Tuesday, October 22, 2013

22nd October 2013 - Who's made a mark?

October is exhibition overload month! I had three exhibitions last week plus a bug - and three more which opened last week and which I haven't visited yet ! So I gave myself permission to write about the Whistler this week and took it easy over the weekend!  The images in this post this week are mainly from the exhibitions I've viewed - as indicated - by way of even more of a taster for those who'd like to see more.

Dr Patricia Montfort and Professor Margaret F McDonald
Curators of An American in London: Whistler and the Thames at Dulwich Picture Gallery
Standing in front of Blue and Gold - Old Battersea Bridge
Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Marine Artists. Mall Galleries - West Gallery
always a very popular exhibition - with good sales
I'm thinking of moving this post to a regular slot on Mondays.  The reason being I keep getting the notion that the weekend ought to be more of a "me" time.  It's been sliding from Sundays to Monday for a while so we'll see how it goes.

This one slid into Tuesday because all day yesterday I was following a major story about copyright infringement which I stumbled upon and which had gone viral - as in 245k shares of the original story on Facebook!  So it started as a couple of lines in this post and by the end of the day was a recommended read for all those who need to know about fair use and/or aren't confident about copyright matters.

Art & Artists


I kicked off last week with this post You are known by the company you keep. This was triggered by using this phrase when discussing some recent "goings on" with fellow artists.

Drawing & Sketching

  • Some of my sketches of gardens and parks will be seen in a new book called Sketch Your World which will be published in January 2014.  I'll be writing more about this nearer the date of publication.  The author of the book is James Hobbs (James Hobbs) who is a former editor of Artists & Illustrators magazine, the current editor of Discover Art bookzine, a board member of Urban Sketchers and a founding member of the London Urban Sketchers.
The different covers for Sketch Your World

Painting

  • The Royal Watercolour Society now has a blog - unfortunately it's a blog without a feed
  • so can't be read in feedreaders and won't translate to Facebook.  If you go to the trouble of creating and maintaining a blog do make sure it has an RSS feed.
  • Artists who impressed this week included:
  • Haidee has also been playing at Being Monsieur Monet - which reminded me of one my favourite occupations which is drawing masterpieces in coloured pencil.  I was reminded that I'd also tackled Morning on the Seine in a different colourway some time ago. It's prompted me to think I should do more. I know I learn a huge amount every time I copy a painting by an old Master.  However it's important to remember there's a lot of difference between copying somebody who's out of copyright and an image by an artist or photographer whose work is covered by copyright - see the copyright section for more discussion of this in the light of this week's viral copyright story.
Morning on the Seine - a copy of Monet's work in coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Pastels and Pencils

Fine Art Prints

  • Artists who impressed this week included Austin Cole with some super etchings at the RSMA Annual Exhibition 
North Pembrokshire by Austin Cole
Etching (edition of 12 - 2 available) £420 unframed

Wildlife Art

  • Davina Bosanquet has an article in Artists & Illustrators.  Davina is particularly good at painting movement in animals - she won the Wildlife in Action Prize at the David Shepherd's Wildlife Artist of the Year competition in 2010

Who painted this?


Art Business & Marketing

Artist development

Copyright for Artists

  • RECOMMENDED READ  The issue is about "fair use" when appropriating other people's work. The viral online copyright storm re. Congdon vs Cody Foster is outlined in my blog post yesterday - see Copyright for Artists - Congdon vs Cody Foster
  • As part of the research I did for the blog post I finally tracked down what has happened to Cariou vs Prince case which relates to Richard Prince's manipulation of photographs taken by Patrick Cariou.
    • Although the Appeal Court ruled that Prince could use "fair use" re some of Cariou's images which he maniulated, another court reviewed again some a smaller number where it was determined that the changes made were insufficient for them to be deemed transformative and hence "fair use" did not apply
    • The current situation is that on August 27, 2013, a petition for a writ of certiorari was docketed by the U.S. Supreme Court in Cariou v. Prince.  That means Cariou is now trying to get the lingering issues determined re what is transformative and hence what is fair use when appropriating other people's images. It's not yet clear whether the Supreme Court will agree to hear the case.

    Marketing and selling art

    • Copyblogger had an article this week all about art marketing - see 99 Ways to Market Your Art by Leanne Regalla - who's ostensibly a writer at MakeCreativityPay.com and on a mission to teach creative people of all types how to pursue their art without going broke, living in their cars, and starving to death. Except for one thing - this is a blog which does NOT yet exist - but wants you to sign for when it does.  This is not marketing by role modelling as I know it!  Moral of the story - before believing everything you read try checking out the person who's doing the writing.  To be absolutely honest I find these articles with OTT imagery and hyped up words with "read me" sub-heads to be a switch-off very fast. I don't think I've ever got to the end of an article which starts "99 ways to...."
    • Clint Watson (Fine Art Views) by way of contrast has a more focused perspective - last week he wrote about The "6C's" of Art Sales
    • Robert Genn (The Painter's Keys) takes a professional perspective on Amazon Art in Changing Times and also has some interesting comments on the audience for online art at the FAA site.  It generated quite a few comments on the latter.

    Art Collectors & Art Economy

    Art Fairs in London

    It's Frieze time again - plus the satellites.  I'm afraid I always avoid it - and it closed yesterday - because when the newspaper articles start to become about what people wear to art fairs is when I think it's time to look elsewhere. However this is what the papers had to say.

