MAKING A MARK

Sunday, October 24, 2010

24th October 2010 - Who's made a mark this week?


Artwork in the 65th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Marine Artists at the Mall Galleries

One of the most enjoyable aspects of being an art blogger is when you t to meet up with the people who've got to know because of blogging.

So it was this week when I met up with Sarah Wimperis (The Red Shoes) and her husband Dave at the Mall Galleries (which is incidentally a great piece to meet up given that you can sit in amongst the pictures having a cup of tea and a bite to eat). We spent some time pointing at pictures at saying which ones we liked from afar for doing a complete tour together - with added insight into the world of marine art from "Big Dave" - the long-time boater and man-about-Cornwall with a boat - who found he had a much closer relationship with this exhibition than he had realised. See the links below for more on marine art

Sarah and I commented on how frames seem to vary between different places. I might do a blog post on this at some point but for now the typology we came up with is:

Cornwall - white frames (ivory or ice white)
Cotswolds - gilt frames
London - neutral frames (any colour of neutral so long as it's recessive)
USA - solid wide black

Do please comment if you think we've got it right or wrong and/or can extend this typology.

Art Blogs

Drawing and sketching
New York Times - Line by Line: This is the new blog about drawing By James McMullan. Here are links to the first few posts.

Think you knew all about LS Lowry? Think again and read this Channel 4 news item about Lowry's theatrical sketches

Landscape

The Ledges, October In Old Lyme, Connecticut, 1907 by Frederick Childe Hassam (1859-1935);
Oil on canvas; 18 x 18 inches

There is one season when the American forest surpasses all the world in gorgeousness—that is the autumnal… every hue is there...from the most golden yellow to the intensest crimson….
Thomas Cole - Essay on American Scenery (1835)

I've been out and about on blogs looking for evidence of people painting the Autumn/Fall. Here's some of what I found:

Jan Blencowe's Persephone's Farewell, Tonalist Landscape on her blog Jan Blencowe The Poetic Landscape
Nigel Fletcher's (The Cotswold Sketchbook) painting of Autumn along Temple Mill Lane
Ronell van Wyk's (African Tapestry) demonstrates you don't have to go for everything! She's been focusing on her plants and leaves ; here's one of her posts - Autumn sketches II..leaves
Susan Abbott (A Painter's Year) has a colourful watercolour painting of Pond Autumn morning plus Pond, Late Afternoon, Orchard in October and Pond and Maple
For Linda Blondheim (Linda Blondheim Art Journal) Fall means being able to go back to being a plein air painter as the temperature hs cooled see It's plein air season again
Plus Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) posted Paintbox Leaves back at the beginning of the month in relation to past painters painting Autumn.

Friday, October 22, 2010

REVIEW: Royal Society of Marine Artists - 65th Annual Exhibition 2010

Paintings in the 65th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Marine Artists
(left Paul Banning RI, RSMA, AROI; Top centre James Bartholomew RSMA)

Last week I visited the 2010 Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Marine Artists but it was great fun to visit the Mall Galleries and review it again yesterday with artist Sarah Wimperis and her husband "Big Dave" given that both are committed 'boaters'.

I must confess I saw the exhibition with completely fresh eyes when Dave pointed out to me that:

he'd been in the safety boat following one of the boats in a very nice painting of a yacht race
his own boat in Cornwall was actually in two of the paintings!

Dave's boat

he knew a number of the buildings and boats in paintings of Porthleven (which is hardly surprising given he used to be the Mayor!)
and there were some incongruities in other paintings which he explained to me - of which more later

This year's exhibition will once more feature the work of some of best marine artists working today. Both members and non-members will have been out on the water, under it, alongside it and scouring coastlines for new subjects that result in an exhibition of quality and variety, whilst all the time relating to the sea and tidal waters.
Mall Galleries

There are some 312 drawings and paintings in the show in all media.

Paintings on the north wall of the West Gallery

Awards and Prizes

First the prizes and who won them. Thanks to Amelia at the Mall Galleries for providing a list - I knew I'd missed some of them as I went round and I don't like to leave anybody out!

