Post 561: After the Meeting, Guest Speaker Delwyn Elizabeth

After the Meeting, Guest Speaker Delwyn Elizabeth

The Prince William Art Society (PWAS) has had some really great programs over the years at our monthly meetings. Monday, July 28, 2025 - on all kinds of art topics. We have had a artists demonstrating watercolor, acrylics, pastels, using Golden Art Products, art journaling, plein air painting, learned about photo art and digital art, packing for traveling, art business tips, made art with our friends. learned about art committees and commissions, learned more about each other, made "art reveal videos", had various art challenges, viewed monoprints being made, and awarded scholarships to name a few different topics. This past program was about hanging our art work in a local library.

Ever Hang Art in a Library?

PWAS, as a group, has hung art in several of our local libraries that have the space to do so. Namely, the Montclair Library and the Bull Run Library. But solo artists - if they have enough art to show in the space and it is approved, also can submit a form for processing. The wait varies per library as well as the available dates and space. Delwyn Elizabeth walked the PWAS members through the "how-tos" of applying.

If you would like to see a recap of past guest programs, do a search on the keyword "PWAS Meetings" and have a happy walk back in time! 

 

Emily Hawes introducing Delwyn Elizabeth 

 

Delwyn discussing how to apply and showing the space available at the Montclair Library.  

 

Montclair Library  5049 Waterway Drive, Dumfries, VA

Perhaps it is time you applied for a library show....(note to self too)

PWAS Meetings

PWAS holds our monthly meetings on the 4th Monday of the month, every month except in December. The meetings are typically held at the Tall Oaks Community Center at 12298 Cotton Mill Drive, Woodbridge, VA which is on the corner of Hedges Run and Cotton Mill in the Lakeridge area. Hedges Run is right off of Old Bridge Road, where the Giant is. 

In December, we hold a member + one adult Christmas party with the date to be determined - and of course with so many very talented artists...we almost always have our own musicians as well. Talented people I tell ya! They paint, they draw, they sketch, they teach art. They make digital art, they photograph beauty. And on top of that, some of them make music too.

The artists cheer each others successes, and help when another artist has a question about art dilemmas they run into. We work together as a team at our art events and have fun in every way we can!

As you can see, miss a meeting and you miss a lot. Join PWAS today if you haven't already! 

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Author: Donna Liguria is the Blogmaster for the PWAS Artistry Spin Blog and Donna's Cave Paintings Blog, and an artist member of the Prince William Art Society (PWAS) in Woodbridge, Virginia. And she takes on the PWAS social media duties as well (help me!) Donna specializes in acrylic painting of landscapes, seascapes, historic locations, animals and many subjects. Visit her Website at DonnaLiguriaArt.com and her Donna's Esty site to shop her art. 

Photos by Donna Liguria 

Local Art: The Prince William Art Society is a 50+-year-old non-profit art group in PWC for the appreciation of fine art throughout the county and Northern Virginia. Visit us at any of our local art shows or join us for our monthly meetings - held on the 4th Monday of the month at the Tall Oaks Community Center at 12298 Cotton Mill Dr, Woodbridge, VA at 7:30pm (typically, but check the website in case of any changes).

Want to join PWAS? Go to https://www.princewilliamartsociety.com/membership

Have an idea for a blog post? Are you a writer and want to help with the blog? Let me know! Thank you for visiting, and remember to Share, Follow, and Comment (below)! ...Remember, comments are monitored so they will not show up immediately.

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Post 590: Prince William Art Society Monthly Meeting July 28 7:30pm

Prince William Art Society Monthly Meeting July 28 7:30pm

The Prince William Art Society (PWAS) has a monthly meeting held on the 4th Monday of the month and the public is welcome to attend to see what Prince William County's oldest art group has going on. Meetings can vary, but typically we have a guest speaker, possibly doing a demo, offering art tips on multiple art topics, and/or discussing their own art processes for their artwork.

 

Tall Oaks Community Building on the corner of Cotton Mill Drive and Hedges Run (just past where Giant is off Old Bridge Road) 

Senior Librarian Delwyn Elizabeth

On July 28th the Prince William Art Society will meet at the Tall Oaks Community Center (12298 Cotton Mill Dr., Woodbridge VA, 22192) at 7:30 PM for a general membership meeting. Meetings are free and open to the public who are invited to attend, and will begin with a program by a guest speaker. This month, Senior Librarian at the Montclair library, Delwyn Elizabeth, will share current information on the expanded exhibit space, plans for using this space to showcase local artists, and how to get your work exhibited. Come for this opportunity to hear updated information and ask questions.

