MAM Poll (October) Results - What has influenced your style of art?

Main influences on your style of art
copyright Katherine Tyrrell / Making A Mark

The main influence on your style of art is YOU! Individual preferences reigned supreme on October's Making A Mark Poll. CLICK THE IMAGE to see a larger version of the chart and review the categories.

60 people responded and provided 160 responses in this month's multi response poll - giving an average of 2.7 responses per person

What's the main influence of your style of art?

• The top influence on your style is the way you prefer to work - 21% of you voted for this as being their #1 influence on their style of art
  
• 16% of you were very influenced by the way you prefer to make marks

I know 'the way way I prefer to work' was certainly my top answer.

However, if we all stop to think, I wonder how much of our preferences are determined by the media we use, the place we grew up, the art we're used to seeing and our first art teacher. It's important to recognise that a lot of our preferences are driven by what we 'know' and what we're used to. However they're often totally unconscious influences which we wouldn't necessarily articulate. They are aspects which you begin to become more conscious of as somebody tries to get you to try out working in a different way - and you discover, maybe for the first time, that you've got some inbuilt resistance to working in a different way. It's then interesting to tease out why that is.

I find it easier to say with confidence that my preference for working in dry media is not something that has been influenced by other people. That's a preference which carries over into all sorts of other areas and is about the feel of the media I'm using as it touches the paper or support. For example, I can't write with certain pens because they don't 'feel' right to me. I like the contact I get between media and the page without having a tool (like a brush) coming inbetween.

I'me guessing that the way we prefer to make marks tends to differentiate mainly those that like to be precise from those that like being more painterly or expressionistic. However if we think about that for a bit how much of these preferences are driven by

• art that we've seen
  
• emotions that we feel
  

In other words - how much of your style is determined by external influences and how much by who you are as an individual?

Other important influences included:

• past art movements (14%) - I don't know what you all think - but I do know that I've certainly experienced a wish to work in the same way as particular painters from the past at various times. If you read many artists's artist statements you often see people referring to the artists who have influenced them. What I find fascinating is that it's perfectly possible to change your mind about this when you get to see paintings by that artist up close. Seeing the technique required to produce the desired effect can often lead to a rethink about whether you really want to paint like that!
  
• your culture (13%) - I'm reminded from time to time that we tend to only look at art from our own cultures. It's good sometimes to remember that art is global and that different cultures tend to portray subject matter in different ways. It's also very interesting to see what happens when western artists try incorporating other cultures into their art
  
• the media you use (11%) - I'm minded to say that this for me is again an indicator that an artist has found their style. If I can tell who the artist is irrespective of which painting media they are using then that artist has a strong style

Does your style vary with the media you use?

What are the less influential factors?

The factors which emerged as less influential included:

• art teachers (8%) - we often hear about people copying the way their tutors work or trying to work in the same way as the author of an art instruction book. While it undoubtedly happens, this poll suggests that it's not seen as an important factor by most people
  
• finding the right genre for you (8%) - which I guess means that those who have established a style draw or paint pretty much the same way irrespective of which genre a drawing or painting belongs to. I've always maintained that stylistic unity across different subject matter is a jolly good indicator that an artist has found the style which works for them
  

7% of the responses came from people who considered they didn't yet have any sort of style at all. On of the basis that people will only have said this once, this is about 11% of the people who responded to the poll.

Only a couple of people thought style was either something you have - or you don't!

Interestingly when I came back to this poll this morning I saw that I'd left out a factor which changed my style. That's about what happens when you switch sizes. Working on much bigger supports really changed the way I worked with pastel - it became a lot more painterly. That in turn influenced how I worked with dry media when sketching when I came back to working small.

But I forgot to ask you "Does size matter?" ! Maybe that's a topic for a future poll! ;)

Links:

• MAM Poll: What has influenced your style of art?
• The Making A Mark Poll - Resources for Artists Find out the results of the monthly Making A Mark Polls for artists. See the charts and read the main findings about topics of interest to artists.

Video: Claude Monet at the Musée d'Orsay

Here's the third in my series of posts about the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Today I've got a video of the paintings of Claude Monet. This is the link to Claude Monet Paintings in the Musée d'Orsay on my You Tube channel (HD version) - you'll find you recognise an awful lot of them. The sound of the museum takes me right back to when I was there four weeks ago.