Clearing Mist - Woodbridge by Peter Wileman PROI FRSA
Winner of The Charles Pears Memorial Award for the most promising work by a non member
copyright the artist

[Note: I'm very puzzled. It's very often the case when I'm listing award winners that most have their own website. Not so apparently with the marine artists. Only a minority of those listed below have their own website. Most are third party sites. Maybe marine art is very focused towards certain galleries which don't like artists to have their own websites?]

Charles Pears Memorial - Peter James Wileman PROI, FRSA (291 - Clearing Mist - Woodbridge)
Classic Boat - Roger Davies (108 - Moonbeam takes on the big class )
Russell & Chappell Award - Michel Brosseau (49 - New sail)
St. Cuthberts Mill - Neil Faulkner (127 Freshly Laundered)
Conway Maritime - Geoff Hunt (162 Jack Aubrey's Minorca: Port Mahon 1800)
Young Marine Artists - Michael Sole (312 Mer et Ciel)
YMA highly commended - Anthony Banks (308 )
Ranelagh Press Award - Geoff Hunt PPRSMA (160 - HMS Sutherland's last battle)
Derek Gardner "deep seas" award - David Hardstaff (13 - The Icelandic Two Step)
The Arts Club Award - Chris Daynes (109 - Two Smacks, Essex Coast)
Winsor & Newton Oil Prize - Keith Noble RSMA (225 - ) who is also on Twitter http://twitter.com/Keithnobleart


Gondolas on the Grande Canal (oil) by Keith Noble Winner of the Winsor & Newton Prize for the best oil painting in the show copyright the artist

Artists whose work Sarah and I both very much liked included:

James Bartholomew RSMA - who had produced large works with a watercolour underpainting and pastel on top. I'd have happily contemplated hanging any of them on a wall. I particularly liked Treen Cove II. His other paintings were Treen Cove I and Off the point, Skye. Here's a sample of what his work looks like up close.
Keith Noble RSMA whose works in both oil and watercolour attracted the eye and was persuasive in terms of the atmospheric effects
Michel Brosseau - a Fench marine painter - of which more below

RSMA 2010: Paintings on the west wall of the West Gallery - including paintings by David Curtis on the right

As always it was delight to see paintings by artists like David Curtis RSMA, ROI

Now for the comments of a boater married to an artist! Dave's comments were as follows:

an exhibition like this would be really loved down in Cornwall (or anywhere which has a strong marine heritage)
he particularly enjoyed the paintings by people who understood and had properly observed the atmospherics of marine landscapes. The weather was real - and not always sunny.
he also liked proper boats and boatyards depicted properly. They do not have to be in anyway photographic - just the right shape. He could spot some boats which were the wrong shape from the other side of the room.
he recognised all sorts of places which weren't in the least obvious to me. People who know their harbours and coastlines will always spot the painting which is true to the place. The corollary of this is that somebody who loves marine life will always spot the inaccuracies in a marine painting. (Note: The same could be said for all specialist genre - such as wildlife art and botanical art)
When looking at paintings, he could also tell who knew the sea from experience and observation and those who did not. His favourite paintings had both atmosphere and movement - but both had to be credible.
He could always tell the difference between people who had painted from a photograph or 'created' paintings from various photographs and those who really knew the sea and had just used a photograph as one reference.
In relation to the latter, he showed me ways in which a painting was "not true" - including one rather prominent painting which had two sets of boats boats sailing in opposite directions - as if the wind were blowing in two different ways in the same place. The painting looked most attractive on first viewing - but once you saw it through Dave's eyes it lost impact.

I also very nuch liked

Charles Hemming House Boat Afternoon top down painting of life on board four houseboats (although I must confess I did wonder about the tidal aspect of this one)
the work of Paul Banning RI RSMA AROI - whose boatyard interiors are invariably fascinating. Thanks to Sarah for pointing out how he does his highlights in watercolour!

All Furled Up - Oil painting by Michel Brosseau

The painter and paintings that we all found impressive - because of the nature of his paintings and his faithfulness to the world of the marine - was Michel Brosseau and his paintings of sails. These were paintings of canvas on canvas and framing which used marine ply.

