“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.”
How Small Steady Actions Move Us Forward to Our Artistic Goals →
“Do not be afraid of moving slowly. Be only afraid of standing still.” - Chinese Proverb
Have you ever thought about the importance of the small, steady actions you take every day toward your artistic goals?
You can’t imagine how important these really are.
Most of us have a very distorted notion of how things actually get done in this world. We think that great accomplishment only comes from great deeds in artistic goals.
We imagine our heroes striding toward their goal in seven-league boots–writing best-selling novels in three months, building business empires overnight, soaring to stardom out of nowhere–and this gives rise to painfully unrealistic expectations of ourselves. And yet nothing could be further from the truth.
Great deeds are made of small, steady actions, and it is these that you must learn to value and sustain in your artistic goals.
Often you feel you’ve done nothing when you’ve actually done a lot. That’s because what you did do seemed beneath notice–it was so small that you thought it didn’t “count.” But it did–just as each stitch counts toward a finished dress, each brick toward a house you can live in, each mistake toward knowing how to do things right.
Directed action, no matter how small, moves toward its point. When you change your perspective, you will start to see how small steps add up.
The Difference between Acrylics and Oil paint →
What is the difference between Oil and Acrylic paints?
Do you want to learn to paint put don’t know where to start?
Get excited about all the paintings you are going to create but don’t know which types of paints to begin with?
To understand the pros and cons you need to ask yourself a few simple questions to determine which medium is best for you…
Please note: The comparison below is for standard acrylics and oil paints, not taking into account quick drying oils or ‘Open’ acrylics (slow drying)
1. Do you work quickly or slowly?
Acrylic Pros: You can paint on anything.
This is one of the key things that make acrylics a great medium to start with when beginning to learn to paint. To be able to set up quickly, start painting on anything is brilliant. Paper, card, canvas board, whatever you have to hand.
Acrylic Cons: They dry quick, I mean really quick.
You want to do some painting, so you book in a little me time. You’ve got a canvas ready, you’ve prepared your ground and now you’re ready to paint.
All is quiet and at peace with the world. You carefully squeeze out your paintings, being careful not to use too much, and then what happens?
The phone rings.
Wrong number.
In this short amount of time the first blob of paint you’d squeezed out will now be dry, solid, unable to shift. So you scrape it off, squeeze out some more, ready to go and…
A knock at the door.
You put down your brushes, come back 10 minutes later and every thing has dried! Not quite the tranquil painting experience you had imagined.
The solution?
- Squeeze out more paint
- Add a retarder to keep the acrylics wet for longer (no more than 15% or the paint goes funny)
- Use a stay wet palette to keep the paints moist. See my video on How to set up a stay wet palette.
Oil Pros: Longer working time.
Because oil paints stay wet for a lot longer than acrylics it gives you the flexibility to start a painting and then come back to it the next day and continue straight where you left off. The paint on the palette will still be wet and pliable, the colours on your canvas can still be blended together.
Oil Cons: Preparation is key
Due to the corrosive nature of the oil (in oil paints) you have to work on a prepared canvas or board. If you are going to prepare the surface of the canvas yourself the preparation time is longer. You could of course buy a pre-primed canvas and get going straight away.
2. Do you like subtle blends or hard lines?
Acrylic Pros: A Crisp edge
The crisp edges that can be achieved with acrylics can be hugely beneficial if you paint with a more graphic composition. You can mask out areas, work over them quickly, and easily cover a hard shape with thicker paint. You can achieve clean, bright colours very easily.
Michael Craig Martin
Acrylics Cons: Achieving a smooth blend
Blending with acrylics can be frustrating due to the rapidness of the drying time. Especially if you are working on a large scale it can be practically impossible to work the canvas as a whole to bring it all to the same finish together.
This is for a size of say 6ft x 4ft. If you are working smaller that this you can achieve some lovely blends.
You can achieve smooth blends with acrylics you just have to work quickly. You can add a medium to the paint to help keep the working time open for longer. Either use soft gel gloss, retarder (slows down drying time) or my preferred choice, glazing liquid gloss.
Pro tip: I use the glazing liquid gloss even if I don’t need a gloss finish. This is because the matting agent used in the matt glazing liquid is white when wet, it dries pretty clear but i have found it can sometimes leave the blacks looking milky)
Oil Pros: smooth blending
Oil paints are king of the ring when blending colours together. Because of the slow drying nature of oil paints they can can fantastic for creating subtle blends.
Working wet-into-wet is the sure fire way to get a smooth transition in your painting. This is especially true for portrait painting when the subtle shading of the face can need constant revisiting and tweaking. You can also add slower drying oils to your paints to create surfaces that can stay wet for weeks.