Yet again, as you can see from the video, it was shot in a very crowded room by an individual (me!) who was still getting used to her new tiny hand held camcorder. See yesterday's post about my video of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings as to the reasons why it is possible to photograph, shoot video and copy paintings in the Musée d'Orsay.

The Lunch: decorative panel
by Claude Monet (1844-1926)
photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Paintings in the video

Here's a list of some of the major paintings by Monet which are in the video and links to the website. The English title has the link the description of the painting in English and the French title has the link to an image of the painting. Following these is either a small extract from the description on the website (in italics) or a comment by me.

• Wind Effect, Series of The Poplars - Effet de vent, série des peupliers en 1891 part of a series of over twenty paintings of the trees planted by the swamp in Limetz, on the left bank of the river Epte, about two kilometres upriver from Giverny.
• Villas at Bordighera - Les villas à Bordighera - painted in his studio in Giverny, from a smaller painting executed on the site (Villas at Bordighera, The Santa Barbara Museum of Art).
• The Coalmen (aka Men Unloading Coal) - Les charbonniers (aka Les déchargeurs de charbon) - There is a clear analogy with the Japanese prints that Monet collected, views of Edo by Hokusai and Hiroshige.
• The Lunch: decorative panel - Le déjeuner : panneau décoratif - I was very surprised at how dull the pigments in this paintings are. It's as if he's been using fugitive paints which have lost their impact over time. It was originally produced as a decorative panel and maybe he used different paints?
• The Saint-Lazare Station - La gare Saint-Lazare - what prevails here is really the effects of colour and light rather than a concern for describing machines or travellers in detail. Certain zones, true pieces of pure painting, achieve an almost abstract vision.
• The Rue Montorgueil in Paris. Celebration of June 30, 1878 - La rue Montorgueil, à Paris. Fête du 30 juin 1878 - The impressionist technique, with its multitude of small strokes of colour, suggests the animation of the crowd and the wavering of flags.
• London, Houses of Parliament. The Sun Shining through the Fog - Londres, le Parlement. Trouée de soleil dans le brouillard - Sky and water are painted in the same tones, dominated by mauve and orange. The brushstrokes are systematically broken into thousands of coloured patches to render the density of the atmosphere and the mist.
• Blue Water Lilies - Nymphéas bleus - Never was the artist's brushstroke so free, so detached from the description of forms. A close-up view of the canvas gives a feeling of total abstraction, because the brushstrokes are stronger than the identification of the plants or their reflections.
• Woman with a parasol turning to the left - Essai de figure en plein-air : Femme à l'ombrelle tournée vers la gauche
  

(Note: I'll be adding more later - got to run!)

Photographs of Monet paintings

You can also see a number of my photgraphs of these paintings by Monet (and others by Monet) in my Flickr set of the paintings in the Musée d'Orsay. On the right you can see ones that I didn't video.

Monet's version of Dejeuner sur l'Herbe (Luncheon on the Grass)
(this is the account of why it's like this)
photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Advice for a novice shooting videos

As regular readers may know, I've come late to digital camcorders - which I'm quite pleased about as mine is very small, very light and slips in my pocket!

People are writing to me and sending me jolly good advice about shooting videos - and I'd like to thank everybody who is doing that. Keep it coming. I will pan more slowly and use stop frames before zooming!

I'm also especially interested in ways of reducing shake and am now trying to find out whether they do shoulder-pods or body-brace for the new tiny camcorders.

Any more suggestions please let me know - and I'll do a composite post at some point about the good advice I'm being given.

Links:

• Making A Mark - The Musée d'Orsay
• Making A Mark - Video: Vincent van Gogh at the Musée d'Orsay
• Musée d'Orsay - Resources for Art Lovers
• Claude Monet - Resources for Art Lovers
• Monet's Series Paintings - Rouen Cathedral

Video: Vincent van Gogh at the Musée d'Orsay

Following yesterday's post about the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, today I'm highlighting my video of the room containing 18 Van Gogh paintings in the Musée d'Orsay (usual YouTube /
watch in HD).

Self-Portrait (1889) by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
H. 65; W. 54.5 cm, Oil on canvas
photo coyright Katherine Tyrrell

Like Rembrandt and Goya, Vincent van Gogh often used himself as a model; he produced over forty-three self-portraits, paintings or drawings in ten years.

It's certainly an experience to be in a room with quite so many Van Goghs. You'll note from the video that it's very crowded. However, that's what all the rooms are like on the top floor where the late nineteenth century and Impressionist paintings are displayed. However people always like to linger in the Van Gogh room.......

