Wildlife Artist of the Year 2013 - David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation

Simon Max Bannister, an Ecological Land Artist, is the winner of the Wildlife Artist of the Year 2013 awarded by the David Shepherd Wildlife Foundation.

The exhibition is currently occupying the Main Gallery of the Mall Galleries and continues until Saturday 8 June 2013 (10am to 5pm). 50% of all the proceeds of sales from this exhibition go to support the objectives of the Foundation.

I went to see it late yesterday afternoon.  Below you'll find links to the prizewinners and how you can see the exhibition online

Wildlife Artist of the Year 2013
A Journey from Londolozi by Simon Max Bannister

Prizewinners

Overall Winner and Go Wild Category Winner: A Journey from Londolozi (£3,785.00 / SOLD)
by Simon Max Bannister (Simon Max Bannister, Land Artist - see blog post A journey of giraffe)
Sculpture: wood | Size: 600cm x 450cm (236.2" x 177.2")

Simon Max Bannister has been consistently creating sculptural artworks for 3 years now. After working with his degree in Graphic Design he found the need to express his creativity with an alternative means. Be it earth, stone, leaf, water, light, shadow and even plastic, he grasps the energy and moulds it into a necessary and intriguing artistic dialogue...... He is currently based at Londolozi Game Reserve as artist in residenceSimon Max Bannister website

This also makes it a win for giraffes in two successive years! (See the 2012 winner Wildlife Artist of the Year - Karen Laurence-Rowe).

Overall runner-up and Endangered Category Winner and David Shepherd Choice winner
High Life (£2,200.00) by Stella Mays ( bio )Pastel | Size: 128cm x 95cm (50.4" x 37.4").

The Colours of Rory McEwen

This is a post about the colours of watercolour paint used by botanical artist Rory McEwen.

Today I was back at Kew Gardens and revisited Rory McEwen The Colours Of Reality (11 May to 22 September 2013) at the The Shirley Sherwood Gallery of Botanical Art. (See my earlier post A day in the life of botanical artist Rory McEwen)

Tulip 'Helen Josephine' 1975
Images courtesy of the Estate of Rory McEwen

One of the characteristics of his botanical paintings is the intensity of the colour and the nuances he achieves.  This partly comes from painting on vellum which is renowned for making colours look intense and fabulous.  Vellum is not porous and hence the paint sits on top of the sheet of vellum.

However the colours in his paintings are, of course, also partly due to the paint he used.

One of the cases in the exhibition is given over to his painting materials.

Knowing how much artists like to know about palettes I used my magnifying glasses to copy out the names of the paints he used.  So what follows is a list of paint colours!

It's difficult to know which brands of paint he used however evidence from the names and from the tubes in the display case suggest he used a combination of Winsor & Newton (much used by botanical artists) and Old Holland Classic Watercolours.

He created his palettes by placing tube paint on paper or a thin board and then using the tube paint as a resource for the paint colours he mixed.  Bear in mind the size of the brushes he used he was working dry brush with little very small brushes (W&N Series 7 sable - a lot of 00 and smaller)

It was very evident that some of the paints were fugitive as there's now no colour left.  However it's unclear whether these were used a lot or not.  Several people have expressed reservations about about the pigments and lightfastness of certain Old Holland colours (eg see Handprint's review of Old Holland).  I think it more likely that when using Old Holland, McEwen may have trying to use paints which would have been available to painters like Georg Ehret.  There again these were tubes which had not been used much so maybe he didn't use Old Holland much at all!

My personal view - based on the names on his palettes - is that he was actually using Winsor & Newton.  You can check this out for your self by comparing the names below with the two colour charts for the different paints:

• Winsor & Newton Artists' Professional Water Colour - Colour Chart
• Old Holland Classic Watercolours - Colour Chart

Anyway here are the lists of colours - I've separated them into colour groups.

One month left to enter £30,000 Threadneedle Prize 2013

Artists wanting to enter the Threadneedle Prize 2013 have just one month left to register an entry for this prestigious £30,000 prize for painting and sculpture.

The deadline to register an entry is 4th July 2013.

