Sunday, October 17, 2010

17th October 2010 - Who's made a mark this week?

Miniature watercolour paintings byTracy Hall
in the Annual Exhibition of The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers
The exhibition season is well and truly open us again.  All the Autumn/Winter exhibitions are opening and the art societies are also busy with Annual Exhibitions.

In today's (late) post I've got pictures of some of the exhibitions I saw last week.  Above are the miniature watercolour paintings by Tracy Hall ARMS HS MPSGS MASF (Watercolour Artist Diary) who won the RMS top prize of the Gold Memorial Bowl in 2008.  Further down the page is a very striking watercolour painting of a wave colliding with a harbour wall by Andrew Blyth which is in the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Marine Artists

I was also trying to get to see "Venice - Canaletto and his Rivals" at the National Gallery on Friday afternoon but it would have been the third exhibition of the day and at the end of a very long and tiring week I decided to save it for when I was feeling fresher.  However reviews to date suggest it should be good.

Drawing and sketching [Late Addition - I forgot to transfer this bit!]

Yesterday was the International Sketchcrawl #29.  Check the SketchCrawl Forum to see results from cities around the world.  Sketches are also posted on Urban Sketchers
as well as a lot of individuals blogs such as :
This week I'm also featuring the blogs of a number of artists whjo like to work in graphite.  These are:
plus another blog I came across this week is Drawing my way round London which has a rather neat idea of involves Heather visiting every station on the (old) Silverlink line / North London railway line, making at least one drawing when she gets to each place.  She began in North Woolwich and will finish at Richmond in the west.

Next Friday and Saturday is the big event in London for Big Draw month when, on 22 and 23 October, you can Make your Mark on the Future: From London Bridge to Tower Bridge.  I'm due to be drawing by Southwark Cathedral on Friday,

Coloured Pencils and Pastels
  • The thing I like about Nicole Caulfield's artwork is that so very often there is a story behind it.  I particularly like the new direction she is taking in developing a new series of works stimulated by the way in which Norman Rockwell's work commented on aspects of daily life - see Beginning of Norman Rockwell Series. I've been following the progress on her latest one with much interest - see Update on "Wrong Place, Wrong Time".  I'm sure every parent will have a wry grin over that one! 
WIP: Wrong Place Wrong Time
copyright Nicole Caulfield
Entries are open from now until Sunday 31st October 2010 and entries will be placed on display on the Australian Coloured Pencil Website  – November 18th  2010.
Landscape

Mitchell Albala (Essential Concepts of Landscape Painting) has posted the second in a series of step by step posts about the "In Sunlight" series: In Sunlight: “December Peak”

Painting
Art Business and Marketing

Art Galleries
Online Galleries / selling art online
  • Etsy broke its own records in September and continues its very impressive upward trajectory.  According to the Etsy Statistics: September 2010 Weather Report: $26.6 million of goods were sold - covering 1.5 million items sold.  Plus 2.2 million new items listed and 780.7 million page views - all of which are new Etsy records.  (Is anybody still using eBay?)
  • Branded art anyone?   See Culture Label which has some of the most well known 'names'.  These are the brands and these are the artists.  It's interesting to see who's allowing themselves to be marketed like this.
  • If you've tried Bonanza to sell your art can you let me know what you think about it or give me a link to a review on your blog.  Thanks! 
  • [an empty space which might have featured a website]  I came across a rather intrusive and what I thought was an OTT approach to marketing a course and website support for selling art online. (Which I hasten to add was not by any of the people I normally feature on this blog).   While I've got absolutely no problem about highlighting enterprise which looks helpful, even if it involves payment of fees, I'm only planning to ever feature sites which aren't "in my face" either stylistically or in terms of pop ups littered all over my desktop!.  This one was totally OTT - and hence is NOT getting featured.  Do let me know if that's the sort of approach you value or not.
Art Business Marketing / Efficiency
Collision by Andrew Blyth (Watercolour £550)

