Email Subscription Service SUSPENDED until further notice

The end of the subscription service?

This is a very sad day.

I'm afraid I'm having to suspend the email subscription service - where you get an email every time I publish a new blog post.

I've spent hours and hours on trying to find a way to address the issues thrown up by

• Google changing arrangements re sending large amounts emails from gmail addresses - and have not succeeded. 
• Mailerlite changing its systems in relation to this - and because they're updating their system

The main issue arises because Making A Mark is not on a domain name I own but rather remains on the blogspot.domain owned by Google

There again, I've got the exact same issues with my Botanical Art and Artists - which is on my own website

I started looking at other blogs using blogger who I know have or have had large numbers of susbribers - and discovered that they too have terminated their email subscriptions. So it looks as if we're all in the same boat

The conclusion I've come to is that:

• I will highlight latest blog posts on:
• Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/makingamark2/ - as I always do already
• Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/makingamark2/
• Twitter / X - https://twitter.com/makingamark2
• I will reintroduce the email subscription service when I can find a suitable solution. It may need to be a paid service - although I expect the payment would be minimal.

So this looks like it's the last blog post to be emailed out - possibly for some time - and maybe forever.

You can always contact me via https://linktr.ee/katherinetyrrell

Review: The Pastel Society 125th Annual Exhibition (2024)

I'm very pleased to say that this year I'm very impressed with the 125th Annual Exhibition by The Pastel Society. I've also been hearing lots of very positive comments by those who have visited in recent days.

The Pastel Society Exhibition on the afternoon of the Private View

It's very obvious to me that a lot of well directed effort has gone into making this a much better exhibition to mark yet another benchmark in its history. This is after all the oldest pastel society in the world which held its first exhibition in 1899!

• It had 1300 entries - of which 366 were hung (28%)
• There were excellent numbers at the Private View yesterday 

Private View: Speeches starting in the evening
- with Sarah Bee's very colourful artwork behind the speaker

• BOTH the content and hanging of the exhibition is hugely better than the one which I criticised last year. 
• It's much more colourful this year and looks all the better for it
• each of the walls is well anchored by strong paintings - with the most obvious being the end wall of the West Gallery where Sarah Bee's artworks absolutely sing out across the entire gallery
• artwork is grouped to very good effect - eg a wall of landscapes

A Wall of Landscapes by different Pastel Society members

• There's a great diversity of artwork on show - from abstracted to hyper-realistic

Abstracted landscapes by Malcolm Taylor on the left
Hyperealistic still life by Ian Rawlings in the centre of the wall

• The PS Annual Exhibition is also back in its "near the beginning of the year" slot which I tend to think of as being a very much better time for art exhibitions and sales - as there's absolutely no competition from summer weather and outdoor pursuits and holidays! 
• However "last year" was only in May - just 8 months ago 
• so the Society has also done very well to put on a second annual exhibition in this short timescale.
• The pricing on the wall looks as if most have had a rethink about the range of prices that help promote sales in the current climate - although not all artworks did. I've been hoping to see some evidence that artists were becoming more sensible and this exhibition seemed to me to be the first one where pricing has changed. I still think the starting price should be £300. There's still a lot of scope for sales at the bottom end of the range.

Richard Rees, the President of the Pastel Society, told me yesterday that of the 1300 entries 

• a third were monochrome
• a third were portraits

I have to say that neither are reflected in the same proportions in the exhibition itself - although there's a good representation of both. Those entering next year's exhibition might like to bear this in mind.

ALERT ALL SUBSCRIBERS: Blogging Service may be interrupted OR subscription mailing service changed

This is by way of an alert to all those used to receiving my latest blog post via Mailerlite

I was supposed to have written a review of an exhibition by now - but having completed by tax return (have you remembered?), I'm currently tearing my hair out over another issue - and will soon be bald. 

Right now I'm thinking of giving up blogging!! It's all because of new rules which come in on 1st February for bulk emails being sent to gmail.

I'm caught in a really difficult situation with:

• Google and Yahoo have changed the rules on which emails it will accept for  newsletter emails (for good reasons - it's to reduce the spam on their platforms). This includes blogs if your RSS to email service provides scope for you to use a personalised email address - which mine does. 
• All "commercial emails" in future must come from an authenticated custom domain
• which is not helpful when you're trying to distribute an email to a subscriber base for a Google blogspot.domain using a gmail address
• I've always stuck with gmail as it's caused me very few problems.
• plus I'm not commercial - everything I write is for free consumption!!!
• PLUS The Mailerlite deadline for the movement to a new Mailerlite software base (i.e. everything needs to be complete by 31st January)
• plus it also requires compliance with the new Google rules - because the platform uses personalised email addresses
• Everything is compounded by having far too many subscribers (for the two sites this affects) to switch to alternative sites without it costing me an absolute arm and a leg - which given this blog generates no income is a problem!