Michel graduated in painting from Wimbledown in 2008. He appears to be having few problems selling his paintings of big sails for big boats. Last year he was the Royal Society of Marine Artists ‘Young Artist of the Year’ 2009.

A corner of Michel Brosseau's "New Sail" (sold)

with canvas left unpainted and a marine ply frame.

Over on The Art of the Landscape I have a post about Places to Paint - Marine Scenes which lists all the places I saw paintings of in the exhibition - plus it has more images from the exhibition.

Links:

Royal Society of Marine Artists - website http://www.rsma-web.co.uk/
Marine Art - Resources for Artists - This site provides information and advice from various websites for artists wanting to understand and draw and paint marine subjects, seascapes and waterscapes.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

What the comprehensive spending review means for art

This is a round-up of a list of headlines and all the relevant links I could find about statements made on:

the comprehensive spending reviews - from the Treasury perspective
what it means for art organisations - from their perspective
what other commentators think

It's by no means definitive yet what it means at the grass roots level and it's unlikely that will become fully clear for some time.

The main messages

a cut of £1.1bn over four years for Culture Media and Sports
Arts Council England to suffer cut of 30% in grant funding - requires 50% cut in admin and is likely to affect around 100 organisations on frontline plus
National Museums will be relatively protected. A deep cut of around 15% is required but is dependent on maintenance of the free entry policy.
Major capital projects for Tate Modern and British Museum protected
Concern about small organisations at a local level likely to be squuzed by Arts Council England cuts and local authority cuts

The Treasury: Comprehensive spending review - what it means for culture and the arts

The Spending Review is a Treasury-led process to allocate resources across all government departments, according to the Government's priorities. Spending Reviews set firm and fixed spending budgets over several years for each department. It is then up to departments to decide how best to manage and distribute this spending within their areas of responsibility.

The Spending Review 2010 covers the four years from 2011-12 to 2014-15.

This is what the Spending review (Chapter 2: Departmental settlements (PDF 697KB))says

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) settlement includes:

provision for a safe and successful olympic and Paralympic Games in 2012, by maintaining a public sector funding package of £9.3 billion;

investing £530 million over the Spending Review period including £300 million from the TV licence fee, to improve the UK’s broadband network;

maintaining free entry to museums and galleries;

capital project funding for the Tate Modern, the British Museum, and the British Library Newspaper Archive in Boston Spa;

ensuring national cultural assets are preserved for future generations including by limiting cuts to 15 per cent for core programmes like Museums, Arts Council England funding to frontline arts and Sport England’s Whole Sport plans; and

overall resource savings of 24 per cent in real terms over the Spending Review period (excluding olympics) through slimming down the Department and its Arms Length Bodies, and focusing on key priorities.

and

While culture, media and sports will take their share of overall reductions to public spending, the Government is committed to supporting excellence and improving the quality of life for all through these sectors by:

encouraging corporate investment to bring in new sources of funding and philanthropic giving, particularly in the arts;

providing greater freedom and flexibilities for museums through easier access to reserves of privately raised funds, and taking a more strategic approach to public funding for the arts; and

continuing to reform Lottery funding to ensure more money goes to support projects in the arts, sport and heritage, by allocating 60 per cent of Lottery funding to these causes and 40 per cent to the voluntary and community sector.

Commons Select Committee - Culture, Media and Sport Committee

Funding of the arts and heritage - written evidence - published 13th October 2010
Funding of the arts and heritage - uncorrected evidence - 12 October 2010 - uncorrected transcript of oral evidence to the select committee last week

Mr Alan Davey, Chief Executive, Arts Council England, Mr Colin Tweedy, Chief Executive, Arts and Business, and Ms Louise de Winter, Director, National Campaign for the Arts

Q21 Mr Watson (to Mr Davey): Good value includes paying £13,500 to colour consultant Lothar Götz to advise you on the grey-scale colour on the walls?