Oil Cons: Trying to create a crisp edge without it effecting the underlying colours with oils means you have to wait until the next day, or touch dry otherwise your brushstroke will pull and mix with the paint underneath it. It is very easy to achieve ‘muddy colours’ when first starting with oils due to everything staying wet and the colours mixing together on the canvas.
Solution: Experience teaches you to work cleanly.
3. Colour shift
Acrylic Pros: They are lightfast
With projected laboratory tests acrylics won’t fade in time, the colours will look the same now as they will in 200 years. The binder in oil paint – oil, goes yellow over time, this causes the subtle glow on old master paintings with acrylics they are colourfast, the binder – acrylic polymer doesn’t yellow over time.
Pro tip : The most likely cause of fading is using pigments that are not lightfast, this is true of oils and acrylics.
Acrylic Cons: They change colour when they dry.
The binder used in acrylics is usually white but dries clear (the recent binder in Winsor & Newton Artists’ Acrylics is clear, but I feel still has a slight color shift) This means it appears lighter on the canvas when you first put in on, and then dries darker as the white binder turns clear.
This becomes really apparent when painting portraits. You think you’ve cracked the precise colour, turn around and the colour has changed. With practice you can learn to judge to shift but it can be disconcerting when you begin to learn.
If you add more acrylic polymers to the paint, in the form of mediums (quick dry mediums, flow release medium) the colour shift will be even greater.
If you use student quality paints that have extra fillers added, which are often white, the colour shift will be more pronounced.
Oil Pros: No immediate colour shift.
Initially oils stay the same colour when painted on a canvas. However, once the colour dries it can appear to change if the oil from the paint ‘sinks in’ to the canvas.
This can lead some areas to be glossy (still have the oil in) and others to be matt (oil has been soaked into the underlayer) to produce a deader colour. To overcome this you have to “oil out’ the area of the painting you are working on. A paint surface can appear dull and is usually caused by too little oil in the paint film due to the absorption into the ground layer (or overuse of thinners such as turpentine)
Pro tip: In classical painting you build an oil painting up in layers and one of these layers is called the ‘dead colouring layer‘ It is painted using oil paint thinned with turpentine onto an absorbent gesso ground, this soaks up the oil, speeds the drying time and gives a local colour to the painting.
Leonardo Da Vinci, Adoration of the Magi, detail.
Oil Cons: Yellowing
Oil paints will have a slight yellow tinge to them due to the colour of the oil (think of olive oil) As oil dries over time through the process of oxidation additional yellowing takes place. This varies in degree depending on the binder used in the paint.
“Yellowing must therefore be considered as an unavoidable characteristic of drying oils and this must be kept in mind by users.”
Professors Mallegol, University Blaise Pascal in France.
4. Do you like working with thick paint or thin layers?
Acrylic Pros: Acrylics are flexible.
If you like the idea of using a palette knife and creating thick, impasto paintings, acrylics could be the choice for you. You can paint thickly, build it up and the paint will dry. If you try to achieve the same with oils the outer surface will dry to the touch but the inner paint will still be wet.
You can also work very thinly with transparent glazes or very thickly with a mountain of paint but the actual surface quality of the acrylic remains flexible, this means your painting won’t crack over time.Thin coats of acrylic paint can be used to give a watercolour look to a picture.
Pro tip: Acrylics can crack but usually only in extreme cold temperatures.
Oil Pros: Long drying times
If you have plenty of time set aside for your painting, oils can be fantastic. You can work with thick paint, wait a couple of days for that paint to dry then add thin glazes to create luminosity in your work.
Oil Cons: To work with thick paint you need to take into account the drying time of oils. Each particular pigment needs a different amount of oil mixed with it resulting in a different drying time, e.g: Earth colours such as Burnt umber is a rapid dryer whereas Ivory black takes much longer to dry.
The solution: Add a siccative to the paint. A siccative is a medium that helps to speed up the drying process in oil paints. Traditionally this was a cobalt drier, more recently, Liquin by Winsor & Newton is a synthetic medium that can accelerate the drying time of the oil paint by about 50%
5. Do you work in a small space?
Acrylic Pros: Acrylics can be a great alternative to oils if your working in a confined space are working with kids or in a unventilated area. You just need access to water. Acrylics have no smell, and are non toxic.
Oil cons: The smell of turpentine
If your start painting with oils in a confined space the fumes from the thinners can overwhelm you, turpentine and white spirit can be really strong. White spirit can also be a irritant to the skin and turpentine rags can spontaneously combust!
I work with odourless mineral spirits or ‘Zest It‘ (a thinner made from citrus ) that have a very minimal odour compared to turpentine.
