I have to admit, in the roughtly two years I’ve authored and now own Artnewyorkcity.com, I’ve always been a little in the dark about it’s popularity and it’s metrics - sure I got some, but they were very basic and didn’t give me much to work with - and being an Artist and a Web Analyst, someone who’s fairly well known in the Analytics Industry, not having good metrics was like ….. flying blind.

But tonight, I noticed that Google Analytics is working for this blog - and probably has for a while - and I just noticed it now (I gave up hope a while back - it seemed getting GA to work on WordPress was not as direct as it needed to be and loading an Application is neccessary).

I don’t want to go into details but I do want to say something about my blog that is absolutely fantastic - and as a Web Analyst - I must say it.

The Bounce Rate on ArtNewYorkCity.com is the lowest I’ve ever seen for any site I have looked at via Web Analytics - it’s less than 5%!

Do you know what the Bounce rate is on my Web Analytics Blog - WebMetricsGuru.com - around 85%

You know what that means?

95% of the visitors to this blog look at more than one page … and you know what? The average visitor looks at more than 5 pages of this blog on an average visit.

That’s fantasitc!   Far better than the average -  I had no idea my blog was that “engaging”….. well, well, pictures speak louder than words - and inspire me to do a hell of a lot more, now I know what I’m looking at.

What else can I say about Artnewyorkcity.com’s traffic, without saying too much  … just good things - that a good chunk of my traffic came from Google Images, as to be expected for an Art Blog.   Granted, the average visitor doesn’t spend that much time on my blog - a bit less than a minute - but since they’re looking at pictures, more often than not, you can look at a lot of stuff in less than a minute - if your into pictures.

And let’s face it - they read my writings too.

About 25% of my traffic is from New York State - (what’d you expect - this is a blog about New York Art) and a lot of visitors like the photography articles.

So you know what - if I know what my readers like ….. and I now know that - I’ll cover more photography - because my readers want me to -  they respond to me writing about it.

Time for me to go to some more openings, and more photography openings.

Not sure when a painting is done.  Used to know - when I was working with oils, pastels, etc - during the last two years or so - I almost always knew when I was done - and I stopped working as soon as I reached the point where I could see my painting - done.

But this is different - what I’m doing now.   It’s almost as if …… we become expert at something, complete the cycle, and start all over again - but one rung up the latter.

Now, instead of painting with pigment, I’m painting with light.

I’m beginning to wonder if painting on the iPhone is part of something much bigger - the integration of Art and Technology was something that was talked about quite a bit over the last 30 years, but for the most part, that integration seemed “forced” and partly unnatural - like a 20th or 21st Century graft on an ancient discipline of painting, drawing, sculpture and applied arts.

First, here’s the paintings I mentioned I’d do today - live drawing from the model - I left my sketchpad home and used my iPhone exclusively - see the images and a photo I took of the model.

Life Painting 2 - Marshall Sponder - iPhone Painting using the Colors Application

Life Painting 1 - - Marshall Sponder - iPhone Painting using the Colors Application

Because this is an English blog (I’m American, but it’s hosted in the UK) i defer to sensibilities, that aren’t mine, and won’t publish the photo of the model, which would show the motifs I worked from.

The point is - I got everything I needed from an iPhone application - and I worked much faster than I could have in traditional media.   And now, here’s my idea - an idea I wish someone would pick up on.

What if the devices like the iPhone, and the application software on it, could select the palette of colors and textures for us and provide a list of matching paints/pigments that could be used to replicate the imagery in physical paint (oil, acrylic, watercolor, etc).

Here’s what I mean - in the future I might sit in front of a nude model, as I did today, with my iPhone and take an image which is analyzed for a selection of highlights and shadows - my palate for the drawing is then “selected” - and I can add to it - but maybe I don’t want to initially.    At the same moment - I can use the same software to output a list of the paints I’d need to replicate the same palate in oils, for example (including the brand).

By the same token, I could go the other way, and set up a palate of colors, read it into the iPhone application, then analyze a motif, and let the software select from what I have to work with.

Software and devices have come this far, that what I am writing about there is not far off - and they’re inexpensive programs on an inexpensive device, such as an iPhone.

Instead of trying to graft technology onto Art, lets’ harness technology to improve what we can do with our own Art - we have now arrived at the point where that’s doable, and shortly, I predict we will be doing more sketching and painting using mobile devices - for a variety of reasons.

I know, I will be.