Some of the more important paintings by Vincent Van Gogh which can seen in the video are listed below. The museum highlights and explains these paintings on its website. The hyperlink is to the page where you can read more about that painting.

• The siesta
• Van Gogh's Bedroom in Arles
  
• The Dance Hall in Arles
• The Arlesienne
• The Italian Woman
• Fritillaries
• Eugène Boch
• Starry Night
• The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise
• Dr Paul Gachet
• Self-Portrait
• Thatched Cottages at Cordeville

Thatched Cottages at Cordeville, Auvers-sur-Oise (1890) by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
H. 73; W. 92 cm, Oil on canvas
photo coyright Katherine Tyrrell

Visiting the Musée d'Orsay: If you want to see the paintings in the Musée d'Orsay with rather fewer people, try and visit very early, very late or during lunchtime. I guess there must be a 'less popular' day for visitors but I don't have a clue as to which it is. (Does anybody else know?) We were visiting the day after it had been closed for a day (which happens every week - on Mondays) and I rather suspect Tuesday might be a busy day.

You should also note that queues for tickets can be long in the middle of the day.

More information: you can find out more about the museum or Vincent Van Gogh by clicking on the links to videos and information below.

Note: This video is shakier than I would have liked. I'm going to have to practice shooting videos while walking in a very crowded room where I'm trying to focus on the paintings and avoid getting in people's faces or having their faces on the video. Any tips?

Links:

Paris Art Museums - my other videos on YouTube

• Monet's Waterlilies at the Musée de l'Orangerie Paris
• Panorama: the Louvre and Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel

More information can be found on this blog and in my information sites:

• Vincent Van Gogh - Resources for Art Lovers
• Musée d'Orsay - Resources for Art Lovers
• 23 posts about Vincent van Gogh on this blog including a very popular one on Van Gogh: Drawing media and techniques

The Musée d'Orsay

The Musée d'Orsay is one my favourite museums for all sorts of reasons. I love the art. I love the the structure which contains it. I love where it's situated and I love the views from the roof over the Seine across to the Louvre with l'Opera and Monmartre in the distance.

Musée d'Orsay - art and the artists

The museum is dedicated to artwork in the period 1848 to 1914 and is, in part, a temple to Impressionism. Essentially it starts where the Louvre leaves off. The artwork housed in the museum came from three different collections.

There's an immense range of work and it takes a long time to get round it all. Last month, I stayed the whole day in the museum until it closed. For the very first time I got round nearly all the paintings and saw many I'd never seen before. This is partly because of the way in which the museum is laid out. You can think you've been through all the rooms when in fact you've left out a huge chunk.

It's probably the best museum for seeing collections of paintings by the various artists associated with Impressionism anywhere in the world.

This is:

• an index of artists
• a list of paintings
• a list of sculpture
• a list of decorative arts
• a list of photographic works
• a list of graphic works and drawings (it's fascinating waht they call graphic works and what they call paintings
  
• a list of architectuural works
  

You can copy works in the museum

Freehand drawing
Freehand pencil sketches, not exceeding 30 x 60 cm, are allowed in the museum. However, for groups, previous authorisation must be requested when the booking is made.

Copyists
Copying museum works of art, by professional or amateur copyists, or by art school students, requires an individual authorisation. This is issued to one named person, and for a single work. The request must be submitted at least one month before the required date of entry to the museum. The permission is valid for three months, and may not be extended.
Copying

The museum allows photography of the exhibits (Yay!) - so long as flash is not used.

During museum opening times, works may be photographed or filmed in the permanent exhibition halls for personal or private use, excluding use for groups or for commercial purposes.

The use of flash, incandescent lamps, tripods or other support, is not allowed without an individual authorisation from the museum director.

As a result - and because this time I had the time to go round on my own I photographed all the pictures I liked - and all the ones by artists I wanted to know more about - plus their caption labels - and uploaded them all to Flickr. You'll note that some photos are taken at slightly funny angles - this is done largely to avoid glare or reflections.

What I found when I got my photographs home is that you can see so much more - just as you can when visiting a museum in terms of how an artist makes marks with for example a brush. Here, for example of the artist's eye from one of the self-portraits done by Vincent van Gogh. You just can't pick that up from good reproductions in books.

You can see my Flickr set here - makingamark2 - Musee d'Orsay.

I'm making them public as I get them labelled - I'm doing it in batches and I think I'm about a third of the way through (inbetween writing lots of words about nutty planning policies!).