Arts Organisations

Arts Council: Arts Council responds to 29.6 per cent funding cut

The Arts Council's grant in aid will be reduced to £349.4m by 2014/15 - a 29.6% cut.
National Council has already indicated that we will seek to minimise the effect of any cuts to the portfolio of arts organisations we regularly fund.

Natrional Campaign for the Arts:“15% cuts to frontline arts better than feared, but concerns remain” - NCA Director, Louise de Winter

It’s a rum day when cuts of 15% can now be greeted with some measure of relief; we’re not saying these cuts won’t hurt, but they will be more manageable than was previously feared.
Arts organisations will also have to take into consideration the impact of the higher level of cuts to local authority budgets of 28%. As non-statutory services, they will be affected by the squeeze felt by local authorities

Arts and Business - The Forum for Arts, Culture & Heritage: no comment to date

Other Commentators

Guardian: Arts funding cut 30% in spending review - Spending review sees Arts Council England shorn of almost a third of its budget, but museums expected to maintain free entry policy

Arts Council England (ACE) will face an overall cut of 30%, and the government is asking it to pass on cuts of only 15% to "front line" arts organisations.
The 15% cut to the arts "front line" – broadly defined as its portfolio of regularly funded organisations – means that, according to the chief executive of ACE, Alan Davey, at least 100 arts organisations will lose their funding.
ACE will be asked to reduce its own operating costs by 50%, having already completed an organisational review in the past 18 months that saw it cutting its costs by 21%

Telegraph:Spending Review: what it means for the Department of Culture, Media and Sport

The government will continue to fund free entry to museums and galleries, and honour its commitment to complete extensions to the Tate and the British Museum.
The Culture Media and Sport Select Committee and the National Audit Office have raised questions about whether the department is getting money through to the groups it is supposed to help. In 2008/09, it failed to spend £115 million of its budget.

Sky News: Arts Council Reeling After Budget Slashed
BBC News: Osborne on arts funding

Last week, a survey of more than 2,000 British adults found that two-thirds agreed with the government's stance on cutting arts funding and increasing reliance on private cash. The poll was commissioned by organisers of The Threadneedle visual arts prize.
BBC 10th September 2010

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

REVIEW: Miniature Art Society - Annual Exhibition

Reflection 4 by Iain Gardiner - Winner of the Gold Memorial Bowl 2010

Last Friday I went to see the 2010 Annual Exhibition of the The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers. This continues to be a very popular exhibition with lots of evidence of both visitors and sales - particularly for those with an established reputation and following.

You can see images of some of the very many works in the show on the artists page of the RMS website

Miniature paintings by Rob Ritchie - winner of two awards (2010)

Award winners this year are:

The RMS Gold Memorial Bowl - Iain Gardiner
President's Special Commendation (Miniature Work) - Rob Ritchie
President's Special Commendation (Large Work) - Marian Tumelty
RMS Group Award (£500) - Dianne Branscombe
The Mundy Sovereign Portrait Award - Michael W Coe
The Bidder and Brone Sculptors and Gravers Award (£350) - Rosalie Johnson
Llewellyn Alexander Suject Miniature Award (£500) - Rob Ritchie
Peter Charles Booth memorial Award - Joyce Rowsell
Anita Emmerich Presentation award - Gillie Hoyte Byrom
Country Club UK Award - Alison Griffin for a painting of the market at Luxor
Country Club UK Sculpture Award - Patricia Northcroft

Bronze Sculptures of birds by Patricia Northcroft ARM

Anthony J Lester Art Critic Award - Michael W Coe
The Bonhams Portrait Award - Bill Mundy - this was a masterly example of portrait miniatures ar their best. It was watercolour on vellum.
Country Club Illustrated award - Roy Cooney

Iain Gardiner has also recently been in October 2010 edition of The Artist magazine having featured on the front cover and had an article about modern paintings in miniature. This includes a step by step of the painting - Reflection 4 - which won the Gold Bowl.

