Sunday, May 27, 2012

27th May 2012 - Who's made a mark this week?


I've been busy again this week with matters relating to activities of the new Urban Sketchers London group.  On Saturday, we held our first Sketchcrawl.  This was very ably organised by Pete Scully (Pete Scully), whose hand drawn and annotated maps are an artwork in themselves!

We had a wonderful sunny day.  Pete did a count-up from the attendance sheets and around about 50 people signed the sheets and more people came for just part of the day.  There were some amazing sketches and lots of variety in the sketching we saw although, rather oddly, very much less watercolour sketching than I think occurs elsewhere.  That said we had rather a lot of architecture in Fleet Street and the Temple to deal with!


My fellow founder members of the Urban Sketchers London blog will be posting sketches on our respective sketch blogs and the urban sketchers blog later this week.

Yesterday I set up a Flickr Group for people to post their sketches to who attended the Sketchcrawl - which you cam find here.  There won't be there just yet as we've not yet written to those who attended the sketchcrawl.

James Oses and drawings of Fleet Street
In the meantime I'm highlighting below some of the people who came to the sketchcrawl - and the work they did and the posts they wrote.

I had a n awful lot of "looking at London" on Saturday!  I've also highlighted the content of a fascinating BBC2 programme about A Picture of London broadcast on Saturday night.  If you're interested in how people portray London in paintings over the centuries then I recommend you catchup using the BBC iPlayer link in my post.

Artists and Art Blogs

1st Urban Sketchers Sketchcrawl

We learned from those coming to the Sketchcrawl that there are various other groups out there who are also drawing London - and we aim to connect up in some way.
Botanical art
Drawing
Landscape
Portraiture
  • People have commented in the past about the fact that the media restrictions of the BP Portrait Award means that types of portraiture which don't involve the use of acrylic or oil paint are lost from view.  Colossal Art and Design has two posts which highlight the different ways people make portraiture these days
    • Photographic Specimens by Michael Mapes on explains how Michael Mapes creates specimen boxes of dissected images and other items related to the individual pinned to create an image of the original photographic portrait. I think it's a new take on an old approach and the images are amazingly effective.  I just wonder how long they will last.
The boxes house thousands of individual specimens consisting of dissected photographs and biographical DNA in the form of such things as hair, finger nails, scent, eye lashes, fingerprints, food, botanical elements, fabric swatches, makeup, dirt, handwriting samples and breath.Michael Mapes website

Art Business & Marketing
Sellers will only be charged $0.20 USD to list or renew an item, regardless of quantity. Fees for additional quantities will only apply when an item sells.
Art Competitions

Artists and Illustrators magazine is holding a competition to find the Artists of the Year 2012.  The deadline is 16 August 2012 closing date, after which a shortlist of works will be drawn up by the expert panel and then readers will also have the chance to vote for their favourite works on the Artists & Illustrators website.
Rather than submitting an artwork in a specific category, we will be holding an open competition so you can send in artworks depicting any subject, in any medium: from botanical art to figurative works, abstract paintings to rural landscapes
Art Exhibitions

Exhibitions in the UK
Exhibitions in Europe
  • I didn't quite understand the rationale behind the focus of this review "Britain's Greatest Artist" Abandons Photography of Hockney's exhibition "David Hockney, a Bigger Picture" at the the Guggenheim in Bilbao until September 30, 2012 - even if it is written by the Onwer/Editor of Outdoor Painting. Hockney has been plein air landscape painting for quite some years but this is mentioned in passing whereas the article places more emphasis on one aspect of Hockney's career from quite some time ago.  In particular, the comment about his drawing perplexes me.  Hockney won a prize for his drawing while at the RCA and was generally regarded as an outstanding student!  Anybody who has actually seen the charcoal and iPad drawings in this exhibition would be in no doubt of this.  For a more up to date perspective on Hockney see the other recent articles about this exhibition David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture on my website About David Hockney - British Artist
Exhibitions in the USA
Andy Warhol was also the most photographed American artist of the 20th century. But what do the images he created of himself really tell us about him? Who was Warhol?
Art Education
Art Studio and Supplies
Techies

and finally.....

There are new T shirts for painters in watercolour - I thought these by Carol Carter (Paintings) were rather good

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