Pro tip: The odourless mineral spirit does not cut through the oil as well as pure artist turpentine and if you are using Dammar varnish in your mixes can cause problems.
Studio Visit: Laurie Justus Pace
In the video above Laurie shows a quick tutorial on how she paints, what she uses and talks inspiration. For more on Laurie Justus Pace visit her website here.
Minimalism Movement →
"A shape, a volume, a color, a surface is something itself. It shouldn't be concealed as part of a fairly different whole." - Donald Judd
The term "Minimalism" has evolved over the last half-century to include a vast number of artistic media, and its precedents in the visual arts can be found in Mondrian, van Doesburg, Reinhardt, and in Malevich's monochromes. But it was born as a self-conscious movement in New York in the early 1960s. Its leading figures - Donald Judd, Frank Stella, Robert Morris, and Carl Andre - created objects which often blurred the boundaries between painting and sculpture, and were characterized by unitary, geometric forms and industrial materials. Emphasising cool anonymity over the hot expressivism of the previous generation of painters, the Minimalists attempted to avoid metaphorical associations, symbolism, and suggestions of spiritual transcendence.
- The revival of interest in Russian Constructivism and Marcel Duchamp's readymades provided important inspiration for the Minimalists. The Russian's example suggested an approach to sculpture that emphasised modular fabrication and industrial materials over the craft techniques of most modern sculpture. And Duchamp's readymades pointed to ways in which sculpture might make use of a variety of pre-fabricated materials, or aspire to the appearance of factory-built commodities.
- Much of Minimalist aesthetics was shaped by a reaction against Abstract Expressionism. Minimalists wanted to remove suggestions of self-expressionism from the art work, as well as evocations of illusion or transcendence - or, indeed, metaphors of any kind, though as some critics have pointed out, that proved difficult. Unhappy with the modernist emphasis on medium-specificity, the Minimalists also sought to erase distinctions between paintings and sculptures, and to make instead, as Donald Judd said: "specific objects."
- In seeking to make objects which avoided the appearance of fine art objects, the Minimalists attempted to remove the appearance of composition from their work. To that end, they tried to expunge all signs of the artists guiding hand or thought processes - all aesthetic decisions - from the fabrication of the object. For Donald Judd, this was part of Minimalism's attack on the tradition of "relational composition" in European art, one which he saw as part of an out-moded rationalism. Rather than the parts of an artwork being carefully, hierarchically ordered and balanced, he said they should be "just one thing after another."
In New York City in the late 1950s, young artists like Donald Judd, Robert Morris and Dan Flavin were painting in then dominant Abstract Expressionist vein, and beginning to show at smaller galleries throughout the city. By the early 1960s, many of these artists had abandoned painting altogether in favour of objects which seemed neither painting nor sculpture in the conventional sense. For example, Frank Stella's Black Paintings (a series of hugely influential, concentrically striped pictures from 1959-60), were much thicker than conventional canvases, and this emphasised their materiality and object-ness, in contrast to the thin, window-like quality of ordinary canvases. Other early Minimalist works employed non-art materials such as plywood, scrap metal, and fluorescent light bulbs.
Many names were floated to characterise this new art, from "ABC art" and "Reductive Art" to "literalism" and "systemic painting." "Minimalism" was the term that eventually stuck, perhaps because it best described the way the artists reduced art to the minimum number of colors, shapes, lines and textures. Yet the term was rejected by many of the artists commonly associated with the movement - Judd, for example, felt the title was derogatory. He preferred the term "primary structures," which came to be the title of a landmark group show at the Jewish Museum in New York in 1966: it brought together many of those who were important to the movement, including Sol LeWitt, Dan Flavin, Robert Morris, Carl Andre, and Donald Judd, though it also included some who were barely on its fringes, such as Ellsworth Kelly and Anthony Caro.
The Minimalists' emphasis on eradicating signs of authorship from the artwork (by using simple, geometric forms, and courting the appearance of industrial objects) led, inevitably, to the sense that the meaning of the object lay not "inside" it, but rather on its surface - it arose from the viewer's interaction with the object. This led to a new emphasis on the physical space in which the artwork resided. In part, this development was inspired by Maurice Merleau-Ponty's writings on phenomenology, in particular, The Phenomenology of Perception (1945).
Aside from sculptors, Minimalism is also associated with a few key abstract painters, such as Frank Stella and, retrospectively, Barnett Newman. These artists painted very simple canvases that were considered minimal due to their bare-bones composition. Using only line, solid color and, in Stella's case, geometric forms and shaped canvas, these artists combined paint and canvas in such a way that the two became inseparable.