Dutch street and canal scenes by Erica Youngman ARMS HS

Other paintings I liked included:

Erica Youngman's group of watercolour paintings of Dutch scenes (see above) - one of which got an honourable mention for the Gold Memorial Bowl
another painting of Iain Gardiner's - this one was called Summer Beat and was very funny in an ironic way. It was nice to see miniature art proving it can be more than just a demonstration of excellent technique.
Suzanne Bradley's Lurcher which was excellent
The Clockmaker by Geoffrey Herickx RMS HS
a larger watercolour painting (Snow and Sunshine) by Bill Mundy which was very impressive

General Impressions

I thought I saw a lot more townscapes and figurative work this year - in the sense of the word which means 'including figures in the painting'. More people and fewer animals. I could be wrong.

I'm certainly seeing more eastern European names on the list of artists exhibiting. I guess that with every passing year this exhibition is becoming attractive to more and more international artists who want the prestige of saying they've exhibited with the RMS.

Those who are the best at miniature art are - without exception - masters of design, values and colour. Those attempting to demonstrate what they can do manage to create incredibly complicated scenes which still read true and believable. The Gold Memorial Bowl winners has an absolutely staggering control over values and tremendous control over brushwork.

This year I spotted the first pastel miniatures I'd ever seen in the exhibition by Vicki Coppard ARMS

Some of the miniature art leans towards a colour range which is less than natural. A few begin to nudge Kinkade. While personal painting style and colours are, of course, always a question of personal choice, I have to say that there were artists who I knew I'd like more if they just toned down the colour a bit. The artwork work which impressed me the most was that which managed to paint in faithful colours without over-egging it.

Tips for aspiring artists

As always the work which looked best was in frames which were not competing with the image. Over fussy and ornate frames to my mind don't work well with miniature art - unless the decoration is also extremely fine. I saw some frames which I thought were absolutely excellent in a dull gilt with very sharp geometry.

I noticed many artists double mat and the mat cutting is incredibly precise. As you can imagine at this size anything which is not done to a professional standard looks "off".

Thanks

I'd like to say "Thanks" to the lovely lady members of the RMS who, as always, made me feel very welcome and helped me with my queries. I was also introduced to Carmela and Roger Arturi Phillips who are miniature art collectors and authors of a book about their very interesting collection - about which I shall write later this week.
Other paintings I liked included

I have to say one of the things I do like about the RMS (and probably it's something only they can do) is that the awards are decided at the time of selection and consequently their exhibition catalogue each year contains images of all the prize-winning paintings as well as images of other paintings by the members.

It also records the names of those who have won an award - not just in 2010 but also in previoous years so people can see what track record of an award-winning artist looks like. A small point but one which I cannot help but help but think helps enormously with helping to sell work to collectors.

You can find out more about miniature art on the RMS websiye and in my resource site Miniature Art - Resources for Artists.

Link:

The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers - Annual Exhibition 2008

Sunday, October 17, 2010

17th October 2010 - Who's made a mark this week?

Miniature watercolour paintings byTracy Hall
in the Annual Exhibition of The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers

The exhibition season is well and truly open us again. All the Autumn/Winter exhibitions are opening and the art societies are also busy with Annual Exhibitions.

In today's (late) post I've got pictures of some of the exhibitions I saw last week. Above are the miniature watercolour paintings by Tracy Hall ARMS HS MPSGS MASF (Watercolour Artist Diary) who won the RMS top prize of the Gold Memorial Bowl in 2008. Further down the page is a very striking watercolour painting of a wave colliding with a harbour wall by Andrew Blyth which is in the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Marine Artists

I was also trying to get to see "Venice - Canaletto and his Rivals" at the National Gallery on Friday afternoon but it would have been the third exhibition of the day and at the end of a very long and tiring week I decided to save it for when I was feeling fresher. However reviews to date suggest it should be good.

Drawing and sketching [Late Addition - I forgot to transfer this bit!]