At the moment, I'm becoming more and more despondent because:

• I apparently need a domain oriented email address to send a subscription email from Mailerlite 
• but I've always used gmail and blogger - so I neither own the domain I currently use for Making A Mark nor do I have a domain email for it.

I do however have a domain name related to Making A Mark - and am currently looking at options on Namecheap (my domain registrar)

Mailerlite is also saying 

Important: According to requirements from Google and Yahoo, the use of public domains (such as Gmail) as a sender address will no longer be permitted from February, 2024. Please switch to a custom domain.

The thing is the Google requirements are complete gobblydygook (see below) - with no idiots guide

Requirements for all senders

Starting February 1, 2024, all senders who send email to Gmail accounts must meet the requirements in this section.

Important: If you send more than 5,000 messages per day to Gmail accounts, follow the Requirements for sending 5,000 or more messages per day.

• Set up SPF or DKIM email authentication for your domain.
• Ensure that sending domains or IPs have valid forward and reverse DNS records, also referred to as PTR records. Learn more
• Use a TLS connection for transmitting email. For steps to set up TLS in Google Workspace, visit Require a secure connection for email.
• Keep spam rates reported in Postmaster Tools below 0.10% and avoid ever reaching a spam rate of 0.30% or higher. Learn more about spam rates.
• Format messages according to the Internet Message Format standard (RFC 5322).
• Don’t impersonate Gmail From: headers. Gmail will begin using a DMARC quarantine enforcement policy, and impersonating Gmail From: headers might impact your email delivery.
• If you regularly forward email, including using mailing lists or inbound gateways, add ARC headers to outgoing email. ARC headers indicate the message was forwarded and identify you as the forwarder. Mailing list senders should also add a List-id: header, which specifies the mailing list, to outgoing messages.

So unless I get this sorted - this might be the last blog post sent vis an RSS to email subsciption.

I'll have to go back to firing up Twitter/X as well as Facebook to announce new blog posts!

I'm currently contemplating switching all existing subscribers to follow-it - because despite their awful advertising they do do a good job of getting emails out promptly. Plus they do NOT use personalised emails. 

Or maybe changing platforms completely and making it subscription based (i.e. I can pay for the subscription email service by you paying me to receive the emails!)

For example Substack offers:

• emails from (name)@substack.com
• paid subscriptions for some content

That's the last resort.

Right now it's just very, very depressing.

Review: Episode 3 of Landscape Artist of the Year Series 9 (2024) at Hever Castle Lake

Episode 3: The Lake at Hever Castle in Kent

This is my review of the third episode of the 9th series of Landscape Artist of the Year 2024.  As regular readers will know by now, it considers:

• the location and weather
• the artists' profiles
• themes arising during the episode
• judges decision-making
• who was shortlisted and who won.

Location and Weather

Hever Castle is in Kent. It was bought by William Waldorf Astor - who was at the time said to be the richest man on the planet - and created a grand garden for the Italian statues he brought back from his Grand Tour. He then had a grand sandstone loggia created at the end of the party for admiring the lake and having parties outside.

Below you can see an overview of part of the Estate - with the garden in the mirror, the stone loggia next to the lake and the pods below it on the other bank of the lake
 

Part of the Lake at Hever Castle
Pods and the space for the Wildcards are central towards the bottom of the pic

The space allocated to the Pods was very narrow which I suspect made for some interesting issues in relation to filming and how close the spectators got to the artists.

The space allocated to the Wildcards is the green open space to the left - which is actually very narrow also in terms of frontage on to the lake - leading to a very tight serried ranks of easels at the front edge.

Pods on the edge of the Lake - with lots of water and lots of trees

The eight artists in their pods and the 50 wildcard artists were set up on the left bank of the Lake at Hever Castle. They were beyond the Italian Garden and had the option to look:

• across the lake
• at the stone built Loggia inbetween the Italian Garden and the Lake
• looking back towards the Castle

The weather was far from great. Mainly it was dull with a huge dollop of rain at the beginning. It got better towards the middle of the afternoon and evening.