If you like, you can subscribe to this feed and this will enable you to receive periodic updates as I convert works to being public with titles. (I think you choose the frequency - I get mine weekly)

You can also use camcorders. I took mine and this is a video of the Degas bronzes on Flickr.

Musée d'Orsay - the building

The building was originally a railway station the Gare d'Orsay which was built for the Universal Exhibition in 1900. The museum is in this building because the trains got too long for its platforms. It closed in 1937 and was empty for a very long time. Obviously there were other priorities for a period of time. Latterly the outcry over the destruction of Les Halles in 1971 meant that it was saved from demolition threats - and there was a lobby to preserve this landmark building. It opened as a museum in 1986.

• this is the story of the site
• this is the story of the station
• here's how it progressed from being a station to a museum which is a major tourist attraction attarcting over 3 million visitors each year
  
• the architecture of the interior is something I study every time I visit. It's simple and complex at the same time and I find the facts and figures about the building to be fascinating

This is the museum floor plan. The location of artworks is updated every morning, before the Museum opens, based on information from the previous evening.

Musée d'Orsay - the views

One of the things I really like about the Musée d'Orsay is the way you can get out on to the roof terrace next to the cafe which is at the top of the building. For some reason the door was locked on my last visit. As it was this time until somebody realised that it was actually a very warm day and maybe people would enjoy being outside. So they opened the doors to the terrace - at which point about half the care got up and walked outside!

I did my very first sketch in Paris on that terrace several years ago! It has the most stunning views of Montmatre and Sacre Couer.

Musée d'Orsay - Resources for Art Lovers

I've set up a site to record all the links about the Museum and you can find it here - although it's still early days! Musée d'Orsay - Resources for Art Lovers

The museum also has a range of information sheets:

• What is a museum ? The Musée d'Orsay
• Painters, the Salon, and Critics, 1848-1870
• In the Times of Impressionist Exhibitions (1874-1886)
• After Impressionism, from Van Gogh to Matisse (1886-1906)
• Orientalism
• The rise of landscape painting
• The Portrait. Painting and sculpture in France between 1850 and 1900
• Children, Images by Artists And Social Realities
• The rural world seen by artists, 1848-1914
• The Industrial World Represented by 19th-Century Artists
• Paris, a 19th-Century City
• The Opéra by Charles Garnier
• French Sculpture, Daumier, Carpeaux, Rodin...
• Art and Power
• References to Antiquity in Visual Arts (1848-1914)
• The Republic and its Images
• British and American Painters at the Musée d'Orsay

25th October 2009 - Who's made a mark this week?

Britanny sketches: Ebb tide and Rocky Shore, Golfe de Morbihan,
coyright Laura Frankstone (Laurelines)

I wasn't the only person visiting France and sketching in recent weeks. Laura Frankstone of Laurelines has been posting more of her delightful Britanny sketches - some of which you can see above and more of which you can see in:

• First sketches, Brittany - posted while she was still there
• My little French studio
• Brittany sketches, part three!
• Brittany sketches, part four!

Carnac Standing Stones
coyright Laura Frankstone (Laurelines)

We did try to see whether we could meet up and I think we got within 30 km - but we were driving south to the Loire as Laura was returning to her cottage with husband and friends who'd flown in.

However Laura earlier had the company of Casey Touissaint (Rue Manual Bis) who posted about In Brittany with Laura.

Artists and art blogs

I came across three sites which were new to me last week

• Neil Hollingworth's blog (Paintings in Oil) highlighted - in My Interview with Jim Thalassoudis - a relatively new blog In The Real Art World which alerts you to the best exhibitions of representational "realism". You can read an interview with Neil on it.

I was fifty years old before I actually began to paint full-time, but drawing was part of my life since childhood. I spent much more time in school sketching in the margins of my papers than taking notes

• I've discovered that Kitty Wallis (pastel artist / owner of Wallis Paper) now has a blog - called Kitty Wallis - but ti's very early days. How about lending some encouragement? I'd certainly like to see more of Kitty's very fine pastel work.
• I also came across botanical artist Mindy Lighthipe's website - she works in a similar way to Maria Sibylla Merian with an emphasis on drawing the insects together with planst and flowers

While old favourites were also blogging about diverse topics

• Julie Oakley won my competition to win a ticket to go to Brussels - and this is her blog post about her trip Brussels break
• Check out Enrique Flores's sketches in Book with Cuba sketches and Book with Cuba sketches/2 plus a video of his book of sketches done in cuba.
• I'm loving the fish that Jeanette Jobson (Illustrated Life) is producing - see The remains of the day (on Watermarks) and Puttering. I think she may well have found a signature theme! You can see more of her artwork and prints here.
• Has anybody else noticed how the paintings posted on Different Strokes from Different Folks are becoming more diverse as people find ways of creating representational relaism without looking like the photograph? See for example Week 49-51 Challenge - City Rooftops. You've still got time to enter this challenge - it finishes on 28th October.
  