Yesterday was the International Sketchcrawl #29. Check the SketchCrawl Forum to see results from cities around the world. Sketches are also posted on Urban Sketchers

as well as a lot of individuals blogs such as :

Pete Scully - sketchcrawling central park, davis
van Annies Chaos in Colour Sketchcrawl #29 at The Phoenix Zoo
Frederick on (Orange explains it all) had me trying to work out where he was for sketchcrawl #29

This week I'm also featuring the blogs of a number of artists whjo like to work in graphite. These are:

Terry Miller (Pencil Shavings) in Maryland who produces some amazing drawings in graphite
Clive Meredith (The Art of Clive Meredith) in Southampton who is self-taught and produces some fine drawings of animals
Nolon Stacey (Leaping into the world of the Starving Artist) is a self-taught graphite pencil artist specialising in fine art drawings of rural scenery, farm animals, dogs, wildlife and landmarks
Dean Richards makes black and white drawings using charcoal, graphite and carbon - which you can see on Burnt Wood and Natural Elements

plus another blog I came across this week is Drawing my way round London which has a rather neat idea of involves Heather visiting every station on the (old) Silverlink line / North London railway line, making at least one drawing when she gets to each place. She began in North Woolwich and will finish at Richmond in the west.

Next Friday and Saturday is the big event in London for Big Draw month when, on 22 and 23 October, you can Make your Mark on the Future: From London Bridge to Tower Bridge. I'm due to be drawing by Southwark Cathedral on Friday,

Coloured Pencils and Pastels

The thing I like about Nicole Caulfield's artwork is that so very often there is a story behind it. I particularly like the new direction she is taking in developing a new series of works stimulated by the way in which Norman Rockwell's work commented on aspects of daily life - see Beginning of Norman Rockwell Series. I've been following the progress on her latest one with much interest - see Update on "Wrong Place, Wrong Time". I'm sure every parent will have a wry grin over that one!

WIP: Wrong Place Wrong Time

Richard Klekociuk (Artleko's weblog) has won the $10,000 first prize at the Tasmanian Art Awards for his drawing Silence at the Table. He was competing against artists in other media. We're seeing more and more coloured pencil artwork 'holding its own' when up against other media. Richard has a very definite style which is unique to him and you can see how he progresses his work in Coastal Rocks
Belinda Lindhardt has written to announce that the Australian Coloured Pencil Network has a call out for entries to the online exhibition. This is open to anybody who is a member of the Society. I wonder if people with a sister living in Australia count? ;)

This is how you register to join the The Australian Coloured Pencil Network website.
This is the User Agreement and Copyright Info and
This is the AusCP Online Exhibition 2010 – Call for entries

Entries are open from now until Sunday 31st October 2010 and entries will be placed on display on the Australian Coloured Pencil Website – November 18th 2010.

Landscape

Mitchell Albala (Essential Concepts of Landscape Painting) has posted the second in a series of step by step posts about the "In Sunlight" series: In Sunlight: “December Peak”

Painting

Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) has an interesting post about 'traditional' and 'contemporary' painting - see The Banishment of Beauty, Scott Burdick
Lucian Freud's portrait of a nude Jerry Hall - Eight Months Gone - has sold for £600k - which I guess is the sort of going rate you get at auction when you are the leading portrait painter in the UK.
Freud is also in the news given he's the chief protagonist in Man with a Blue Scarf: On Sitting for a Portrait by Lucian Freud a new book by Martin Gayford (chief European art critic for Bloomberg News / formerly art critic of the Spectator.) This has been recently reviewed by Jonathan Jones on his Guardian blog.

Art Business and Marketing

Art Galleries

Deborah Secor (Landscape Painting in Pastels) has a post from her book blog for people approaching their first gallery - see Chapter 35: The First Gallery - and for those wanting to do art fairs - see Chapter 34 - Art Fairs

Online Galleries / selling art online

Etsy broke its own records in September and continues its very impressive upward trajectory. According to the Etsy Statistics: September 2010 Weather Report: $26.6 million of goods were sold - covering 1.5 million items sold. Plus 2.2 million new items listed and 780.7 million page views - all of which are new Etsy records. (Is anybody still using eBay?)
Branded art anyone? See Culture Label which has some of the most well known 'names'. These are the brands and these are the artists. It's interesting to see who's allowing themselves to be marketed like this.
If you've tried Bonanza to sell your art can you let me know what you think about it or give me a link to a review on your blog. Thanks!
[an empty space which might have featured a website] I came across a rather intrusive and what I thought was an OTT approach to marketing a course and website support for selling art online. (Which I hasten to add was not by any of the people I normally feature on this blog). While I've got absolutely no problem about highlighting enterprise which looks helpful, even if it involves payment of fees, I'm only planning to ever feature sites which aren't "in my face" either stylistically or in terms of pop ups littered all over my desktop!. This one was totally OTT - and hence is NOT getting featured. Do let me know if that's the sort of approach you value or not.