"We set up and the heavens opened"

The pods were deluged just as they started the heat. There's a shot of somebody sweeping water out of one of the pods!

The Artists

Artists in the Hever Castle Lake Heat

Below you can find profiles of the eight pod artists. Links in the names are to their websites

If you visit https://www.skyartsartistoftheyear.tv/landscape-artist-of-the-year/profiles/series-9/ you can see videos of them painting the heat paintings.

• Evelyn Chambers (Instagram) - She lives in Kent, near the Castle and exhibits locally in Kent. She has been painting since childhood. Her main themes are nature, the sea, landscape, horses and self-portraits. Evelyn currently uses marker pen for her drawing on the canvas followed by acrylics. You can see her submission - in the pod - and pod painting on this page on her website.
• Deepa Goswami (Instagram) - lives in Newham in East London. She achieved a Distinction in her Foundation Year at the Royal Drawing School and is a Part I Graduate from the Sheffield School of Architecture. She currently works as a fitness instructor and paints miniatures. She's also currently shortlisted for the Artist of the Year competition run by the WWT London Wetland Centre in West London (@wwtlondon). I think she's painting in gouache, although I don't think it got a mention in the programme.
• Rydal Hanbury (Instagram) - How lovely to be named after a lake in the Lake District! Rydal lives in St Albans, Hertfordshire and draws and paints in London and St. Albans. She completed The Drawing Year at The Royal Drawing School in 2008. From 2016-18 she studied for The Portrait Diploma at Heatherley Art College. Over the two years she won the Portrait, Figure Composition and the Drawing Prize. She has taught drawing at the Royal Drawing School and Central Saint Martins. She spent 10 years drawing the scenes of rush hour people around the Bank of England before Covid. During COVID she ran a lunchtime drawing class via Zoom for those working from home. From 2022, she focused on the St Albans Charter Market. Taking a year to draw ‘every’ stall from east to west, learning every trader’s story. Her submission is of her garden and husband's greenhouse and was painted during the pandemic. She's pictured below with her submission painting.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rydal hanbury (@rydalhanbury)

• Yana Kucheeva (Instagram) - Lives in Berkshire and works as a book illustrator for a Russian publishing house. Her artwork has been published in a number of magazines and art books. I thought she produced a very effective painting in four hours. Particularly since she'd never painted plein air before - or to a time limit! (see Themes for a pic of it.) Her submission painting of an abandoned factory in St. Petersburg turned into an art space was large and impressive.
• Craig Longmuir (Instagram) - He is an artist and art teacher from Sheffield. He has over thirty years experience of painting with oil on canvas following his first class degree with honours in Painting & Printmaking from Sheffield Hallam University in 1986. He paints mainly en plein air and favours dramatic, hilly locations with vast panoramic vistas. His submission painting is of the Hope Valley from Bamford Edge. His style is very colourful and involved a LOT of paint.
• Joe Mayhook (Instagram) - Born and raised on a street on Bankside in London he works as a Parks Manager. In his spare time he endeavours to record the buildings and life of Bankside. He paints in blocks of colour and this is his submission painting of St Pauls from Southbank.
• James Robinson (Instagram) - He is an artist and illustrator, specialising in painting and drawing both from life and imagination. He lives in Hertfordshire and studied art at The Florence Classical Arts Academy. He was the Artist in Residence at Haileybury School in 2021 and he now teaches there. His submission was a painting done of River Mugnone, Via Felice Fontana, Florence.
• Louise Stebbing (Facebook, Instagram, X) - Louise is a Norfolk based traditional fine art printmaker working mostly in lino printing & etching. Her submission was a linocut as was her heat artwork. She has exhibited extensively - in very reputable places and won many prizes for her work. She draws inspiration and solace from nature around her and places she visits. Below is the linocut she produced AFTER the heat and when she got home.  I think she ran out of time on the day to achieve what she was aiming to do. I had her down as a probably shortlist artist.

This is a linocut created in more time in my studio of the same view at Hever Castle very limited edition ...https://t.co/TUArx8YWz6 #linocut #hevercastle #printmaking

— Louise Stebbing (@LouiseStebbing) January 25, 2024

 

The Wildcard Artists

Submissions

No pics of the submissions together as they are now all hung in the pods which I'm guessing is more cost efficient and effective for all sorts of reasons. Not least that the Judges now ask the artists about their style and submissions!

