4 March 2012: Who's made a mark this week?

A young Neoregelia Scarlet Charlotte
coloured pencils 7.5" x 11.5"
copyright Katherine Tyrrell - all rights reserved

I'm pleased to announce that my coloured pencil drawing of a bromeliad was selected and will be hanging in the 2012 Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists - at Westminster Central Hall next month - 20-29th April 2012.

Here's my post about the submission process last Monday Society of Botanical Artists Submission Day - and a botanical egg.  Do let me know who else has had their work selected too - particularly if you can't get to the exhibition and would like your work photographed 'in situ'.

During my week off I continued to experience problems with both my eyes and my drawing hand.  I'd been resisting the inevitable conclusion that I can't do detailed work anymore.  Or at least until I get the op and have brand new lenses - and hence I need to stick to my "colour field" approach to botanical artwork for now and sketchier approach for everything else.  Either that or I need to start working much bigger!

Artists and Art Blogs

Artists

• I missed The Culture Show Special - Andrew Marr with David Hockney on The Art of Seeing - but it's downloading right now and I'll be watching it straight after I've finished this post!  
• This is an ArtsDesk review of the programme David Hockney: The Art of Seeing, BBC Two
• This (surprise, surprise Daily Mail!) article provides images of drawings and etchings by David Hockney - Sketched self-portrait of David Hockney as a teenager sells at auction for £22,500

Botanical Art

• Amicus Botanicus is a small and recently formed botanical art society.  It was created by 11 enthusiastic graduates of the 2004 Botanical Painting Diploma Course at The English Gardening School.  (For info about its exhibition in May see art society exhibitions below)
• Last week I discovered that the Société Française d’Illustration Botanique have a Facebook page and a Twitter account and their website is on its way
• Japanese spatial design graduate turned artist Macoto Murayama creates botanical art using a computer graphics program which is normally used by people developing architectural drawings.  You can read about this in Building Flowers and also see a slide show of his work.  It's fascinating stuff and wholly original.

Drawing and Sketching

You can get a close up of my sketching technique in this month's banner
for Urban Sketchers London

• A new Urban Sketchers blog has been created for the USK London correspondents.  Urban Sketchers London launched on 1st March - and yours truly had the first profile spot - see Meet the correspondents: Katherine Tyrrell. Other members are Adebanji Alade, James Hobbs, Barry Jackson, Olha Pryymak, and Zhenia Vasiliev (ex-Moscow correspondent for USK).  I wrote about it and the people involved on my sketchbook blog The new 'Urban Sketchers London' blog
• John Wright (Sketch Journal) tells us to Get Drawing - Five Tips to Break Sketcher’s Block
• The Big Draw now has its very own blog on Blogger - The Big Draw blog - however I think whoever is doing it hasn't quite got the hand of resizing images for the web!

Painting

• Painting is re-emerging in the UK as an important way of creating art according to a Telegraph article - Damien Hirst: has shock art lost its bite?
• Many congrats to Tracy Helgeson (New York State, USA) who sold 26 of her paintings at the opening of her new show last night - see Mini-Art at The Harrison Gallery March 2012.  My jaw dropped when I saw she was showing 100 small paintings and 7 large ones - but I guess then they're this size you'd need a lot.  You can see all the artwork in the show here - you might want to be like people on Saturday and buy more than one! :)  Tracy has reinvented her blogs and Works by Tracy has morphed into The Painter's Farm where there is much talk of goats!

People were buying 2 and 3 at a time, one couple bought 6! Everyone was having fun making little groupings of them.......

Paintings © Tracey Helgeson

• Colin Allbrook's work is really super.  Very traditional watercolour techniques and impeccable control of palette and tones.  Read about him in this Artists of the RI post - Colin Allbrook RI
• There's a great interview with artist Sophie Ploeg on Jackson's Art Blog in which she talks abut the materials she uses and her approach to painting - see Guest Artist : Sophie Ploeg

Art Business and Marketing

Pinterest

The major topic of debate this week revolved around the explosive growth of Pinterest.  In particular the way the site does nothing to prevent people misappropriating full size images without permission of the owner ie copyright infringement until after they have been pinned.  Whereas it's undoubtedly the case some people think Pinterest is brilliant there are other, and I'm one of them, who find its business practices very dodgy.  The fact that the P*rn Industry have now discovered Pinterest and pinned large quantities of 'adult' images to the site does not impress - mainly because of the laxity of Pinterest quality controls over site content.  Do you want your images appearing on the same site as explicit content?