Art Business Marketing / Efficiency

Alyson Stanfield (Art Biz Blog) has recently had two excellent posts about:

the Top Time-Savers for Your Art Business
Publicity Resources for Promoting an Art Event Speaking as somebody who now has a small avalanche of email each week from people trying to promote art events, I would really appreciate it if people (and galleries who are not quite digitally competent in particular) would read and digest this one!

Now I know we don't really think about artists being in competition with one another - but just in case you do - why not review 9 ways to spy on your competitors online from Joan Stewart's The Publicity Hound's Blog
Robert Genn (The Painter's Keys) has a useful post about things to think about when Pricing a reproduction run
Joanne Mattera (Joanne Mattera Art Blog) has a neat 'Marketing Mondays summary of CV vs Resume vs Bio You can find links to the CAA guidelines for different art professionals in How to write an Artist's Statement - Resources for Artists

Collision by Andrew Blyth (Watercolour £550)

Art and the Economy / Art Collectors

Movers and shakers

On Friday I posted a list of what are purported to be the 100 most influential people in contemporary art - The most influential people in art? (2010 although after reviewing it I came to the conclusion it was a total celebration of those who have been spending money on gallery real estate. See how many of the names you know?
Who are the promising newcomers to look out for in Britain's thriving contemporary art scene? The Guardian asked Richard Wentworth, Yinka Shonibare, Cornelia Parker and Tacita Dean to each tip a new artist - and they chose Helen Marten, Bjørn Venø, Katie Paterson (one of the least flashy websites I've seen in a long time. Take a look and you'll begin to get the unintended but accurate pun!) and Charlotte Moth. This is the slideshow of their work - The new faces of 21st-century art
I must confess I smiled at Ed Winkelman's Super Foul Mood List of Pet Peeves - and don't forget to read the comments for everybody else's!

Collecting art

Caroline Roux in the The Independent has a A 10-point plan for creating your own art collection

Arts Funding

Tracey Emin is confused about arts funding! Enough said?
I'm planning a post this week about art funding and the budget cuts. However I think the writing on the wall is pretty evident judging by the performance of the Chair of the Arts Council as I watched the Culture, Media and Sport Committee began to take evidence on the funding of the arts and heritage in its first oral evidence session on the funding of the arts and heritage. Museums were also accused of producing some breaktaking examples of waste and having listened to some examples I have to say I agree.

Art Competitions and Art Societies

We now know that Emma Haworth has won the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2010
but we won't be seeing the exhibition until November.
On Friday I visited the Mall Galleries to see the Annual Exhibitions of the:

The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers - which is excellent as per usual (see review later today).
The Royal Society of Marine Artists (see review Tuesday). Both continue until 23rd October 2010.

At the end of this month, the Second Annual Juried Botanical Art Exhibition of the Botanical Artists of Canada is being held in the gallery at Todmorden Mills Heritage Site (click this link for the Google Maps info site). I'm a big supporter of botanical art exhibitions and if somebody can get photos of the exhibition - with the permission of the society - I'd be happy to host a more detailed post about the exhibition on this blog. The Opening Reception is on 27th October (7pm-9pm) and the exhibition runs until 7th November 2010. The gallery is open between noon and 4pm Wednesday to Sunday.

Contemporary Art Fairs

The Frieze Art Fair (14–17 October 2010) took place in Regent’s Park, London last week but I never pay it any attention and I'm not going to start now! It had over 60,000 visitors in five days. Frieze Art Fair 2011 will take place 13–16 October next year.

