Who's made a mark on art #263

The major news this week for me is that I've been invited by Sally Bulgin, Editor of The Artist, to become one of their regular correspondents for the magazine and write articles from time to time. The invitation to discuss the possibility came out of the blue and was a very pleasant surprise. Last week I met with Sally and we're now discussing possible topics.

This is your chance to make suggestions about things you'd like to see me writing about!

For those who don't live in the UK, 'The Artist' is the longest established art magazine in the UK - and one of the most popular, it's stocked by all the major newsagents.  It's been around for a very long time and is both practical in content and informative about what's going on the art world. (Not to be confused with 'The Artist's Magazine' in the USA - but they are similar!)

The new website and another new website!

Botanical Art and Artists

The first of my new websites for my information sites continues to progress. My aim is to have it launched in time for the RHS Botanical Art Show at the end of this week.  The domain address, when it's published will be http://www.botanicalartandartists.com.

Art Business - for Artists

I've also started a second one!  This one will include content from my 'resources for artists' art business information sites. These have been well and truly clobbered by HubPages due to their "no more than two links to one domain" rule.

It's tentative title is 'Art Business - for Artists'. This one is probably going to launch incomplete and I'll add in one new topic a week.  That's because there's an awful lot to add and I do want to edit, restructure and reorganise as I add content in.  So please excuse me if I have give regular updates as new topics are added week by week.

I'm organising topics under the headings which run across the top of the screen: art business, communication, copyright, sell art and money & tax.  Here's a provisional screenshot of the home page for 'How to write an Artist Statement'.

Art Basics

Drawing 

• Have you come across the Da Vinci Initiative? If not you should definitely take a look - especially if you are an art teacher. More about this in a post coming up.

The Da Vinci Initiative, part of a 501C3, nonprofit, educational foundation, is a mission for visual literacy in our contemporary world. With a focus on K-12 public and private schools, the goal of this project is to provide skill-based learning in art education in order to deepen the understanding and applications of the visual language that surrounds us.

• If you've ever fancied an intensive course in life drawing at a first rate school of art take a look at the two 4 day courses which the Ruskin School of Art are offering this Easter.  The Ruskin Art School is part of Oxford University.
• Jeanette Barnes won one of the runner-up prizes at  Lynn Painter-Stainers this week with a large drawing in conte crayon. It's always really nice to see one of your old tutors win a prize in a prestigious art competition! I used to take Jeanette Barnes's 'Drawing the Bigger Inner Space' class at what is (now) the Royal Drawing School. She's a great tutor - super enthusiastic about drawing and what people can achieve. I really love her drawings and she also contributed a number of them to my book! I very much recommend you take a look if you want to explore how to develop your drawing - or just like looking at exciting drawings!
• You can see more of Jeanette's drawings on her website 
• find out about her urban challenge workshops and classes for school students and adults on her website http://weexploredrawing.com.

Jeanette Barnes and her prize-winning drawing

Canary Wharf Cross Rail Station nearing completion © Jeanette Barnes

Conte Crayon, 100cm x 130cm, £3,500

Painting

• Deborah Paris's blog Field Notes - the blog of The Landscape Atelier has lots of excellent posts which provide a taster for the tuition in her classes. Chroma Trumps Value provides a very nice illustration of an important point.  I much prefer this approach to tempting students to enroll for online classes to those who say they have something available for you to view and you get a link to a subscription page and that's it. I, for one, am much more likely to sign up to learn about something with an artist who shares her expertise for free as well as delivering classes for a subscription.
• The Pleasure of Sharing provides eight great tips for botanical artists, especially those who use watercolour, being passed on by Jarnie Godwin - and nice to see credits being given to the sources! 
• If you've got a round-up of "best tips" you'd like to share do please drop a line.

Art Business & Marketing 

Copyright & Plagiarism

• Georgina Adam has written in The Financial Times about The Art Market: The imitation game and comments on the increase in lawsuits relating to appropriation and plagiarism. 

Art Exhibitions

National Galleries

• The "troubles at the National" continue to rumble on as National Gallery staff to stage fresh strikes over privatisation. This was my blog post last month about the background behind the strikes - Cost-cutting and Petitions at London Art Galleries

Members of the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union at the National Gallery in London will walk out on Sunday for five days, following a five-day stoppage earlier this month.

• Meanwhile Jonathan Jones writes in The Guardian about Fewer Brits are visiting our top galleries – should we be worried?  I think the headline might have been more balanced if it had got the numbers correct and reflected on the fact that attendance at the major galleries has been on a rising trend for some time and that the big galleries in London are magnet for tourists ( see my website The Top Ten Museums in London ).  The problem if anything is that its' well nigh impossible to have a "calm encounter with art - because of all the visitors!!

Art Competitions

The wall of Lynn Painter-Stainers 2015 Prizewinners at the Mall Galleries

• My blog posts about the Lynn Painter-Stainers prize 2015 this week:
• Lynn Painter-Stainers 2015 - Prizewinners -  Wladyslaw Mirecki won the 2015 Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize worth £15,000 and an engraved gold medal. Check out also the artwork produced by the artists who picked up cheques to the value of £30,000 re. the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2015. 
• Exhibition Review: Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2015 - More about the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 20145 Exhibition - this time it's my review of the overall exhibition - with lots of pics.
• In general, people I have spoken to have been disappointed that this competition is now only hung for 6 days. Here's hoping that this will change in the future.

This is a prize which gets a lot of people at the Private View!

Not so many sales though - I always think of this exhibition as a very definite bonus for the CV and marketing!

