The North Gallery had been taken over by The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers who were preparing selected miniatures for their Annual Exhibition - which opens in October.
 |
| RSMGS - Annual Miniature Art Exhibition - in preparation |
- Saturday - artwork delivered for consideration
- Sunday - panel selects artwork for the Exhibition
- Monday - artwork placed in cases
- Tuesday - artwork numbered, pinned (to secure it in place and stop it moving around when the cases are moved), cleaned and photographed for the catalogue and website
- Wednesday - judging for prizes - prior to cases being moved to secure storage prior to exhibition
Update on the glasses: As reported on Monday I started this week with no intermediate glasses for viewing my computer screen - which made trying to post a bit weird. I collected my new titanium glasses on Wednesday and these are now in front of my eyes and I can now see fine again! Of course the old computer glasses which had completely disappeared turned up on Thursday! The only consolation was that they had been through about three lens changes, had been losing their fitness for purpose due to wear and tear and really needed replacing....
Artists and Art Blogs
Drawing and Sketching
- My most popular post this week was New website: John Ruskin and The Elements of Drawing. I had a feeling not many people had spotted this new website and resource! If you're interested in drawing and have not yet checked it out can I recommend you take a look.
- On Tuesday I visited the Annual Exhibition for the BP Portrait Award 2011 - and spent some time Sketching visitors to BP Portrait Exhibition 2011 in outline. Mostly I had no more than 10 seconds per person. You'll find more BP Portrait Award posts and linked links below.
 |
| Sketching the visitors to the BP Portrait Exhibition 2011 (1) 11" x 16", pen and sepia ink in double page spread of A4 size Moleskine Sketchbook copyright Katherine Tyrrell |
- Irene Brady (Nature Journal) has The Mosquito Solution for how to avoid mosquitos ruining sketching opportunities in areas where they are prevalent
- David Pilgrim (David Pilgrim Art) is featured on the front cover of the September edition of The Artist magazine. It includes an article by Roy Connelly (London Oil Paintings) in which he talks to six artists of the plein-air brotherhood
- The Devon 11 - Plein air painters out on the Coast
- From this I found Ian Lettice's blog Diary of an analytical painter. Poor weather kept him in the studio this week and you can see how many paintings he produced in yesterday's post An Experimental Week
- I came across this old Masterclass article in The Artist about painting the landscape and sea from The Artist by Robert Jones - a Cornish artist whom I admire (not least because when I first came across his work he was mixing coloured pencils with goauche).
- This weeek I've included some blogs by artists who got selected for the BP Portrait Award Exhibition 2011
- Jo Fraser - who lives in Scotland, is the winner of the BP Travel Award and also produces sculpture
- Manual Ferrer Perrea who writes his blog in Spanish and paints great still life as well as portraits
After seeing the new contemporary printmaking exhibition on Tuesday I started looking around for printmaking sites
- Here are two ning communities for printmakers
- Plus a number of blogs by printmakers
- New Zealand Printmakers - the title is pretty self-explanatory, however this is an active blog with an international bias
- Fife Dunfermline Printmakers in Scotland
- Colin Beaumont - Printmaker - an infrequent blogger but who is interesting when he does. I loved the very simple and very effective Scots don't tan - number 1 & 2
Book artists do seem to have their own very particular set of interests relating to their form of art - types of paper, book-binding, calligraphy and printing. Here are some blogs by book artists
- Book Art Object has a number of contributors
- Ampersand Duck is written by a book arts teacher
- Giant paint brush now part of Philadelphia's outdoor art scene (thanks to new Twitter follower Jason Nelson @StoneSculptorJN for that one)
- SculptSite.com sets out to be the "Sculpture Portal for News, Exhibitions & Happenings from and about the World of Sculpture" both on and off the Internet. SculptSite.com is dedicated to highlighting anything and everything about Sculpture. It's based in Scottsdale, Arizona but appears to be international in its focus. To be honest I didn't find it the easiest site to navigate as the top menu isn't a menu no matter how many times you click it - which means no categorisation of sculpture news, exhibitions and happenings. Duh!
- The Guardian had an interesting story about The Watts Towers - a public artwork sculpture built in Watts by a semi-literate Italian immigrant named Simon Rodia, who built them using hand tools only between 921 and 1954.
A taciturn man, the nearest Rodia ever came to explaining his masterpiece was to say, "I had in mind to do something big and I did it."Art Business and Marketing
- Viewing Views differently is a a reminder from Etsy that a successful business is all about the conversion rates not the views. It followed on from The Single Sale High (and Lows). It's very good advice and both are recommended reads.
- The Harvard Business School Blog tells us about Nine things successful people do differently
- Get specific
- Seize the moment to act on your goals
- Know exactly how far you have left to go
- Be a realist optimist
- Focus on getting better rather than on getting good
- Have grit
- Build your willpower muscle
- Don't tempt fate
- Focus on what you WILL do not what you won't do
- Alyson Stanfield (artbizblog) had a focus this week on the use of Facebook by artists - see Fine-Tune Your Artist Presence on Facebook
- she highlighted this article by Lisa Call (MakeBigArt) - Work for Yourself and Let your Friends Know - which outlines how to show everyone you have your own art business in this article:
- I've never been sure I got my two pages set up right so I'll be rereading all these again to see if I can sort out whether or not I did it right first time!
- jobs in the arts in the UK can be found here
- I took a look at a number of articles in the Financial Times relevant to art collectors.