By the late 1960s, Minimalism was beginning to show signs of breaking apart as a movement, as various artists who had been important to its early development began to move in different directions. By this time the movement was also drawing powerful attacks. The most important of these would be Michael Fried's essay "Art and Objecthood," published in Artforum in 1967. Although it seemed to confirm the importance of the movement as a turning point in the history of modern art, Fried was uncomfortable with what it heralded. Referring to the movement as "literalism," and those who made it as "literalists," he accused artists like Judd and Morris of intentionally confusing the categories of art and ordinary object. According to Fried, what these artists were creating was not art, but a political and/or ideological statement about the nature of art. Fried maintained that just because Judd and Morris arranged identical non-art objects in a three-dimensional field and proclaimed it "art", didn't necessarily make it so. Art is art and an object is an object, Fried asserted.
As the 1960s progressed, different offshoots of Minimalism began to take shape. In California, the "Light and Space" movement was led by Robert Irwin, while in vast ranges of unspoiled land throughout the U.S., Land artists like Robert Smithson and Walter de Maria completely removed art from the studio altogether, and turned the earth itself into a work of art. This achievement not only further blurred the boundaries between "art" and "object," but reinvented the more conventional definitions of sculpture.
The significance of Michael Fried's attack on the movement continues to be discussed, and, to the extent that, as critic Hal Foster has put it, Minimalism forms a "crux" or turning point in the history of modernism, the movement remains hugely influential today. However, some critics have challenged the reputations of some leading figures such as Donald Judd: in particular, feminists have criticized what they see as a rhetoric of power in the style's austerity and intellectualism. Indeed, it is the legacy of the movements that followed in Minimalism's wake, and that are often canopied under the term "Post-Minimalism" (Land Art, Eccentric Abstraction, and other developments) that is more important.
Recap of Nancy Medina's 3-Day Workshop
So if you didn't get a chance to make it out to Nancy Medina's workshop at our beautiful gallery, you missed out! Not to worry we have some really cool pictures from the event. Nancy did a fantastic job and we enjoyed having her class here. Take a look at the pictures from the event below.
Studio Visit: Rebecca Zook
Image via courtesy of the Artist
Have you ever wondered what your favorite Artists studio looked like? Well here's your chance to see:
Rebecca paints from her home studio in Granbury, Texas. One of her cats typically oversees each project and keeps her on schedule at all times.
You can see more of Rebecca's work on our site and Here
Expressionism Movement →
"Everyone who renders directly and honestly whatever drives him to create is one of us." - E.L. Kirchner
Expressionism emerged simultaneously in various cities across Germany as a response to a widespread anxiety about humanity's increasingly discordant relationship with the world and accompanying lost feelings of authenticity and spirituality. In part a reaction against Impressionism and academic art, Expressionism was inspired most heavily by the Symbolist currents in late nineteenth-century art. Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, and James Ensor proved particularly influential to the Expressionists, encouraging the distortion of form and the deployment of strong colors to convey a variety of anxieties and yearnings. The classic phase of the Expressionist movement lasted from approximately 1905 to 1920 and spread throughout Europe. Its example would later inform Abstract Expressionism, and its influence would be felt throughout the remainder of the century in German art. It was also a critical precursor to the Neo-Expressionist artists of the 1980s.
- The arrival of Expressionism announced new standards in the creation and judgment of art. Art was now meant to come forth from within the artist, rather than from a depiction of the external visual world, and the standard for assessing the quality of a work of art became the character of the artist's feelings rather than an analysis of the composition.
Key Ideas
- Expressionist artists often employed swirling, swaying, and exaggeratedly executed brushstrokes in the depiction of their subjects. These techniques were meant to convey the turgid emotional state of the artist reacting to the anxieties of the modern world.
- Through their confrontation with the urban world of the early twentieth century, Expressionist artists developed a powerful mode of social criticism in their serpentine figural renderings and bold colors. Their representations of the modern city included alienated individuals - a psychological by-product of recent urbanization - as well as prostitutes, who were used to comment on capitalism's role in the emotional distancing of individuals within cities.
With the turn of the century in Europe, shifts in artistic styles and vision erupted as a response to the major changes in the atmosphere of society. New technologies and massive urbanization efforts altered the individual's worldview, and artists reflected the psychological impact of these developments by moving away from a realistic representation of what they saw toward an emotional and psychological rendering of how the world affected them. The roots of Expressionism can be traced to certain Post-Impressionist artists like Edvard Munch in Norway, as well as Gustav Klimt in the Vienna Secession, and finally emerged in Germany in 1905.
