The art of judgement and the judgement of art

 Sterling Fellows

charcoal and white pastel

19" x 25"

I won't belabour the point as I've had my rant over on Facebook about the vaguaries of criteria for acceptance and rejection of art in juried competition.  This piece was submitted and rejected to a juried competition.  That's fine.  No problem.  My ticked box on the application form asked for adjudicator comments, in my hope that I would receive something that would help me in the future if the piece was rejected. The note that was sent with my rejection letter told me that  I can draw well, create great atmosphere, but I need to add colour and broaden my composition.

Hello...there was no colour because that was the purpose of the piece.  NO COLOUR.  So the feedback is basically telling me, yes, you can draw well and create a scene, but we'd really prefer you made it in colour and choose a different composition.  ie  it would have been better if I hadn't done it at all or done it to someone else's criteria.  I was asked for and included an artist statement.  I guess they never read that  as it may have given a little insight into my work and its theme of fish.   These comments weren't telling me why the piece was rejected, or how I could improve it technically.  I see these as comments from a group/individuals personal preferences in art and how they would prefer to see the piece if they had created it.

So I'm left shaking my head and mentally ensuring that I don't enter that competition again.  I should have learned after the rules were changed the other year where a piece must be hidden from the world before being entered.

I don't mind having work rejected, in fact I expect it, as not all work suits all exhibitions and my piscean creations aren't everyone's cup of tea, nor is representational art.  My problem is with the criteria, or what seems to be lack of, in both the ability of judges to choose work objectively and to respond, if required, with comments that can assist an artist to grow.   I'm likely flogging a dead horse to rail at it from time to time, but I will continue to do so.

________________________________________

Now on to a lighter note...if you subscribe to my newsletter, you will know that I am having a contest until the end of February with a prize of an original portrait.  However, I thought I'd share it here as well.  Details of how to take part are below.

This contest gives you a chance to win an 8 x 10 original portrait. The portrait can be of you, a friend or family member or a pet.  I will choose the medium and the winning name will be drawn on March 1st.

The pieces shown here are drawn in charcoal. Your portrait may be in charcoal, graphite, or coloured pencil.  Perhaps painted.  Its all part of the surprise... 

There are several ways to win.

1. I will have a contest post on my Facebook page. Join my Facebook page 

(you need to click 'Like') and let me know why you want to win a portrait. 

2.  Become a subscriber to my newsletter.  Current subscribers  and those added up until February 28 will be included in the draw. You can join in the link on the sidebar to the right here.

3.  Send me an email  between February 15 and 28 and tell me why you would like a portrait and of who. 

The winner's name will be announced in the March newsletter.

Good luck!

Medusa

 

 Medusa

16 x 20

coloured pencil 

Medusa is complete, even if I can't get a great photo of it.  The combination of coloured pencil and a black surface make for technical difficulties, even with PS editing.  I'll keep working on it, but you get the general idea of it.

The tinkering part of me wonders if I should add some specks of detritus floating in the water as there tends to be particles in deeper water instead of being crystal clear.  The sensible part of me slaps my hand away and says leave it alone.  And I will let it sit for a few days and see if anything rears its head when I next see it.

I used an online framing program MatoMatic, to test some frame and mat colours.  I like to have some idea of what I want before going to a framing shop and this program allows me to try out different ideas at no cost.  It also gives art collectors an opportunity to see how a piece will look when framed, when making a decision to purchase online.

I'm taking a short break from the blog to catch up on my final gyotaku pieces and work on some marketing and planning for the workshop.

River stones

I've had an idea for a painting in my head for quite some time and have been playing around with different mediums to see what will work best for it.

The reflections of light on stones in shallow, flowing water is what I want to reproduce.  The distortions of the shapes caused by the moving water and the lines of reflected sunlight across the stones is challenging and takes time to produce.  I don't anticipate this to be a quick piece.

I tried a study in acrylics and that just didn't work for me and today I reverted to watercolours which seems to give the effect that I'm looking for in the stones.  Subtle colours and granulating pigments work well to create the texture of the river stones.  I'll be using a lot of masking fluid to create the lines of light I think.  Masking seems preferable to using gouache for these lines, as the final result should be transparent and natural.

I'm still not sure of the final size for this.  Not a huge piece I don't think as the detail might just become too tedious.  Then again, size matters, so going large and going crazy may be in my future.

Valentine puzzle

 
I'm not a fan of Valentine's Day.  I think there's more consumerism than love in it, but I don't deny those who enjoy the event.   However, I'm going to make you work for your Valentine treat here tonight.

I took a photo on a beach that seems appropriate for the day and created a puzzle out of it. Once you complete the jigsaw puzzle you will see the image.  I'm in the process of starting a new painting but have nothing share quite yet, as its in the very ugly stage. Soon.

