Sunday, June 08, 2014

Who made a mark in May 2014?

I'm still trying to develop a new way of doing "Who's made a mark". I'm now thinking along the lines of a once a month round-up complemented by more frequent posts of new things to look at via my Facebook Page. This seems to work better for me as it spaces out the effort involved.

That said I still need to work on timing - this was supposed to be published last Sunday - but I ran out of steam near the finish!  Which means it's about May and now the first few days of June as well!
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Art Blogs

Artists



  • I can't start without noting that last month marked the passing of Robert Genn.  He was an artist whose writings have made a very great deal of difference to an awful lot of artists. His dog Dorothy died on May 13th and Robert Genn died just two weeks later on May 27th. It seems like they'll always be together riding around in his open top car looking for good spots for paintings.
  • Robin Lee-Hall has been elected as the President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. Her portraits are painted using egg tempera. 
Portraits by Robin Lee-Hall PRP

Botanical Art

Fiona Strickland Botanical Artist - Facebook Page
Shevaun Doherty - Gold Medal Winner for her Iris foetidissima on vellum

Drawing and Sketching


  • Brilliant sketch by Jennifer Lawson who recently walked 500 miles across Spain in 35 days on the Camino de Santiago - one of the pilgrimage routes - and sketched en route and photographed and blogged via her iPhone.  She started at Jean-Pied-de-Port France at the base of the Pyreness on April 24th and finished at Santiago de Compostela
    • You can read all about her journey during April and May on her blog - Jennifer Lawson carrying all her belongings on her back. Start at El Camino di Santiago—500 miles in 35 days. En route admire the sketches she left en route - "art abandonment"
    • Her wonderful drawing of the Praza do Obradoiro in Santiago de Compostela is the one of the reasons why somebody invented accordion sketchbooks!
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Painting & Plein Air


Haidee Jo Summers with her painting 'Sails up in harbour'

Printmaking


"Shower With a Friend" © Sherrie York
reduction linocut, 15" x 15"

Art Books


Art Business and Marketing

Becoming an artist

Art Fairs - the nitty gritty

  • One of the other things Lisa does is share with us how to market yourself and what it can cost - see, for example ACC Baltimore – The Cost which relates to her trip and stand at the American Craft Council show in Baltimore in February.

Communication

Copyright

A couple of reminders about basic facts re. copyright 

Tax

  • VAT for non-UK artists and UK exhibition organisers - VAT for those who don't live in the UK or who organise exhibitions with international artists is now a bit a minefield following a recent change in regulations which now discriminates against the international artist.

Art Competitions


The order of posts below are from deadline for entries to exhibitions for various major art competitions in the UK.

Call for Entries



Selected artists



Exhibitions relating to art competitions and juried entries to open exhibitions



Art Exhibitions


Major Exhibitions in the UK


Journey from lapis lazuli to cobalt blue, ancient vermilion to bright cadmium red, through yellow, orange, purple and verdigris to deep green viridian – in a series of colour-themed rooms. Finally, enter a dazzling central room devoted to gold and silver.

Art Societies in the UK


Major Exhibitions in the USA


  • I wish I was in Washington this summer so I could go and see the Degas/Cassatt Exhibition at the National Gallery of Art (until October 5, 2014).  There's a really great sideshow on the website page. Plus here are some of the reviews - which also contain more images from the exhibition
The complex and dynamic artistic relationship between Edgar Degas and Mary Cassatt is fully examined for the first time in this exhibition of some 70 works in a variety of media.

Art Education


  • A major event in May was the fire at the Mackintosh Building - designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh - at the Glasgow School of Art (The school has produced most of Scotland's leading contemporary artists including, since 2005). Below are my posts about this horrible event.  Work has now begun on the restoration. Expert stonemasons from Historic Scotland have begun to remove part of the Western Gable of the Mackintosh Building
    • Major fire at Rennie Mackintosh's Glasgow School of Art - A review of the fire at the Glasgow School of Art
    • Mackintosh Building Fire Fund - which covers how you can contribute to the Restoration of the iconic Libary and the Phoenix Bursaries for those final year students whose degree shows perished in the fire
    • It's been announced that the 1897-99 part of the building and the GSA Archives has survived intact. This includes the Director’s Office and Studio, Mackintosh Museum, Mackintosh Room, Board Room and Furniture Gallery. 
    • You can follow updates to what is happening to the school via The Glasgow School of Art Media Centre
  • I don't know how many of you have already seen this but this is a very useful video by the RA on how to photograph your artwork (for submission to a competition)
  • Apparently, according to The TelegraphArtists no longer need to be able to paint or draw to be great. This was an argument made by Julia Peyton-Jones, co-director of the Serpentine Gallery and discussed by others on a panel at the Hay Book festival.  I'm with the observations made by William Packer the art critic
Packer told an audience he was increasingly seeing artists finish years of training only to find they did not know how to draw properly.
and
"What I find so depressing at the moment is that when one looks at so many people coming out of art schools now – even those who are brave enough to put up a painting – is how technically impoverished some of it is.
"This is the great problem that faces us. If you're going to become a ballet dancer it's unthinkable that you don't have to learn the steps first. Can you imagine an earnest violinist who thought the scales are terribly inhibiting?" 

Art History

  • This is my post about Women and Art  I've been enjoying a set of three episodes charting important Women in Art on BBC4 and pulled together a set of links relating to women artists in the first episode. I'll be trying to follow this up for those identified in the next two episodes - if they are still available on BBC iPlayer.
  • Turner is now a film - see "Mr Turner" - a new film about JMW Turner, however it won't be releaed until later this year. Looks good though
  • This month I wrote about the OASC arrangements for Metropolitan Museum of Art Images. This allows access to high resolution images for all those with genuine educational intent.

Art Materials and Supplies



Art on Television and Video



Techies


There is a multitude of different screen sizes across phones, “phablets”, tablets, desktops, game consoles, TVs, even wearables. Screen sizes will always be changing, so it’s important that your site can adapt to any screen size, today or in the future.
Google

and finally.........


Round about the middle of May - and despite the fact I've been neglecting this blog while writing the book and getting the images together, this blog managed to generate over 500,000 pageviews in 4 months.

I'd like to say a very big THANK YOU to all the visitors to my blog

  • to the new people who've not yet got round to touring through the archives!  
  • Plus those who keep coming back and let me know how much they appreciate this blog.

1 comment:

  1. Yeah I too was a little disappointed in Matthew Inness' decision to move Underpaintings to a subscription service.
    Although I do understand his monetary reason moving forward I wish that at the very least the previous blog was left there in place and its posts still accessible as I had book marked some, especially those with info relating to materials usage.
    I think of Stapleton Kearns who has essentially finished his, other than occasional posts, but has left it all there for us to go back to. Too bad unless you are a full subscriber.
    I may do so. It is a reasonable price.
    (but don't you do the same Katherine!)

    Sherrie York's work is still at the top of her class in printmaking and I like her wry sense of humor in recent posts.

    I must say the article "5 Copyright Terms We Need to Stop Using Incorrectly" almost left me more confused. Is it the language the article is written in or do we need better terms in the first place?
    Maybe I just need to read it several times.

    Hope your book is coming along and I think once a month for this post is sufficient. Once a week I could not always get to it all.

    ReplyDelete

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