In the blink of an eye

Birdies!

coloured pencils on Arches Hot Press 8" x 10"
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

How do you think without thinking? What draws you to one painting and not another? Why does one scene or subject grab you and not another? How do you know when an artist has 'got it'?

More importantly, why does Robert Genn keep writing about things I've been doing? Two weeks ago on March 18th, Robert wrote "Grabbing the Heart"

When you think about it, a couple anguishing over the purchase of a work of art is like a small focus group. Often as not they talk themselves out of it. At the same time, some works just seem to walk out of galleries. Are these works talking on an emotional level to the folks who can't resist them? And what is it about these works that they can't resist? No matter what type of art you're looking at, at the top of the list I'd put "Unusually satisfying pattern
Robert Genn - Grabbing the Heart

In the post Robert references Dr. Robert Knight of the University of California (Berkeley) who does work which traces the emotional roots of decision making otherwise known as "the neural mechanisms subserving cognitive processing in humans"

At the same time as Robert posted I was halfway through reading 'blink' by Malcolm Gladwell, author of 'The Tipping Point: How little things makes a big difference'.

The Tipping Point is about change and why it sometimes happens faster than we expect and in ways we maybe don't expect. That book had a huge impact on me - and enabled me to understand much better why things happen - and how my 'maven' predisposition to gather and share information fits in with all of that.

Malcolm Gladwell used it ('maven') in his book The Tipping Point (Little Brown, 2000) to describe those who are intense gatherers of information and impressions, and so are often the first to pick up on new or nascent trends.
Wikipedia - Maven

I saw Malcom's name on 'blink' and immediately picked it up and tucked it under my arm.

"Don't judge a book by its cover"?

There was no question in my mind that this would be another good read. That, as I found out later, was an excellent example of the main topic of the book - snap judgements.

It's a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. When you meet someone for the first time, or walk into a house you are thinking of buying, or read the first few sentences of a book, your mind takes about two seconds to jump to a series of conclusions. Well, "Blink" is a book about those two seconds, because I think those instant conclusions that we reach are really powerful and really important and, occasionally, really good.
Malcolm Gladwell - What is blink about?

As I read the book it immediately struck me (in the blink of an eye!) about how his notions on this topic might be applied to art. A week later Robert Genn sent out his letter Grabbing the heart. That's when I knew I had to write something.

'blink' is not about 'intuition' - Gladwell is at pains to avoid using the word 'intuition' in his book. What he's looking for are the ways in which people process information really fast. He says his book is about:

• blinks - when we think without thinking - when we digest, assess and conclude in two seconds
• thin-slicing - when our 'adaptive unconscious' part of our brain operates in a 'fast and frugal' mode and creates sensations which tell you what you need to know e.g. about new people
• "the very smallest components of our everyday lives" and "the particulars of the fleeting moment" -
  
• the notion that your adaptive unconscious is an ability which can be cultivated - that our snap judgements and initial impressions can be educated and controlled - for example by learning how to 'read' people's faces.
  

I'm not going to try and explain it all - firstly because he provides some extracts on his site, secondly because it has a wikipedia page and thirdly because you might want to buy it!

Anyway - I kept feeling the need to try and come up with examples of how our 'adaptive unconscious' works. So what follows is my take on this - feel free to suggest more examples via the comments.

Here's my take on what are some of the ways 'snap judgement' applies to art.

The painting you love before somebody tells you who painted it or how much it's worth.

For example, Lake Keitele is one of the best loved paintings in the National Gallery in London and was painting of the month in July 2004. Its image also adorns an amazing amount of products in the NG shops.

Lake Keitele (1905)
Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865 - 1931)
Oil on canvas, 53 x 66cm
National Gallery, London

Yet it's painted by a Finnish painter called Akseli Gallen-Kallela, an artist who normally painted figurative scenes and who most people have never heard of. Maybe - as Robert Genn suggests - both artists and the public have a strong emotional response to a satisfying pattern.

The painting which you know is 'wrong' even if you don't know why.

Gladwell starts his book with the story about the concerns relating to the authenticity of the Getty Kouros which is dated "about 530 B.C., or modern forgery" and why certain people 'knew' it was wrong as soon as they saw it.

The painting which calls to you from the other side of the gallery as you walk in

How many of you have had that experience?