Art Societies

• The Wapping Group of Artists - Annual Exhibition 2015 I also visited the annual exhibition by the Wapping Group of Artists this week. They paint plein air along the River Thames every week in summer and this is my review.

Other Exhibitions

• There's an exhibition of Mackintosh drawings at the HQ of the Royal Institute of British Architects. It continues to 23 May. (Note: Glasgow School of Art: what architect could restore Mackintosh’s masterpiece? This is an excellent article about the challenge of restoring the Glasgow School of Art designed by Mackintosh. I'm definitely with the 'restore as much as possible' brigade)
• Ohla Prymakk's Exhibition - Ukraine Diaries - is at Krilova Stelfox Gallery (at 5th Base) 23 Heneage Street (off Brick lane) London, E1 5LJ. 

Upcoming Exhibitions and events

• View the e-catalogue for the Annual Exhibition 2015 of The Pastel Society. The exhibition opens at the Mall Galleries with a Private View tomorrow and then opens to the public on Tuesday and continues until 7 March. For more information see The Pastel Society website and the events page on the Mall Galleries which lists the featured art work and the related events
• The Pastel Society Art Event evening on the 5th March coincides with my book-signing (with James Hobbs) at the Mall Galleries (3-7pm)
• The Mall galleries will also be playing host to the exhibition for the British Life Photography Awards (2-7 March)  - which is a new one on me - but I shall take a peek and report back.
• The RHS Botanical Art Show opens on Friday 27th February and finishes Saturday 28th February. I shall be there on the Friday only - interviewing artists who have won Gold Medals.  This year the show is on its own and has more room - and more selected artists than ever before! See RHS Botanical Art Show 2015 - Selected Artists. The show is held in the RHS Lindley Halls, London SW1P 2QW, between 10am–5pm both days
• The Annual Open Exhibition for the RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition opens at the Bankside Gallery on 6th March and continues until 18th March. It's worth making a note that this is an art competition where the exhibitors' art gets a decent length of time on the walls of the gallery!

Art on Television 

The Big Painting Challenge

The Big Painting Challenge starts 22nd February on BBC1 - Check out the many and various aspects to the Big Painting Challenge which starts tomorrow night on BBC1 at 6pm. Daphne Todd - Past President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters - is one of the Judges.

I've added in links to the clips from the programmes to the original post. These include a number of "how to" items as well as short clips from the first episode - including one in which Daphne Todd makes a remark about whether an artist will finish which echoes Mary Berry and Bake-off! Love it!!

BBC gets creative

It appears The Big Painting Challenge is all part of a new season (emphasis) on people getting creative which is being promoted by the BBC alongside other partners well known in the field of creativity. This is the link to the BBC Get Creative Site

Art Materials and Equipment

• Page 76 of my book has a text box describing how to create a shadow (or light) box. Due to pressure on space I ended up removing the diagrams for how to make one - however there's any number of videos around on YouTube about how to create a lightbox - all of which have slightly different methodologies. This particular one by the Da Vinci Initiative - aimed at art teachers - is worth highlighting because the method is very simple and clear - and cheap way of creating a lightbox (also known as a shadow box). PLUS it makes it a lot easier to store that an equivalent sized cardboard box which is the standard solution used by many people AND being in two parts, it makes it much easier to clip different coloured papers to the interior if you want to change the interior colour of the box. My only criticism is that in western art it's conventional for light to come from top left - and she clipped her small light to the wrong side!

• I LOVE people who write reviews because a product should be avoided. They are at least as important as those who do rave reviews! Teoh Yi Chie of Parka Blogs has written about a new stylus which he's not found helpful - see Review: Wacom Intuos Creative Stylus 2
• Here's an excellent tip - highlighted to me by Sharon Tingey - of how to make radial colour charts

Websites and Techie Stuff

Have you made the move to a responsive website yet?

• I've not been doing Who's made a mark on a regular basis for quite a while. What I am noticing is that a number of artists I've been following for years have upgraded their websites and blogs so they are mobile compatible. This particularly applies to those with, shall we say, a more professional approach and/or interactive sites. It's difficult to find a bunch of information about responsive websites and why artists need them and I'll be aiming to do that in building the new art business website. In the meantime here's an article 3 Reasons Artist Websites Must Use Responsive Design by Pierre Kuhn which sums up the situation pretty well 

Facebook comments

• In 2013 facebook introduced new functionality within comments such that people could reply to a specific comment - see Improving Conversations on Facebook with Replies. This week I noticed that when you are commenting Facebook now apparently deems that your comment is now NOT worth counting if your have REPLIED to a comment (ie hit the arrow) as opposed to just writing a new comment. So conversations about a point in relation to a post are now submerged - unless you happen to click the comments and note that some comments are now noted as having e.g. 7 replies!  Can I recommend that people do their friends a favour and start a new comment every time!

Hacked websites

• Google published a useful page Case Studies: Fixing Hacked Sites detailing some case studies about what's involved in addressing a website which has been hacked. My attitude is action should start with prevention! I prefer to be with a site which can help me if I'm hacked rather than being all on my own. I wouldn't have a clue where to start - and this article persuaded me of the benefits of being with a decent host.

Sketching 365 in the WH Smith's branch

at Westfield at Stratford City

and finally......

I'm ecstatic - my book has gone mainstream!  I found a copy on Friday in WH Smith's which is the largest high street newsagents and stationers in the UK. They also stock books - and they're now stocking mine.

My other half had to calm me down - I let out a small shrieky noise when we found it!