Marion's Painting Blog

Perusing what people have been searching for in the past week, I noticed someone was looking for "how to paint the beach technique". I've several articles on sea painting, which whoever it was would've found if they'd searched for "sea" using the search box in the top right-hand corner. In case they didn't, I'm listing them here in the hope that they see find it. The term "beach" makes me think of white sand as far as you can see, but of course that's only one type of beach. Where I'm living now, the shore is generally a dark black-brown and rocky.

• Observing the Sea with an Artist's Eye
• Using a T-Square for Painting Horizons
• Painting Video: Surf Seascape
• Reference Photos for Artists: Seascapes and Waves

Step-by-Step Painting Demos:
• Sea with Rocky Shore
• Breaking Wave
• Abstracted Seascape
• Rocky Seascape in Pastels
• Abstracted Seascape Using a Limited Color Palette

^{Image: © Marion Boddy-Evans. Licensed to About.com, Inc}

It's one of those bits of research that seems to reveal the obvious: having trainee doctors study something that involves observation (i.e. art) improves their observation skills. According to the report on CBC:

"Doctors-in-training who took art classes while in medical school appear to have better skills of observation than their colleagues who have never studied art, according to a research from Harvard Medical School. ... The assumption in the past was that either you know how to look or you don't... this is not true. You can train people to look, educators as well as artists know that."

It might just also give you something to chitchat with the doctor besides the weather. Read full news report from CBC...

See Also:
• How to Become a Doctor in the USA (From About.com's Guide to Graduate School)

The Rule of Thirds is a basic composition rule popular among photographers, but equally applicable to the composition of paintings. Applying the rule of thirds to a painting means you'll never have a painting that's split in half, either vertically or horizontally, nor one with the main focus right in the centre like a bull's-eye. Read more...

"All the elements... sink their individual identities in what became a prolonged meditation on art and life, space, time, perception and the nature of reality itself... a crossroad for Western painting, where the classic outward-looking, predominantly representational art of the past met the provisional, internalised and self-referential ethos of the future..."

-- Hilary Spurling on Matisse's Red Studio, Matisse the Master, page 81.

^{Painting: Red Studio by Mattise, in the collection at Moma. Photo © Liane/Lil'bear (used with permission).}

How to price your art is one of those topics where everyone's got a passionate opinion. I've read lots of advice and tips on pricing your art, and have written on the subject myself, but I don't believe anything will easily beat Robert Genn's 10 Commandments on Art Pricing for succinctness (or sound advice).

See Also:
• How To Set a Price For a Painting
• Latest Forum Discussion on Pricing Paintings

^{Image: © Marion Boddy-Evans. Licensed to About.com, Inc}

You may recall the excitement in the Painting Forum earlier this year when "our own" Jon Rader Jarvis was featured in the Splendid Over 60 feature in The Artist's Magazine. Well, the mag's going to be publishing a similar feature next year and have put out a call for submissions.There's no entry fee, but you will need to send five to 10 images (on a CD, as slides, or visible on a website) and your name, date of birth, and necessary contact information (e-mail, phone and/or mailing address) to be considered. If selected, you'll need to supply high-res digital images, slides or transparencies, but for a submission low-res photos are okay. Find out more... (and good luck!).

This week's painting tip is from Walt Rock and it's about an easy way to paint trees. It's also one of those tips that makes me want to slap my forehead for never having done it because it should work so well and easily. (My excuse is that my stenciling stuff is in a different part of my painting space to my canvas brushes. Pathetic I realize, but I'm sticking to it.) Read this week's painting tip...

Got a great painting tip to share? Use this form to submit it.

See Also:
• An Introduction to Art Paint Brushes
• Top 100 Painting Tips

^{Image: © Marion Boddy-Evans. Licensed to About.com, Inc}

Deliberate misattribution of artwork and forgery are art crimes that have a huge impact on the art market, though less in the news which seems to focus on thefts. The forgery can be: Wholesale, where a new artwork is passed off as something valuable; Alteration, where a work is altered to make it more valuable; Provenance, where the history of the artwork is faked or changed. For more details, read Noah Charney's article Buyer Beware on Art Info. Apparently, "since the Second World War, art crime has evolved into the third-highest–grossing annual criminal trade worldwide, behind only the drug and arms trades." Rather astounding.

Airports generally bombard my senses: people twittering, announcements bing-bonging, bland information boards you by necessity have to look at, advertising posters of varying quality design trying to sell me things I don't want... When I went to Inverness airport recently, I was expecting less of it, being a small regional airport, and indeed there was. But what there also was, which I was not expecting at all, was an exhibition of original art in the restaurant seating area.

While I didn't see anyone specifically looking at the paintings and I can't say who might have noticed (certainly not the kids with their noses against the windows looking at the planes on the runway), it certainly enhanced my "airport experience". It's a collaboration between Ealain Gallery (Ealain is Gaelic for art) and the Highlands and Islands Airports. The paintings are for sale and are delivered to you at the end of each two-month show. Now if only the same could be found at London's airports which have considerably more wall space waiting around for a flight could be less painful.

The plot thus far: 300 pieces of art. An art collector dies without a will. Art auction houses start selling. Someone does their homework (or, in artspeak, checks the provenance). The FBI get involved and find 137 paintings whose provenance is in doubt (artspeak for probably stolen). What's the betting this gets made into a mini-drama TV series some time even if the real owners of the artworks are never all traced? Read the full news story on the Guardian...