Edvard Munch in Norway
The late nineteenth-century Norwegian Post-Impressionist painter Edvard Munch emerged as an important source of inspiration for the Expressionists. His vibrant and emotionally charged works opened up new possibilities for introspective expression. In particular, Munch's frenetic canvases expressed the anxiety of the individual within the newly modernized European society; his famous painting The Scream (1893) evidenced the conflict between spirituality and modernity as a central theme of his work. By 1905 Munch's work was well known within Germany and he was spending much of his time there as well, putting him in direct contact with the Expressionists.
Gustav Klimt in Austria
Another figure in the late nineteenth century that had an impact upon the development of Expressionism was Gustav Klimt, who worked in the Austrian Art Nouveau style of the Vienna Secession. Klimt's lavish mode of rendering his subjects in a bright palette, elaborately patterned surfaces, and elongated bodies was a step toward the exotic colors, gestural brushwork, and jagged forms of the later Expressionists. Klimt was a mentor to painter Egon Schiele, and introduced him to the works of Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh, among others, at an exhibition of their work in 1909.
The Advent of Expressionism in Germany
Although it included various artists and styles, Expressionism first emerged in 1905, when a group of four German architecture students who desired to become painters - Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, and Erich Heckel - formed the group Die Brücke (the Bridge) in the city of Dresden. A few years later, in 1911, a like-minded group of young artists formed Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) in Munich, after the rejection of Wassily Kandinsky's painting The Last Judgment (1910) from a local exhibition. In addition to Kandinsky, the group included Franz Marc, Paul Klee, and August Macke, among others, all of whom made up the loosely associated group.
The Term "Expressionism"
The term "Expressionism" is thought to have been coined in 1910 by Czech art historian Antonin Matejcek, who intended it to denote the opposite of Impressionism. Whereas the Impressionists sought to express the majesty of nature and the human form through paint, the Expressionists, according to Matejcek, sought only to express inner life, often via the painting of harsh and realistic subject matter. It should be noted, however, that neither Die Brücke, nor similar sub-movements, ever referred to themselves as Expressionist, and, in the early years of the century, the term was widely used to apply to a variety of styles, including Post-Impressionism.
How to Boost Creativity in Your Home Office or Studio →
photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/bill_lim/1557978846
While you may not always be inspired, the designs, colors and decorations that surround you can help stimulate and boost your creativity.
If you’re an artist of any kind, your workspace should be comfortable—aesthetically pleasing, highly functional and business savvy. Also, privacy is important. Every artist, or writer needs a room of one’s own, as Virginia Woolf famously advised. With a little effort, you can easily design an appealing work environment to bolster your creativity. Here’s how…
Flowers and Greenery
Plants and flowers can literally breathe new life into your office space and evoke feelings of positivity. If you don’t have a green thumb, you can still add a touch of nature to your work area. Modern terrariums, silk flowers, bamboo shoots, or a beautiful orchid can bring character and love to your room.
Wall Art
You’ll probably spend at least eight hours each day working in your home office or studio. Wall art can inspire creativity when you capture images that lift your mood the moment you enter the room. Whether it’s a portrait, city backdrop or painted ocean view, wall art can enliven the ambiance throughout your work space. You can also have the pictures artistically framed to match and complement the colors and shapes within the pieces of art.
Dim the Lights
Research shows that darkness promotes creativity because it brings a sense of freedom from constraints, which lowers inhibition. The study showed that dim lighting sends a visual message that enables the imagination to run free.
Psychologist Elaine Aron, author of “The Highly Sensitive Person,” found that artistic people are more sensitive to light, noise and other stimuli from the environment. Therefore it makes sense that creative people can get their best work done in a dim room free from distractions.
Colors and Shades
The right color scheme can inspire relaxation and creativity. If your work requires significant mental clarity, paint your room a cool shade of blue or sage. To increase calm and a sense of organization, you’ll want to move toward earth-toned accent walls that include chocolate, tan or deep gray. If you’re looking to retain a sense of happiness and energy, upbeat colors of lemon, raspberry or turquoise can bring pleasure.
Personalized Pictures
Pictures of family, pets, and friends can be pleasant reminders that will help keep you motivated and creative throughout your busy day. If you lack wall or desk space, you’ll find digital frames a great way to rotate a lifetime of memories.
Good Energy
A popular technique that many use for inspiration and creativity is feng shui, a Chinese system that supposedly brings well-being to those who live in a harmonious environment. According to this ancient art, you can reap far more business rewards when you place your desk facing the door instead of a window. Whether you believe in the principles of feng shui or not, much of it makes common sense.
Mirrors can be strategically placed to “open up” a room, and irritating noises such as chair squeaks and wobbly tables can be masked with soothing noises of the ocean or rain falling. This practice of setting up your living space to create “good energy” can be utilized with some simple adjustments.