My own feeling is that the concept of a mood board approach is here to stay for retail and shopping but that a lot of work needs to be done before it's satisfactory for all parties. My recommendation is to "wait and see" - Pinterest is a site which needs to sort out a LOT of issues.

I highlight the concerns below in the copyright section.

Facebook

• These are 10 changes to Facebook you need to know by Robin Grant On Wearesocial.  Apparently the timeline format change is only the tip of the iceberg for all those running Facebook "pages".

Art Competitions and Art Societies

Calls For Entries

• Yesterday I posted the Call for Entries for £30,000 Threadneedle Prize 2012 - which aims to attract the very best in new figurative and representational painting and sculpture by UK and European artists. My post tells you about the prize and unpicks the process
• Better get your submission ready if you're wanting to submit to the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition - closing date for entries is the end of this month - see RA Summer Exhibition 2012: Call for Entries

Art Society Open Exhibition

• RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition 2012 - Review is about my visit to exhibition of the Royal Watercolour Society's Annual Art Competition where all the works come from the open submission.  Well worth going to see if you enjoy watercolour

Art Society Exhibitions

• The Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists opened at the Mall Galleries on 29th February.  I've not seen it yet but hope to do so early this week  - even if I get drenched!  There are a number of talks and demonstrations scheduled for this next week - see the website for more info.  James Horton, the President, has an article entitled "High Society" in the March 2012 issue of Artists & Illustrators magazine which describes the selection of artwork for this exhibition.
• If you like watercolour you should start planning to visit London for the 200th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours Wed 14 - Sun 25 March 2012. This is their blog Artists of the RI
• Botanical art lovers will want to know that Amicus Botanicus is holding an exhibition called Amicus Botanicus - A New Leaf at 54, The Gallery, Shepherd Market, Mayfair, London WIJ 7QX between 14-20th May.

Art Exhibitions

• Drawing Now Paris - the Contemporary Drawing Fair is the first European art fair devoted entirely to contemporary drawing.  You can see it at the Carousel of the Louvre, 99 rue de Rivoli, 75001 Paris.  This is the shopping/exhibition in the Louvre Palace below the glass pyramid.  It's opne to the public between 29 March and 1 April.

Art Education

Life Drawing

• I've signed up to do a life class on 20 April at the National Portrait Gallery and I get to draw Sue Tilley who was Freud's Model for Benefit Supervisor sleeping.  I'm really pleased because when I met her at the PV for the Freud exhibition I remember thinking she'd be terrific fun to draw.

Tips and techniques

• Richard McKinley (Pastel Pointers) has been writing a series of posts about pastel techniques
• Basic Pastel Techniques Part One | Blending, Scumbling, Glazing
• Basic Pastel Techniques Part Two | Hatching, Cross-Hatching, Feathering
• Pastel Pointers | The Technique of Dusting
• Pastel Pointers | Shipping Pastel Paintings, Part 1

Copyright

Copyright infringement

I've become a complete Pinterest bore this week!  However at time I've felt very inclined to start a "civil rights for images" campaign!

• Let's STOP ("stop taking our pictures") accepting that images always get taken! 
• Let's STOP being passive victims of bad behaviour!  
• Would you just accept it if somebody mugged you in the street? 
• Why do we then accept people taking our images without asking permission?

Anyway - for those interested in this topic, I've rounded up all the links to the good articles on the topic of the misappropriation of images and copyright infringement related to Pinterest and created a new website Pinterest and Copyright - Photography, Art & Crafts which has four sections:

• what Pinterest has to say about copyright
• the basics about copyright, fair use and the public domain
• commentary about "the issue with the images" from a number of different perspective - the lawyers, the geeks, business journals, the newspapers, the art business blogs and me
• tips and tutorials for those needing a bit of help with watermarks