I'm wondering whether there are some features about paintings which work for a lot of people - such as a strong value and well designed value pattern.

I have heard, for example, that 'red' sells - but does the shade of red make a difference and does the quantity of red make a difference?

A number of people commented on this in response to Robert Genn's post and he commented further in Visual Triggers in which he suggested that there were four:

• Precious colour
• Gradations big and small
• Something personal
• Something mysterious

When you are always 'drawn' to a painter or a painting - but you really don't know exactly why you find it so inspirational.

One of my reasons for doing projects about certain artists is to try and unpick the reasons why I'm attracted to their work. I trust in and start with the emotional response but hopefully derive more intellectual understanding as I progress.

The problem which persists is the notion that I might destroy my emotional response if I understand too much about why it happens.

That view which won't leave your brain as you keep walking around 'en plein air' trying to work out what to do.

I've just learned to trust myself on that one - it works!

I've also still got views in my brain from car journeys where I have no physical image to work from other than the one which my cells continue to dish up from time to time.

My most persistent one - which dates back some 20 years or so - is a scene in the Lake District. It's of a a flash of sunshine hitting a field to produce grass the colour of washed out lemon yellow rape surrounded by grey green stones walls against mountains and sky which have gone dark navy blue due to an imminent storm. There are stands of trees on the profiled horizon of the foothills which are olive green with hints of both navy and lemon.

How many of you can now see this 'view' from this description?

The moment you add in something to a painting - without any thought - and it goes 'zing'

I am continuously amazed by the number of times my hand picks up a colour which can't possibly be 'right' and yet it turns out to be exactly right. Like I just 'know' that my cat needs a dose of 'Gentian Blue'!

when you trust your hand to draw what 'feels' right

I can't explain this one, other than to say just as I can now type without looking at the keyboard, I can also draw without looking at my paper. I guess it's learned.

I've also learned not to be precious about the line being exact. The line which suggests the right line - but leaves something to your imagination - often seems to have more power than the absolutely precise line. I don't 'know' what to include or exclude - but my hand does!

Immediately knowing what needs doing as soon as you turn around the painting 'which won't work' which has been turned to the wall

Go on - that must have happened to you too!

Immediately acting on an idea for a painting which just springs apparently unprompted into your head

I'm less persuaded by notions of images which you photograph. I think you train your eye to 'know' when something works or not. Although this fits well with Gladwell's notion that you can train your brain.

However having an idea for a work - maybe on waking and then setting it up and it all works brilliantly just has to be the subconscious at work - doesn't it?
_________________

Do you agree? Do you have any other examples?

Now - the question is how do we create the work which enables gallery owners and the buying public to make a 'snap judgement' to show / buy our work?


[Note: 'Birdies' was done last night - and still needs some tweaking but will be one of my entries for this year's SOFA exhibition. I saw my cats on the window ledge next to me and immediately picked up my camera and took a photo - knowing as I went for the camera that it would become a drawing. In the blink of an eye.]

Links:

• blink - the power of thinking without thinking Malcolm Gladwell; Little, Brown and Company; 1 edition (January 11, 2005); 288 pages; ISBN-10: 0316172324; ISBN-13: 978-0316172325
• Reviews of blink
• Observer - Be a blinking marvel
  
• Malcolm Gladwell
• blink - answers the question 'what is blink about?'
• The Tipping Point - answers the question 'what is The Tipping Point' about?'
• blog - one to subscribe to if you want to give your brain a work-out
  
• Wikipedia
• Malcolm Gladwell
  
• blink
• The Tipping Point
• Akseli Gallen Kallela
  
• Robert Genn
• Painters Keys - you can subscribe for free - and I recommend you do
  
• Clickback archives
  
• Grabbing the heart
  

Outstanding performance - a talent or 10,000 hours of practice?

The purpose of today's post is to reflect on a couple of the principles from my annual plan ("There are no shortcuts!" and "Good enough is good enough") and to comment on Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers which has been receiving a lot of press of late and mixed reviews. I've included a number of the reviews in the links at the end so you can decide for yourself whether you'd like to read the book. Personally I found it very persuasive.