• This post unpicks and summarises the "call for entries"
• highlights the key dates in the processes for submission, selection and exhibition
• At the end you can find links to all the posts I wrote about the Threadneedle Prize last year
• You can find a complete archive of my past posts about the Threadneedle Prize - with lots of images - on Art Competitions in the UK (2013) - Resources for Artists

Ben Greener, Winner of the 2012 Threadneedle Prize with "My Feet"

About the Threadneedle Prize

The PURPOSE - my emphasis (in red) highlights the focus of the competition

The Threadneedle Prize is the leading competition for figurative and representational painting and sculpture for artists working in the UK and Continental Europe.

The Threadneedle Prize is one of the UK’s largest prizes for contemporary painting and sculpture

The competition is open to all artists working in the UK and Continental Europe who use figurative and representational art as a starting point for their work.

You may submit up to three works, completed since 1 January 2012, including paintings, sculptures, original prints, drawings and mixed media installations.

Works that have been selected for other prizes or competitions in the UK or continental Europe are not eligible to enter.

Past Winners

This is the sixth year of the competition. Click the links to see previous winners who are:

• 2008: Nina Murdoch, Untitled (71 works exhibited) 
• 2009: Sheila Wallis, Self Portrait (87 works selected for exhibition) 
• 2010: Patricia Cain, Building the Riverside Museum (46 works selected) 
• 2011: Henrietta Simson, Bad Government (After Lorenzetti) (52 works in exhibition)
• 2012: Ben Greener My Feet (153 works in the exhibition)

I have to say the Threadneedle has changed every year so far so looking backward is probably no guide to the selectors choices this year.  It would be nice to see a continuation of:

• the strong trend towards having women artists shortlisted (they've won 4 of the 5 competitions to date)
• a repeat of the number of works selected last year.  I think the vast majority of the people I knew who saw the exhibition commented on how much better the exhibition was in 2012 after a weird year in 2011.

The 2013 selectors 

The selectors this year comprise a painter, a sculptor, a critic and a Museum curator. They are:

• Tim Shaw - Sculptor shortlisted for the first Threadneedle Prize in 1908, he won the FBA Selectors Choice prize with a wax sculpture entitled Tank on Fire.
• Paul Benney - a painter who has exhibited in 8 BP Portrait Exhibitions
• Laura Gasgoigne - a freelance critic and writer who comments on the visual arts
• Barnaby Wright is the Daniel Katz Curator of 20th Century Art at The Courtauld Gallery, London

How it works

Threadneedle Prize 2012 - Key Features of the Call for Entries

1. This is an OPEN art competition (with some restrictions)
2. In 2012
• 4,062 works were submitted by 2,441 artists (an average of 1.66 artworks per artist
• Last year 145 artists had 153 artworks selected for exhibition (triple the figures of previous years!)
• which means 3.7% of artwork by 5.9% of the artists was selected for exhibition 
• (Last year I crunched the numbers after the work had been selected - see Threadneedle Prize 2012: Analysis of entries)
3. Every single entry selected for the final exhibition is sourced through a proper open competition process
• There are no invited artists
• There should be no entries promoted by the Selectors or the Gallery or the Sponsors
• The selection panel is changed every year
• Everybody has an equal chance - and the rest is up to the merit and judgement of the selectors - which is always highly personal.
4. Initial entry is digital.  Artwork only needs to be dispatched to London if it gets through the screening stage.  This has generated a big increase in entry from places outside London and the south east. No artist has to incur the costs associated with a trip to London or using a courier without being in with a reasonable chance of being selected.
5. There seem to be no major changes in the rules this year!

Below you can find out who can enter and progress through to what you can enter.

Am I eligible to enter artwork? 

2nd June 2013 - Who's made a mark this week?

As many of you will appreciate by now May has been an extremely odd month for me and that has been reflected in a big slowdown in my posting and reading online.

First of all I have had two GA operations on my eyes three weeks apart see Phacoemulsification of cataract with intraocular lens implantation #2. I've now got TWO new lens implants to correct both my cataracts and another more serious problem with my eyesight.  I sketched while waiting to go down to Theatre on the second occasion - see Day surgery sketching at Moorfields Eye Hospital.