Art Galleries and Museums

This week I visited the website of the Musee d'Orsay (the 3rd most popular art museum in Paris) and was very pleasantly surprised to find it has had a complete revamp since my last visit and now looks better and seems to be much more accessible. It now has better links to the exhibitions it supports in the Orangerie and around the world while it undergoes a revamp of the actualmuseum. The one really wierd thing is the website doesn't have a title on the home page to say it's the website of the Musee d'Orsay! I'm now just wondering whether I need to check every link on my resource website - Musée d'Orsay - Resources for Art Lovers! ;)

Musee d'Orsay has a new website (English version)

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

This week Deborah Paris (A Painting Life) launched a new blog devoted to Deborah Paris - online classes and workshops. I have to say that I am mo re and more convinced by the benefits blog can bring to art tutors - and their students. It includes a link to a sample of videos of demonstrations and other instructional videos. plus new classes for Winter and Spring 2011 have already been posted, so click on over and take a look!
Sarah Wimperis (The Red Shoes) has an invaluable tip about How To Varnish Watercolours. (I'm meeting up with Sarah on Thursday to hear more about life in Cornwall)

Art Studios

Luann Udell (Luann Udell) has written another one of her really useful posts about the practical aspects of being an artist - see Making the most of your Open Studio.
Luann's studio is in a renovated antique barn attached to her home in Keene, NH and last weekend she was participating with my friend Nicole Caulfield (Nicole Caulfield) in the Fall Foliage Studio tour - which sounds idyllic! If you want to check out artists in the Monadnock area of New Hampshire this is where they all are. Check out the websites to see if they accept visits at other times. Here's Nicole's Photos from the Open Studio

Colour

Albala also has a post about the use of a limited palette for landscape painting - see Limited Palettes Part 1: The Expanded Primaries. It provides a good overview of all the colours in the proposed limited palette.

Copyright

This post started as a summary in this post and grew and grew into a fully fledged post earlier today - see Does teaching art generate copying of art? It's started to generate a few comments and I'd definitely like to hear what you think - even if it's just more questions about aspects which puzzle you.

Opinion Poll

The Making A Mark Poll this month is proving to be exceptionally popular - and there's a very clear pattern emerging. This is the post about what it's about POLL: What do you do when not being an artist?

Photo/video manipulation

What's PEPE I thought - until the penny dropped. It's the new combined Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 9 & Adobe Premiere® Elements 9. It's available for both Windows and Mac at the same time - which is nice. According to MacWorld as updates go "this ones's a biggy"! See their review in Adobe Photoshop Elements 9 review where it gets 5 stars. I like Bridge and I'm not sure I'm going to rush to change it though.

This simultaneous, cross-platform release of Photoshop Elements 9 marks a first for Mac users - the Adobe Elements 9 Organizer is finally available for Mac users and comes packaged with the hobbyist-targeted photo-editing software.

Websites, webware and blogging

I posted two items this week following the article which included comments from me in Artists and Illustrators supplement for art students about how to get noticed. Those commenting ahve also made suggestions

If you've not seen it before you might find my resource site Blogging for Artists - Resources for Artists helpful if you are relatively new to blogging. This includes links to other useful blog posts about blogging for artists. From other media sites:

Looking forward, the New York Times had an article about New Web Code Draws Concern Over Privacy Risks. The new language, HTML5, could give marketers access to many more details about users’ online activities. HTML5 is not here yet - but it will be.
I was reading an article this week about how to design a website for an iPad and it made me think that maybe we don't think enough about the various different types of technologies used to view our various websites and blogs. Which is by way of a lead in to the fact that last week Microsoft Unveils New Windows Phones plus Windows Phone 7 Revealed: What You Need to Know
for all those that do art fairs and sell art in places without tills you'll be interested in A Simple Swipe on a Phone, and You’re Paid

and finally........

Nearly 3,000 visitors came to see the John Moores Painting Prize exhibition on its opening weekend. Apparently the Walker Art Gallery and a trick of light conspired to also deliver an image of the hand of god!