• Gabi Campanario (founder of Urban Sketchers) has got a neat little teaser going on his blog - which is now on the Seattle Times - called TGIF, where's the sketcher?

and I'm still posting about my trip to France - but fewer postrs last week for two reasons. First my time has been hijacked by trying to protest about my local Council's plans to ruin my local neighbourhood - so fewer than I had hoped. Second I needed to learn how to make a video! Which I did - you can now follow me on my You Tube channel as I work my way through my camcorder memories!

Petit déjeuner @ Dolce e Amaro
8" x 10" in Moleskine - while sat having breakfast
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

• Petit déjeuner @ Dolce e Amaro
• Musée de l'Orangerie, Tuileries, Notre Dame and St Germain
• and this is the video of Monet's Waterlilies at the Musée de l'Orangerie Paris

Plus this is where I was last Sunday morning - Columbia Road Market on a Sunday morning

Note also that Urban Sketchers member Steven White has started a weekly sketching challenge in our flickr group. This week the challenge was trees.

Art photography

I had a couple of items about photography this week. I keep wanting to learn more and more about photography.........

• There's a new exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery which I reviewed here Exhibition Review: Beatles to Bowie - 60s exposed
• Plus the results of Landscape photographer of the year 2009 were announced. There are to be books associated with this very popular competition

Art business and marketing

After my comments about the availability of free information about marketing your art last week I thought it might be instructive to go looking for some more sites which also offer free information of the reputable variety - and it was! You can subscribe to both of the sites identified below for free to get articles like these.

• I've got a lot of time for Art Calendar. Could be because they asked my view and quoted me once in an article! However I do like the way they share articles from their journal for free. You can get access to the full version of some of their recent articles on their website. Here are some examples:
• Social Networking for Artists - Tips for Success by Renee Phillips
  

It is entirely possible for you to sell your art in this marketplace even in this current climate, as long as you understand luxe buyers and their behavioral patterns, and can then develop and implement a marketing plan geared toward this audience.

• Luxury Marketing Part I: Finding Your Place in the Luxury Market - very interesting comments in the nature of the marketplace and the buyers and of this information will surprised me!
  
• Luxury Marketing Part II: Studying Your Target Market
• Luxury Marketing Part III: Do you make the luxe list?
• Luxury Marketing Part IV: Creating a Luxury Brand
• one more to come in this series!
  
• Plus did you also know that you can purchase digital copies of back issues of Art Calendar for $2.95? I've not seen this done before but it seems like an excellent idea to me.
  

• Another new blog (to me) this week is Art Marketing Secrets - which has some interesting posts
  
• Big Artist Website Mistake #1: Poor Image Quality
• Big Artist Website Mistake #2: Inconsistent Work
• Big Artist Website Mistake #3: Distract Your Visitors
• Big Artist Website Mistake #4 – Ask Harry Potter!
• Big Artist Website Mistake #5 – Poor Quality Bio

Art competitions

• Art Sleuth has written about The Turner Prize 2009 - in which he reviews the entries
  

Art exhibitions, galleries and museums

• I made my first video this week and the second one is in this post Monet's Nympheas in the Musée de l'Orangerie. I'm planning a series of posts about the art museums I visited in Paris
• The Sacred Made Real (21 October 2009 – 24 January 2010) exhibition opened last week at the National Gallery. It explores the intense dialogue between the arts of sculpture and painting - in realtion to relgious art - revealing that they were both intricately linked and Interdependent and a particular focus on hyperrealism

Paintings, including masterpieces by Diego Velázquez and Francisco de Zurbarán, are displayed for the very first time alongside Spain’s remarkable polychrome woodden sculptures

• RWS/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2009 has moved to The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston Birmingham B15 2TS until 10 November 2009.
  

This prestigious competition aims to encourage the use of watercolour and water based media paintings among both contemporary artists and the public. A selection of works from the exhibition is on tour until the end of the year.

