When you start exhibiting your art on the net, and want to be successful all around the world, you have to work hard everyday. Publishing new paintings, writing new blogs posts, twitting, facebooking, etc. Unless of course you are already famous and already have millions of followers, which is not my case. Anyway, I don’t like fame, at least not when it becomes too obvious and followers become stalkers, kind of… following and being followed is in fact one of the many social jails I always tried to escape in my life.
Anyway, in the past, one of my active places on the net was Flickr. But caught on other platforms, I had stopped to publish for a long while. Yesterday, who knows why, after receiving one of these Flick mails from a new fan, I went there and checked the statistics, expecting to see the amount of daily visits reduced to null. But it was the contrary! What a strange thing the internet is! I have often noticed it, by sites and blogs, they always say that the search engines want you to publish new material all the time, but strangely enough, exactly in the time when I work much, the stats numbers go dramatically down! And when I do nothing, the numbers go up! This must be the result of some “Gravity”.
Well, this morning I checked the stars again, a little bit closer this time, and found out to my big surprise that half of my views in Flickr since the 29th of November, are focussed on ONE painting.
My portrait of Robbie Savage!!!!
Instead of an average of 1 view per day, it jumped to 250 views per day! Now, for the ignorant who still don’t know Robbie Savage, let me say that: he is one of the players of our Football Team “Derby County”
Like always my little brain was very curious to understand this sudden phenomena. So with these facts and numbers I went to Kev Moore, my partner and another ‘celebrity’ of Derby County and always aware of everything going on there. He explained to me what is going on with Robbie in the UK right now, and here it is, Kev Moore personally, telling you about Robbie Savage:
“Robbie’s star is rising right now as a result of a cumulation of many things, he has just passed his 600 league game milestone, he has been a high profile player for many years, via Man Utd, Leicester, Blackburn and Birmingham, and now of course Derby, where under Nigel Clough, he found himself resurrected in the twilight of his career. Enjoying the notoriety of being ‘the pantomime villain’ he was always the perfect candidate to have an autobiography ghostwritten, and this was recently released. Add to this Robbie’s dovetailing of his new media career with his impending retirement from the game proper, including appearances on BBC Radio and Television, and you see his profile spilling over into the non-football public. The icing on the cake is the huge following Robbie has garnered on Twitter. Simply put, he’s reaching more people than ever before and more people are talking about him, and searching for him on the net.”
And if you are interested in buying a Giclee print of this portrait, it is available in many different sizes and on different supports – Papers, canvasses, etc.) in my FAA Gallery. I am not sure though that I am allowed to sell these prints without Robbie’s permission, and if it is the case, I am sorry and will retract the painting from sale. I guess his agents will let me know. Anyway, this portrait is, I guess, much too romantic for most of the fans… which makes me want to make another one, depicting the wild Savage…
Another great product featuring Robbie Savage has been created in the family: “Fan Fayre for The Commons People”.
Kev Moore’s 12 track CD in homage to his club Derby County,
Featuring Commons People, Can’t let Savage go, The Derby Ram, Steve Bloomer’s (still) watching, We’ll always be the Derby, Nothinghamshire, and many more!
To purchase online at http://www.mikismart.com/CD_Fan_Fayre_for_the_Commons_People_-_Red_Dog_limited_Edition/p112123_228365.aspx