The patient in the bed opposite - with the ubiquitous post surgery eye dressing
8" x 10" pen and ink and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I now not only know how to give myself eye drops, I can also do 19 drops a day for a week! (thankfully we're now back to a more normal regime!).  Which for somebody with a severe eye phobia is a really big deal!

Last Thursday I had my one week later check-up (of course I sketched again! See sketch in
Postoperative checkup at Moorfields Eye Clinic) following the second operation.  It looks like everything has been successful.

Guess who can now read easily all the way to the second to bottom line on the eye chart!  I now officially have better than normal distance vision!

Once I get new reading and computer glasses in 4 weeks time I'll have got the eyesight back that I used to have more than 25 years ago!  No more endless polishing of glasses to remove a non-existent film on the glasses!

However, the bottom line right now is I continue to need to limit the time spent on the computer for at least another four weeks.

This is mainly due to the fact my current prescription lenses no longer work. I'm using my old driving glasses from 1996 as the glasses which give the best result when sitting at a desk staring at a screen.  However I can't use them for very long.  Reading offline is OK so long as the text is no more than 6 inches from my eyes - which makes reading exhibition lenses very interesting - if you see me at the moment I'm the woman with my nose to the wall!

Art Blogs and Artists

Drawing and Sketching

• One of the really nice things about new eyes - even when it's just one - is that it makes it a lot easier to sketch.  We had trip out to Ide Hill and Emmetts Garden in the middle of May to see the bluebells on the hillside
• The view of the Weald from Emmetts Garden
• The green at Ide Hill
• It used to be possible to access JMW Turner's sketchbooks really easily on the Tate Britain website - then along came the digital project and now we have a great front-end and absolutely no links through to the actual sketchbooks! How silly is that? See Tate Britain - J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours
• Sketching tips for gouache paint is for those people who like sketching and painting with watercolour - and who'd like to have a go at gouache.  Take a peek at the results which Martin Stankewitz gets using gouache paint. This website has lots and lots of practical tips for beginners and lots of his paintings too

Botanical art

• I also came across a blog post by an artist who has tried developing botanical art using gouache - see Gouache Technique by Clare Ward (Drawn to Paint Nature)
• Mindy Lighthipe (The Art of Mindy Lighthipe) provides a YouTube video PhotoShop Tutorial on Getting White Backgrounds for botanical artists wanting to know how to clean up backgrounds in digital images of botanical art for the purposes of reproduction.  It's just short of 30 minutes in length.

Painting

• Women in the Act of Painting in flagrante depicto posts paintings of women painting - and that's it.  So where's yours?

Portraiture

• Alan Coulson has been getting some exposure this last month
• This New York article - Rajat Gupta’s Lust for Zeros - includes two portraits by Alan Coulson - who paints wonderful portraits and won 3rd prize in last year's BP Portrait Award
• Here's an interview with Alan on Creative Spotlight The BP Portrait Awards love him, we reckon you will too - Portrait Artist - Alan Coulson
• I really enjoyed Kate Stone's account - The Pee Ess of A - of the Portrait Society of America Conference - here's a taster

If you normally go to the PSoA conference, you know what it's like; but if you haven't ever been, well, sonny, LET ME TELL YOU. Hundreds of reclusive, socially inhibited art geeks crawl out of the woodwork, put on nice clothes that they probably had to borrow from a friend who doesn't get away with wearing sweatpants to work, and bask in the glorious sensation of being part of the crowd. 

Who painted this?

For those who've not seen them I won't give the game away.  Start at 26 and work your way through (and don't look at the comments!)

• Who painted this? #29 has a very vivid and painterly painting this week which a number of you are correctly identifying!
• Who painted this? #28 - what looks like a very contemporary still life
• Who painted this? #27 - big doggie!
• Who painted this? #26 - A very handsome chap who looks quite a lot like another handsome chap

Art Business & Marketing 

• I spent a large part of my career dealing with business issues and hence have a particular interest in the workings of the art business - and how artists relate to it.  Picasso the businessman - branding and the value of art provides a summary of some of the reasons why Picasso had a mastery of branding and the art business. It includes lessons which some artists have learned well - and others have yet to learn.
• "The Science and Art of Pricing and Costing Your Work" is an excellent and easy to read article in plain English - by Visual Artists Ireland. I've added it into my website "How to Price Your Art - Resources for Artists"
• I loved Sophie Ploeg's poster for her Open Studio last month

