Picturing the Regency

I have a new contest up on my website. If you'd like to enter it, please visit the home page http://www.lesleyannemcleod.com/ and go to the guestbook to sign up and be entered in the draw. The prize this time--for March and April--is a blank, lined journal with Shakoriel's Regency art on the cover. The journal is from our CafePress store, Regency Fancies www.cafepress.com/regencyfancies


When we started the CafePress store, I just wanted Shakoriel's Regency art to find a bigger market. It is so good, so evocative of the Regency period, that it seemed to me it deserved a larger audience than it could find if it remained only on my website.


I am so fortunate to have a resident artist. And I am so lucky she doesn't charge me an arm and a leg for every illustration. She's just starting out, glad for the commissions, and I'm happy to give her the work. Because you see, there just isn't a lot of Regency art available for use, for reasonable prices.

I need art for website information, for book trailers, for promotional materials and for covers. I comb out of copyright books (thank goodness for Google Books and Project Gutenberg), free clip art sites and Dover's invaluable clip art series for appropriate illustrations. There is a Regency romance writer who does a great deal of promotion, and she uses literally dozens of the grand Regency artworks to illustrate her essays, blogs and newsletters. I don't know how she affords it. I certainly can't. Most of the Regency art that you will see on book covers, websites and various publications is all copyrighted at stock art agencies. It costs a fortune to use original Regency art--at least $300-$500 for a single time use. Places like Mary Evans Picture Library, and Corbis.com, and Clipart.com, are invaluable, but they cost, big-time.


If the picture is from a book, you can't use it without permission or licensing. If it's on a website, you need to make sure it hasn't come from somewhere else without permission. I tried to get permission from the publisher to use Barbosa's art from Theresa Chris' out of print book. They didn't even answer my letter. So I am using it but with full attribution, and even then, it's a risk. The Internet is a huge problem for artists--as much as it makes their work available to the world, it also makes it available for pirating. As I work in the creative field, I am concerned about pirating. And I want my illustrations to be legal and above-board. But I do want to have lots of Regency art.

As I've said before I'm a visually oriented person. I want to see what the Regency looked like and I want to show my readers what it looked like. Shakoriel helps me do that.

Thanks, Shakoriel!

Till next time,
Lesley-Anne

Searching for the Regency...

I really enjoy the Internet. It opens up communities and worlds to me, places I'll never see and things I'll never be able to do.

I am a very visual and art-oriented person, so wherever I go on the Internet, I tend to look for, and at, pictures. That's why my own website is very graphic-oriented. The visual gives you a taste--a sample--a flavour of a place, an event, or a thing.

Wherever I go on the Internet the first thing I do, if I'm at a site with an internal search engine, is put 'Regency' into a search. I've done it at http://www.etsy.com/ and found some wonderful costume makers and some Jane Austen-themed trinkets. I've done it at http://www.cafepress.com/ and found some great Regency-themed totes and decorative items.

If I want to look at pictures just to absorb historical atmosphere, I go to http://pro.corbis.com/ and enter 'Regency' in the search. Adding a year to the search makes it even better. The same thing happens at http://www.maryevans.com/ a wonderful picture library. Images are copyrighted at both of these sites, and can only be used by purchasing rights, but for browsing they are wonderful. The great English auction house http://www.sothebys.com/ is a great place to look at actual Regency furnishings, jewelry and art.

When I go to museum websites, I put 'Regency' into the search box. At http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/ , http://www.vam.ac.uk/(Victoria and Albert Museum), and http://www.britishmuseum.org/research.aspx this brings me more pictures and information than I have time to view.

And then of course, if you tire of looking at pictures, and you want in-depth information you can go to http://www.abebooks.com/, enter 'English Regency' in a keyword search and find 5730 books that you can read about the Regency era--fiction and non-fiction.

So, do you have an overriding interest that you always enter in search boxes? Or am I alone in this singular pursuit? :)

Til next time,
Lesley-Anne