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| Miniature watercolour paintings byTracy Hall in the Annual Exhibition of The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers |
In today's (late) post I've got pictures of some of the exhibitions I saw last week. Above are the miniature watercolour paintings by Tracy Hall ARMS HS MPSGS MASF (Watercolour Artist Diary) who won the RMS top prize of the Gold Memorial Bowl in 2008. Further down the page is a very striking watercolour painting of a wave colliding with a harbour wall by Andrew Blyth which is in the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Marine Artists
I was also trying to get to see "Venice - Canaletto and his Rivals" at the National Gallery on Friday afternoon but it would have been the third exhibition of the day and at the end of a very long and tiring week I decided to save it for when I was feeling fresher. However reviews to date suggest it should be good.
Drawing and sketching [Late Addition - I forgot to transfer this bit!]
Yesterday was the International Sketchcrawl #29. Check the SketchCrawl Forum to see results from cities around the world. Sketches are also posted on Urban Sketchers
as well as a lot of individuals blogs such as :
- Pete Scully - sketchcrawling central park, davis
- van Annies Chaos in Colour Sketchcrawl #29 at The Phoenix Zoo
- Frederick on (Orange explains it all) had me trying to work out where he was for sketchcrawl #29
- Terry Miller (Pencil Shavings) in Maryland who produces some amazing drawings in graphite
- Clive Meredith (The Art of Clive Meredith) in Southampton who is self-taught and produces some fine drawings of animals
- Nolon Stacey (Leaping into the world of the Starving Artist) is a self-taught graphite pencil artist specialising in fine art drawings of rural scenery, farm animals, dogs, wildlife and landmarks
- Dean Richards makes black and white drawings using charcoal, graphite and carbon - which you can see on Burnt Wood and Natural Elements
Next Friday and Saturday is the big event in London for Big Draw month when, on 22 and 23 October, you can Make your Mark on the Future: From London Bridge to Tower Bridge. I'm due to be drawing by Southwark Cathedral on Friday,
Coloured Pencils and Pastels
The thing I like about Nicole Caulfield's artwork is that so very often there is a story behind it. I particularly like the new direction she is taking in developing a new series of works stimulated by the way in which Norman Rockwell's work commented on aspects of daily life - see Beginning of Norman Rockwell Series. I've been following the progress on her latest one with much interest - see Update on "Wrong Place, Wrong Time". I'm sure every parent will have a wry grin over that one!
WIP: Wrong Place Wrong Time
copyright Nicole Caulfield
- Richard Klekociuk (Artleko's weblog) has won the $10,000 first prize at the Tasmanian Art Awards for his drawing Silence at the Table. He was competing against artists in other media. We're seeing more and more coloured pencil artwork 'holding its own' when up against other media. Richard has a very definite style which is unique to him and you can see how he progresses his work in Coastal Rocks
- Belinda Lindhardt has written to announce that the Australian Coloured Pencil Network has a call out for entries to the online exhibition. This is open to anybody who is a member of the Society. I wonder if people with a sister living in Australia count? ;)
- This is how you register to join the The Australian Coloured Pencil Network website.
- This is the User Agreement and Copyright Info and
- This is the AusCP Online Exhibition 2010 – Call for entries
Entries are open from now until Sunday 31st October 2010 and entries will be placed on display on the Australian Coloured Pencil Website – November 18th 2010.Landscape
Mitchell Albala (Essential Concepts of Landscape Painting) has posted the second in a series of step by step posts about the "In Sunlight" series: In Sunlight: “December Peak”
Painting
- Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) has an interesting post about 'traditional' and 'contemporary' painting - see The Banishment of Beauty, Scott Burdick
- Lucian Freud's portrait of a nude Jerry Hall - Eight Months Gone - has sold for £600k - which I guess is the sort of going rate you get at auction when you are the leading portrait painter in the UK.
- Freud is also in the news given he's the chief protagonist in Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud a new book by Martin Gayford (chief European art critic for Bloomberg News / formerly art critic of the Spectator.) This has been recently reviewed by Jonathan Jones on his Guardian blog.