I tried to add the puzzle to this post, but its a bit too wide, so I'll simply add the link and let you solve the puzzle.  You cannot rotate pieces and each correct matching piece will lock against its mate when found.

Valentine Jigsaw Puzzle

Rennies Mill River in summer

 Rennies Mill River in summer

7 x 9

acrylic

Part of the pact with myself for 2011 is to create a body of work with water as the subject.  I have no deadline hanging over me to do this and have completed one piece.  This is a small second piece where I was was working out water movement and colours.  I have a larger painting planned for another piece, not the same subject, being drawn up today.

The surface of water with all its reflections and movement is a challenge to capture.  A combination of real life studies and photographs make it easier and living close to many water sources, its just a short walk or trip to find myself very close to my subject.

On this cold snowy winter day, I need a touch of summer that looking into this water provides.

Duck retirement home

BD, the Muscovy duck is in his old age now and living life well in the barn, with his relatively new friend, Lucky, the Pekin duck.

They've both seen their fair share of problems in their lifetimes and stick together like glue.  Lucky, so named because he survived attacks by mink, fox and an owl, loved to explore outside, but BD is very slow and arthritic and doesn't like to stray far from the barn door.  Lucky patiently waits by his side, never wandering off more than a few feet.

BD is old in duck years - into his 10th year now, even though it seems some ducks can live til they're 20.  I hope he does live that long and more.  Even though he's just a duck, he's my favourite guy.  I mean, who could resist those pale blue eyes?

Jelly update

 Medusa - WIP

16 x 20"  coloured pencil

This week has been crazy busy for me both at work and with art.  I haven't had a lot of time to create, but I've been fitting in my daily drawings - more likes sketches most days, and have had a few minutes to add some more layers to the jellyfish.

To cover the scratch on the board, I've started to add another jellyfish in the distance.  No one else can see to see the scratch besides me and it is really only apparent in certain light.  But I *can* see it and it will prey on my mind constantly unless a fix was found.  Hence, the distant jelly.

An interested fact about jellyfish and one I didn't know is that the adult jelly is called a medusa.  This is provided the perfect name for this piece and what better a name for a jellyfish with those long floaty tendrils.  At least they don't look like snakes.

Speckled trout

I'm on the home stretch for this gyotaku project and have purchased some interesting Japanese papers for the workshop next month.  There are so many kinds of papers, a fortune could be spent on them and it seems a bit like that at times!  However, as always, I have champagne tastes and beer money.  It seems whatever I'm drawn to or like using, ends up being the most expensive paper.  But I'm trying for middle of the range in pricing, with a few more expensive pieces included, as they do perform very well.

Tonight I've been working on a speckled trout.  The colour of this little fish is spectacular and I love using the very thin tissues to get a print from the trout.  I like seeing them appear under the paper, as if by magic, then the revealed print as I hold my breath and hope that it worked.  Its all magic.

Atlantic Lobster

 
I've been manipulating a lobster over the last couple of days to try to do a gyotaku print.  A hard shelled crustacean is difficult to print well and as a lobster has a a number of prickly point in its armour it makes it more difficult to mould paper around the shell without tearing it.

For crustaceans the indirect method of gyotaku is the best, using fabric - a light weight cotton or silk and tamping colour through the fabric instead of inking the beast itself.  I didn't have the right fabric on hand, so I used the lightest rice paper that I had as well as a bit of unryu.

The body just wouldn't do what I wanted and the lobster's crushing claw came away from the body, so I took advantage of the fairly flat surface of the large claw to print just that section.  These will not be large pieces, measuring around 8 x 10, and I'll experiment with a couple with added background colour as well as leaving a couple as just the print itself.

And for those who wish to know, here's everything about Atlantic lobsters!

Romanian hay stacks

Haystacks at Magura

This month's Virtual Paintout is in Romania.  Its a region of the world that I know little about, so I had a interesting time wandering in urban and rural areas and seemed to find something new to paint everywhere I looked.

As usual, I head straight for the countryside, as I love to know how other parts of the world farm for food, raise animals, etc.  Its usually just a different scale of things but the buildings and landscape change, sometimes dramatically.

This piece was of haystacks in or near Magura, Romania.  I loved the little hand built stacks supported by frames of wood and knew they'd have to be painted.  I used acrylics on an 8 x 10 canvas board.

I had painted over a previous image with red and like how that shows through and gives warmth to the piece.  The red complements the greens well here.  I must use more coloured grounds under my paintings as they add a richness.

Daily drawing page

Its always feast or famine with me.  

I have so many ideas in my head, I can't them onto paper fast enough and there aren't enough hours in the day to capture them.  I need to capture them because I know there will be a fallow time when nothing inspires me and nothing translates onto paper or canvas as I want it to.