- The tips to collectors are interesting in terms of what makes for a collectable item. For example see Simon de Burton's article about The market: Scottish colourists
- Ever wondered about the role of the art adviser? Read Hidden persuaders - Georgina Adam's article which examines the very private world of the top art advisers, an occupation which has seen explosive growth in the last decade. These are the people who can influence how wealthy collectors bid at auction and buy from galleries
They don’t figure in the lists of top collectors, yet they spend millions every year at auction and at dealers. They get first dibs on the most sought-after works of art at the top fairs, yet outside the art world their names are unknown – and they like to keep it that way.Art Competitions / Open Exhibitions
- This is a reminder that the deadline for entering the ING - Discerning Eye competition is 3rd September. See my post ING Discerning Eye 2011 - Call for Entries(26 May 2011) for more details of how to enter. You can check out the type of artist who gets selected here - see ING Discerning Eye - selected artists archive published. I visited ING on Thursday to see the Collection of works by British Artists at their London Wall office in the City and will be writing about this next week. I was delighted to see works by Cheryl Fountain currently on display.
- The deadline for the 8th British International Mini Print Exhibition is 21st September 2011. The 7th Exhibition toured the UK for 2 years.
Art Society deadlines
Art Exhibitions- The deadline for The Natural Eye - the Society of Wildlife Artists Open Exhibition 2011 is 11-12th September in London. Their website gives details of what they are looking for. The exhibition is 27 October - Sun 6 November 2011.
The 48th annual exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Artists is a showcase for the very best of art inspired by the natural world.
- The Annual Exhibitions of the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts are open to all artists in Scotland and elsewhere. The 150th Exhibition will be held between 23 October - 12 November 2011. The deadline for entry is 28-29th September. This is what the winning entries for the 149th Exhibition looked like
The new post summer exhibition season is getting underway in London and I highlighted - and have now updated - some of them in this post Art Exhibitions in London & Art Trails - September 2011.
Art Competitions
- This week I posted a series of belated posts about the BP Portrait Award Exhibition and associated events (see below).
- Review: BP Portrait Award Exhibition 2011 - this was updated after publication with an embedded video of the winner
- BP Portrait Award 2011: links to Selected Artists
- BP Travel Awards: 2010 (Paul Beel) and 2011 (Jo Fraser) - Note that I'm on a video (for a few microseconds!) about the making of the artwork by last year's winner which is playing in the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. Sarah spotted me!
- Book Review: BP Portrait Award 2011 Catalogue (coming very soon!)
- I also updated the art competition section of Portraiture - Resources for Artistswith links to the video about this year's winner and the new book about 500 Portraits: BP Portrait Award
from the competition in the last two decades.
- I also visited a new contemporary printmaking show which I reviewed in this post Review: Bite - a NEW Contemporary Print Exhibition
 |
| Cover of the Catalogue for the Inaugural Exhibition of the Plein Air Brotherhood |
- I've been following the development of the Plein Air Brotherhood. Their Inaugural Exhibition is at the A&K Wilson Gallery in Harpenden, Hertfordshire throughout September 2011. The Private View, to which all are welcome, is 6 - 8pm on Thursday 1st September. You can download the invite
Tips and techniques - how to produce fine art prints
- Belinda del Pesco (Belinda del Pesco Fine Art) blog posts set an excellent standard for the artists who wants to show other artists and art collectors how she makes her artwork and, in particular, her prints. For example, she has recently provided an excellent overview of how to go about producing a collograph in
- Collagraph: Cape Dory Book Club
- Collagraph: Sinking In (& using Carborundum on a plate)
- she also recommends Akua Water-based inks. as a non-toxic soy-based printing ink
Originally formulated for intaglio printmaking, this ink can also be applied with a brayer for relief printmaking, monotype, and collagraphs; and it will print from any plastic, wood, linoleum or metal plate. They contain no driers, offering a long working time for monotype or wiping the plate.
- Bridget Farmer is a Northern Irish artist/printmaker with a bit of an obsession about birds - which you can see in her blog Bridget Farmer eg Pleasant Pheasant Printing in which she demonstrates how she produces a dry point etching. It's exceptionally well illustrated
Workshops
- The Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop is organising a 6 week workshop in September and October on Working with a Sketchbook
- A 2 day collagraph printmaking workshop/ course will be taught by award winning artist/ printmaker Clare Yarrington at the Fife Dunfermline Print Workshop.
- This week Robert Genn wrote about creativity and referenced the work by Teresa M. Amabile who is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration and Director of Research at Harvard Business School which resulted in The Six Myths of Creativity. I went looking for a detailed summary of the work and found
- The Six Myths of Creativity (a pdf file - for filing/reading later)
- the blog post it was taken from The 6 Myths Of Creativity by Bill Breen December 1, 2004
- Click the publications and resource materials on her Harvard webpage (click her name) to see yet more references to creativity
- This was an inspiring speech to listen to - Steve Jobs addressing a Stanford University commencement ceremony filmed in June 2005 - How to live before you die
- What's the MAIN way you have sold art in the last 12 months? Just 3 days left to vote in the Annual Making A Mark Poll
The National Gallery brings us a film of The Making of the ‘Living Wall’. Using over 8,000 plants, GE (General Electric) has brought to life Van Gogh's 'A Wheatfield, with Cypresses' in a ‘living wall’ outside the front of the National Gallery. It now has an app which means you can submit you own photo of it to make a digital "living wall" mosaic of the original masterpiece!
As it happens I took a photo just this week! Add your photograph
Just wanted to say I love your drawing from the exhibition. It gives a wonderful feeling of the people and the movement around the show!
ReplyDeleteAnd I'm entering the Discerning Eye for the first time ever, thanks to your previous reminders. Wish me luck. :)
My job is done!
ReplyDeleteNope forgot - all I need to do now is get around to entering some work myself before the deadline!
Thanks for including www.nzprintmakers.com in your list of sites with interesting printmaking, much apprciated! I'm very glad that you enjoyed reading it :)
ReplyDelete