    Art Exhibitions


    Major Art Exhibitions in London

    New exhibitions opening this week included:
    The experience of looking at a great many Klees at one go is like eating too many chocolates … it is often hard to stay alert, and to keep one’s curiosity aliveThe Guardian
    The tour by the curators - explained features of various works in the show
    (Left) "Wapping" | (right) Symphony in White #2 The Little White Girl
    If you're writing reviews of exhibitions in London do let me know - I'd rather list bloggers than newspapers!

    Art Society exhibitions

    Two major exhibitions opened last week in London and continue until 1pm on Sunday 27th October
    Paintings by David Curtis RSMA ROI
    As seen in the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Marine Artists at the Mall Galleries
    Miniature paintings of gardens by Carol Flanders RMS SLM HS
    As seen in the Annual Exhibition of the
    The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers 

    Art Competitions



    Art History




    Art Materials and Supplies

    • I updated my website about paper and non-canvas supports for artists - so it now has a major section on vellum and a slight change of name - Fine Art Paper & Vellum for Artists.   I think the memory of those very fine paintings on vellum by Rory McEwen won't leave me.  Vellum always seems to make colour sing out.
    • Cass Art is a major art shop in London. It has a blog - however the blog has problems. 
      • Problem #1 - Images are far too big and not properly optimised for the net and 
      • Problem #2 - It 's one of those website special blogs (like the RWS blog mentioned above) - which I absolutely hate because they have one universal characteristic i.e. No RSS feed that Feedly can find - or me for that matter! Hence impossible to follow through a feedreader.  
      • However there have been rather more blog posts this year - hence the mention. Here's a sample: "Top 5 products I wouldn't do without" from our product specialise Chris Bond What are the products you can't do without?

    Art Education


    • This is Artist Daily on the topic of oil painting. A quick trot through some instruction and highlights of art history.  (How can you do that in one article?)
    • Very sound advice by Courtney Jordan, the Editor of Artist Daily in another article - Don't Paint the Sky Blue!
    • Botanical artist Anna Mason (Facebook) produces big vibrant paintings of flowers. She has a new online workshop for watercolorists www.watercolourswithwow.com. She's already achieved 1,000+ members for the free part in the first month. 

    Art on Radio, Television and Film



    Framing art



    Techies

    Screendumps

    • I'm sure I'm not the first person for whom the screendump commands don't always work in Apple. (That's Cmd+Shift+3 for whole screen and Cmd+Shift+4 to select part of screen). They come back but sometimes they sulk first! Here is a really helpful - and old - handout on how to use the Grab function - which you can access as an Apple utility. The pdf File is called "Image and Screen Capture with Apple Grab" and was created by Holly Robertson Spring 2004 IT Lab, School of Information, University of Texas at Austin

    Websites and blogs

    Online products - digital distribution


    and finally......


    I know there is some really odd art speak out there - but these descriptions win the 'gold medal'! See How To Recognise Famous Painters According To The Internet

    7 comments:

    1. Judging by the fact that I just clicked 8 of the links herein, I'd say this was an informative post! Thanks for writing it, and always very interesting to read here!

      ReplyDelete
    2. Excellent post, especially with Whistler (love seeing the scale of some of those pieces in your photos) and David Curtis in the same post! Giant inspiration! And Monday's are good. I vote yes on your leanings. :)

      ReplyDelete
    3. Thank you for the link "How to recognise famous paintings"! It gave my grey day a good beginning:-)

      ReplyDelete
    4. Yes, "How to recognize famous paintings", very funny.
      It is true that there are certain characteristics common to most artists work.
      If done right it could be used as a teaching tool.

      Why? I remember years ago a story ( and I'm sorry, it's been so long I can't remember if it was TV news, an article in a magazine like Readers Digest or what )
      relating to some elementary school kids taking a field trip to a museum and being shuffled from one painting to another and told they were considered to be GREAT paintings without being told WHY they were considered great.
      This kind of 'common speak' could help. Some times critical reviews by historians are too convoluted for their own good!

      The Blogger problems really hit home for me.
      I have been having those same two issues for quite some time and was beginning to think I was all alone, I had asked others and no one else was experiencing it as well as searching online for help, to no avail until recently.
      So bad was the image quality problem I was having to post disclaimers in each post (on my blog) about how the image was so bad and I could not figure out why!

      I finally found the potential problem in Google product forums and it relates to Google+ and its Auto Enhance setting.
      You must actually disable the Auto Enhance feature in your Google+ account.
      I think it should NOT be turned on in the first place and you should select it ONLY if you want it.
      My experience with any auto enhance is it never works very good.

      The real problem is... I don't have a Google+ account! I have Google Blogger. What if I don't want Google +? Do I have to activate it just to fix the problem!?
      I should not have to, it should not effect images uploading to Blogger, especially if I don't have Google+!
      Very frustrating!!!
      I would be intetested to hear what others think.

      ReplyDelete
    5. I think Google automatically gives you a Google+ account if you have a google email. They just see it as one account with different bits

      ReplyDelete
    6. Katherine you might be right, although I don't have email with Google either.
      It sounds like you are saying any account with Google will do it.
      Still though, if true the auto enhance feature is "on" unless you turn it off seems dumb.
      I would argue that certain features should not be "on" if it causes problems. It should be up to me.
      Maybe Google will realize this and fix it no matter how big or small the problem.

      ReplyDelete
    7. David - if you have a Blogger blog then the chances are you also have a Google account.

      The default is certainly on - I had to go and turn mine off.

      They do it because they think they're being clever - we know they're not!

      ReplyDelete

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