Sophie Ploeg's 
Original and Excellent Open Studio Poster

Art Economy & Collectors

• Lori McNee has written a very relevant article about The Relationship Between The Housing Market And Art Sales
• I came across an article by ArtInfo which poses and responds to the question - Does Investing in Art Make Sense? A Look at Both Sides of the Debate

Art Education

Drawing Workshops 

• Jeanette Barnes and Paul Brandford are offering Summer Drawing Workshops at venues across London during June, July and August.  Both are very experienced tutors (see their joint CV page). Jeanette as one of my tutors at the Prince's Drawing School and she's very good.
• Sarah Simblet - author of:
• Anatomy for the Artist and The Drawing Book - will again be teaching the unique Art & Anatomy course at the Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art at the University of Oxford on 4th- 10th August or alternatively 1st - 7th September
• Botany for the Artist: An Inspirational Guide to Drawing Plants - will be teaching a NEW course on botanical drawing July 8-12, 2013 - largely based in the Drawing Studio at 74 High Street, Oxford but also including visits. Click the link for more details.
• I've participated in two of Sarah's classes and also heard her lecture and she is an excellent educator

Copyright

• A couple of articles by The Art Newspaper on copyright relating to artwork
• UK museums must pay for images where copyright is unknown - not quite the outcome the museums and libraries were expecting when they lobbied hard for changes in copyright law to deal with orphan works.  A proposed amendment which passed stipulates that they must pay upfront.  I'm going to be writing about the change of law soon.  Just been waiting for the legal process to come to an end.
• with respect to how much does it take for a derivative work to be transformative - Judge says Sid Vicious street art breaks copyright

Colour

• The Creation of Color in Eighteenth-Century Europe by Sarah Lowengard is a fabulous site
• This is a website devoted to the pigments in watercolour paint

Art Exhibitions

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564) 

The Ideal Head 

Red chalk on off-white paper 205 x 165 mm

Part of the Master Drawings Exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (see below for details)

Major Museums and Galleries in the UK

• The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has a new exhibition about Master Drawings which is attracting universal acclaim. It's not every day I get to post a drawing by Michelangelo on this blog! Time to get out the train timetables......

Major Museums and Galleries in London

• Rory McEwen - The Colours of Reality has opened at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew Gardens.  I saw the exhibition just before the second operation and managed to publish one quick post but have to still to wrote the review as it's going to be LONG! How do top botanical artists spend their day? Check out A day in the life of botanical artist Rory McEwan (1932 - 1982).  Plus a great video of the exhibition
  I went to see the retrospective exhibition of his work at Kew Gardens today - and it's amazing! I can absolutely see why he has been so influential. More on the exhibition tomorrow.
• I also met Dr Shirley Sherwood and we talked about the linked exhibition Rory McEwen’s legacy - Artists influenced by him in the Shirley Sherwood Collection (13 April 2013 - January 2014)
• The Whitechapel Gallery has an exhibition of the botanical photographs of Karl Blossfeldt ( 16 April - 14 June 2013 ).  This is a chap who inspired Rory McEwan.

Art Society Exhibitions

Royal Society of Portrait Painters - Private View

• Viewing the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters in May in between surgery #1 and surgery #2 was an interesting experience - but I still managed to generate FOUR posts!  (Lots of photos!)

Winner of the £20,000 SELF Portrait Prize
Jan Mikulka with his self portrait (oil on canvas, 100x70cm, 2012)
and Alastair Adams, President of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters

• Jan Mikulka wins £20,000 SELF Portrait Prize - This is the brand new self-portrait prize
• Royal Society of Portrait Painters - 2013 Prizewinners These are prizes with some significant cash values - it includes The Ondaatje Prize for the most distinguished portrait of the year which is worth £10,000 plus a gold medal.
• Review: Royal Society of Portrait Painters - Annual Exhibition 2013 - the best of the rest!
• PLUS - Bulldog Bursary 2013: Shortlisted artists 