Art Business and Marketing
Art Galleries
Art Galleries
- Deborah Secor (Landscape Painting in Pastels) has a post from her book blog for people approaching their first gallery - see Chapter 35: The First Gallery - and for those wanting to do art fairs - see Chapter 34 - Art Fairs
- Etsy broke its own records in September and continues its very impressive upward trajectory. According to the Etsy Statistics: September 2010 Weather Report: $26.6 million of goods were sold - covering 1.5 million items sold. Plus 2.2 million new items listed and 780.7 million page views - all of which are new Etsy records. (Is anybody still using eBay?)
- Branded art anyone? See Culture Label which has some of the most well known 'names'. These are the brands and these are the artists. It's interesting to see who's allowing themselves to be marketed like this.
- If you've tried Bonanza to sell your art can you let me know what you think about it or give me a link to a review on your blog. Thanks!
- [an empty space which might have featured a website] I came across a rather intrusive and what I thought was an OTT approach to marketing a course and website support for selling art online. (Which I hasten to add was not by any of the people I normally feature on this blog). While I've got absolutely no problem about highlighting enterprise which looks helpful, even if it involves payment of fees, I'm only planning to ever feature sites which aren't "in my face" either stylistically or in terms of pop ups littered all over my desktop!. This one was totally OTT - and hence is NOT getting featured. Do let me know if that's the sort of approach you value or not.
- Alyson Stanfield (Art Biz Blog) has recently had two excellent posts about:
- the Top Time-Savers for Your Art Business
- Publicity Resources for Promoting an Art Event Speaking as somebody who now has a small avalanche of email each week from people trying to promote art events, I would really appreciate it if people (and galleries who are not quite digitally competent in particular) would read and digest this one!
- Now I know we don't really think about artists being in competition with one another - but just in case you do - why not review 9 ways to spy on your competitors online from Joan Stewart's The Publicity Hound's Blog
- Robert Genn (The Painter's Keys) has a useful post about things to think about when Pricing a reproduction run
- Joanne Mattera (Joanne Mattera Art Blog) has a neat 'Marketing Mondays summary of CV vs Resume vs Bio You can find links to the CAA guidelines for different art professionals in How to write an Artist's Statement - Resources for Artists
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| Collision by Andrew Blyth (Watercolour £550) |
Art and the Economy / Art Collectors
- On Friday I posted a list of what are purported to be the 100 most influential people in contemporary art - The most influential people in art? (2010 although after reviewing it I came to the conclusion it was a total celebration of those who have been spending money on gallery real estate. See how many of the names you know?
- Who are the promising newcomers to look out for in Britain's thriving contemporary art scene? The Guardian asked Richard Wentworth, Yinka Shonibare, Cornelia Parker and Tacita Dean to each tip a new artist - and they chose Helen Marten, Bjørn Venø, Katie Paterson (one of the least flashy websites I've seen in a long time. Take a look and you'll begin to get the unintended but accurate pun!) and Charlotte Moth. This is the slideshow of their work - The new faces of 21st-century art
- I must confess I smiled at Ed Winkelman's Super Foul Mood List of Pet Peeves - and don't forget to read the comments for everybody else's!
- Caroline Roux in the The Independent has a A 10-point plan for creating your own art collection
- Tracey Emin is confused about arts funding! Enough said?
- I'm planning a post this week about art funding and the budget cuts. However I think the writing on the wall is pretty evident judging by the performance of the Chair of the Arts Council as I watched the Culture, Media and Sport Committee began to take evidence on the funding of the arts and heritage in its first oral evidence session on the funding of the arts and heritage. Museums were also accused of producing some breaktaking examples of waste and having listened to some examples I have to say I agree.
Art Competitions and Art Societies
- We now know that Emma Haworth has won the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2010
- but we won't be seeing the exhibition until November.
- On Friday I visited the Mall Galleries to see the Annual Exhibitions of the:
- The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers - which is excellent as per usual (see review later today).
- The Royal Society of Marine Artists (see review Tuesday). Both continue until 23rd October 2010.
At the end of this month, the Second Annual Juried Botanical Art Exhibition of the Botanical Artists of Canada is being held in the gallery at Todmorden Mills Heritage Site (click this link for the Google Maps info site). I'm a big supporter of botanical art exhibitions and if somebody can get photos of the exhibition - with the permission of the society - I'd be happy to host a more detailed post about the exhibition on this blog. The Opening Reception is on 27th October (7pm-9pm) and the exhibition runs until 7th November 2010. The gallery is open between noon and 4pm Wednesday to Sunday.
