How to Use Pinterest Place Pins to Map Your Paintings Around the World

Pinterest is one of the fastest growing social networks. Its users number reached 70 million by summer 2013. The idea of Pinterest is collecting pictures (here they known as “pins”) by themes in folders (“boards”). For example, one can collect paintings by Vincent van Gogh, baseball cards or photos with Christmas toys. You can upload pictures from a PC or to save pictures from any site by a browser app. Saving by the app will keep the link to the original image. Also you can look in other’s collections and save their pictures in your collections.

That’s why Pinterest is so interesting for artists: it’s built for people who search for visual content and Pinterest has a lot of amazing collections of artworks, much more than one can find in other places.

Some time ago the Pinterest team noticed that people collect photos connected with their travels by folders - that’s why Pinterest recently had started Place Pins: a feature to place photos on the map of the world.

I’ve got the idea to place my own landscape paintings on the map instead of just photos. It turned out very interesting: I can see how the world map is covered by memories about the places where I’ve been.

The people visiting my profile also seem to be interested in this and they began to follow me much more frequently. Also no pictures are at the bottom of pages anymore - so all paintings have equal chances to be seen.

Another thing I did is create a group board where I placed paintings by famous artists. You can make your own board like this or to join mine and it will appear in your profile. In any case, it can make the profile more interesting and to collect in group is fun.

Here is a list of ideas with Place Pins which you probably could use:

Place your landscapes on the world map
Place your paintings at the places where they were painted
Place them at the places they are now, like museums and houses (if their present owners are not against it)
To collect the paintings of famous painters by the same principles
Place the paintings nearby with the places and things which inspired you to paint them. For example, if you’ve painted them in an Italian city, you can collect Italian architecture elements, photos of sea and other things
Place the paintings in the surrounding of views which inspired you to paint them
Place the photos of you working on your painting at the place.

Many artists were very inspired by this idea, but I faced the fact that it is hard for them to make the first pin on the map, since there are no detailed instructions.

Here they are:

Register at Pinterest by e-mail or Facebook authorization
Press on your avatar at the upper right corner of the screen and choose “Your profile & pins”. You will see your boards.
If you already have a board with your paintings – go there and press “pin it” to make their copies on the group board with the map. To be able to add pictures to the group board you need to follow it and sometimes ask the owner to add you (usually he has a special pin or board for this). Or you can press “edit” the existing board and make it a board with a map.
If you don’t have a board, press on the “create a board”. Choose a name for it (like “my landscapes”), write a short description, choose “art” category and set option “add a map” as “Yes”.
Now you can place your pins on the map. Press on the round grey button with the cross.
Type the name of the place. If the language of the country is not English, sometimes is easier to type the English name in Google, find the native spelling, then copy-paste it in Pinterest, and find the place by the native name.

Sometimes the object is not on the map yet, so you need to choose something near or bigger. For example, if there would be no beach I am searching for, I could choose a hotel nearby or zoom out and choose the whole city as an object. Also sometimes it is easier to press “choose city” and then to type the name of the object without details (like “beach” instead of “San Sebastian beach”).

San Sebastian Beach

You can press on the red dots on the map to see the name of the place in the menu at the left. When you find the one you need, press “map it”. Sometimes you will need to renew the page to see that the position is added to the pin. To change it, go to the “edit” menu in pin.

Enjoy!

daniil belov P.s. If you are looking for the place of work of someone else, like in my case, you can use the name of the painting to find the place. I hope I was right in my guess about beach. Sometimes, however, I search for the places in outside internet, like it was with the “Japanese bridge” by Claude Monet. You can find it’s place on my board.