• The Hilliard Society of Miniaturists were very kind and sent me all I needed to review their current Annual Exhibition before my second operation - and here's my review - Hilliard Society of Miniaturists - 30th Annual Exhibition. The exhibition closed today but they have an excellent virtual exhibition online so you can enjoy it too - and purchase work!
• I love art societies which put artwork online for all to see. California Art Club - 102nd Annual Gold Medal Exhibition is my review from a distance of the virtual exhibition of the 102nd Gold Medal Art Exhibition of the California Art Club - due to open to the public on 2nd June. I've highlighted the work of a few artists which I liked the look of. There's nothing quite like starting with a thumbnail view when reviewing a lot of art........

Artists I know

• Portrait artist - Alan Coulson is having his first solo show of contemporary portraiture  - Alan Coulson - Paintings and Drawings - at George Contemporary Art & Design from 7th june - 15th July. (Address: 338 Hackney Road, London E2 7AX)  I may be at the PV on Thursday night.  Those living in London may well have seen Alan's portrait of fellow artist  Richie Culver on a poster advertising the BP Portrait Award in various locations around London last summer.

BP Portrait Award 3rd Prize: Richie Culver by Alan Coulson
Oil on wooden board 850 x 950 mm
Alan Coulson (left) with Richie Culver (right)

Upcoming exhibitions - UK

• The 245th Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts opens to the public on 10 June.  I'm going to be at the press preview next Wednesday so expect a review shortly afterwards
• Did you submit artwork to the RA Summer Exhibition? Was it rejected? You'll find good company at the "Not the Royal Academy" Summer Exhibition at the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery at the side of Waterloo Station. This Salon des Refusés of artwork rejected by the RAs selection panel runs opens 10 June and runs until 17th August 2013.

Art Galleries and Museums

• Penelope Curtis, the Director of Tate Britain contributes her thoughts on the new chronological hang of British Art 
• Out with the thematic at Tate, in with the chronological is an article in the Art Newspaper
•  You get the same article with much better images on the Tate Britain website
• This is Brian Sewell on:
• the rehang of British Art at Tate Britain - The BP Walk Through British Art, Tate Britain - exhibition review
• the purchase by the nation of John Constable's painting of Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows - Brian Sewell: We’ve seen it all before ... do we really need to spend millions to see it again?

Art History

• Last month I exchanged emails with Carl Randall - the 2012 winner of the BP Travel Award - which reminded me that he was using the award to do an updated version of one of the Hiroshige series.  Click this link to see the original Hiroshige  images from various editions of the "The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido Road". You can see the various different images he created for the different stations en route. I love this approach to archiving art images!

Art Societies

• The Royal Society of Portrait Painters has got itself a twitter account at last - http://twitter.com/RP_portraits

Art Studio

• Sadie Jernigan Valeri (Sadie J. Valeri) has a new blog post Studio FAQ: Lighting, Wall Color, and Casts  which is chock full of information how how to go about setting up a classical realist studio

Art Supplies

• 2013 POLL: Which is your favourite make of artist grade soft pastels? - Calling all pastel artists - I'd appreciate if you visit my BRAND NEW opinion poll and vote for your favourite make of soft pastel. Have you changed allegiance in the last year or do you favour the same brand as in previous years. Both perspective are important and I'd welcome votes from practising pastel artists using artist grade pastels. Or maybe check out the poll to see what I think are artist grade pastels?
• An earlier poll suggests that the top three brands of soft pastels are all made in Europe. They were: Unison (18%); Sennelier (13%); and Schminke (9%) - see Unison is still favourite artist grade soft pastel for more information.
• Heaton Cooper - based in Grasmere in the Lake District - have a new design for the studio and art shop website http://www.heatoncooper.co.uk/.  I always associate images by the Heaton Coopers with my childhood. While out walking, my father once came upon William Heaton Cooper painting the Lakes - so at home we had prints of his paintings. Subsequently, as an Examiner for my professional body, I used to pay an annual visit to Grasmere to spend 4 days marking a Management paper! One of my joys as a respite from marking used to a walk into the village to visit the studio and the art shop. Now I have to content myself with many visits to their website for their online art supplies - and periodically placing an order. I've always found them very reliable and very much recommend them. To me Heaton Cooper is a bit of traditional England brought up to date.
• One of my local art shops - Paintworks, in trendy Hoxton, now has a Facebook Page. If you ever visit don't miss the selection of paper in the basement.  The reason I keep going back is they have a car park so great for when you have a stack of stuff to get!
• David Gluck provides an account of how she makes Panels that will blow your face off.  They are seriously weird but seems like they do the job!