A very old watercolour - Pura Taman Saraswati (September 1992)
watercolour on Arches NOT paper
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Note: Pura Taman Saraswati is devoted to Dewi Saraswati 

the goddess of learning, literature and the arts.

Outliers is a fascinating and thought-provoking read. It's about unpicking the explanations behind people who have produced exceptional results. Note I didn't say that the people are exceptional. That's the point of the book. 

• Too many times people who have done well are described as 'very smart' or 'very ambitious'. 
• Gladwell's point is that there are lots of talented and/or smart and/or ambitious people who do NOT do exceptionally well. He thought there was probably a better explanation and he concludes it's one which might well be found in the culture, age, environment and opportunities that are available to those that achieve success (such as Bill Gates having access to a computer for programming software while in his teens ). 
• Gladwell has produced some propositions in his book which I personally find very persuasive. This includes identifying a range of factors which can lead to people becoming successful - such as being born in the right place at the right time which is amazingly influential as he demonstrates.

But first........... an explanation of the above painting. It's extremely rare. That's because it's a watercolour done by me, the dry media fiend! I started it sitting next to the Lotus Pool (continuing the theme of ponds!) at the back of the Cafe Lotus in Ubud in Bali in September 1992 - which makes it 16 years old!

Just look at the leaves on those trees and the brash colour! (photos on Flickr of the real thing) At least it taught me a really good lesson at the time - which was that I hadn't yet mastered watercolour. I keep it to remind me just how 'good' I am at watercolour! I was thought of this painting this morning when looking at Joseph Raffael's website where there are various paintings of a lotus pool in Bali - which I immediately recognised as being the lotus pool in Ubud! It's always a salutary experience to take a look at the painting of a subject you've painted - but painted by somebody who not only knows what he or she is doing but has also been doing it for rather longer! (Check out Raffael's CV )

That said, I'd like to think that I've got a bit better at my art since 1992 both in terms of the switch to dry media plus all the hours I've spent on drawing and developing artwork!

Which is really the focus of this post - the need to put in the hours.

10,000 hours

In Making A Mark in 2009 - The Plan, I indicated that I try to work by a couple of principles

1. There are no shortcuts! For me shortcuts are for keyboards rather than artwork. You become more efficient and effective at producing art through reiteration and refinement and changing the way you do things. You've got to put in the hours.
2. 'Good enough' is good enough. This might seem contradictory to the above - whereas in my view it's actually the other side of the coin. You've got to put in the hours AND know when to stop. An attitude of perfectionism can be very limiting - whereas practice makes perfect.

Making A Mark in 2009 - The Plan

Gladwell highlights the need to put in the hours as a really important explanation of why some people become very successful. He identifies 10,000 hours as being the minimum requirement for becoming seriously good at whatever you do based on various research which has been done.

In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice-skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals," writes the neurologist Daniel Levitin, "this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or 20 hours a week, of practice over 10 years... No one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.
Outliers 

Here's another source saying the same thing

To become an outstanding performer, one does not need an innate endowment of the right sorts of genes; instead, one simply needs to engage in deliberate practice for around 10,000 hours. Outstanding Performers: Created, Not Born? New results on Nature vs Nurtue by David R Shanks

Now I guess most people's reactions to 10,000 hours is that's way too much time to find. However I guess at the end of the day, it really all depends on how much you want to be successful.

Competition in the marketplace

However Seth Godin points out that it's much easier to become a success if you put in 10,000 hours - because most people give up after 5,000 hours! He also points out that's 

• it easier to become successful in areas where the marketplace is new and/or where competition is less prevalent and less motivated to pursue success.  Remember, there's an awful lot of watercolour artists out there all vying to be the best!  
• I commented recently that I found it very difficult to find artists who were still genuinely posting a new painting every day. That's because of the 'die-off' factor. 
• Long time readers of this blog will remember one of my all-time popular blog posts about The Stickability Factor written in the context of vast number of artists taking up daily painting with a view to becoming a successful artist. (Can I just emphasise that the people who gave up daily painting are emphatically normal. That's the point of Gladwell's book - the people who 'make it' are those who had the opportunities or inherited a culture which enabled them to put in the hours - and they did).

"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again!"
a very old adage - for a good reason

"How to paint" in 5 easy lessons

Of course the notion of 10,000 hours being a benchmark for becoming successful is the complete antithesis of the 'how to' in 5 easy lessons culture.

