8th June 2008: Who's made a mark this week?

The Pimms Bar at the Summer Exhibition 2008,

Gallery III, Royal Academy of Arts
8" x10", pencil and coloured pencil in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I enjoyed my Private View of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition on Friday. It was packed as usual and, as usual, I did my annual sketch of the Pimms Bar! This time I did the sketch from some new seating - which was AWFUL. Can I just repeat that - TRULY AWFUL - just in case anybody from the RA is reading. Bar type stools which are inherently unstable are a health and safety risk - and I had to sit very still while sketching this because although the view was very good and I had a table to sit at and put my Pimms on, any sudden movement saw me lurching towards the ground very quickly!

I later discovered that the alternative new benches placed in every room were equally badly designed. They made horrendous creaking noises as people sat on them - and I soon discovered this was because they are supporting the weight of 6-8 people with an inadequate design and no support in the middle. I made sure to sit towards the ends and I recommend anybody visiting to do likewise.

I did begun to wonder whether the chairs and benches were somebody's idea a performance art installation! Certainly the antics of people responding to the disconcerting nature of the seating were interesting to watch although I could have done without the experiences of 'sitting'.

The Summer Exhibition - minus the Pimms Bar - opens to the public tomorrow and continues in the Main Galleries until 17th August. The RA website has:

• a Summer Exhibition website
• room guide
• list of exhibitors
• Video: Sculpture in the Royal Academy's Courtyard by Sir Anthony Caro RA
• FAQs about the Summer Exhibition (word file)

You can watch The Summer Exhibition: A Culture Show Special on BBC at 7pm on Thursday 12 June. The Sunday Times today has an article about the Summer exhibition and how it is changing Tracey Emin at the Royal Academy summer show (Tracy Emin has curated a room this year). I'll be doing a blog post about my visit on my Travels with a Sketchbook blog either later today or tomorrow.

Sculpture by Sir Anthony Caro
in the Courtyard of the Royal Academy of Arts, London
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Art Blogs

• Gayle Mason told me about Terry Miller and his blog Pencil Shavings. Terry has a fascinating and extended blog post about what makes a good picture. In effect it's a commentary on composition and design - with some very good images as examples. It will be of interest to many and most particularly to those who are wildlife artists.
  
• The Flying Pictures exchange has taken off! Here are the latest posts. I must confess I'm getting a teeny bit confused about who is posting about what - I predict it will become even more complex (for the over 50s!). Imagine - Person D comments on the sketchbook she has just got from person C which started off with Person A and say how much she likes the sketches by Person B! Boggggle!
  
• Robyn in Tuscany (Have Dogs will Travel) Flying Pictures Takes Off and Inside Story - FP Sketchbook Exchange and Lindsay’s Book Flies On
• Vivien Blackburn (Paintings Prints and Stuff) has got the work produced by Glen Heath who is a friend a delightful lady who I've met.
  
• Ronell (African Tapestry) has Vivien's book - see The story of Vivien, published by Ronell
• Val Littlewood (Pencil and Leaf) was recently in England and took a botanical art course at West Dean which she comments on in various posts including Leaf of the Day: West Dean Sketches. Val tends to do blog posts about different leaves - and her blog will be interesting to those with an inclination towards botanical art.
• Adam Cope (Dordogne Painting Days) has an interesting post about Inigo Rose a fresco painter
  
• Casey Klahn (The Colorist)has written about how to use a photo reference and yet spin the artwork freely away from representation in Olive Tree Grove
• Petra Voegtle has created a new blog Blooms and Blossoms (a blummin' good name!) which is just photos of flowers - for those of us who love flowers it's a delight. I'm sure she's been to the same gardens as me!
  
• Irene Brady (Nature Drawing and Journaling Workshops with Irene Brady) has been writing about a recent sketching hike up a moutain Upper Table Rock Hike and her latest workshop Nature Journaling Class, May 2008 and her approach to working with her students.
  
• Vivien Blackburn (Paintings Prints and Stuff) has had a very exciting week this week - her new planchest arrived and it made it up the stairs to her studio! She's been sorting out all her work to put it safe and sound in the new drawers - and has been unearthing old work and 'To Work On And Finish Later' artwork as she goes. In her latest post collagraphs with coloured pencil touches - and what is a collagraph? she explains how she made her collographs.
  

Artists

• Last week The Guardian had a rare interview with renowned US artist Cy Twombly. He talked to Tate Director Nicholas Serota about his work. Serota has been working with Nicholas Cullinan of the Courtauld Institute of Art on Tate Modern's Cy Twombly exhibition, called Cycles and Seasons. This will be This is his first solo retrospective in fifteen years, provides an overview of his work from the 1950s to now and is the most important exhibition of Twombly's work anywhere in the world for 15 years. It opens at Tate Modern on 19th June.
• I used to have a boyfriend who was a DeadHead, which for anybody who wasn't around in the 60s and 70s means he was a dedicated fan of the Grateful Dead. I wasn't. However I did find their album covers fascinating. Alton Kelley, the artist behind the album covers of Grateful Dead, Jimi Hendrix, Country Joe and the Fish and others died this week - from complications from osteoporosis.
  
• Sheona Hamilton-Grey (Black on grey on White) highlihted Rien Poortvliet - the man who drew the Gnomes - as her contribution to Maggie Stiefvater's Artists in May blog project.
  

