Saturday, July 07, 2007

8th July 2007: Who's made a mark this week?

After Monet - Palazzo Conterini
coloured pencil on Art Spectrum Colourfix

copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Sadly, the weekly round-up starts on a sad note...


Artists - in memoriam

Thanks to blogs from the Pastel Journal and the Artist's Magazine respectively for alerting me to the fact that pastel artist Richard C. Pionck died on 5th June aged and artist and instructor Charles Sovek passed away unexpectedly on 8th June.

I was hugely impressed by pictures of Richard Pionk's work in some of the very first pastel books I ever bought. They always seemed to me to be an excellent example of the classical tradition in terms of construction of a still life (and how to do a 'plain' background!). His portrayal of light in his set-ups was most attractive (and read his biography for how he achieved this). A memorial service at the Salmagundi Club is planned for 29th September and a Memorial Fund in his name has also been set up to promote excellence in oil and pastel works of art.

I posted about Charles Sovek in March last year in Charles Sovek - Lessons from the Easel. I never ever met the man but he struck me very much as being one of those people you'd always wished you had met. I know that my post is one of the most popular on this blog. I'd like to take this opportunity to once again commend to you all the wonderful resource which is his website - and is now his legacy.

Art Business and Marketing

Lots of art business items this week - apologies for whom this is an irrelevance. I've put some of them with the websites and blogging section at the end.
Art Fairs
  • Casey Klahn has a blog all about the Endless Summer Art Fair. He offers some good solid advice in his post about how to frame and how to hang work in his recent post about "Installation". If you go to art fairs, show at them or are contemplating doing so you'll find this blog a good read.
  • Maggie Stiefvater is doing a double act with Casey (watch for them commenting on each other's blogs) and also offers some very good advice on her blog on the same topic in "Sit Pretty".
Art videos

Check out a couple of videos produced by the people behind the Pastel Journal and North Light Books. They're the best produced videos I've seen to date in the 'quickie art instruction video' field (maybe not surprising since this is by a commercial entity and this is marketing!).
  • The first video shows Deborah Christensen Secor, a pastel artist living in Albuquerque, at the Pastel Journal stand at the International Association of Pastel Societies, explaining how she approaches her pastel landscapes and organises her pastels. Lots of good information in a short space of time - and I imagine a great treat for those who frequent the Wet Canvas Pastel Forum where Deborah used to be a Guide
  • The second video has plein air pastel artist Richard McKinley talking during a demonstration at the same event about choosing materials and the organisation of his palette in his pastel box.
  • Click the product demo menu item to the left of these videos to see more videos about various products
Art Education: Websites, Books, Workshops, Tips and Techniques
  • Continuing with the pastel theme, Susan Borgas had an excellent post last Sunday which demonstrates very clearly how she works with pastels. She has illustrated the post with all the pastels she used in a recent work posted on her blog and also how she distributes them, moves them around while working and cleans them.
  • Switching to coloured pencils - Linda Lucas Hardy has a very informative article in The Artist's Magazine's July/August 2007 issue to view a step-by-step demonstration of her unusual colored pencil techniques and how she produced Light,Crisp and Tasty. The magazine's website also provides 16 coloured pencil tips by Linda. You can also check out Linda's workshop schedule - scope and dates - here. I met Linda last year at the Annual CPSA Convention in Albuquerque and she's great fun. I asked her about her technique then and found her to be very helpful as well as very knowledgeable.
Websites and Blogging
There were more than 5,000 nominations for sites to be included in this awards program, which Webware's editors pruned to a list of 250 finalists. Users then voted on those finalists--there were 489,467 votes cast--to come up with these...(www.webware.com)
The image at the top is one I did quite a while ago as part of an exercise about learning how to draw water and most particularly to learn how Monet did water. It's by way of a trailer for the Monet Month later this year.

Finally....the mystery learning point about Van Gogh's "Almond Blossom" is now posted at the end of the comments on Flowers in Art - and Van Gogh #1

4 comments:

  1. Hi Katherine -

    this is a fantastic set of resources!! Thank you so much! I will go check out some of them.

    You are pointing me in directions to get advice on many of my questions.

    ~ Diane Clancy
    www.dianeclancy.com/blog

    ReplyDelete
  2. Also, thanks for the link to my site!

    ReplyDelete
  3. A jam packed post Katherine. I have been back twice to check some of the links.....think I will have to come back again...;-)

    Ps....thanks for the link to my post.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I can't get the videos to link properly. Drat!
    Thanks for the link, too. I'll be posting soon on self-publishing, which is something I know you've been interested in. I just finished the layout.

    ReplyDelete

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