I'm all for breaking down learning skills into stages and digestible chunks - that's just good practice. But the implicit suggestion which one sometimes comes across that, by following the 'easy lessons', you'll become really skilled in double quick time is one which I find very difficult to digest. [Note: I've also just deleted a sentence which was very explicit about what I thought about people who make these sort of suggestions and promises! ]

We seem to live in a culture nowadays where people expect to be successful really quickly. 

However, while labour-saving devices are enabling me to write this blog post while I do my laundry at the same time, the reality is that there is no easy shortcut to acquiring personal skills - especially those involving the exercise of the brain and the co-ordination of hand and eye.

Creating the time - minimising interruptions

It would also seem that only really concentrated focus on an activity enables people to develop skills. David Brooks in the New York Times felt that Gladwell's explanations were not sufficient. He commented as follows

Most successful people also have a phenomenal ability to consciously focus their attention. We know from experiments with subjects as diverse as obsessive-compulsive disorder sufferers and Buddhist monks that people who can self-consciously focus attention have the power to rewire their brains.
Control of attention is the ultimate individual power. People who can do that are not prisoners of the stimuli around them.
David Brooks New York Times Lost in the Crowd

Jakob Neilsen this week suggested that one of the ways that one can find the hours to get things done is to become much more focused about how you work. 

In this week's Alertbox article, Ten Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution, he advocates implementing good time management practices.....

All time-management courses boil down to one basic piece of advice: set priorities and allocate the bulk of your time to tasks that are crucial to meeting your goals. Minimize interruptions and spend big chunks of your time in productive and creative activity. Ten Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution

He also suggests creating that focus by eliminating all sources of interruptions from information-related technology. This suggestion is based on the notion that interruptions disturb the flow and for every minute of an interruption it'll take 10 minutes to get back in the groove. Bear in mind he's also a bit of a guru around how best to use technology! I somehow feel he won't be an advocate of Twitter!

I'll finish with the quote I've been using repeatedly in relation to daily painting

"What they call talent is nothing but the capacity for doing continuous work in the right way." Winslow Homer

Links

• Malcolm Gladwell
• Outliers
• My review of Malcolm Gladwell's book 'Blink' - In the blink of an eye
• Robert Genn (The Painter's Keys) - Ten thousand hours (which includes a comment from me)
• Seth Godin (Seth's Blog) - 10000 hours
• David Brooks (New York times) - Lost in the Crowd

Japanese Art - drawing the Chokushi Mon in Kew Gardens #1

Chokushi-Mon

coloured pencils in Daler Rowney sketchbook (8.5" x 11.5")
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

We visited the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew this week and I attempted to draw the Japanese Gateway (the Chokushi-Mon) while at the same time trying to remember all the things I'd been learning as part of my Japanese Art Project. This post is about I designed my sketch and the things I now need to do to translate it into a more formal drawing.

Chokushi Mon

Chokushi-Mon (Gateway of the Imperial Messenger) is a replica (four-fifths actual size) of the Karamon of Nishi Hongan-ji in Kyoto.

The replica was created for the Japan-British Exhibition held in London in 1910, and after the exhibition closed, it was dismantled and reconstructed in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. It is the finest example of a traditional Japanese building in Europe.
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew - Chokushi-Mon and Japanese Landscape

You can find this Japanese Gateway at the southern end of Kew Gardens, it's located at number 17 on the visitor map. You can find out more about it and the Japanese Landscape Garden which surrounds it here. It's very peaceful - I walked on the stones amongst the stone lanterns in the tea garden and read the haiku chiselled into one of the stones.

Two blog posts for one sketch!

As this sketch is related both to my Japanese Art project and to 'travels with a sketchbook' I'll be writing about it on both blogs - in different ways.

• On this blog I'm focusing more on the design of the sketch and how it might be changed to try and improve the design for a more formal drawing.
  
• On my Travels with a Sketchbook blog, I'll be looking at the lesson it provided about walking around a subject and what sort of material you can get from sketching - and why it's still a good idea to do a thumbnail and take a photo! I'm inclined to think that my thumbnail sketch was maybe a little more successful at rendering the values!
  