Whether your work space is a sunny studio or set up in a dim, spare bedroom, you will benefit from an inviting setting, filled with your own personal warmth. It’s important to design your home work environment with aesthetic qualities that bring pleasure, inspiring creativity and success.
The Great Divide in the Art Market →
Bridget Riley’s 2013 print “After Rajasthan” was one of the works on sale at the London Original Print Fair. Credit Courtesy of Karsten Schubert
LONDON — The art market tends to be written and talked about as a singular thing. The headline-grabbing millions spent on postwar and contemporary trophies dominate perceptions of how art is bought and sold, leaving more earth-bound collecting short of attention.
The cultured professional classes of the United States and Europe have always spent money on art and continue to do so. However, the latest market report issued by the European Fine Art Foundation indicates that average fine art auction prices increased by 82 percent and 100 percent, respectively, in Britain and the United States from 2009 to 2013, far outpacing the growth rate of many professional salaries since the 2008 financial crash.
“The market has shifted,” said Anders Petterson, managing director of the London-based art analysis firm ArtTactic. “People who in the 1990s would buy paintings are now having to look at prints and works on paper.”
The tale of these two markets could be seen last week in London. On Thursday, Christie’s previewed an exhibition of 65 works by Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter at its private sales gallery. Both of these influential German artists, who became friends in the 1960s, regularly feature in the Top 10 price lists of contemporary art sales in London and New York, and both are the subjects of one-man retrospectives at major museums this year. Eager to cash in on the bounce in interest that will follow the Polke show currently at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Richter opening at the Fondation Beyeler, in Basel, Switzerland, on May 18, collectors have released 35 works for sale at Christie’s Mayfair gallery space on New Bond Street.
The experimental paintings that the artists made in the 1980s are priced as high as $3 million, typifying what wealthy international collectors are buying at the upper end of the market.
The previous evening, just down the road but seemingly a world away, a crowd of 700 less well-heeled collectors turned up at the Royal Academy of Arts for the private view of the 29th annual London Original Print Fair. The Soho dealer Karsten Schubert sold several versions of the vibrant 2013 Bridget Riley screenprint “After Rajasthan” for 4,000 pounds, or $6,720, each. The Oxfordshire-based gallery Elizabeth Harvey-Lee was asking the same price for a version, albeit damaged, of Hendrik Goltzius’s 1588 chiaroscuro woodcut “Hercules and Cacus,” one of the stars of the current “Renaissance Impressions” show at the Royal Academy through June 8.
Prints, regardless of period, have a reputation for being affordable and pleasurable, but not something that will earn a speculator a fast buck. These are the sort of things discerning buyers of art with a limited budget enjoy on their walls.
“The prices don’t change much, but there’s always somebody who wants one,” said Gordon Cooke, acting managing director of the Bond Street-based Fine Art Society, one of 48 dealers exhibiting in the print fair, which ran through Sunday. “Things find a niche.”
But as Mr. Cooke, who co-founded the London fair, points out, buying and selling prints hasn’t always been considered the poor relation of the art market as it is by many today.
In the 1920s, American speculators awash with cash from a soaring stock market were flipping limited-edition prints by D.Y. Cameron and other all-but-forgotten British artists for enormous sums of money. “Like to see my etchings?” supposedly became a well-worn chat-up line. The etching boom reached its zenith at Sotheby’s in London in May 1929, when Cameron’s print of medieval cathedral windows, “The Five Sisters, York Minster,” sold for £640. That sum would have bought a three-bedroom house in the suburbs of London, equivalent to between $1 million and $1.5 million today. At the time, no painting by Picasso or Modigliani, whose auction markets were in their infancy, had ever sold for that kind of money. Six months later, the American stock market crashed and with it the market for contemporary British etchings.
That Cameron print is now worth about £2,000.
James McNeill Whister’s 1889 etching “The Embroidered Curtain.” Credit The Fine Art Society
Other more famous printmakers still command high prices. One who has stood the test of time is the American-born, British-based artist James McNeill Whistler. The Fine Art Society was showing Whistler’s 1889 etching “The Embroidered Curtain,” priced at £120,000.
Whistler is widely acknowledged as one of the few first-rate artists to be a first-rate printmaker. Even so, his critically lauded monochromatic etchings are now less sought-after than the larger color prints by Edvard Munch and Picasso and portfolios by Andy Warhol, which routinely fetch top prices at Sotheby’s and Christie’s specialist print sales. A complete set of 10 of Warhol’s 1972 “Mao” prints, aside from the official published edition of 300, sold for £506,500 at Sotheby’s on March 18.
