Coming Up Dry

Since I finished Room With A view, I've been trying to compose another piece for my box series. I've sat with a sketchbook and scribbled out ideas based on objects I knew I had in the house for still-lifes. I took out the objects and tried arranging them and lighting them and after a full week, I still don't have something I am happy with . & that's not just one idea that fell short... I had several ideas I pursued and wasn't happy with any of them.

Still-life. Its harder than it looks.

One full week of work without anything to show for it.

But I know in the end, I will finally come up with something.

I loved drawing from still-lifes in college. We'd get to class and the teacher would have a table set up in the middle of the room with our drawing horses radiating around it. All you had to do was get there early and look through the mess of well-lit objects, and using your hands formed like a a rectangular window to look through, scope out a good composition to draw from for the day.

Room WIth A View Updated.

Here's an update on that last image I posted. I had posted it last time at my "stand back and look at me" stage. I usually plow through and render everything, trying to keep the big picture in mind, but you can't really do it properly until you get everything in. Once you do, you can look at the whole picture and make adjustments.

So this is what I changed:

• I went through and tried to make my hard edges more selective.


• I had a lot of hard edges and got rid of a lot on the left sideI added some color and highlights on the cup.


• Darkened the darks on the spoons (although it doesn't seem to be showing that well in the photo - when I tried to adjust the background went too dark)


• added some details on the tea tagsand I fixed up the lines on the bottom drawer that is sticking out.
  

DISCLAIMER: ;-) Any crooked lines now I will chalk up to not getting my photo straight on!

Why I believe in photo restrictions for competitions:

I want to write about a couple of my own personal experiences to do with being an artist and working from photographs. Hopefully, by writing about this it might give people a different perspective on their submissions to exhibitions and the way competitions need to be organised.

When I first started off with my own personal work after art school (and having 2 babies) I did a drawing derived from a photograph my friend Dan White took. It was of a man in an apron, smoking a cigarette in an alleyway. I entered it in a local contest with the local art association and won first prize. But I felt soooo guilty. Why? Well, after the prizes were given, we all were talking to the juror (a great local pastel artist who writes for Artists Magazine) and he told me why I had won. Among his reasons was the execution, but a big part of it was the concept of the man and his surroundings. Since I knew part of the reason I won was because the subject was so interesting and I didn't find that subject - Dan did - I felt guilty. & I hadn't given credit to him. If I could have said, "done from a photo by Dan White" I would have felt better, but no, I was representing it as my own by entering it in a contest - & winning!


Now here's a similar story but with the shoe on the other foot (is that the right saying?):
I created the above photograph of a still-life which I uploaded 3 years ago into the WetCanvas Reference Image Library for people to use on the site. I found the objects, arranged them, lit them, cropped the photograph etc. Here is that photograph on Wetcanvas. So many people painted this still-life and I was completely fine with that (that's why I offered it on the ril), but then I started getting emails from people thanking me for the photo reference because they just won this or that award with their painting they made of it. If concept and composition is a big factor in judge's decisions, when picking the winners - would those judges have awarded that award if they had seen my original photo and known it wasn't the artist who made that reference? I don't know.

So I think if you used someone's photograph in your piece to be honest and ask yourself some questions:

• 
  Is the concept of the piece your own or the concept of the photographer?
  
• 
  Is the design your own or just a slight derivation of the original artist's (the photographer).
  
• 
  If the judge could see the reference image it was derived from, and knew you did not take the photograh, do you think they would judge it the same?
  

So if you can honestly answer these questions with saying yes it is your concept, your design and you sincerely believe the judge would not alter his/her opinion if he/she had knowledge of the reference photograph, I say enter it!

I want to note that what I am talking about here is in regards to juried exhibition entries and not everything an artist creates.

New Rules for UKCPS

There are some new rules for the 7th annual UKCPS Open International Exhibition this year. Here is what was printed in the March issue of the UKCPS newsletter Talking Points:

The 2008 Open International Exhibition is to be held in Bristol at the Royal West of England Gallery in October. Internationally there has been a move to tighten up the guidelines ruling how an artist is expected to complete a work which is submitted for Exhibition, and the UKCPS has decided to follow the changes brought in by the CPSA for their exhibitions in the USA. This aims to ensure that work accepted will be entirely the original work of the submitting artist. If you work from photographs, you must have taken the photo yourself. This change will exclude photos from all outside sources including copyright free Galleries, books and magazines. The use of an image composed by someone else means that your artwork is not entirely your own and original. Similarly, any work completed with outside assistance is not entirely your own work and this means the exclusion of work completed on courses and workshops and also work which has been displayed as a ‘step by step’ exercise over the Internet on sites such as Scribbletalk.com and Wet Canvas.com where other artists comment and make suggestions. An essential point is that the completed image should demonstrate your own drawing skills.

Copyright is becoming a very ‘hot’ topic these days and breaches of copyright on images like logos and registered designs are increasingly the subject of legal action. We recommend that you seek advice if your picture includes a copyright design as a substantial part of the whole image.

The part I am concerned about is the point that I bolded. I completely agree with some of it. I salute them for creating the rule that you can not submit an image that is a copy of someone else's photograph. But although I agree you can't submit a collaboration, getting a critique from peers I do not believe should be counted against a work. The HOURS of sweat and tears put into the composition and execution of a work is not lost by a fellow artist saying to take an inch off the left side or to intensify some darks.

Take a look at these threads from popular forums:

Here's my UKCPS entry last year which I won first place with. It was not a WIP and noone offered any crit.
http://www.scribbletalk.com/showthread.php?t=3965

Now here's one I was thinking about entering in competiton. http://scribbletalk.com/showthread.php?t=4904 It is not a work in progress thread, but I did get some feedback. Someone said I should darken the area behind the cups a bit to set them off a little more. Although I didn't post the post after, I did make it a wee bit darker behind the cups. Does that mean that this piece is not solely mine? Does that little bit of advice from a peer (not an instructor of mine) make this a collaboration?

As I am writing this, the thread I started at Scribbletalk asking about this has been being posted on. There is some good information/insight in there:

Also here is a post by Katherine Tyrrell on this topic on her blog Making a Mark -

& another post on the subject on Gayle Mason's blog Fur in the Paint

SG Chipman adds his two cents on the topic

I also just want to say I've written a post about the photograhy side of this topic and will post that tomorrow.

WIP Little Boxes Cont'd

Here's where I'm at. The photo is a bit skewed from not taking the photo completely straight on, so some of the lines are a bit off. I will be doing a few more little things to this like altering colors and other nitpicks, but it is pretty much finished.

I thought I would show you some step-by-steps from this starting with some steps on the fabric.

Steps for the Fabric:

In the first image I've already done the left side of the fabric to a higher degree than the right, so I will be focusing on the right side of the fabric in this wip. With the cloth I've essentially made a monochromatic underpainting, to which I applied colors on top of in the last step.

1. On the right side, I've blocked in, very generally, the "colors" of the fabric: derwent coloursoft white grey for lighter bits, and steel grey for the medium areas of grey. Then I did put a darker grey in a few spots.


2. I didn't do anything to the cloth in the second image.


3. In the 3rd image, I took a color that landed in between white grey and steel grey (dove grey) and glazed it over pretty much everything to make smooth transitions between the lighter/darker areas.


4. In the 4th image I've added color (dusty blues and dusty peaches) and added them over the top of the grey "underpainting" I've created. I've also used white and darker colors to add more highlights and darks. This step took quite a while and is not just a simple glazing of colors over a finished drawing. Sometimes you have to readjust values after this.
   

I'll post the steps for the wood drawers later. :)