• I'll include the link here when I've completed that post [Update: Sketching the Japanese Landscape at Kew Gardens]
  
• If you want to know more about the sketchbook I used just follow the link to details about the sketchbooks I use on my website.
  

To start, I'm going to show you the view I actually saw from where I was sitting - see right.

I'm now going to walk you through

• what I thought at the time - in terms of designing the sketch
• what I NOW think in terms of what I need to do if I work this up further.

These are the previous Japanese Art project posts which are most relevant to the thought processes:

• The concepts and characteristics of ukiyo-e
• The elements of ukiyo-e
• Principles of design and composition and ukiyo-e

The view - and the scope it offered for a 'Japanese design'

Design wise, I started off at another vantage point but wasn't entirely happy and started walking around, camera in hand. As soon as I got to the spot I drew from I 'knew' this was 'the view' - in the blink of an eye as it were!

I tried to work out afterwards why I liked this view so much. This is what I've worked out so far:

• It provides a simpler view in terms of 'stacking the zones' (foreground, middleground, background plus having three key motifs - the tree trunk, the gateway and the flowering cherry)
• It offered scope for a 'truncated view' of a large object in the foreground which is lopped off in an unusual way ie the trunk of the conifer
  
• The gateway and the flowering cherry are subjects which were often featured in Japanese prints.
  
• The juxtaposition of these two subjects seemed to work much better from this perspective than from any of the others I had tried. From this view the gateway was decidedly higher which seemed more appropriate.
  
• I liked the way that the conifer branches framed the view of the gateway. Features in Japanese drawings are often used to 'frame' a view.
  
• Japanese drawings often employ a considerable amount of flat empty space and I wanted to try and create more empty space if I could. I decided the way to do this might be to leave out quite a lot of background greenery - which also seemed to get in the way of 'reading' the scene and to reduce the rest to a flat 'zone' of green.
• Finally, doing a drawing of Kew fitted well with the habit of Japanese artists who tended to produce a series of drawings of landscapes at different times of the year. I've drawn at Kew on many occasions and will continue to do so - although I maybe ought to make more of an effort in the winter months!
  

I decided to crop the view for sketching and debated between the portrait and landscape format. My intention was to try and make it as simple as possible.

In executing the sketch, what I found most difficult was the notion of developing a drawing in terms of flat colour and without any shading to denote form. In translating the sketch to a drawing I think that might be the part I struggle most with.

Designing a more formal 'Japanese' landscape drawing

Here are some of the things which I've extracted from my mental 'to do' list as I sat down to write this post.

• I think the portrait format might offer more scope for a good design and I need to try this out
• I want to try and work with conventional Japanese paper formats and will be designing within their dimensions - probably around 15" x 10".
  
• I'm wondering whether I can get a scroll format out of this (I need to find out what the word is for that!)

• images are often asymmetrical eg large empty spaces balance small areas of concentrated details

• truncated objects are often more important than those which are wholly visible (the eye wants to work out what is 'hidden' from view

Principles of design and composition and ukiyo-e

• I need to work out where the empty space is going to be in the design - and how this might work with an asymmetrical angle to balancing different aspects of the design. I've noticed that the more emphatic the empty space is, the more you focus on the subject of the piece. I think the way forward is to adopt the portrait format and remove the green blur behind the conifer trunk (as I've done in the sketch).
• Some of the shapes and forms need to be simplified and exaggerated. I need to make sure that the drawing works in monochrome before adding colour
  
• I also need to focus more on the graphical line elements and symbolic patterns within the design in order to compensate for the lack of shading in a more formal 'Japanese' drawing.
• I started to do this through emphasising the markings on the bark of the conifer. Lots of scope to do more here.
  
• I still need to work out ways of drawing the conifer needles and the cherry blossom so that they read well and add visual interest. I'm wondering with both whether there is scope to draw with pen and ink to get simple lines and then overlay with colour and then draw into the colour with an eraser to get yet more lines.........we shall see!
  
• A simple, clear colour palette needs to be worked out. I also need to think about unity and the scope for using analogous colours! I'm wondering how many colours I can use - and how I can get those colours to be ones I like working with. Simple, bold and harmonious are the words I need to keep at the front of my brain!
  
• I'm wondering whether an initial drawing in pen and ink with coloured pencils to provide flat colour might be a possible way forward. It fits well with what I like doing when sketching.
  