“These days people want big colorful pictures,” said Anthony McNerney, director of contemporary art at the London-based art adviser Gurr Johns. Mr. McNerney, along with many professionals in the art market, acknowledges that Mr. Richter’s abstracts are the commercial ne plus ultra of that category. “I saw one recently that had been bought for £1.5 million in 2000,” he said. “It’s now worth about £20 million. You can’t get that kind of return if you’re spending just a few thousand pounds.”
Mr. McNerney could have added that mainstream auction houses charge owners of lots priced at less than £10,000 about 30 percent in seller’s fees, while owners of works priced much higher, for example at £20 million, are charged nothing.
Where does that leave a lower-level art investor?
“People look too much at auction results,” Mr. McNerney said. “Rich collectors compete in auctions to prove how much money they have. The rest of us should just have a discussion about the art we like.”
And so with “investment grade” works beyond the reach of most wallets, buyers at the lower end of the market are having to fall back in love with the idea that art is a commodity that generates something more than mere financial returns.
“Art gives you something every day,” said Pilar Ordovas, a London-based dealer and former European head of Christie’s contemporary art department. “There are several art markets, and it is possible to buy good things that are prints and works on paper. It’s all about developing an eye and not ticking boxes and thinking about stocks and shares.”
Jean Arp: 1886 – 1966 →
plastron et fourchette shirtfront and fork
Born on September 16, 1886 in Strasbourg (then part of Germany), Jean (Hans) Arp was a pioneer of abstract art and a founding member of the Dada movement. After studying at the Kunstschule, Weimar from 1905 to 1907, Arp attended the Académie Julian in Paris.
In 1909, Arp moved to Switzerland where in 1911 he was a founder of and exhibited with the Moderne Bund group. One year later, he began creating collages using paper and fabric and influenced by Cubist and Futurist art. Arp then traveled to Paris and Munich where he became aquainted with Robert and Sonia Delaunay Vasily Kandinsky, Amadeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, and others.
In 1915, with the onset of World War I, Arp moved to Zurich, feigning mental instability to avoid military service. It is here where he met and collaborated with Sophie Taeuber, creating tapestries and collages, and whom he married in 1922.
In 1916, Arp became part of the founding group of the Zurich Dada artists. Their aim was to encourage spontaneous and chaotic creation, free from prejudice and the academic conventions that many believed were the root causes of war. For Arp, Dada represented the “reconciliation of man with nature and the integration of art into life.” At the end of the war, Arp continued his involvement with Dada promoting it in Cologne, Berlin, Hannover, and Paris.
Although Arp was committed to Dada, he also aligned himself somewhat with the Surrealists, exhibiting with the group in Paris exhibitions in the mid 1920′s. He shared their notion of unfettered creativity, spontaneity, and anti-rational position.
Arp and his wife also had close ties to Constructivist groups such as De Stijl, Cercle et carré, Art Concret and Abstraction–Création, all of which aimed to create a counterbalance to Surrealism as well as to change society for a better future.
In the early 1930′s, Arp developed the principle of the “constellation,” and used it in both his writings and artworks. While creating his reliefs, Arp would identify a theme, such as five white shapes and two smaller black ones on a white ground, and then reassemble these shapes into different configurations.
In the 1930′s, Arp began creating free-standing sculpture. Just as his reliefs were unframed, Arp’s sculptures were not mounted on a base, enabling them to simply take their place in nature. Instead of the term abstract art, he and other artists, referred to their work as Concrete Art, stating that their aim was not to reproduce, but simply to produce more directly. Arp’s goal was to concentrate on form to increase the sculpture’s domination of space and its impact on the viewer.
From the 1930′s onward, Arp also wrote and published poetry and essays. As well, he was a pioneer of automatic writing and drawing that were important to the Surrealist movement.
With the fall of Paris in 1942, Arp fled the war for Zurich where he remained, returning to Paris in 1946. In 1949, he traveled to New York where he had a solo show at Curt Valentin’s Buchholz Gallery. In 1950, Harvard University in Cambridge, MA invited him to create a relief for their Graduate Center. In 1954, Arp was awarded the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale. Retrospectives of his work were held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, in 1958 and at the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris, in 1962.
Jean Arp died June 7, 1966, in Basel, Switzerland at the age of 80. His works are in major museums around the world including a large collection at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Strasbourg.
How to Speed up Oil Paint Drying Time
Oil paint straight from the tubes may take days, sometimes weeks, to completely dry. Many artists, myself included, do not like working wet on wet. For busy artists who are producing lots of commissions, or have a time limit to finish a series for an upcoming show, a faster oil paint drying time is imperative.