 

Montclair Library 5049 Waterway Dr, Montclair, VA 22025

Come Join Us!

My fellow artists in Prince William County, come join us at our meeting, we have a lot of very interesting artist members and folks that just plain love art. You could be a part of us and our group!

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Author: Emily Hawes

Author: Donna Liguria is the Blogmaster for the PWAS Artistry Spin Blog and Donna's Cave Paintings Blog, and an artist member of the Prince William Art Society (PWAS) in Woodbridge, Virginia. And she takes on the PWAS social media duties as well (help me!) Donna specializes in acrylic painting of landscapes, seascapes, historic locations, animals and many subjects. Visit her Website at DonnaLiguriaArt.com and her Donna's Esty site to shop her art. 

Local Art: The Prince William Art Society is a 50+-year-old non-profit art group in PWC for the appreciation of fine art throughout the county and Northern Virginia. Visit us at any of our local art shows or join us for our monthly meetings - held on the 4th Monday of the month at the Tall Oaks Community Center at 12298 Cotton Mill Dr, Woodbridge, VA at 7:30pm (typically, but check the website in case of any changes).

Want to join PWAS? Go to https://www.princewilliamartsociety.com/membership

Have an idea for a blog post? Are you a writer and want to help with the blog? Let me know! Thank you for visiting, and remember to Share, Follow, and Comment (below)! ...Remember, comments are monitored so they will not show up immediately.

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Post 589: What PWAS Members Are Up to This Summer Part 1

What PWAS Members Are Up to This Summer Part 1

Here's another blog post from the Prince William Art Society members, where I ask a question and await to see who answers. The question posted was, "What have you been up to this summer so far?" I wondered and asked the members to send me what they've been up to, any new artwork, taking any classes, going somewhere for a vacation, or just plain taking a break. Let's have a look what the artist's days have been filled with.

PWAS Member Bettie Sperty

What I have been up to this summer is a good question. 

I have recently been wondering where the months of June and July went! Mainly because I don’t feel like I’ve really done anything! What I have done is spend a little time in my vegetable garden, took a couple of visits to N.C. to see family, helped work on the granddaughter’s treehouse in our back yard, had her come visit us for a couple of weekends, dog sat a few times for two different dogs, attended a few meetings. 

As for creativity, I did make some pottery pieces to use as paint brush vases/holders, I painted a friend’s cement dog to look like her real dog and now painting her giant cement crab, worked on knitting projects and just this past weekend got to spend 3 days at our friend’s place on the water in Southern Maryland.

Not very exciting but not too shabby either. - Bettie

PWAS Member Robert Mira

As far as what I’m doing for the next 30 days, I've started to learn and practice drawing. It’s an art which I thought I could never do but practicing every day has provided some positive results as far as I’m concerned. 

I’ve learned how to have better control when creating lines, how to see things in a basic form, get better at figure proportions, etc…

My goal is to later on bring those skills into my paintings. Here are some samples:

PWAS Member Donna Liguria

I had to pause myself and think back on where has the summer gone....already! The Best of the Region at the ARTfactory seems like ages ago, yet its only the end of July. Like Bettie, I grow a vegetable garden although much smaller. And I love all the great home-grown tomatoes and fresh basil. BLTs, roasted tomatoes, pesto...good eats.

Through those many rainy days we had, I've inventoried and reordered my giclee art prints, and got those packaged. I've been updating my Etsy shop and sold a few things there, and shipped those orders out. I've attended a workshop with Valerie Larson and I've described that on my blog here Donna's Cave Paintings. I did get started on the Tech Series talked about in the workshop post, here is what I have so far:

Tech Series 1 Instagram for Artists

Tech Series 2 Are You Reeling on Instagram?

Tech Series 3 How to Be Pinteresting

Tech Series 4 The Blogging Story

I've completed a commission for the DC Four Seasons Series I did, and this one is called, "A Capital Summer". And it was picked up by the client just before the Fourth of July. 

 I've also packaged the DC Four Seasons Series as a print package available on Etsy. I have "Cherry Blossoms, An Annual DC Event" (Spring), "A Capital Summer", "Lincoln Memorial in the Fall", and "White House Having a White Christmas" (Winter).