Art and the Economy / Art Collectors

Movers and shakers
  • On Friday I posted a list of what are purported to be the 100 most influential people in contemporary art - The most influential people in art? (2010 although after reviewing it I came to the conclusion it was a total celebration of those who have been spending money on gallery real estate.  See how many of the names you know?
  • Who are the promising newcomers to look out for in Britain's thriving contemporary art scene? The Guardian asked Richard Wentworth, Yinka Shonibare, Cornelia Parker and Tacita Dean to each tip a new artist - and they chose Helen Marten, Bjørn Venø, Katie Paterson (one of the least flashy websites I've seen in a long time.  Take a look and you'll begin to get the unintended but accurate pun!) and Charlotte Moth.  This is the slideshow of their work - The new faces of 21st-century art
  • I must confess I smiled at Ed Winkelman's Super Foul Mood List of Pet Peeves - and don't forget to read the comments for everybody else's! 
Collecting art
Arts Funding
     Art Competitions and Art Societies
    Contemporary Art Fairs

    The Frieze Art Fair  (14–17 October 2010) took place in Regent’s Park, London last week but I never pay it any attention and I'm not going to start now!  It had over 60,000 visitors in five days.  Frieze Art Fair 2011 will take place 13–16 October next year.  

    Art Galleries and Museums

    This week I visited the website of the Musee d'Orsay (the 3rd most popular art museum in Paris) and was very pleasantly surprised to find it has had a complete revamp since my last visit and now looks better and seems to be much more accessible.  It now has better links to the exhibitions it supports in the Orangerie and around the world while it undergoes a revamp of the actualmuseum.  The one really wierd thing is the website doesn't have a title on the home page to say it's the website of the Musee d'Orsay!  I'm now just wondering whether I need to check every link on my resource website -  Musée d'Orsay - Resources for Art Lovers! ;) 
    Musee d'Orsay has a new website (English version)

    Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

    Art Studios

    Colour

    Albala also has a post about the use of a limited palette for landscape painting - see Limited Palettes Part 1: The Expanded Primaries. It provides a good overview of all the colours in the proposed limited palette. 

    Copyright 

    This post started as a summary in this post and grew and grew into a fully fledged post earlier today - see Does teaching art generate copying of art?  It's started to generate a few comments and I'd definitely like to hear what you think - even if it's just more questions about aspects which puzzle you.

    Opinion Poll 

    The Making A Mark Poll this month is proving to be exceptionally popular - and there's a very clear pattern emerging.  This is the post about what it's about POLL: What do you do when not being an artist?
      Photo/video manipulation

      What's PEPE I thought - until the penny dropped. It's the new combined Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 9 & Adobe Premiere® Elements 9.  It's available for both Windows and Mac at the same time - which is nice.  According to MacWorld as updates go "this ones's a biggy"!  See their review in Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 review where it gets 5 stars.  I like Bridge and I'm not sure I'm going to rush to change it though.
      This simultaneous, cross-platform release of Photoshop Elements 9 marks a first for Mac users - the Adobe Elements 9 Organizer is finally available for Mac users and comes packaged with the hobbyist-targeted photo-editing software.

      Websites, webware and blogging

      I posted two items this week following the article which included comments from me in Artists and Illustrators supplement for art students about how to get noticed.  Those commenting ahve also made suggestions
      If you've not seen it before you might find my resource site Blogging for Artists - Resources for Artists helpful if you are relatively new to blogging. This includes links to other useful blog posts about blogging for artists. From other media sites:
      and finally........

      Nearly 3,000 visitors came to see the John Moores Painting Prize exhibition on its opening weekend.   Apparently the Walker Art Gallery and a trick of light conspired to also deliver an image of the hand of god!

        2 comments:

        1. Great post as usual. Looking forward to seeing the RSMA and the Minaturists and meeting up, see you soon.

          ReplyDelete

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