Contemporary Art Fairs
The Frieze Art Fair (14–17 October 2010) took place in Regent’s Park, London last week but I never pay it any attention and I'm not going to start now! It had over 60,000 visitors in five days. Frieze Art Fair 2011 will take place 13–16 October next year.
Art Galleries and Museums
This week I visited the website of the Musee d'Orsay (the 3rd most popular art museum in Paris) and was very pleasantly surprised to find it has had a complete revamp since my last visit and now looks better and seems to be much more accessible. It now has better links to the exhibitions it supports in the Orangerie and around the world while it undergoes a revamp of the actualmuseum. The one really wierd thing is the website doesn't have a title on the home page to say it's the website of the Musee d'Orsay! I'm now just wondering whether I need to check every link on my resource website - Musée d'Orsay - Resources for Art Lovers! ;)
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| Musee d'Orsay has a new website (English version) |
Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques
- This week Deborah Paris (A Painting Life) launched a new blog devoted to Deborah Paris - online classes and workshops. I have to say that I am mo re and more convinced by the benefits blog can bring to art tutors - and their students. It includes a link to a sample of videos of demonstrations and other instructional videos. plus new classes for Winter and Spring 2011 have already been posted, so click on over and take a look!
- Sarah Wimperis (The Red Shoes) has an invaluable tip about How To Varnish Watercolours. (I'm meeting up with Sarah on Thursday to hear more about life in Cornwall)
Art Studios
- Luann Udell (Luann Udell) has written another one of her really useful posts about the practical aspects of being an artist - see Making the most of your Open Studio.
- Luann's studio is in a renovated antique barn attached to her home in Keene, NH and last weekend she was participating with my friend Nicole Caulfield (Nicole Caulfield) in the Fall Foliage Studio tour - which sounds idyllic! If you want to check out artists in the Monadnock area of New Hampshire this is where they all are. Check out the websites to see if they accept visits at other times. Here's Nicole's Photos from the Open Studio
Colour
Albala also has a post about the use of a limited palette for landscape painting - see Limited Palettes Part 1: The Expanded Primaries. It provides a good overview of all the colours in the proposed limited palette.
Copyright
This post started as a summary in this post and grew and grew into a fully fledged post earlier today - see Does teaching art generate copying of art? It's started to generate a few comments and I'd definitely like to hear what you think - even if it's just more questions about aspects which puzzle you.
Opinion Poll
Photo/video manipulation
What's PEPE I thought - until the penny dropped. It's the new combined Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 9 & Adobe Premiere® Elements 9. It's available for both Windows and Mac at the same time - which is nice. According to MacWorld as updates go "this ones's a biggy"! See their review in Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 review where it gets 5 stars. I like Bridge and I'm not sure I'm going to rush to change it though.
This simultaneous, cross-platform release of Photoshop Elements 9 marks a first for Mac users - the Adobe Elements 9 Organizer is finally available for Mac users and comes packaged with the hobbyist-targeted photo-editing software.
Websites, webware and blogging
I posted two items this week following the article which included comments from me in Artists and Illustrators supplement for art students about how to get noticed. Those commenting ahve also made suggestions
If you've not seen it before you might find my resource site Blogging for Artists - Resources for Artists helpful if you are relatively new to blogging. This includes links to other useful blog posts about blogging for artists. From other media sites:
- Looking forward, the New York Times had an article about New Web Code Draws Concern Over Privacy Risks. The new language, HTML5, could give marketers access to many more details about users’ online activities. HTML5 is not here yet - but it will be.
- I was reading an article this week about how to design a website for an iPad and it made me think that maybe we don't think enough about the various different types of technologies used to view our various websites and blogs. Which is by way of a lead in to the fact that last week Microsoft Unveils New Windows Phones plus Windows Phone 7 Revealed: What You Need to Know
- for all those that do art fairs and sell art in places without tills you'll be interested in A Simple Swipe on a Phone, and You’re Paid
and finally........
Nearly 3,000 visitors came to see the John Moores Painting Prize exhibition on its opening weekend. Apparently the Walker Art Gallery and a trick of light conspired to also deliver an image of the hand of god!
Great post as usual. Looking forward to seeing the RSMA and the Minaturists and meeting up, see you soon.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the mention Katherine!
ReplyDelete