I've found that very early morning tends to be my most prolific time.  My sleeping patterns change constantly and if I wake at 4am, I have learned not to fight it, but just get up and start drawing or painting.  This month, I'm doing daily drawings in addition to other pieces I have in progress.  I've created a separate page on this blog to record the drawings at least for this month.  It may last longer than that, but I don't want to bore people with my daily graphite scribblings or have them lost in the body of the blog.

Today this little dog was drawing on the back of a flyer with a felt tip marker at 6:30am.  Another early morning piece using whatever materials came to hand.  Sketches don't have to be on your best paper, and, Murphy's Law, often the pieces that you wish you'd used good paper for, come out to be your best. Its all good practice, no matter what the medium or what the support.  Just draw!

More jelly...

Today was a snow day due to a storm that arrived overnight.  It tapered off in late morning but snowclearing then had to take place and I decided it wasn't worth life and limb to tackle the roads at that point in the day.  By the time I would have gotten to work, it would have virtually been time to come home again.

So I took advantage of the day to work on the jellyfish.  It is good to work on black paper in daylight.  The colours are so much easier to see.  With working, I only have daylight at weekends, but the daylight lamp I have does help when I have to work after dark.

I noticed today that there is a slight scrape across the surface of this board.  Its not an indentation but more a line that's slightly lighter in colour.  Its noticeable under certain angles of light and I may end up having to add something to that area to cover it as I can't think of any other way to get around it. I don't want to draw a background, I want the black to be the background only. 

Black is danger prone. It shows fingerprints and any movement of something hard on the surface.  I think it was my bracelet perhaps that may have grazed the surface, even though I use a hand guard while I draw.  I'll have to try some tracing paper to experiment with options and see what I can add there to mask the mark.

Jellyfish

I'm keeping drawing foremost in my head lately and have had the idea for this piece in several forms kicking around for awhile now.

Jellyfish are so graceful and lovely floating and pulsating their way through the ocean.  Some are clear, almost glass-like, others have colours, some reflect the light as it filters down through the water.  They do come with a sting in most cases and are usually best seen from a distance in the water.  Often I've seen them from small boats, bobbing along next to it.

This is the start of a coloured pencil piece done on 16" x 20" Canson art board.  It doesn't have much tooth but enough to get the minimal colours needed to capture this creature.  I quite like drawing on black paper and love the contrast it provides.  I know there are some papers that seem to 'absorb' the colour, but I think its more a trick of the eye and lighting.  The dark paper does show through as much as white would in providing light but so far it seems to be working in my favour.

I haven't used this Canson art board before and picked up a few pieces in my last order of art supplies, both in black and white.  Its pretty sturdy stuff and can be used for most dry media and watercolour also.

February daily drawings

Drawing more is one of the goals I have for this year.  I adore drawing in all forms, but found myself pulled into printing and painting more over the last year, with drawing not as frequent.  Its very true that saying "Use it or lose it." and especially so with drawing.  Its a skill that needs daily practice to remain sharp.

I've decided to push myself to draw something daily during the next month.  It may not be a finished drawing or even turn into one, but it will be something that requires dry media applied to paper. 

Jonathan Manning (aka Blade) started a Daily Drawing Challenge on his blog The Artistic Biker.  He posts an image each day and people can draw it and post it optionally on a Flickr group as well.

The item for January 26th was a teddy bear.  I always have a soft spot for bears and they're lovely to draw, so this is the result of a lunchtime sketch. 

Anyone else up for some daily drawing in February?  You can use the Artistic Biker or other drawing challenges for inspiration or simply choose something close by to draw from life.  The important thing is just to draw and keep those skills honed. 

Atlantic salmon printing

Weekends really need  to be longer, as I try to stuff so much into them, especially art, and this weekend has been no different.

Salmon prepped with ink and my hand to show scale

I've finally pulled out a very large salmon to print.  This salmon is about 3 feet long and weighs approximately 15lbs.  It was a donation luckily, otherwise it may have broken the bank to purchase a fish that big.  With large fish there are challenges, mostly of where to thaw it, clean it and print it.   The bathtub worked for the first two and I have a 4 foot folding table that works perfectly for printing and wet mounting.

 Salmon print hung to dry.  This sheet of unryu paper is 25" x 37"

I've done a number of prints of the whole fish as well as front and rear halves. Finding places to hang them to dry is my current problem.  I will set up a line in another room where I can peg prints while they dry.  The oil based inks take several days to cure completely before I can start adding the eye or any other colour.

Flatrock update

I've had my fingers in several pies today from gyotaku printing and painting to framing.  I have several pieces on the go at once which is my usual state of operation.  While one dries, I can move on to another and keep the flow going. 