I need to emphasise that I'm not trying to copy in a literal sense what is found in a Japanese woodblock print so much as trying to find a way in which the key elements and principles of their way of designing might work with my natural style.

I'm going to try and design and complete a more formal drawing before the end of this month - and the end of the project.

If anybody would like to to join in with their own development of "a japanese landscape drawing" just leave a note in the comments and I'll come and take a peek - and then. as per usual, reference and link to your work in a wrap-up post.

Links:

• Japanese Art
• The concepts and characteristics of ukiyo-e
• The elements of ukiyo-e
• Principles of design and composition and ukiyo-e
• Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
• visitor map
• Chokushi-Mon and Japanese Landscape
• Pastels and Pencils - Art Materials - Sketchbooks
  

Does the RA Summer Exhibition still have the WOW factor?

I went to see the 2017 Summer Exhibition of 1,092 artworks at the Royal Academy of Arts on Monday - and this post should have been written sooner (but for an event this week).

This blog post is going to

• show you how you can see the exhibition - even if you can't get to London
• examine why this exhibition wowed me less than others and
• identify pieces I really liked.

Friends Review on 12th June - Gallery III complete with Pimms Bar

This is how you can see the exhibition - without visiting:

• a video on YouTube - which lasts 74 seconds (how many years has it taken for the RA to catch up with YouTube for promoting what an exhibition actually looks like?)

• a Summer Exhibition Explorer website - where you can see ALL the exhibits - and create pages for different categories and price points. It started last year and seems to have been refined this year
• for example, for those seeking more affordable art - there is an art for under £500 website option - which tends to include a lot of prints. 

You can see the exhibition in person in the Main Galleries at Burlington House, the home of the Royal Academy of Arts until 20th August 2017 (Saturday – Thursday 10am – 6pm; Friday 10am – 10pm). Entrance is £15.50 (without donation £14). Friends of the RA, and under 16s when with a fee-paying adult, go free.

Has the Summer Exhibition lost its WOW?

The Summer Exhibition this year has certainly lost its WOW related to oversized works and/or statements by artistic testosterone flaunting male artists - whether that be pink walls and stripey staircases or massive paintings almost covering an entire wall in Gallery III

It's altogether a gentler exhibition - quite possibly because it was put together by a female curator Royal Academician Eileen Cooper who wanted to explore themes of discovery and new talent.

That does however mean that the Courtyard is positively disappointing. The Wind Sculpture VI by Yinka Shonibare work is simply not big enough - and it's not helped by the cones off to the left, the "pavement cafe" scene out front and the cranes out back. You only notice all these things when your eye is not totally absorbed by a massive something or other.  (Looking at the pic of it in the online website, it looks much better in a domestic setting.)

If it wasn't for the colours you could blink and miss this installation.

Looking back after nearly a week, I'm finding it difficult to remember anything much about the exhibition apart from the Western Union: Small Boats (edition of 3 £200,000) video by Isaac Julien which was very impressive.  It also won the The Royal Academy of Arts Charles Wollaston Award 2017

This is the challenge of the Summer Exhibition - making sense of it.

• Last year I went with the intention of picking out 10 works that had an impact on me - see 10 artworks of merit at the RA Summer Exhibition 2016
• In previous years I've also adopted the 10 things approach to get a handle on it eg 
• 10 reasons why the RA Summer Exhibition 2015 might surprise you and 
• 10 reasons to visit the RA Summer Exhibition 2013

This year I was somewhat preoccupied by the fact my steroid injection for my arthritis has worn off and I was more interested in whether or not a gallery had a seat to sit down on. (There were some but nowhere near enough considering the age of a lot of the visitors - the RA could be a LOT more disability friendly). My solution was to see the exhibition in two halves - with lunch over the road at Fortnum & Masons inbetween (the art on my plate was much more to my taste!)