Art Business and Marketing

• I came across Landscape Artists International this week - which includes some familiar names as charter members and members. Career stage, strength of reputation, and apparent financial success are not to be considered in jurying applications for membership. Commitment to the furthering of art appreciation and sharing knowledge with others may be considered as a factor. This page provides the criteria applied for jurying applications
  
• Greg Perkins, Contributing Editor of Art Business News has an article about The Fine Art of Framing which discusses high end framing trends and custom framing for galleries and artists. It includes some useful comments - one of which I include below.
  

Of the categories of color, style and scale, I believe scale is usually the most misunderstood and abused. In order for your frame designs to be perfect, you have to pay attention to all three of these areas. The most important consideration is for the frame design to balance with the art. A common problem is the use of mat borders and frame mouldings that are narrower than they should be. A narrow mat border can degrade the perceived value of the art because the visual weight of the frame tends to crowd the piece when it isn’t set back with a more generous mat border.
Greg Perkins

Art exhibitions

Christus und Maria,
by Lucas Cranach the Elder

It's the last day of the Cranach exhibition at the Royal Academy today - which I visited on Friday. It contained one painting which I found amazing and arresting given the bold nature of its composition and subject. It's Jesus and Mary (but they weren't sure which - Virgin or Magadelene!). If it were to be done as a contemporary portrait it would still seem bold. Anyway - and I did a sketch and then found this article Lucas Cranach: A master of irony and ambiguity in the International Herald Tribune this morning which was equally astounded by it - but it has a proper photo of the painting! If you're interested there are more resources in the RA link and on Wikipedia in Lucas Cranach the Elder

• The Lure of the East: British Orientalist Painting opened last week at Tate Britain, London SW1 and runs until Aug 31. It's a 5* exhibition according to Jonathan Jones's review in The Guardian.
  
• Starting on 16th June there's an exhibition in the Bookshop Gallery at the National Portrait Gallery of Artists and Their Studios - photographs by Eamonn McCabe There's also a book. The artists featured in the display are: Chris Offili, Bridget Riley, Michael Craig-Martin, Frank Bowling, Marc Quinn, Stuart Pearson-Wright, Simon Starling, Richard Long, David Mach, Maggi Hambling, Sandra Blow, Anthony Eyton, Howard Hodgkin and Grayson Perry.

Art galleries and museums

• It's nice to see a move towards museums placing an emphasis on responsible and ethical as well as legal! This week, as part of the Association of Art Museums Directors’ commitment to establishing the highest professional standards for its members, it published the “2008 Report of the AAMD Subcommittee on the Acquisition of Archaeological Materials and Ancient Art". (although it has yet to appear on their website) This provides new rules for how antiquities can be acquired. The IHT comments in Museums' new rules on antiquities

Art materials and supplies

• news from Artifolk that they are getting the Caran d'Ache Luminance Pencils in their individual colours. These were being demonstrated at the Patchings Art Craft and Design Festival (last day today) - but the general consensus seems to be they are horrendously expensive. Looks to me like Caran d'Ache might need to review how they amortize their R&D costs!
• This week I commented on the way in which Saunders Waterford HP responds to coloured pencil in Saunders Waterford Hot Press - pros and cons for coloured pencils. The image is one I completed in class on Thursday night - it took me about 90 minutes.
  

Drawing a Head 5th June 2008
pencil and coloured pencils
on Saunders Waterford Hot Press
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Colour

I started my colour project this week - and it seems to have aroused a fair amount of interest. It runs during June and July and these are the links to the first few posts:

• Colour and Color - an online project - which outlines what I think the project is going to be about and cover - although I have to tell you that this is almost certainly going to be reviewed since I acquired new books about colour on Friday by Albers, Cage and Itten!
  
• Learning about Colour - Art Book Reviews for Artists #1 - outlines some books which focus on learning about colour
• Using Colour - Art Book Reviews for Artists #2 - these books focus more on colour being used in practice by artists.
  

I'm dipping in and out of the Handprint site with regularity and found a particular link which I commented on in Buyer beware on Thursday. This attracted a fair few comments and even turned into a bit of a fan page for Handprint!

Resources for artists

I 'officially' published three new information sites this week - including one today! They are

• Colour - Art Book Reviews for Artists - this one is providing very popular and has shot up the charts!
  
• Copyright and Orphan Artworks - Resources for Artists - published today
  
• Packaging, posting and shipping art - Resources for Artists - including lots of 'How to's and published yesterday

As always I'm very happy to receive any comments and suggestions on my sites either on the lens or the relevant blog post.

Coming soon: I've got 7 more new information sites queuing up to be announced on this blog - plus yet more that I'm still working on! If you'd like to check out the latest ones, check out Making A Mark on Squidoo. - which always has a complete inventory of all sites whenever they are published. See if you can spot all seven new ones which have as yet not been announced!

Websites and blogging

• Do you know which are the top 25 blogs about blogging? Check out this link to find out. I've had some excellent tips from some of them but certainly have not explored all of them or even heard of some of them!
• Have you come across the Art Law Blog before?
  

and finally.....

My blogging was very nearly brought to a halt this week by an absolutely massive unexploded bomb from WWII which was found during ongoing work to the 2012 Olympic site near where I live. It was the biggest one found in the last 30 years.

We've had absolutely terrific disruption of tube and rail traffic. Apparently at one point they were thinking about evacuating c.40,000 people which might have included me! This video link shows you the controlled explosion AFTER they removed the explosives - and it's the biggest controlled explosion I've EVER seen. Goodness only know what would have happened if it went off as they were dismantling it the other night and it started ticking and oozing explosive - yikes!!!