Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours - 208th Annual Exhibition and Prizewinners

Today should have been the Private View of the 208th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours.  Instead of which, due to the coronavirus crisis, everything is carrying on - ONLINE!

There's a possibility that the show will be shown at the Mall Galleries on a later date in 2020 - subject to the timeline for the Coronavirus crisis.

RI 208th Annual Exhibition

You can:

• review the paintings selected for the 2020 RI Exhibition ONLINE (SCROLL DOWN)
• take a look at what painting and which artist won which prize - SEE BELOW for the names of the prizewinners and links to their artwork online - plus comments on what prompted the painting
• Paintings are also being sold online - about which more tomorrow

RI Prizewinners 2020

Be Still by Deborah Walker

I'm assuming all the prizewinners were selected when the paintings were selected by the RI Panel for the exhibition.

The Mall Gallery has done blog posts about the prizewinners - in four parts. Click the links to see the prizewinning paintings

Prize Winners Part One

• George Butler  - The Winsor & Newton Award: £3,000. I recognised his work as soon as I opened the blog post!
• Day Bowman - The Winsor & Newton Product Prize: £1,000 worth of Winsor & Newton art materials
• Suzon Lagarde - The Leathersellers' Prize: £1,000 awarded by The Worshipful Company of Leathersellers to an artist aged between 18 and 30 years old
• David Howell PPRSMA - The James Fletcher-Watson RI Memorial Award: £500 for the best use of watercolour in the exhibition - includes a Soundcloud podcast about his painting
• Deborah Walker RI RSMA - The Megan Fitzoliver Brush Award: A trophy, named The Pipe Fish, awarded for a work that most inspires a connection with the natural world. (see above)

The inspiration for 'Be Still' is from such a place near to my home in Staffordshire. I like to walk at the end of my working day, to breathe and clear my head. It's a quiet time.

• Claire Sparkes RI - The Anthony J Lester Art Critic Award: A certificate of commendation for an outstanding work chosen by the art critic and broadcaster Anthony J Lester - VERY IMPRESSIVE in my opinion.

MAMA #2: All about Vincent Van Gogh on his birthday

The second in my series of 'Making A Mark Archive posts' is about Vincent Van Gogh. If you read all my blog posts, listed below, and follow up the links it'll keep you occupied all day!

Vincent Van Gogh was born 167 years ago today on 30 March 1853 in the Netherlands. 

In 2007 I did a very big project on Van Gogh and have written periodically about him over the years. This is a list of my Van Gogh blog posts categorised by:

• Van Gogh and Drawing
• Van Gogh's Paintings
• Van Gogh and Flowers and Gardens
• Exhibitions
• Videos
• Miscellaneous posts

They include include lots of images of wonderful drawings and paintings by Van Gogh.  Many of them are my photographs of the originals in exhibitions.

The one below is my copy - in coloured pencils - of his painting of Almond Blossom which I did as an exercise while doing my project on Van Gogh. 

A copy of Van Gogh's Almond Blossom 1890 (in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam)
9" x 12", coloured pencils on hot press papercopyright Katherine Tyrrell

Van Gogh and Drawing

"I sometimes think there is nothing so delightful as drawing." Vincent van Gogh (1853 - 1890)

His approach to drawing was a revelation for me in terms of mark-making.

I remember learning that all those who talked about Van Gogh as if he had a manic approach to his artwork - working very quickly - had very obviously never ever tried drawing with a reed pen and ink!

Cottage Garden, 1888
Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853–1890)
Reed pen, quill, and ink over graphite on wove paper;
61 x 49 cm (24 x 19 1/4 in.)
Private Collection
Exhibited at: "Vincent Van Gogh - the Drawings" Metropolitan Museum of Art -

• Van Gogh: Drawing media and techniques (2007) - This post focuses on Van Gogh's drawing materials and how they influenced his style. This is one of the most popular blog posts on my blog. I rather think a link to this has crept into the resources of some lesson plans about teaching drawing!
• Van Gogh: More About Drawing (2007) - Links to websites which provide a very useful perspective on Van Gogh's approach to drawing
• Van Gogh: Drawing Landscapes (2007) - More about Van Gogh and Drawing - this post focuses on his landscape drawings.
• Van Gogh: Drawing Figures, Portraits and Self-Portraits (2007) - At one stage in his career, Van Gogh hoped to be a portrait painter in Paris.

Van Gogh's Paintings

MAMA #1: Charles Sovek's comprehensive website of resources for artists

The Making A Mark Archive (MAMA)

This is a new bit of routine for me - digging out a post from 14 years of archived blog posts about art - to provide you with new things to look at and/or new things to do.

• I'm going to work my way through the years, starting in 2006
• I'll also try and stick closely to the current calendar date - but x years ago!
• When I get to 2019, I'll start again in 2006 - and continue until this horrible health crisis is over. I've got masses of great content in the archives of this blog and this is one way of sharing it!

Here's one inspiration for why I'm doing this.....

MAMA #1:  Charles Sovek's comprehensive website of resources for artists

On March 25th 2006, I posted about the wonderful website of resources created by artist Charles Sovek in Charles Sovek - Lessons from the Easel

"I found a veritable feast of resources for all sorts of artists when I browsed around Charles Sovek's website after being given a link to one part of it as a reference for a project.

Although Charles Sovek works in oil, acrylic and gouache, the material he provides about art is universal. Sadly, it's very rare to find such a comprehensive and good resource on an artist's website - and so I'm obviously going to share!"

EXAMPLE: Charles Sovek wrote articles for "The Artist's Magazine" over a 20-year period beginning in 1985.

Here are some links from one page of the website

• The Key to the City - October, 2005
• True Colors - August, 2002
• Breaking the Ice - November, 2000
• The Surprising Color of Gray - August, 1999
• Capturing Green - July, 1995
• Mixing Colorful Grays in Oil - November, 1992
• Strong and Simple: Discovering Fairfield Porter - May, 1992
• Going Over The Edge - March, 1992
• Creating Effective Shadows - November, 1991
• Finding the Three Shapes Under Everything - October, 1991
• Light and Color, Sorolla Style - December, 1990
• Turn On the Glittering Light of Impressionism: The Art of Frank Benson - October, 1989
• Secrets of Sargent's Watercolors - April, 1989
• Paint Like a Master Impressionist: The Art of Edward Potthast - December, 1988
• Beating the Background Blues - November, 1988
• Simplifying Your Painting: The Art of Alfred Chadbourn - March, 1987
• Catching Light in Your Paintings - October, 1984

I RECOMMEND you click every link and pic you see on the website, there's a LOT MORE than is apparent at first glance! 

Please also SHARE with any artist groups who you think might benefit from access to resources for artists - during the current emergency.