So 10 reasons why the Summer Exhibition has lost its wow are:

1. nothing made me say Wow!
2. disappointing entrance to Burlington House (see above) and the exhibition (an exhibit at the entrance which stops you moving forward is not good for circulation and the colour of the walls was vile - like sick!)
3. the small paintings are lost or swamped - why it's OK to hang similar smaller sized photos together but not small works is beyond me.  I used to love the crush in the Small Weston Room as we all tried to see all the small works - typically entered by the public.
4. no models in the architecture section - it was literally and metaphorically too flat
5. some galleries are crammed/swamped with strong images making them indigestible (eg the photography) and the gallery difficult to view.
6. a certain lack of punctuation or good design on the walls - eye-catching statement pieces were either competing with one another or located in corners - making it difficult for the eye to 'read the room'
7. too few good figurative paintings - by which I mean of the relatively realistic variety. There were any number of the more fantasy oriented or "I can't draw" variety.  I see a lot more paintings I like better on a regular basis in the open exhibitions and art competitions exhibiting at the Mall Galleries. 
8. too few drawings - in past exhibitions we're seen a lot more drawings
9. the prints seemed to lack something - I love the print rooms and yet this time prints seemed more amorphous - lacking colour or size as punctuation and scattered across a number of rooms
10. Overall, it seemed as if the exhibition lacked a good "Edit"

I thought the galleries with coloured walls had more impact - but I wasn't a huge fan of the colours chosen.

See what I mean below

What makes somebody buy a painting? (Poll results)

Subject matter, colour and composition are the three most important factors influencing people buying paintings according to the September Making A Mark Poll " Which 3 factors make somebody buy a painting?"

The main reason people tend to buy a painting is "because they like it".  However that needed unpacking as to WHY people like paintings - hence that's the reason why this phrase was not included as an option in the poll.  The poll was also set up so as to see how much weight was accorded to:

• choice of what to paint 
• the manner of its execution
• marketing and selling the painting

Hence in the rest of this post I unpack what that all means in terms of your responses.

153 people responded and I'd like to thank all those who did.  I guess you're interested to see how all the different factors rank!  It's a poll with a large set of possible responses - so to see how the various factors ranked in order of your perceived importance:

• right click the chart below 
• open it in a new tab or window to see a much larger chart

right click to open a much larger version in a new tab

Now for a bit more comment and analysis of the responses - some of which were distinctly odd!

Seven things you didn't know.........

A new and exact plan of the Cities of London and Westminster
and Borough of Southwark
with additional buildings to the year 1756
14" x 29"
Artist Engraver R.W Seale

Maggie Stiefvater has tagged me - which apparently means that I now have to write seven things about myself that most people don't know and then tag seven other bloggers and ask them nicely to do the same thing and mention who tagged them in their blog post. I guess it's a blogging version of Post Secret!

OK - so here are seven things that most people don't know about me.

1. Age 6, I was told I needed to put my best dress on so I could go and see something rather special - an art exhibition! However I didn't know until I got there that I'd won a national art competition. Now you can imagine - when I become a famous artist this will become a big feature of my resume. I'd just like to record for posterity therefore that it was a rather large painting of a squirrel eating a nut sat on the branch of a tree - and that the tree had proper marks for the bark. See - making a mark even at that age!
   
2. I have two professional qualifications - I'm a qualified teacher and a qualified accountant - some would say I also qualify as a "nerd" - but we'll just move on quickly............! ;)
   
3. .....to the problem I have with anybody coming anywhere near my eyes and eye drops . (My stomach turns over even writing that sentence!) It's a long story but when I was a child I used to have to have a lot of eye tests which started age 5. By the age of 10 it took six people to hold me down to get eye drops in to anaesthetise my eye and even then it usually took at least 3-4 goes as I apparently had the fastest blink reflexes that anybody at the Eye Hospital had ever seen. Now I try to be adult about it - it's just one person and about 5-6 goes.
   
4. I've sung madrigals in the Kings College Choir (the one without the little boys in gowns) sitting in a punt on the Cam next to Kings College Chapel. Given that this was in June during an English summer the weather was a cause for some concern. We'd all remembered to wear our thermals underneath the evening dress but then watched with horror as a gust of wind took all the scores off our conductor's music stand and dumped them all in the Cam. Soggy! I think the drizzle held off until we got indoors for the 'aftershow party' which is, of course, one of the main reasons for joining any choral society! I sang in a couple of college choirs while at Cambridge and thoroughly enjoyed it. Singing is such an amazingly energetic thing to do - I always felt like I'd had a good work-out afterwards! I then went on to sing, among other things, Carmina Burana in Central Hall Westminster with Lawyers' Music - which was simply amazing.
   