The main difference between oils and water based paints is the drying time. The water in water based paints evaporates, causing the paint to harden.
Oil paint, on the other hand, oxidizes, which is a much slower process. It is important to realize that oil paintings take months to fully dry before varnishing.
What we are referring to here is the oil paint hardening enough to touch or be painted over.
There are many things an artist can do to ensure their oil paintings dry in hours, rather than days. Please realize though that no matter what an artist does to speed up drying of oil paintings, they should allow at least a few hours before even testing the paint or painting over layers. With thin washes, it may even be possible to do several layers in one day. There is no way to make oil paint harden instantly during a painting session, but by using the following tips, you can significantly lessen the duration they take to dry.
1. Use drying mediums
There are many drying mediums available for painting with oil paint. There are a variety of products available, and it is advisable to research which ones work best for you.
Also pay particular attention to the directions, and amounts to use for each product. Some are obviously very hazardous, and should be handled with great care.
Alkyd mediums – such as Liquin, Galkyd and Neo-Meglip
Lead Dryers
Cobalt Dryers
Turpentine – to thin the paint and make it dry faster, especially for base coats
2. Environment
Let the painting dry in a non-humid larger room with well circulated air. Try using a dehumidifier and a fan. Placing it in a well heated, well lit room has been proven to significantly reduce the time for drying of oil paints.
3. Paint in washes or thin layers.
The drying time will be significantly decreased if you work in layers rather than thick impastos. For those artists who primarily create paintings by impasto, your drying time still can be lessened by using a combination of some of the other methods listed here.
Always abide by the thick over thin rule for oil painting, though – to avoid cracking. Thank-you Art of Cheryl O for pointing that out.
4. Different pigments and brands of oil paint having innate drying times.
Ivory black and titanium white tends to dry very slowly, whereas pigments such as lead white and burnt umber harden at a faster rate.
5. Linseed oil.
Combine thickened linseed oil with the oil paint on your palette, which will speed up the drying process. (This does not work for all brands of oil paint)
6. Use a fast drying paint.
The very nature of oil paint requires a much slower drying duration. For art commissions and works with stringent time limits, you may do better by using a faster drying medium, such as acrylics, watercolor, gouache and even digital painting. Anyone who has tried oils and a variety of other mediums will realize oil colors are much more vibrant. Colors are easier to mix and blend together on the canvas. If you do not want to sacrifice this vibrancy and blending for a quicker drying medium, you may do better by working with oil paint instead of against it – realizing that paint drying time is a part of the medium.
7. Use acrylic paint for the background.
To cut down on the whole procedure for a painting, some artists first paint the background with acrylic – quick drying paint, then the main elements of the composition in oils. This gives an interesting contrasting effect between the acrylic and oil paint.
8. Paint on flat surfaces.
Oil paint on textured canvas tends to dry more slowly, as thicker globs of paint fill the crevices of the canvas. A flat surface such as board ensures the paint is evenly dispersed and dried.
As you can see, there are many methods of speeding up drying time for oil paintings. To quicken the process even faster, use a combination of these techniques. With a little experimentation, I think you will find that drying duration is no longer a problem, and oil paintings are created at a much faster pace.
How do you decrease oil paint drying times? Please share your experiences with us below.
What is Oil Paint?
Definition:
(noun)
In its simplest form, oil paint is a mixture of three things: pigment, binder and thinner. Pigment is the colour element, while the binder (the oil) is the liquid vehicle or carrier which holds the ground-up pigment to be applied to the canvas or whatever support is to be painted.
A thinner is usually added to the viscous pigment-oil mixture to make it easier to apply with a brush. Thus for example, one of the simplest oil paints might contain a mixture of red iron oxide (the pigment), linseed oil (the binder) and turpentine (the thinner). Oil paint may also contain a number of other additives, to promote drying, appearance and other actions.
What Sort of Oil is Used in Oil Paint?
Unlike tempera, acrylic paint, watercolour, or gouache, all of which dry by evaporation, oil paint dries by oxidation - meaning, the oil reacts chemically with oxygen in the air and gradually changes from a liquid to a gel and finally becomes hard.
What Types of Oils are Used in Oil Paint?
The most popular type of oil used in oil painting is linseed oil because (unlike other vegetable oils like olive or canola oil) it dries by oxidation. Linseed oil is not the only drying (or siccative) oil: safflower, poppy seed, or walnut oil may also be used, depending on the sheen, drying time and other effects required by the painter. However, linseed oil tends to dry faster and, in the process, forms a more flexible paint film that can be reworked more easily. Note also, that pigments do not dry at the same speed: charcoal black oil paint, for instance, tends to be slower to dry while red/yellow ochre hardens much faster.
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