Call for Entries: ING Discerning Eye Drawing Bursary 2018

The Call for Entries for the ING Discerning Eye Drawing Bursary - worth £1,500 to the winner - closes in just over a month - on 17th September at 5pm.

Winner of the ING Discerning Eye Bursary 2017
Painted Cave 1, 2 and 3 by Max Naylor

The ING Discerning Eye Drawing Bursary 

Purpose

The purpose of the ING Discerning Eye Drawing Bursary is to offer the opportunity for artists to extend their practice through the offer of financial support.

Call for Entries

The call for entries is very low key.

Information about

• the fact there is a Bursary and 
• how to enter is extremely minimal 

to the point where i'm sure some would call it non-existent!

Plenty of information (bottom of the main ING Discerning Eye page) about last year's Drawing Bursary exhibition and prizewinners (and previous years too - but no button to press to find out about this year.

So basically you have to know a Drawing Bursary exists - which means students of art schools and drawing schools will - and that there is a Bursary Page

Then there's the confusion about what it is called.

So basically:

• a bursary was created in 2002 
• in 2005 it was decided that this should become a Drawing Bursary
• in 2007 it was named the David Gluck Memorial Bursary

which is doubtless why Parker Harris include it in their newsletter (the only way I know of finding out it's happening) as the ING Discerning Eye Drawing Bursary.

Anyway - bottom line:

• there is a Drawing Bursary
• the winner gets £1,500
• the other four shortlisted artists win £150 each
• your work gets exhibited in the North Gallery of the Mall Galleries during the course of the ING Discerning Eye Exhibition in November (see Call for Entries: ING Discerning Eye 2018)

This is the link to the Call for Entries for the ING Discerning Eye Drawing Bursary

How to Enter

Shortlisted 2017
The Stills by Susannah Douglas

In order to enter you need to:

• be an artist born or resident in the UK
• read the terms and conditions Click here to enter
• complete the online Application Form
• PLUS submit a short CV with their application (maximum 1 A4 page in Word or PDF format)
• PLUS provide a statement / written explanation (max. 100 words) to answer the question: “Why do you want the bursary?” i.e. how the bursary will benefit their current drawing practice
• upload three digital images 
• The artworks must not exceed 30cms square or 12″ sq in size. 
• This must be the actual size of the support, be it paper or otherwise. 
• Framing will be on top of this size.
• pay an entry fee of £5

I suggest you read about Past Winners (see below) before you start an entry

2014: 

Key dates

Three book reviews about Botanical Art and Illustration

On Monday, three new art instruction books arrived and I've been spending this week reading different perspectives on guidance and instruction for those interested in botanical art, painting and illustration - and then writing three book reviews.

The books are:

• Botanical Illustration - The Complete Guide by Leigh Ann Gale 
• Botanical Art with Scientific Illustration by Sarah Jane Humphrey 
• Botanical Painting by Margaret Stevens (with the SBA)

BELOW you can find the links to the three book reviews and a short summary of each.

Links are embedded in the title of the books reviews.  If you want to know more, read the full review on Botanical Art and Artist News

RA Summer Exhibition - a curious exercise in pricing and sales

One of the consequences of having the whole of Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts online - is that you can review which artists got their pricing right - and which got it wrong.

That's a sweeping assertion so let me explain.

But if you want to know what art has sold at the Summer Exhibition you can skip the explanation and go straight to my overview of what sort and size of artwork sold for what range of prices.

I KNOW some artists are going to be very surprised - mostly those who have been over-pricing their work.

I'm hoping my conclusions provide food for thought for those submitting work to next year's Summer Exhibition.

Explore the artworks of the Summer Exhibition by Gallery

The RA Summer Exhibition is the biggest open art exhibition in the world. It attracts an awful lot of visitors, many of whom come to buy - if only to say they bought something from the Summer Exhibition.

That said, if you've got an awful lot of people viewing your work - and you've got it priced right - there's a reasonable expectation that you will sell it.

Moreover, those Royal Academicians have knocked around a bit. They've developed their fans and they ought, by now, to know what their work is worth. One would think.

So does that mean that they are any better or worse than the 'ordinary artist' who submits via the open at getting their pricing right?  It appears that some do and some don't...

The aim is after all to sell the work - since the proceeds of the sales go to support the activities of the Royal Academy Schools. Surely no-one would be so mean as to overprice their work so it doesn't sell?

What has sold - in terms of type, size and price range?

The exhibition closes on 19th August - so it's reasonable to assume that the bulk of the buying has already taken place.

You can review - as I have done - the artwork in the exhibition - and see whether or not it sold. You have a couple of options:

• view the exhibition in person towards the end of its run - and look for the red dots
• view the exhibition online - and look to see whether it has sold

Pastel Society - Call for Entries for 120th Annual Exhibition (2019)

If you work in pastels, oil pastels, charcoal, pencil, conte, sanguine, or any other dry media you can submit your artwork to the 120th Annual Exhibition of The Pastel Society.

It's an open exhibition at the Mall Galleries and last year around a third of the art hung was selected from the Open Entry.

The Pastel Society seeks the best in contemporary dry media, combining traditional skills with creative originality

This is a summary of the Call for Entries - complemented by images from the 2018 exhibition and comments on this open exhibition. For full terms and conditions, click here.

The 120th Annual Exhibition will open on Tuesday 5 February and continue every day - from  10am to 5pm - until it closes at 3pm on Saturday 16 February 2019.

A corner of the Annual Pastel Society Exhibition in 2018

Prizes

This is an art society which has managed to attract a lot of sponsorship for prizes for work in the competition.

Prizes are mainly product prizes but also include some cash prizes - and the cash prizes are particularly attractive to younger artists

The Great Grayson Perry Lost Works Treasure Hunt

Have you got one of Grayson Perry's early pots? Will Grayson Perry become the ceramic equivalent of Clarice Cliff?

Whenever I switch on the television and there's an antiques type programme on, somebody seems to have just found a bit of Clarice Cliff in the attic or had it sat on a shelf forever.

Apparently the same might be said for early works by Grayson Perry - who was none too meticulous about making a note about the creation of his earlier works or where they went.

Crowdsourcing a Grayson Perry exhibition

Biker Pot, 1992, Grayson Perry (c) Grayson Perry,
Courtesy the artist and Victoria Miro, London & Venice

The Holbourne Museum in Bath has an exhibition planned for 2020 that is intended to focus on the early ceramic works of Grayson Perry from the eighties and early nineties .

Grayson Perry, 2016 (c) Richard Ansett

However there's a bit of a problem - as Grayson Perry explains