5. I love a really good puzzle and have an absolutely huge collection of detective novels. They sublimate an intense drive to solve problems! I've read more of less everything ever written by every detective novelist who has taken my fancy. The problem now is that having read so many they have to be really really good for me not to have guessed the ending before I get to it.
   
6. When I was younger I used to very much enjoy having a backstage role in the delivery of dramatic art! I can design and paint a mural or backdrop flats; reposition lights and change gels from the top of a scaffolding lighting tower and prompt the entire script of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead by (Sir) Tom Stoppard or Under Milkwood by Dylan Thomas.
   
7. Some people may know that I originally studied geography for my first degree but I don't think I've ever mentioned that I have a complete fascination with maps. In fact I've had to make a pact with myself to stay out of antique print shops as I used to collect old maps - particularly if they relate to London. The pact is because when I started doing it, they didn't cost so much - but they do now. I have two enormous maps of the whole of London - one relating to a survey done in 1756 (see top) and the other in 1843. I like the latter because it shows me what London was like five years before my home was built!

OK - so who are the lucky people who are going to be tagged by me? Well fortunately I was going through my blogroll last night so that I could update those tagged as my favourites on Technorati - so the deal is if you're on this list you're also on my Technorati favourites list! (Memo to self - finish the update!)

I did do a search on your blogs to see if you've ever been tagged before before listing you - honest! I've just got an awful feeling that this exercise is called different things and I may be asking some people who've already 'played' before. I've left out all those people where I definitely remember reading a similar type exercise. Have I remembered to tell you how my memory is not my strong point anymore???

• Ed Terpening ("Life Plein Air") in northern California has been a regular blogging read for a very long time. I just love the mix on his blog of great plein air paintings and the sharing of information about his trips and the process of painting. What can I say - it makes me feel like I'm standing alongside him.
  
• Susan Borgas ("Arts and Stuff") is a lovely lady and fellow pastellist who lives in the Flinders Range of South Australia. Susan has taken to blogging and all things internet related with gusto. I don't know how she gets everything done - well I do actually, try reading her blog post about 'Hints for Staying Focused'. I do like reading about how people stay organised!
  
• Tracy Helgeson ("Works by Tracy Helgeson") living in upstate New York (you should see her snow drifts!) is a relative newcomer to my 'regular reads' list but entertains me enormously with her writing as well as giving me really lovely paintings to look at.
• I've grown to know Shirley Levine ("Paper and Threads") well over the last year while her daughter and her family have been living in London. She visits from New York where she lives on a regular basis and Shirley and I visit exhibitions and do sketches together when she does. She's a really lovely lady with a fabulous sketchbook of her visits to London, lots of interests and I'm sure her list will be fascinating too.
  
• Vivien Blackburn ("Painting, Prints and Stuff") is another cyberchum who've I've met face to face. We do exhibitions and art fairs when Vivien comes down to London from Leicestershire - although we'd chatted for ages before we started doing this. I'm just wondering whether Vivien will hint at her BIG secret which she is NOT ALLOWED to talk about! ;)
  
• Gayle Mason ("Fur in the Paint") is my Fine Line Artists cyber chum who lives in Yorkshire and draws the most wonderful dogs and cats. She makes my jaw periodically drop with things I find out about her. She's such a dark horse that I'd love to read whatever she comes up with for something like this.
• Kathy Ellis ("LabsWork4Me") is my other Fine Line Artists cyber chum living in Maine. Kathy's had a few biggish things to deal with recently - like moving to a new abode - which has made a serious dent in her blogging about her drawings of chocolate. But she's settled in now, has got the broadband hooked up and I'm dying to hear what she comes up with. Another dark horse with hidden depths and an 'interesting' past - and future!

I've just realised that 4 out of my seven are people I've met face to face solely because of mutual interests plus internet forums and/or blogging! :D

Wendy Prior also got tagged by Maggie and we've done a deal over which Fine Line Artist gets 'tagged' by who!. So a quick mention for the fact that she's tagging Nicole Caulfield and Gord Leverton. We'd have liked to have tagged Louise Sackett as well - but no blog - drat! Louise - if you start one this can be your first post!

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