• You can see fellow Watermarks blogger Tina Mammoser's work On the walls, in Blackheath at the Blackheath Gallery in Tranquil Vale (I've always loved that street name!)
• Meanwhile I came across a bit of a different perspective on Damien Hirst's latest exhibition in Michael Savage (Culture Wars). In A tragic aspiration to cool he suggests that its the people at the Wallace Collection who should be criticised for allowing such bad paintings site alongside some real greats.

  In fact, Hirst’s paintings are shockingly bad. They are crudely painted, shallowly conceived, derivative and trite. They are pastiches of Francis Bacon, hewing close to the original but with none of the panache. But they are not only poorly crafted. The symbolism is laughably shallow – a skull and an ashtray, for example. Oh my gosh – I get it, smoking and death, that’s soooo clever…

Opinion Polls

• I'm running a short poll this month (see right hand column) - all about how you acquired your current style - see MAM Poll: What has influenced your style of art?

Websites and blogging

• The Definitive Guide to Semantic Web Markup for Blogs - was written two years and is mostly about wordpress blog themes. However it looks like it's still a good read for those who want to check out if their blog is behaving properly in delivering the goods to search engines. What do people with wordpress blogs think?
  
• Social Media: The Need For Measurement is about what happens when people confuse the medium with the message and start using a communications channel without first deciding what they are going to do with it. Lots of great free tips and pointers.
  

The fist step should be to ask "why"? The same question applies to any marketing campaign, be it search marketing, radio, television, or anything else. Why does this website exist? Why am I doing this and what result am I trying to achieve?

Is it to boost traffic? Is it to make more money? Is it to cut costs in other marketing activities by replacing one with another? Is it to grow the RSS subscriber base? Get more links? Grow the mail list? A combination of all these things? And how do these relate back to the purpose of the site?

and finally......Just in case you missed the announcement on Friday and the very yellow image in both blog post and in my side column. :D

I got a very welcome email on Friday telling me that Making A Mark has been officially rated #4 in Top 25 UK Arts & Culture Blog.

When I finally got over the shock of having beaten the blogs of the Guardian, the Independent and the Daily Telegraph, I began to realise that quite a few of the other blogs are team blogs and what look like paid enterprises.

So I'm feelin even more cockahoop! It really does feel like Making A Mark - which is just me - has very definitely made a mark!

Many thanks to all my blog readers who left very nice comments on this blog post.

MAM #4 in Top 25 UK Arts & Culture Blogs

I knew my blog was doing well in terms of readership but I got a very pleasant surprise this morning to find that Making A Mark has been rated #4 in the Top 25 UK Art And Culture Blogs. It's even beaten the art blogs produced by the top national newspapers!!!

I was even more pleased when I realised that, unlike some I've seen, this listing has actually been produced by a team who've used proper research across a range of relevant criteria and then produced an algorithm for weighting them! The site behind the listing is Creativetourist.com. This is the website created by a very reputable organanisation - the Manchester Museums Consortium, which covers a group of nine museums and galleries in Manchester (more about this tomorrow as I've not come across their site before).

The top 25 UK Arts and Culture Blogs

You can find these listed below. You can read more about each of the art blogs and how the list was compiled in this blog post - The Top 25 UK Arts & Culture Blogs.

1. We Make Money Not Art
2. Feeling Listless
3. Things Magazine
4. Making a Mark
5. Jonathan Jones on Art (Guardian)
6. Frieze Blog
7. Charlotte Higgins (Guardian)
8. Saatchi Blogon
9. Amelia’s Magazine
10. Art of the Estate
11. Culture Wars
12. Telegraph culture blog
13. UK Street Art
14. Madam Miaow Says
15. Art in Liverpool Blog
16. Follow the Yellow Brick Road
17. Artsy
18. The FACT Blog
19. Art Sleuth
20. Arts Blogs: The Independent
21. Art & Things
22. Where’s Runnicles?
23. Culture Vulture
24. View from the South Bank
25. Intelligent Naivety

I know a lot of these blogs and consult some of them on a very regular basis - but some are new to me and I'm certainly going to be checking these all out in the near future. You might like to do likewise! :)

In the meantime I think I'm just going to sit here with a big mug of tea and get over the shock!

Monet's Nympheas in the Musée de l'Orangerie

On our first day in Paris we visited the Musée de l'Orangerie to see Monet's final Nympheas - known as The Grand Decorations. I wrote about these two years ago Gardens in Art: Monet's final Nympheas as part of my Gardens in Art blog project.

