What's the MAIN way you have sold art in the last 12 months? (Poll results)

For the last month, the annual Making A Mark Poll on What's the MAIN way you have sold art in the last 12 months? has been collecting responses from readers.  The results are in from the 117 people  who responded to this year's poll and I now have two charts indicating

1. The most (and least) effective methods for selling art in the last 12 months
2. Trends in selling art in the last 4 years

RIGHT CLICK THE CHARTS and open in a new tab TO SEE LARGER VERSIONS

The most effective ways of selling art in the last year are:

• being a gallery artist - nearly 20% of you sell most of your art through commercial galleries
• 26% of you mainly sell art through face to face or familial contacts
• either at art fairs (13%)
• or through word of mouth / family or friends (13%)

Review: Society of Feline artists - Annual Exhibition 2011

Pure Gold - British Shorthair Blue Cream by Jacqueline Gaylard
Winner of the Llewellyn Alexander SOFA Award for 2011
Acrylic on Board (£1,900)

Jacqueline Gaylard won the Llewellyn Alexander SOFA Award for 2011 at the Private View of the Society of Feline Artists Annual Exhibition at the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery in Waterloo this afternoon.

Her handling of the subtleties and colour tones of the fur in the acrylic painting of a blue cream British Shorthair cat is superb.  While clearly being a painting it's as if this is a living breathing cat.  This is a cat which has frequently featured in Jacqueline's paintings before now but this paticular painting is especially appealing.

Jacqueline was displaying a suite of top notch work - with her five other paintings also setting an equally high standard of both composition and execution for others to emulate.  She's also an artist who pays meticulous attention to backgrounds!

Artwork by Jacqueline Gaylard

A pigment conundrum for you!

I have a conundrum for you - which will appeal especially to those who know about pigments and art materials.

Can anybody tell me and photographer Peter Hunt what is the object (case and phials) in the three images you can see below?  It appears to be some form of pigment - contained in numbered glass phials with a cork stopper, in a leather container which folds up into a neat box.

Some queries:

1. What is it?
2. What's it used for?
3. Why is (the pigment?) contained in this way?

The phials unpacked in their container (images courtesy Peter Hunt)

28th August 2011 - Who's made a mark this week?

This week I got to see what goes in to setting up an exhibition of Miniature Artwork when I visited the Mall Galleries on Tuesday to see Bite: Artists Making Prints - the new Printmaking Exhibition.

The North Gallery had been taken over by The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers who were preparing selected miniatures for their Annual Exhibition - which opens in October.

RSMGS - Annual Miniature Art Exhibition - in preparation

I learned about the process which goes something like this:

• Saturday - artwork delivered for consideration
• Sunday - panel selects artwork for the Exhibition
• Monday - artwork placed in cases
• Tuesday - artwork numbered, pinned (to secure it in place and stop it moving around when the cases are moved), cleaned and photographed for the catalogue and website
• Wednesday - judging for prizes - prior to cases being moved to secure storage prior to exhibition

I also learned about a very special loan exhibition concerning Royal Portrait Miniatures which I'll be writing about next week.

Update on the glasses: As reported on Monday I started this week with no intermediate glasses for viewing my computer screen - which made trying to post a bit weird.  I collected my new titanium glasses on Wednesday and these are now in front of my eyes and I can now see fine again!  Of course the old computer glasses which had completely disappeared turned up on Thursday!  The only consolation was that they had been through about three lens changes, had been losing their fitness for purpose due to wear and tear and really needed replacing....

Artists and Art Blogs

BP Travel Awards: 2010 (Paul Beel) and 2011 (Jo Fraser)

This post is about:

• Jo Fraser who has won the BP Travel Award in 2011
• the artwork produced and exhibited by Paul Beel who won the BP Travel Award 2010

The main purpose of the Travel award is

to allow artists to experience working in a different environment on a project related to portraiture

The winner gets a £5,000 bursary to spend on the project of their choice - as described in the proposals which won the award.

The Travel Award always seems to get neglected in the avalanche of coverage for the main BP Award - however its winners have proved over time to have become some of our top painters.  It's also far more interesting in that it involves a project and typically more than one painting of more than one person!

You can read my past posts about the BP Travel Award here

• BP Travel Award - 2009 and 2010
• BP Travel Award: Gareth Reid and the Finnish winter bathers
• Exhibition Review: BP Travel Award 2008 - Emmanouil Bitsakis.
• View the BP Portrait Award 2007 and BP Travel Award 2006 exhibitions

Now on to this year's artists - and looking forward and looking back.