There were:

• large x 2 (landscape x 1 and 1 squarish)
• Medium x 4 (landscape format x 2 + squarish x 2)
• Small x 3 (landscape x 1 and portrait x 2)

Themes and Learning Points

Coping with the weather

Nice as this looks - this was NOT what it was like on the day. 

FINAL Call for Entries: Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition 2024

The Royal Society of Portrait Painters seeks submissions of new and traditional artistic models and perspectives in portraiture from international artists.

This is about:the annual exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters - and why it's a good idea to enter

• who can enter
• what you can enter
• how to enter
• the timeline of important dates

[ PROFUSE APOLOGIES: I thought this post was published but somehow or other it got stuck in "draft" mode - and the deadline for entries is 12 noon on Friday 26h January 2024 ]

I'm also referencing some other information which I've previously written about which you may well find helpful.

About the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters

The Royal Society of Portrait Painters invites artists from all over the world to submit portraits for its Annual Exhibition in 2024......The total prize fund is £40,000, including The William Lock Portrait Prize (£20,000) and The Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture (£10,000).

The Society welcomes paintings, drawings and original prints including digital/ipad prints from artists over 18, from the UK and internationally.

"The Society’s Annual Exhibition is probably the largest and most significant celebration of contemporary portrait painting in Europe. The show is always selected by a jury of practising portrait painters, no critics, no journalists, no celebrities – just painters."

Reasons why you should enter the RP's annual exhibition

For those wondering whether and why they should submit an entry to this exhibition, take a look at the following.

Entry is digital

You only need to go to the expense of framing and transport IF invited to progress to the second stage of selection. So entries which do not succeed only incur the expense of the submission fee.

The Importance of Exhibitions to Portrait Commissions

• This exhibition generates a LOT of portrait commissions. This exhibition is very much a marketing shop window.
• An expert Commissions Consultant service runs throughout the show
• Exhibiting artists are invited to
• display additional material
• advertise portrait commissions through our Commissions department on which a commission will be payable.

The Commission Area in 2023

Some significant prizes

This is an exhibition with some heavyweight and prestigious cash prizes. It has the most valuable individual prizes awarded by any national art society in the UK.

In total, the cash on offer is worth a total of £36,000. These include awards for younger artists and portrait drawing.

• The William Lock Portrait Prize: £20,000 for the most timeless portrait with a real feeling for paint and its aesthetic potential
• The Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture: £10,000 plus the Society’s Gold Medal awarded for the most distinguished portrait in the Society’s annual exhibition
• The de Laszlo Foundation Award: £3,000 plus a Silver Medal for the most outstanding portrait by an artist aged 35 years or under
• The Raw Umber Studios Prize value: £2,000 for the most exciting contemporary portraiture lies at the intersection of technical excellence and 
• The Smallwood Architects Prize for Contextual Portraiture: £1,000 for a portrait in which architectural or interior features play an important part.

A prestigious portraiture exhibition - in central London and online

This is a very prestigious exhibition within the portrait world

• It fills all three galleries at the Mall Galleries on The Mall in London
• last year it attracted 4,400 entries to the exhibition - including very many entries from international artists

The exhibition is also put online so it can be seen all over the world.

Why it compares favourably to the BP Portrait and other portrait competitions

• ALL works selected for exhibition from the Open Entry are chosen by practising professional portrait artists who are full artist members of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters. The Selection Committee is rotated annually. There are no administrators, sponsors, gallerists, art critics or other such éminence grise who get a say on what gets hung.
• Your chances of getting exhibited: Exhibition Metrics: I haven't crunched the numbers since 2019 but back then the data analysis I did was as follows 
• about half the portraits exhibited were by non-members
• about 5% of the works submitted via the open entry are selected for the open exhibition. (This is a not untypical percentage for a top exhibition and is better than the acceptance rate for BP Portrait over several years when that was running)
• a SIGNIFICANT number of artists from overseas submit their work - with an increasing number from Asia
• your work needs to be VERY GOOD to get selected. I'd go so far as to say it needs to be better than some of the artwork submitted by members!

CALL FOR ENTRIES

This is an OPEN EXHIBITION. Artists are invited to submit works for exhibition alongside members of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters at their Annual Exhibition 2024.

In summary:

• All entries are via digital submission
• The deadline for entries is 12 noon on Friday 26h January 2024 
• The non-refundable entry fee is 
• £20 per work payable at the time of submitting 
• £15per work for artists aged 35 or under

Details of how artists can apply via the open entry process are set out below.