Monday, February 06, 2012

RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition 2012 - Selected artists & artwork

149 paintings in waterbased media by 118 artists have been selected for the RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition 2012.  This is an annual competition open to non-Members of the Royal Watercolour Society.

The associated exhibition of successful entries will be held at the Bankside Gallery between 24th February - 14th March 2012.
(The competition) aims to encourage innovation and experimentation in watercolour painting, spanning work on paper in watercolour, acrylic, gouache, pen & ink and watercolour mixed media.
The 2012 competition attracted 864 entries - which makes the percentage selected just over 17%.  However this is a genuine open competition - there are no members paintings or invited artists so far as I can make out.  The RWS members' paintings can be seen in the Spring and Autumn exhibitions and the Mini Picture Show just before Christmas.

NEW!  The RWS website has for the first time made available a pdf document which sets out the image, artist's name and the title of the work - see RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition 2012 - Accepted Works.

Below I've reproduced the names of the artists and their selected artwork.  I've included links to their websites so that those interested in submitting work in the future can research the calibre of the artist and artwork which gets accepted to this prestigious art competition.  As you will see if you click the links, those selected represent the complete gamut of artists

Please note
  • the link in an artist's name is to his or her website
  • links to a commercial gallery page or the website of an art society are noted separately
AND I've also included links to:
  • the selected work on their website (if identifiable)
  • their blog (if one exists).  A link to the name of the blog appears after the artist's name and before the title of the accepted work.  (This means I get to find out about interesting new art blogs!)
If I've got it wrong - or there's a better website to link to please don't hesitate to let me know (contact details in the side column.

Below is an alphabetical list of the artists and the title of their selected artwork(s) - but first here's a video of one of them, Jonathan Pitts painting plein air.  Jonathan won the 2nd Prize in last year's Sunday Times Watercolour Competition (see John Hunt wins Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2011 and REVIEW: Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition 2011)


READ MORE......>>
Posted by Making A Mark on Monday, February 06, 2012 4 comments
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Phew!

snapped in the National Gallery Bookshop
Color and Light was found inbetween
Masterpieces in Detail and How to paint like Turner
What is it about the end of one year and the start of the next which makes what used to be a fairly routine exercise into a marathon?

Answer - It's not about the end of the year (although changing categories and setting up brand new files did complicate matters).

It's actually about the fact that the structure of the Art Book market and retailing patterns are changing enormously right now - and the data patterns keep changing too in an effort to keep up!

Anyway, my monthly book reviews of the charts have been done (not easy!) and I now have:
As a result of this, Who's made a mark this week? got bumped and will appear later today.
Posted by Making A Mark on Monday, February 06, 2012 0 comments
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Saturday, February 04, 2012

The Best and Newest Art Books in January 2012 - and Urban Sketchers

Starting a New Year seems like a good time to make some changes to my monthly posts about Makingamark's Top Ten Art Books and The Best New Art Books for the previous month.

I'm going to continue to post a link to both the updated websites on this blog - generally in the "who's made a mark this week?" post.  However the detailed review will in future take place on Making A Mark Reviews (tomorrow) - and I'll also include a link to that post here on Making A Mark.

The Art Book that's making a BIG Impression

The Best New Art Book in January 2012 is The Art of Urban Sketching: Drawing On Location Around The World which at the end of January had secured the #10 in the top 100 books in the Arts and Design Category on Amazon (which now includes music) - BEFORE it had even been published.

It's now up to #8 and is also
Congratulations are due to Gabi Campanario (The Sketch Journalist) who authored the book and the 100 Urban Sketchers (Urban Sketchers) who participated in its production.

The last time I saw anything like this was when James Gurney's Color and Light: A Guide for the Realist Painter was published at the end of 2010 - and it then topped the charts for the whole of 2011 and still remains a firm favourite.

The one sad note is I still haven't seen The Art of Urban Sketching.  It published on Wednesday 1st February but I got a note to say delivery of mine is delayed.  I guess that's what happens when you've got a popular book which lots of people want. :(

A new Making A Mark project

The other reason for making changes as to where the review of the best and newest art books is located is because I've got a new Making A Mark project brewing - and it relates to art books.

The Amazon charts are beginning to become swamped by author driven books - however the problem is they are of extremely variable quality.

