NEWS about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists

READ THIS: If you subscribe to news from Botanical Art and Artists

28/7/2021

If you have subscribed to emails about NEWS about Botanical Art and Artists from this website YOU NEED TO KNOW

the means of sending you email news updates from this blog is CHANGING
YOU need to do just TWO THINGS.

THIS IS WHAT ALL SUBSCRIBERS NEED TO KNOW

Why email news updates are changing

Google has decided to terminate Feedburner's free email subscription service that I use to send out news updates from this blog.

I'm replacing Feedburner with Mailerlite - which has a lot of good reviews. However this is not a free service so there will be one additional condition of an email subscription.

In future, all emails will be published by Mailerlite.

If you read on a desktop the email will look like this - using the last email as an example.

If you read on a mobile device like a phone this is what it will look like

I'd very much appreciate FEEDBACK from you
if you have any problems or comments on the new format.

What you need to do

I've created and published a new page about the news email subscription service this morning. This explains what's happening and what existing and new subscribers need to do.

IN SUMMARY - existing subscribers

the emails of all ACTIVE (i.e. all verified emails) subscribers have been imported into Mailerlite from Feedburner. This means you don't need to do anything to get the new email.
your email subscription will remain active so long as most emails are opened on a regular basis.
- It's very likely that I'm going to be charged on a monthly basis for the number of subscriptions exceeding 1,000 in future (because I will exceed the limits for the free account) and I'm very keen on encouraging those who no longer read the emails to unsubscribe.
- I will in future be able to tell who opens the email and I'll be fixing a threshold for how many unopened emails triggers a removal from the list - and will tell you when I decided what that is. The figure I have in mind at the moment is 10.
- The alternative would be to make all email subscriptions subject to a nominal Patreon subscription - which I'm disinclined to do at the moment.
If you want to avoid getting duplicate emails (until the Feedburner email service stops in the very near future) - you can unsubscribe from Feedburner using the link at the bottom of the email - see image below

You can also unsubscribe at any time. There is an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every one of the new emails.
Your emails are
- never shared with anybody except the provider of the email service -
- never used for any other purpose
- read my privacy policy here

IN SUMMARY - new subscribers

The NEW subscription page explains what you need to do if you want to subscribe to this news blog..

If at any point you want to unsubscribe in future

please DO NOT MARK AN EMAIL AS SPAM.
the only reason you are receiving the email is because you volunteered your email and verified that you wanted to receive news updates from this website i.e. you consented to receive it and it is by definition not spam.
THE CORRECT PROCESS to stop receiving emails is to use the unsubscribe link. This is always at the bottom of every email. Open the email, scroll to the bottom and click the link. You will be asked for a reason but don't need to provide one.

If anybody has any queries, please do not hesitate to get in touch via comments below or the query form at the bottom of my contact page

6 Comments

An apology - and good news - and more good news

21/2/2017

1 Comment

First I have to apologise to five RHS Botanical Art Gold Medal Winners from last year:

Simonetta Occhipinti GM and Lidia Vanzetti GM from Italy
Esmée Winkel GM from the Netherlands; and
Sarah Howard GM and Roger Reynolds GM

who were the subject of my third set of interviews with RHS Gold Medallists from last year's RHS Botanical Show - which I started but recently discovered I never finished!

Mea culpa. My only excuse is that I've never before had to do 13 interviews one after the other and then write them all up - besides extracting all their top tips! Then do the blog posts and the website updates.

I guess I'm not surprised I forgot something but I am very sorry it was this blog post.

The good news is that it is now published. My red exhibition/interview book gave up all that was required of it and my braincells remembered more bits as I finished it off! (If you see a woman clutching a red Moleskine at the RHS Botanical Art Show this week it's probably me!)

See Interviews with RHS Botanical Art Gold Medallists - from the UK and Europe

Roger Reynolds with his gold-medal winning exhibit "The Tip of the Branch"

There is more good news (for me).

Yesterday this website exceeded 4,000 pageviews on one day for the first time. Google seems to a big fan of this website and traffic in 2016 has been very good (see chart). After nearly two years, Botanical Art and Artists is now approaching two-thirds of what Making A Mark gets after 11 years of blogging!

Given that this website is now well and truly established - and doing rather well in the comparative rankings of botanical art websites - in future I will be moving virtually all botanical art blog posts to the news blog on this site.

Traffic (pageviews) since April 2015 - an upward trajectory

1 Comment

Festive Greetings, Thanks and a Christmas Rose

24/12/2016

'Helleborus niger' by Sydenham Edwards - Plate 8 from The Botanical Magazine, Volume 1. by William Curtis

My very best wishes of the season to all botanical art fans and artists and the many readers of News about Botanical Art and for Botanical Artists.

I hope your Christmas trees, plants and flowers survive the festivities!
Below are some words about and more historical images of the Christmas Rose.

Thank you for... reviewing the pages on this website and reading about the various dimensions of botanical art and artists.

During 2016, the traffic to this website has climbed very steadily.
Every week it now gets:

3,500 - 4,000 visitors and
more than 5,000 pageviews

The trend looks set to continue in 2017!

Thank you also for...

sending me suggestions for artists
sending me details of botanical art exhibitions you're organising
telling me about botanical art tutors you value
buying botanical art books via my associate links on the website. The pennies I get all help to fund this website and are much appreciated.

The Christmas Rose

The Christmas rose or Black Hellebore (Helleborus niger) has nothing whatsoever to do with the rose family and actually belongs to the the buttercup family, Ranunculacea

The scientific name Helleborus derives from the Greek name for H. orientalis, ἑλλέβορος helléboros, from elein "to injure" and βορά borá "food".

Helleborus niger has been represented by many botanical artists over the years.

Above is an engraved version of a painting by Sydenham Edwards which was Plate 8 in the very first volume of The Botanical Magazine produced by William Curtis and distributed from his London Botanic Garden in Lambeth Marsh (near the site of Waterloo Juntion today)

Below are two more versions:

Black Hellebore. Heleborus Niger by Dioscorides - Greek physician, pharmacologist, botanist, and author of De Materia Medica - in the Codex Julianae Aniciae.
Black Hellebore by Otto Brunfels, in "Herbarum vivae eicones"

Black Hellebore. Heleborus Niger From: Codex Julianae Aniciae (Facsimile) By: Dioscorides Folio 115 verso

Otto Brunfels, Black Hellebore, in "Herbarum vivae eicones"

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A News Blog for Botanical Art and Artists

24/5/2015

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I'm adding a news blog into Botanical Art and Artists for two reasons:

It allows me to update people with any major changes to this website
It allows me to highlight
EITHER any botanical art exhibitions that botanical art organisations or artists may be holding
OR news of any relevant open exhibition or art competition
OR any interesting blog posts they may have written eg about tips for botanical artists.

My main blogging about Botanical Art is going to continue over on Making A Mark but more day to day blogging about botanical art will be over here in future.

If you have an exhibition coming up that you think might interest people please let me know.

You can contact me with news via the contact form in the contact section.

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