The Two Willows by Claude Monet

200 x 1275 cm (three panels - 200 x 425 cm)
Salle 2, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

The Clouds by Claude Monet
200 x 1275 cm, (three adjoining panels 200 x 425 cm)
Salle 1, Musée de l'Orangerie, Paris
photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Note the scale of these works!

I'm created a YouTube slideshow of photos which shows you both the scale and the detail of the paintings - and how loose and painterly his technique is. Plus you can see all the photographs I took of all Monet's waterlilly paintings in L'Orangerie - Monet's Nympheas (which also has a slideshow facility)

I've also uploaded a video to YouTube which give you an impression of what it's like to visit them in the two rooms - you can view seven of Monet's eight paintings of waterlillies in high quality video here (click the little HQ button to see the High Quality version). It's split between Salle 1 and Salle 2. I have to say that I'm really glad that the first time I saw them was very early on a Saturday morning just after the museum had opened - and there were very few people there.

The video also gives you a clear sense of what a simply massive project this was. Prior to the Impressionists, artists who were accorded the highest regard included ones who painted large murals for grand buildings. Much as Michelangelo used to do for the Pope! Maybe this was Monet's way of saying he ranked alongside the greats of the past. It made me think that maybe David Hockney has been thinking along the same lines of late with the huge paintings he has been producing.

I'll be writing more later on about the Musée de l'Orangerie and about a book I bought about Monet's Nympheas - which was bedtime reading while in Paris. The post on my sketchbook blog about the day I visited the Orangerie will follow later today

PS That was my very first video upload - I'm still sure I must have done something wrong! I'm not too sure why it's taken me so long to get round to getting a decent camcorder and starting to create videos!

Links:

• Musée de l'Orangerie
• Information about the Musée de l'Orangerie in English
  
• Making a Mark: Gardens in Art: Monet's final Nympheas
• Gardens in Art - blog posts on Making A Mark
• Travels with a sketchbook in France

Exhibition Review: Beatles to Bowie - 60s exposed

National Portrait Gallery - Beatles to Bowie website
The Beatles, 1964 by Robert Whitaker
Robert Whitaker Archive © Robert Whitaker (Used with permission)

Last Thursday a major new photographic exhibition Beatles to Bowies: The 60s exposed opened at the National Portrait Gallery and runs until 24 January 2010 before going on tour to Newcastle and Norwich. It includes 150 photographs of the 1960s including rare portraits of The Beatles, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones. Over 100 of them are being exhibited for the first time.

Beatles to Bowie: the 60s exposed will illustrate how image, music, fashion and performance combined to make these musicians the leading icons of their time and London the world's most important cultural capital.

Pink Floyd, 1967 by Vic Singh
© Vic Singh (used with permission)

I went to see the exhibition on Friday evening (which is late night opening). I was brought up short when reminded that 1st January next year marks the 50th anniversary of the start of the sixties. However I didn't object in the least to being reminded of images of people who were an important part of my youth.

Here's a few of my mental notes of what stood out for me

• some stunning large images by David Bailey on the back wall - technically perfect with a huge aesthetic impact as well. It made me realise why people have had such a high regard for Bailey.
• the exhibition includes the actual proof sheet of the film which includes the famous 1963 photograph of The Beatles leaping into the air for the cover of their Twist and Shout EP is also featured in the show. There it is with a red line cropping in to get the famous image
• 10 showcases of 150 items - displaying the graphical art and photography used for record sleeves for albums and singles - plus illustrated sheet music, advertisements, flyers and magazine covers. I was instantly transported back to being a teenager in the 60s when I spotted a Petticoat front cover!
• a Pop meets Fashion section - including photographs of Mary Quant and all the other famous designers of the sixties. There's also a display of dresses by Mary Quant, Ossie Clark and Biba(?) on Adel Rootstein mannequins which were designed to look like Sandie Shaw, Twiggy and somebody else whose name I forget. Interestingly the Mary Quant design seems to have stood the test of time.
• Pete Townsend looking very respectable in a very well cut and tailored clothes in a photo of The Who!
• I was a fan of Scott Walker so paid particular attention to that photograph!