Opinion Polls

• 60% of people who responded to April's Making A Mark poll indicated that people - either as individuals or in groups - are the most difficult subject to paint.  Portraits are the most difficult subjects to paint comments and ruminates on this notion.
• What guides you when listing exhibitions you've participated in? The Making A Mark Poll for June 2013 - reviews different approaches to listing exhibitions on an artist's CV or website  - POLL: How do you list your exhibitions on a CV or website?

Techies

• Ever wondered how to handle the banner and profile images of your Facebook Page as an artist? This article by paper artist Col Mitchell shows you how to have impact - 22 Ways Fine Artists Can ROCK their FB Page Banners
• If you're keen on Twitter you might find this of value How to Get More Twitter Followers—and Keep Them

and finally....

You are invited to share your photos of public art on The Guardian website - Public art – share your pictures

Please share the best and worst public art – whether it's as famous as Mount Rushmore, or something only known about in your local area.

POLL: How do you list your exhibitions on a CV or website?

Part of the Exhibitions Page on my Portfolio website - Pastels and Pencils

This morning I discovered that I'd completely forgotten to update the Exhibitions page on my website since last year - and I hate out of date websites!

So I had to find a way of bringing it up to date and make it look interesting despite the fact I have no planned exhibitions at the moment because, prior to my recent surgery, I was finding it too difficult to produce.

I'm not very fond of long boring lists of exhibitions  and always try to introduce a few images - hence the above solution for part of my new Exhibitions web-page while I get round to contemplating what I might now be able to do in the rest of this year.

Revising the page got me thinking about the different options for listing exhibitions on your website and in your CV / Resume.

Which is why this month's Making a Mark Poll is all about exhibition listings!

It's a very basic topic - however there are a few options for how best to list exhibitions given that they tend to vary between:

• type: solo or group 
• type: art society or art gallery or charity or collaborative project  etc
• date: recent or first exhibited
• venue

POLL: How do you list your exhibitions on CV or website?

This month's Making A Mark Poll asks How do you list your exhibitions on CV or website?

The poll provides for multiple responses and the options are:

• always most recent exhibition first
• always oldest exhibition first 
• always include title of exhibition
• always include year of exhibition
• every solo exhibition - date order
• every solo exhibition - group by type / venue / date 
• all group exhibitions - date order
• all group exhibitions - group by type / venue / date
• all solo & major group exhibitions only 
• select list of both solo and group exhibitions

I'd also be interested to hear the reasons why people choose the options they use.  I know I have changed how I list mine over time - mostly with a view to making the differences between the different exhibitions more explicit and to reflect which have grown or diminished in their importance to me.

You can find the poll in the right hand column.  It finishes vert early on 30th June and the results will be reported soon after that.

Note re Making A Mark Poll in May

Last month's poll went awry.  The poll started losing votes for no apparent reason and my experience of Blogger polls is that they often don't correct quickly when the software gets out of whack.  So I pulled the poll and will try it again at a later date.

This month I'm using Polldaddy software which I normally only use for the Making A Mark Awards - however I'm using it in the side column - so we'll see what happens!

Links to Resources for Artists

If you need help thinking about how you communicate about yourself, your art and your exhibitions, you might like to take a look at my websites about creating and artist's statement and a resume or CV.

How to write an Artist's Statement - Resources for Artists

An Artist's Statement is essential - but lots of artists dread writing a statement about their art! DO YOU NEED HELP? Do you need a statement for an art competition, an exhibition catalogue, a grant proposal or a website - but not know how to express your art in words?

How to write an Artist's Resume or CV

How do you summarise your life as an artist in a CV or resume for galleries, exhibitions and potential employment? Do you understand the difference between an artist's CV, artist resume and a bio - and how to write them?