 And I'm waking up each morning to multiple colors of Morning Glory flowers which find their way onto canvas and watercolor paper. I have a blog post on that here. Other than that, I've been applying to a few of the area Art Calls, so awaiting the verdict on those.

 

Let's see if we can go to a Part 2 on What PWAS Members Are Up to This Summer. PWAS Members? Send me your stuff by July 31! When I get 3-5 replies, we'll do a part 2. Visitors...post a comment below!

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Author: Donna Liguria is the Blogmaster for the PWAS Artistry Spin Blog and Donna's Cave Paintings Blog, and an artist member of the Prince William Art Society (PWAS) in Woodbridge, Virginia. And she takes on the PWAS social media duties as well (help me!) Donna specializes in acrylic painting of landscapes, seascapes, historic locations, animals and many subjects. Visit her Website at DonnaLiguriaArt.com and her Donna's Esty site to shop her art. 

Local Art: The Prince William Art Society is a 50+-year-old non-profit art group in PWC for the appreciation of fine art throughout the county and Northern Virginia. Visit us at any of our local art shows or join us for our monthly meetings - held on the 4th Monday of the month at the Tall Oaks Community Center at 12298 Cotton Mill Dr, Woodbridge, VA at 7:30pm (typically, but check the website in case of any changes).

Want to join PWAS? Go to https://www.princewilliamartsociety.com/membership

Have an idea for a blog post? Are you a writer and want to help with the blog? Let me know! Thank you for visiting, and remember to Share, Follow, and Comment (below)! ...Remember, comments are monitored so they will not show up immediately.

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Post 588: Tech Series 4 The Blogging Story

Tech Series 4 The Blogging Story

The Prince William Art Society (PWAS) Artistry Spin Blog will explore the use of technology and its impact on the world of art. There are so many tools and resources that can benefit the artists to not only create artwork, but to inspire them, to share their work with the world and to potentially sell their artwork. We'll review and offer suggestions on some of the top trending tech on the web, popular for artists, and those wanting to find out more about art, and perhaps, YOUR art.

Why an Art Blog?

A blog is a good way to promote your art, your knowledge of art, your art business, and your art website without being overly in your face. As you may know, people buy art more often if they can relate, they can connect to the artist - by learning your story, the story about your artwork, and how it makes them feel. A blog can document the story of you and each piece that you create. 

Donna's Cave Paintings Blog on Blogger 

A blog is another outlet for being creative, especially if you enjoy writing. You really don't have to write a book, you be you and communicate your message in a way that is comfortable to you, in the language you use every day. Share what you know about your medium, why you painted the subject of the artwork, how you felt or what happened in your life that you poured into the work and so much more. 

PWAS Artistry Spin Blog on Blogger

Blogs are search engine optimization food for your art. Google and other search engines plow through the internet gobbling up new content, categorizing what it finds. By adding those sweet keywords and keyword phrases and building your blog content, the search engines will find you and will understand how to catalog your data.

Social media - your Facebook and Pinterest postings, are more limited on the content you post, perhaps by character count, the number of images, who can see your posts, etc. They are meant to be short blasts of info that the viewer can quickly digest. Blog writing means you can post as much info as you like to get your point across, and often all the pictures you took of an art show you are in. 

Your art website is your personal and professional online art gallery, a showcase, and an art shop that shows who you are and what you have created, and perhaps what is available for purchase. Your social media links direct traffic to your website and vice versa.  Your art blog gives you the space to share your story and your artistic journey in much more detail. That said, you should have a page or at least a link on your website that directs the viewer to your blog.  Check out Should Artists Have a Blog? Art Blogging Pros and Cons

You'll Need to Pick a Blogging Platform - Check out the tools and features of various blogging software and think about what you want to get out of it - now and into the future. See if its free, a free trial to try, or what the pricing options are. Not many are totally free as there may be hosting fees, domain name fees, or have more features and advanced SEO tools in the pricing levels. 

• Google owned Blogger is free and is what I use for my blog, Donna's Cave Paintings and for the Prince William Art Society blog, Artistry Spin. It has a user friendly interface and plenty of templates to suit my needs. Here is a A Step by Step Guide to Creating a Blog Using Blogger
• WordPress.com has a user friendly interface and a free starter plan: its a very popular blogging platform.
• Substack
• HubPages
• Squarespace (free trial)
• Tumblr
• Wix
• Medium 
• Ghost 
• Weebly

There are more out there of course. These are often recommended blog platforms for their ease of use with templates, intuitive interfaces, drag-and-drop features, etc. making setup fairly pain free. 