Here's another small update on the Flatrock rocks piece in watercolour.  The detail is taking time.  Another reason to keep a few pieces in production, so the detail doesn't bog me down too much.

Rock detail

One of the other pieces I've worked on today is a gyotaku piece that's become multimedia with different supports, media and techniques.  Here's a little peek at what I've been up to.  More tomorrow...

Gyotaku starfish detail

Mommy?

This little piece came as a result of me experimenting with a digital photo box that I received as a Christmas gift. At last, functioning lighting that allows me to set up still life pieces, light images that I need to photograph and it doesn't matter what time of day it is!  Bliss.  I also have another daylight lamp that helps light my work table in the studio.

These are two little ceramic decorations, one a tealight holder.  I hadn't given much consideration to placement, but the little green bird seems to be gazing at the chicken with that look that kids get who need to ask something and it always starts out with 'Mommy?'

This is 5 x 7 in acrylics.

Art management software

Here's an update of the watercolour of 'downtown' Flatrock.  I'm still building rock shapes and colours and as the rock is quite detailed, this could take some time.  So while I paint, I think.  This can be good and can be bad.  This time I'm thinking about organization.  That usually happens when I can't find something.  I swear to myself that I will become completely organized.  Of course that doesn't happen and so the cycle begins.

 

One of perhaps the less interesting, but very important aspects of art is tracking what you have created, what you have sold, who to, for how much, who bought it, exhibitions, donated pieces, etc.  It is vital from a business perspective as well as marketing and archival purposes to track this information, but we don't tend to do it well or consistently.  Its often a scramble to pull information together, find who has what as well as locate images, etc.

I know I'm guilty of this. I've used Excel spreadsheets for most of my tracking of production, sales and marketing but don't always keep on top of it as I should.  I presumed that some clever souls have created a solution to my dilemma in the way of software that would make the task easier and keep my tracking visible and in one place where I could access the many arms of information about my art that I need.

So I'm on a quest to find an effective, reasonably priced software package that will do this.  I've tracked down a number of options for artists to use and will be busy reviewing them and road testing a few also.  Here are some of the software packages for artists that I found.  Note: they are not in any order of preference

If anyone uses any of these software packages, I would love to know which one and whether you would recommend it to others.

• Working Artist
• Flick
• Bento
• Masterpiece Solutions
• Artsystems Studio
• GYST (Get Your S**T Together)
• Art & Craft Business Organizer
• eArtist
• Artist Butler
• Artworks
• My Art Collection - this seems to be geared more toward the collector than the artist for managing acquired pieces of art, but could have use for artists also
• Art Affair 

Pricing for these software packages varies from $30 up to $170.  Each package varies in what it offers in management capability from basic inventory control to creation of CDs and catalogues for gallery presentations as well as invoicing.  

Of course once I decide on one of these packages then I need to push myself to keep it updated.  Let's hope that the beauty of having everything in one spot, combined with a routine will help.

Rocks - WIP

I probably need my head examined for starting another very complex painting, but start I have and will take my time to build layers on it.  The rocks leading out into the sea give Flatrock its name and consist of blocks and many thin layers, looking almost like a multi-layered cake at times.

I spent most of the afternoon drawing the piece onto 200lb paper and have starting the first layers of colour.  I used the same reference piece which was taken in early morning so the sun was catching the edges of the rock with a pink/gold light, the blues and browns and purples seemed to stand out and give the view more interest.

Its interesting experimenting with different colours for the rocks and these initial washes are Italian Deep Ochre, Moonglow, Lunar Blue, Indigo, Turquoise and Mummy Bauxite with some touches of Lunar Black and Rich Green Gold.  All these are Daniel Smith colours and I do love their watercolour pigments.  I'll continue to build colours with glazes and keep my fingers crossed.

This a similar view of the same rocks in Flatrock, which I completed in pen and ink in 2009.  That piece was submitted to the Arts and Letters Awards and got Honourable Mention with some hanging time in The Rooms in April 2010.

The sea

‘O Man, so long as you are free you will cherish the sea! The sea is your looking glass; you contemplate your own soul in the infinite unfolding of its waves, while your mind is a no less bitter gulf.’
Charles Baudelaire, 1852

 I'm in a bit of a slump at present, and seems that most of what I try my hand at fails.  However, today I had some inspiration for a new piece and am in the process of drawing it out on a half sheet of 200lb watercolour paper.

This sketch of a wave rolling onto the beach at Middle Cove helped move me into creative mode.  The complexity of drawing or painting water is endlessly interesting and I've been browsing online, searching for artists who create water.  The study of others work is so helpful and provides additional information and inspiration to me.