I'm going to highlight just a few of the links below

• This post on Business Insider sets out the nub of the issue - Pinterest Might Be Enabling Massive Copyright Theft.  It contains a FAQ interview which focuses on whether the use of the images by Pinterest is transformative and can therefore be declared fair use (eg Google Images is transformative - it creates thumbnails - and has been declared to be "fair use" in a Court of Law).  (BTW This is also the magazine which has identified that the p*rn industry has moved into Pinterest - Yuk!).
• This post Is Pinterest a Haven for Copyright Violations? by Ellen Brundige (Greekgeek) also provides an excellent introduction to the nature of the problem - a recommended read.
• Standing at the crossroads of what's yours is mine is a very thought provoking post on Crafthaus.  It discusses how the image of the artwork is the product ie what really interests people - NOT the artwork itself.  The consequence being the image is more valuable than the artwork.  That gives the old brain cells a mental stretch - but read the post twice and for me it made complete sense within the current context.
• Kirsten Kowalski, who's a lawyer as well as a photographer, told me her bandwidth had been completely blasted (200 GB) and her site crashed after her legal analysis of the situation in this post Why I Tearfully Deleted My Pinterest Inspiration Boards - DDKPortraits Kirsten Kowalski.  She subsequently had a chat with the man who runs the site which is rather illuminating. My Date with Ben Silbermann - Following Up and Drying My Tears - DDK Portraits Kirsten Kowalski.  Apparently he knows very little about copyright!  Surprise, surprise!
• Connie Mableson identifies how Pinterest need some considerable legal help to comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act - Changes Needed to Pinterest's DMCA Policy | ALL ABOUT THE DMCA , SOPA & ACTA
• The Art Business Blogs - Art Biz Blog and Fine Art Views by FASO had extended discussions about this topic - as indeed did my own posts
• Is the Pinterest Problem Really a Problem? - Art Biz Blog
• How Artists Can Harness the Power of Pinterest - Art Biz Blog (written just before the viral surge re Pinterest and copyright infrongement)
• Artists upset with Pinterest over copyright issues and alleged copyright infringement? - FineArtViews Blog by FASO
• This post tells you how to add a copyright watermark to your image using picnik (but you better be fast as Picnik disappears in April)
• WeareSocial provides some geographical perspective in Pinterest: US vs. UK users on the difference in the number of users between the UK and USA

Here are my posts - which were oriented around the practicalities of stopping people pinning my images and then getting them removed from Pinterest.  Two of them have rocketed into my top ten list of most popular posts

• How Pinterest removed all my pinned images in minutes (#1) - this tells you how to find out if your images are on Pinterest
• Takedown: How Pinterest moved fast to remove my pinned images (#2) -identifies a very fast and very simple way of getting lots of images removed from the Pinterest site.  There is no need to do a separate notice for every image.
• Pinterest: How to prevent your Blogger images from being pinned - this tells you how to insert the meta tag into your template if you want to stop people pinning your paintings
• Pinterest: How to prevent your Flickr images from being pinned - this tells how to avoid your images being shared off Flickr

Photography and removal of metadata

• Photographers have been campaigning for a very long time of the need to recognise that their property  - in terms of digital files - needs to be protected.  PhotoMetadata was created by the Stock Artists Alliance and is a site which is a home to the campaign and various tutorials about how to protect your images.
• However I'm wondering how many of those who embed their copyright information into their images are aware that it is removed by very many sites.  The Top 12 Myths about Embedded Photo Metadata is a recommended read for everybody who is putting photos of their artwork on the Internet.

As of late 2010, over half of the various social media or photo sharing sites either remove all embedded metadata on upload, or remove it from images that are processed to intermediate preview and thumbnail images.

the Copyright Notice, Source, Creator, and Contact Info, comprise what is referred to as "Copyright Management Information" and removal of these is against the law in the United States under the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA)
The Top 12 Myths about Embedded Photo Metadata

Opinion Polls

Pinterest hijacked the normal end/start of the month routine re the Making A Mark Opinion Poll and I'll be remedying that in the coming week.

Internet, webware and blogging

• Picnik is closing in April.  For those looking for an alternative and without the budget to be afford the full blown version of Photoshop, I have to say I'm very happy with Photoshop Elements - although I've yet to upgarde to v10.

and finally......

I've only just noticed but my blog apparently went through 2 MILLION page views a while back.  It's a number which is so big it's slightly mind-numbing.  Many thanks to everybody who has visited and commented on my posts - it's your support which keeps me going.......