Saturday, November 6, 2010

Our FIRST ever Winner of the Street View Paint Off

Congratulations to Laeli Bowden who has won our October/Arizona challenge. Laeli will be receiving a $250 Visa card! Laeli painted the Red Rocks of Sedona and her painting caught the eye of 112 friends who voted for her painting.


Red Rock Country by Laeli Bowden
OCTOBER'S FIRST PLACE WINNER 
I feel compelled to give you a few other stats, such as: 

Honorable mention goes to Michelle Boonstra and Len Windel who were a close second and third in the vote count.  And just in case you wondered, Laeli was our 18th entry, and it was received in the middle of the month.  Michelle was our fifth and Len our 3rd.  Which is to say it doesn't matter much if your painting was an early or late entry.

Or DOES IT?  I received a great question about the length of voting time for the contest.  It's worth exploring. It had to do with the "voting period" and whether it should be all month, or a 5 day period AFTER all entries are in.  So let me share that part of the rules and solicit your comments and suggestions.

Basically right now in November the voting has OPENED.  I made it the 6th of the month so as not to confuse anyone voting as to what period they are voting for.  So when the voting for the last month ends on the 5th, the voting for the new period opens on the 6th.

Now, this does suggest that anyone who enters early could gather more votes, and this is true to some extent because they'd have more TIME to be seen, but that didn't make a huge difference to our winner in October.  She had lots of friends ;)  I think I've addressed this in the capping of votes for each person.  Each person can only vote 5 times in the whole contest.  Meaning that everyone will have the chance to get their friends to vote for them a limited number of times whether or not they were early or late.

The biggest change is of course the the voting by the public for the Finalists with the Winner being chosen from them by a panel of their peers.  Which will include some of the artists entered (who can't vote for themselves)  along with myself and a few artist friends of a higher quality than  I.  I will introduce each judges group along the way.

I am going to post this.  I reserve the right to edit, if I made errors.  I know everyone is waiting for the winner.

Congrats again Laeli.  Great Job.

6 comments:

karylsquilts said...

Congrats Laeli, a wonderfull vibrant painting !

Kathleen Daughan said...

Congratulations to Laeli. Wonderful painting. I'm wondering why a person can vote 5 times. Isn't once per person enough. Hard to ask friends to vote 5 times.

Smellers said...

BEAUTIFUL painting, Laeli. I love the "cripness" of the colors you chose. My comment regarding the voting is this: as time goes on, I personally don't feel comfortable asking my friends to vote for my work over and over again. Also, a vote by "friends" doesn't really speak for the true artistic-ness of the piece, only that the artist has alot of friends. Of course, if this is how the contest is going to run, then those are the rules regardless. How about a peer voting system instead? How about limiting voting to only those who have been in at least one Paint Off contest? The rule could be that you cannot vote for your own work, but you can vote for anybody else? Just some thoughts.

Kay Zahn said...

Thanks everyone for your comments. I was hoping to get your feedback.

The voting 5 times thing (i think) works like this. When you vote, you are reminded that you have 4 votes left (etc.) and you can give them ALL at that time to the same person, and/or save them for a later entry. At least that's what I am meaning to set up.

I'm thinking that this way anyone who is just voting for friends doesn't have to come back unless they want to. And then the addition of the FINALIST only from the Fan voting, to the last stage with is voting by a jury of peers, which will include some of the artists entered, but not finalists or something like that.

We only have one entry so far. Maybe I'll put up a fake entry and then vote and see what happens (to test the 5 votes at a time thing) I have put up test entries, but there were never any voting buttons until today.

I sort of took that idea from the Great Food Truck Race that my friend was in (on the Food Network) and they let you vote all at once or one at a time over the course of the month.

And then there was a choice of once a day every day, but that seemed like too much. So I'm looking for the most sound way to choose the public favorites but still NOT have a popularity contest only . .

keep up the input if you have more thoughts or comments

Unknown said...

I think that voting 5 times for the same painting is just wrong. If a picture is really good and worthy of winning then it would get plenty of votes from different viewers.

As for having friends vote for you, ok, at least they will be in the voting pool and could vote for other paintings they really like.

Kay Zahn said...

@Art-N-Garden - I may have been wrong. It appears that you HAVE 5 votes, but you CAN only vote for a painting ONCE.

So it DOES bring one's friends IN to the voting pool which helps, if they like other paintings.

I think a lot of folks who really want the voting to reflect their favorite painting and not just their own or their friend's, will wait until they see them all, and then cast a vote (or two)

Thanks for making me recheck that statement about voting all 5 for one painting.