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Sunday, June 06, 2010

6th June 2010 - Who's made a mark this week?

Sarah Wimperis has created another very impressive set of paintings about where she lives in Cornwall.  Painting With a Story in Mind on Watermarks and her blog The Red Shoes explains how she came to paint these images.

 
Paintings by Sarah Wimperis
copyright the artist
With this set of paintings I have tried to let them tell a story.  It is not complicated, it is the walk down to the sea.  It is a walk that I do often, through every season and every kind of weather but here it is early summer.  To me, a walk to the sea, through rich deep green lanes and paths, past billows of wild flowers and beneath towering beech trees, is an essence of Cornwall and hopefully it will say similar things to other people, wanting to buy a little bit of that to hang up at home.

This year Sarah has had her work selected for two prestigious national exhibitions; the Royal Institute for Painters in Watercolour and the Royal Watercolour Society.

Art Blogs

Drawing and sketching
Storm Clouds over Westminster
16.5" x 23.5" coloured pencils on cartridge paper
copyright Katherine Tyrrell
Coloured Pencils and Pastels

Coloured pencil artists were enjoying winning prizes last week


  • Last Sunday I featured Leslie Evans (Chisaii) in my coverage of the Wildlife Artist of the Year.  She had three coloured pencil works in the show shipped over the USA.  This week came news that Reverie had won the People's Choice at the 2010 David Shepherd Wildlife Foundations' Wildlife Artist of the Year competition held in London last week.
  • Judith Heilbronn-Crown wins 'Best in Show' in UKCPS's 8th World of Coloured Pencils at the Pencil Museum in Cumbria.  The post also has images of other award-winning work in this exhibition which is open to all members of UKCPS irrespective of their experience levels.
Landscape

 Art and the Economy / Art Collectors

The death of the British boom in hot! new! young! art has been predicted before, but now it really seems to be happening. In its place a more catholic, and more honest era may be beginning.

Art Competitions and Art Societies

Art Exhibitions and art fairs


Major Museums

The Musée d'Orsay has an exhibition entitled "Photography Not Art" Naturalism according to P.H. Emerson (1886-1895) 16 March - 1 September 2010
"Photography Not Art" : these three words written by Peter Henry Emerson (1856-1936), one of the principle exponents of photography as an art form in its own right, say a lot about the complexity of a debate which started with the birth of photography and went on for several years.
Art Exhibitions - the Summer Exhibitions
    Future Exhibitions
      Art Societies
      Open Studios

      Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques 


      Workshops
      Tips and techniques

      Art Studios

      Art Supplies

      • Jonathan Linton (Theory and Practice) has been preparing a post about white paint for the last five years.  He's done a series of tests to see how much white oil paints will yellow over time.  The White Test. . . 5 Years in the Making  .  He includes some amazing colour charts - and a ranked list for those which remained white, those which practically turned orange and those which had a distinct lemon yellow tint.  Definitely a RECOMMENDED READ for all painters.  Thanks to James Gurney for highlighting this on his blog.
      I give you the results of this expanded White Test (or Off-White Test, as it is known in-house.) 
        • Matthew Brehm (Sketchblog), Assistant Professor of Architecture at the University of Idaho, and a correspondent for Urban Sketchers has posted about his Sketching Gear today.  Like so many of he is still searching for the sepia ink which won't bleed if touched by water. 
        • Last week Lapin (Les Calepins de Lapin) posted about his sketching gear originally posted on his blog My secret sketching gear

      ART TV

      • "Work of Art: The Next Great Artist" starts on cable channel Bravo in the USA next Wednesday.  The formaty involves 14 very different artists being pitted against one aother in weekly challenges and awards the winner a $100,000 prize and a solo exhibition.

      Art Videos

      • Pat Hodson (the Open College of the Arts Blog) has a video about her Herbal Notebook

      Book Reviews

      • Jonathan Jones has a book out.  Trying to revive the Renaissance is an article in which he explains - in a polemical fashion - how he came to write it. 
      • Here's a review of The Lost Battles by Jonathan Jones by another Guardian writer.  It's an account of the rivalry and competition between the Renaissance geniuses Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci.

      Copyright

      Opinion Poll

      • The new Making A Mark Opinion Poll for June has started - with lots of responses  It focuses on What's your favourite magazine for artists?.  This month it's a two part survey.  We have one magazine with an early lead - but don't look until after you've voted! ;)  Remember also that the results for the second part of this poll are going to be distorted by the ease of availability of magazines.  However the first part has messages for all magazine publishers - irrespective of where you live.
      • I also asked Have you reviewed an art magazine?
      • The results of last month's Poll are set out in Have you bought a painting DVD? (MAM Poll results)

      Websites, webware and blogging

      "The most important thing to understand about Facebook is that you are not Facebook’s customer, you are its inventory." Newsweek - Who Needs Friends Like Facebook?
      • This Newsweek quote about Facebook made me sit up and pay attention! Do read Who Needs Friends Like Facebook?  I'm on the verge of leaving Facebook again as I'm entirely sympathetic to the sentiments of this article 
      The problem now is that Facebook has shown its hand. Now we know what we’re dealing with. If you really expect this company to suddenly become trustworthy, you’ve lost your mind. Over the past five years Facebook has repeatedly changed its privacy policy, always in one direction, and every time this happens, the same movie plays out. People complain. Facebook stonewalls, then spins, then pretends to be contrite, then finally walks things back—but only a little. Nobody seems to notice that after the walk-back Facebook is still grabbing more personal info than it was before. 
      • How to avoid being harvested by spambots.  Every time you leave your email on a blog, website or online forum you run the very high risk of having it harvested by spambots and becoming the target for lots of spam - and worse.  However if you do have to identify your email address, it's best mask it in some way.  I've alwats made jpegs out of mine.  however another way is to use software like Project Honeypot.  Thanks to Sarah Longrigg, Moderator of the UKCPS Yahoo Forum for the tip about this software.  Updates are highlighted at
      Project Honey Pot is the first and only distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots they use to scrape addresses from your website.

      and finally........


      Sound installations are becoming a new art form.  We went to Kew Gardens yesterday where there is a new installation called Whispering in the Leaves in the Palm House.
      Chris Watson’s Whispering in the Leaves is an extraordinary sound installation that immerses visitors to Kew Gardens’ Palm House in the dawn and dusk choruses of the Central and South American rainforests.
      This is the Whispering in the Leaves website where you can listen and/or download the sounds.  I think you can all enjoy it but I'm guessing the wildlife artists will particularly like it.  It goes rather well with reading my new catalpogue of the new botanical art exhibition about Old and New South American Botanical Art!  Not bad for getting in the mood while painting!

      2 comments:

      1. Your Westminster sketch is magical. It immediately reminded me of reading Mary Poppins when I was a little girl in sunny southern California trying to picture England -- those are just the colors I pictured. I've tried several times to paint a scene I photographed of the beach and Ferris wheel in Santa Monica on a foggy early morning but just could'nt get it right. You did!

        Glad you enjoyed my yogurt post...I'm always so delighted to be mentioned here. And now I have my day's blog browsing set out for me. Many great places to visit today.
        Thanks!
        Jana

        ReplyDelete
      2. Thanks Jana. The trick is to go darker than you think you can possibly go!

        ReplyDelete

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