See also How to Use This Blog on Artistry Spin

How to Start Your Art Blog

Do some research to spot layouts you like to get an idea of what your want on your site.

• You'll need a Name for your blog, and specify the URL for your blog.
• Do you need to register your blog and get hosting?
• Select the theme and layout you like. Templates are often available. Customize the colors, the fonts, what goes where and more.
• Consider sidebars, pages, and other optional features. Be sure and check the Mobile and Computer view of your blog.
• Provide a keyword rich description for your blog.
• Create a Draft post, get a post started. You should always have at least one photo on a post.
• Publish the post and have a look at it live.
• Promote the blog. This is not Field of Dreams in that if you build it, they will come. You have to let your art public, friends, family, the world know that you have a blog and you just posted on it.
• Can you make money with your blog? Some offer this functionality in several ways. 

Just be aware that once you chose a design theme, there are some changes you may not want to do later as it might be too drastic a change. I once altered a theme layout on one of my blogs and some of my posts were temporarily no longer with us. Talk about a mad scramble toward recovery!

An option I like in Blogger is that I can create a Post Template so that whenever I begin a new post, I have my fonts and layouts, signature areas and info already added to the starter post and can then just adjust titles and the body as I like.

What Should I Blog About?

Anything you want to. But a main focus area for consistency is better and in this scenario we are talking about an ART blog. Are you passionate about art? That should show in what you write about. 

Create a list of Blog Topics of interest to you, a sort of blog idea list and add to it when another light bulb appears overhead. Sometimes I even have draft posts for blog ideas that I write up over time and publish when I feel its says what all I want it to.

1. Write about specific art pieces and the STORY behind the piece.
2. Blog about your goals and what you want to do in the future with your art talent.
3. Blog about shows you get into and want to apply to.
4. Write about what artwork and art series you have in progress. Before and After makes for good posts - we all want to see how the artwork turns out.
5. Have a favorite art tool? Why do you love a certain paint brand?
6. Obviously, any art shows you have coming up and attend. Pictures of art receptions and definitely your solo exhibits all document your art journey.
7. Locations, people and places, pets and favorite art subjects that inspire your artistic self are what you post about. 
8. Places you go to paint - do you plein air paint? Do you take art classes?
9. Your art studio.

This is just a starter idea list, but blog posts themselves make for great topics, pins, links to add to Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, etc. By sharing to all your social media, you're helping to promote your art and YOU!

When Should Blog?

Whenever you can! Find a schedule that works for you and stick to it as best you can. Posting at least once a week is often recommended. You can schedule posts in advance to perhaps post every Monday, or whenever you like. Content is King on the internet, so having fresh content regularly is search engine fodder as well as good your art fans.

Want to learn more? What is a Blog? Types, Benefits, and Why You Need One

Well, what do you think? I like that I have a way to say something that I may not always be able to articulate on the spot, but can put together my thoughts on various art subjects and then post them out to the world. There are stories about many of the art pieces that I have and I want to tell that story too. Maybe blogging will work for you, so will you be starting an art blog?

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Author: Donna Liguria is the Blogmaster for the PWAS Artistry Spin Blog and Donna's Cave Paintings Blog, and an artist member of the Prince William Art Society (PWAS) in Woodbridge, Virginia. And she takes on the PWAS social media duties as well (help me!) Donna specializes in acrylic painting of landscapes, seascapes, historic locations, animals and many subjects. Visit her Website at DonnaLiguriaArt.com and her Donna's Esty site to shop her art. 

Local Art: The Prince William Art Society is a 50+-year-old non-profit art group in PWC for the appreciation of fine art throughout the county and Northern Virginia. Visit us at any of our local art shows or join us for our monthly meetings - held on the 4th Monday of the month at the Tall Oaks Community Center at 12298 Cotton Mill Dr, Woodbridge, VA at 7:30pm (typically, but check the website in case of any changes).

Want to join PWAS? Go to https://www.princewilliamartsociety.com/membership

Have an idea for a blog post? Are you a writer and want to help with the blog? Let me know! Thank you for visiting, and remember to Share, Follow, and Comment (below)! ...Remember, comments are monitored so they will not show up immediately.

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