David Bowie, 1966
by David Wedgbury
National Portrait Gallery, London
© National Portrait Gallery, London

I think anybody who lived through the 60s in the UK will remember quite a few of the photographs very well indeed - I know I spotted a significant number which were familiar to me. It was a revelation to see some of them as photographs rather than album sleeves! There's also a quite a few "Oh - I remember him/her!" moments to be had for the lesser known singers and musicians!

A range of photographers are involved with the exhibition from people I hadn't heard of then or since through to some very famous photographers.

The exhibition website has tabs for each year of the sixties. This part of the site is very short on images - but provides a good overview of what happened in each year.

Miffed by how few images there were I started to look a bit further and finally found a link to the commercial part of the site which is selling prints of photographs. Not the limited editions ones by David Bailey I might add! However, for those unable to visit, it gives you a much better impression of the sort of images which are in the exhibition. Plus if one of the images takes you back to your youth - such as an early image of Eric Patrick Clapton (who knew?) you might even want to order a print!

Links:

• BEATLES TO BOWIE: THE 60s EXPOSED at the National Portrait Gallery - Wolfson and Ground floor Lerner Galleries. Admission £11, Concessions £10/£9; Free for Gallery Supporters, Sponsored by The Bank of New York Mellon
• Beatles to Bowie: the 60s exposed will tour to the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne (6 Feb-18 April 2010) and Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery (8 May-5 Sept 2010.
  

MAM Poll: What has influenced your style of art?

How did you develop your own individual and unique style of art?

If you read my analysis of the MAM Poll (September) Results: Preferred style of art then you'll know that I commented on whether I should have started with the question 'what is style?' Subsequently it occurred to me that it would be interesting to test out how we think we've arrived at our own individual styles of art.

So - seeing as how there's less than two weeks left in October I though I might have a quick poll for October to find out .............

What has influenced your style?

You may select multiple responses and can choose one or more of the following options:

• I'm influenced by my culture
• I'm Influenced by past art movements
• I'm influenced by teachers
• my preferred way of working
• my preferred way of making marks
• what's possible with the media I use
• finding the right genre for me
• You either have it or you don't!
• I've not yet got an individual style

Un atelier aux Batignolles (1870) by Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904)

(a picture of Manet surrounded by his peers including Zola, Renoir, Monet and Bazille)

photo by Katherine Tyrrell

Do please feel free to comment on:

• what you think influences style and/or
• whether it's the same process for everybody and/or
  
• how you developed your style and/or
• whether your style has developed over time
• whether it's 'in the genetics' or a product of persistence and hard work

Where is the poll? You'll find the poll in the right hand column in the usual place - just below the Blogger Followers widget.

Deadline for responses: The poll closes early on 31st October. The analysis of results will be posted late the same day.

Links:

• MAM Poll (September 2009): What's your style of art? - post introducing the poll and providing suggested definitions about style
  
• The Making A Mark Poll - Resources for Artists Find out the results of the monthly Making A Mark Polls for artists. See the charts and read the main findings about topics of interest to artists.

Landscape photographer of the year 2009

I've often felt that landscape photographers have a lot to teach us all about how to frame a view and how to treat lighting and colour within an overall composition. I've been so convinced of this I even started buying books by people like Charlie Waite.

See if you can work out what are the key characteristics of the winning photographs in Take a View - the competition for Landscape Photographer of the year. You can take a look at them in:

• either The Guardian's slideshow
• or the slideshow of the Daily Telegraph

You can also see the winning photographs in an exhibition in the Lyttleton Exhibition of the National Theatre between 5 December and 24 January 2010.

Sunrise over the Old Man of Storr, Isle of Skye
by Emmanuel Coupe: Landscape Photographer of the Year 2009 – Overall winner
copyright Emmanual Coupe

You can also see more stunning photographs by overall winner Emmanual Coupe on his smugmug website. Note he also does workshops which focus on the fundamentals of aesthetics and composition. You canslo read an interview with him here.

The website for the competition provides some useful hints and tips - many of which are just as applicable to artists composing landscape paintings. There were also some more Tips and hints for getting a good landscape in the Times Online

What was also interesting was the categories they chose for the landscape photographs:

• the classic view - an image that captures the beauty and variety of the UK landscape.
• Living the view - a category for images of people interacting with the outdoors – working or playing in the UK landscape.
• Your view - Pretty much anything goes, as long as it is in the UK and in the outdoors.
• Phone view - which seems to be shorthand for spontaneity and capturing the unexpected

Over to you:

• How do you categorise your landscapes?
  
• What are your tips for achieving an effective composition and an overall aesthetic effect?