I'm going to be looking at how artists are driving the publication of books they have authored - in the many and various different ways it is now possible to publish a book.

The aim is to look at the pros and cons of different approaches and to try and identify some lessons learned for those who'd like to try and do the same thing.

If you've ever produced a book and would like to be part of the project survey please email me and let me know.  Who knows you may feature as one of the interviews I'll be doing with James Gurney et al...... :)
Posted by Making A Mark on Saturday, February 04, 2012 0 comments
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Friday, February 03, 2012

The Watercolours + Works on Paper Fair 2012

I visited the Watercolours + Works on Paper Fair 2012 at the Science Museum in South Kensington on Thursday.  It's an excellent Art Fair and well worth a visit if you like watercolours, pastels, drawings and fine art prints.  You'll see an extensive range of work by artists both past and present.

Sarah Wimperis on the Beside the Wave Stand
I was there via an invite from Sarah Wimperis (The Red Shoes) who is representing the Beside the Wave Gallery.   She had some of her work on show which looked excellent.  Interestingly I think her Gallery was the only one to be sporting the new QR code.  People who buy the works can take them away straight away and I learned this means that she is also rehanging the stand every morning!

I also met David Paskett, President of the Royal Watercolour Society and we had a nice chat about his recent experience of taking the Entry to the Open Exhibition online.  I learned that the artists are now selected and I'll be aiming to post who they are in the near future.

The Fair has an extensive range of galleries offering a complete range of works on paper from the very traditional to the very contemporary.  I noticed that there are a lot of well known English landscape artists and I was picking out names such as Edward Bawden,  Alfred Heaton Cooper - who work I love (He's the "NC Wyeth" in the Heaton Cooper dynasty), William Russell Flint, John Piper, Edward Seago, Edward Wesson

Sim Fine Art had a couple of art history based stands - one was devoted to watercolours and drawings by the Women War Artists (below) - such as Evelyn Dunbar and Rosemary Rutherford (see The Rediscovered Wartime Folios of Rosemary Rutherford)
READ MORE......>>
Posted by Making A Mark on Friday, February 03, 2012 0 comments
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Wednesday, February 01, 2012

POLL: How do you respond to comments on your blog?

I'm sure I'm not the first person to wonder what is the best or most effective way of responding to the comments I receive on my blogs.

Which is why the Making A Mark Poll for February 2012 focuses on How do you respond to comments on your blog?

I've seen the topic discussed a number of times in the last six years on various blogs - mainly in response to the problem of the antagonistic commenter.  I endeavoured to head off this particular problem right back at the beginning of this blog with the introduction of my Comments Policy in 2006.

This was then followed by Notes on blogging etiquette for artists in 2008.

Both can be found in my "For Your Information"  section in the column.  They both guide the tenor of my response to the jolly nice people who read this blog - and the queer fish who sometimes pop up out of the blue!  For example, if they offend against the rules of my comments policy then they don't get published - period.

However I have a confession to make!

My actual response to comments which are left and published  is generally very much determined by how much spare time I have and what time of day I'm reading and moderating the comments.  I'm much more well disposed to the ones left overnight which I read while eating my breakfast when compared to those which arrive when I'm very busy.  It's not that I like the latter any less - it's much more to do with how many minutes there are in a day!

So this is my Poll.  It's multi-option - so tick all those that apply to you. I know I use a variety of responses.

How do you respond to comments on your blog?
  • I respond to every comment
  • One response to all comments
  • One response to similar comments
  • I respond if I have the time
  • Respond on commenter's blog
  • No response unless good point 
  • No response unless question asked
  • Provide answers to questions via email
  • I don't usually respond 
  • I never respond to comments

Do please feel free to comment on:
  • your preference for leaving comments
  • your preference for how other people should leave comments
  • what's the best way of keeping track of what people say and/or how they respond
  • where you've seen a good discussion of this topic.
Where is the poll? You'll find the poll in the right hand column in the usual place - just below the Blogger Followers widget.

Deadline for responses: The poll closes early on 29th February and the analysis of results will be posted later the same day. 

You can read the Poll results for January's blog here - What makes you leave an artist's website? POLL RESULTS
Posted by Making A Mark on Wednesday, February 01, 2012 13 comments
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