Inktober is here.
October has been in like a lion. With these changing days, its time to use your talents! Inktober is an annual encouragement to artists to better their inking skills. Want to participate? Just follow the rules.
Rules of Inktober:
- Create a drawing in Ink (you can use a pencil to draw it first).
- Post it on your preferred social media.
- Hashtag it with #inktober to share it and help inspire others.
- Rinse and repeat.
There is time left, you just have to find it!
Our early Fall promotion is near its close. The current promotion in our flyer ends the 31st of October.
To view our current promotions, click the flyer below:
Did you notice the coupon on the top right of the flyer? Print the flyer and bring it in before the end of the month.
Pictura Coloring Books have arrived!
Click the image above to see how fun these coloring books can be.
Eight designs for fun and enjoyment.
Today is NOW!
Practical Tips for Artists
First of all we need to give a big thank you for Gamblin’s Scott Gellatly for giving us such a great demo this past Friday. I hope all attendees learned a lot about their oil paint and Gamblin’s goal of respecting the old traditions as well as making a better oil paint for future generations. – Keith K.
Scott wanted to leave us with some good reasons to protect your work.
Why Varnish
As painters, you might know that other painters do it. As collectors, you might know that some of your artists do it. So…what is varnishing and why is it important?
Picture varnishes serve two important functions – first, a varnish layer protects oil paintings from environmental dirt and dust. The second reason is based on aesthetics – artists varnish because theylike the way varnishes increase the sense of depth in oil paintings, or to achieve a uniform surface quality on their finished works. This article briefly discusses both of these concerns, for the artist and the collector.
Protecting Our Paintings
It is generally recommend that finished paintings are varnished, unless the artist truly dislikes the look.
Unvarnished paintings are vulnerable to aging in ways that varnished paintings are not. As an artist myself, I know that once a painting leaves my studio, I give up control over how and where the painting is hung and how it is cared for. Very few, if any, private collectors keep their homes at the uncontaminated levels and controlled climates that museums do.
There are two important criteria that a quality picture varnish must have – first, the varnish must be water-clear to not change or alter the color scheme of the painting below. Second, the varnish must be easily removable in the future. The top-most layer of any painting will ultimately take on a layer of dust and dirt. Varnishes provide a non-porous layer which will prevent the dust and dirt from being embedded in the more porous paint layers below (see diagram below).
If and when the painting needs to be cleaned, the varnish layer can be easily taken off of the painting, along with the dust and dirt that has accumulated on top. In this way, a varnish should be thought of as a discrete, “sacrificial” layer to the rest of the painting below.
Enhancing the Painted Image
It is not uncommon for paint layers to dry to different surface qualities. Some pigments used in oil colors require more oil and dry with more gloss, other pigments require less oil and dry matte. Varnishing is an excellent way of unifying the surface quality of paint layers. But what type of surface is right for the painting? High gloss? Dead matte? Something in between? Finding the appropriate surface quality is a very personal choice. Gloss surfaces beautifully saturate dry paint layers and increase the sense of depth in paintings. Matte surfaces give paint layers a very direct appearance, but can lighten the darkest values of a painting. Historically, representational painters preferred a gloss surface because of the increased sense of depth. Abstract painters adopted matte surfaces to enhance the physicality of paint layers. This, of course, is an over-generalization. What’s most important is that painters find the right surface quality for their work.
The other aspect of this is how the environment affects the viewing of the work once the painting is installed. Paintings that have a gloss surface can be difficult to see if they are not lit properly. This can take away from the painted image to the point of being distracting. Fortunately, the surface quality of the final varnish layer can be easily modified to accommodate both the painter’s aesthetics and the painting’s environment.
Contemporary Varnishes
Traditional dammar varnish and other natural resins make a durable top layer but they do yellow and darken over time becoming increasingly difficult for conservators to remove when they clean paintings.
In the mid-20th century, acrylic resin varnishes were adopted because of their stability of color. However, these varnishes changed the look of paintings, so many conservators went back to the use of dammar, along with its tendency to yellow with age.
In the early 1990’s, Robert Gamblin collaborated with Rene de la Rie at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, to bring a contemporary varnish to the studio painter. The research that came out of the National Gallery identified one of the most stable resins to be used as a picture varnish. This resin not only beautifully saturates dry paint layers, but is also formulated into a varnish with a very mild solvent. Equally as important, this varnish can be removed with a mild solvent. Gamvar Picture Varnish has now been available to painters for two decades.
To Varnish, or Not to Varnish
Similar to finding the appropriate frame for a painting, applying a varnish is an excellent way of putting a finishing touch on a work of original art. Not only does a final varnish coat unify and saturate color, but it plays an invaluable role in protecting your deeply-valued painting, whether you are the creator or collector.
In short, Varnish!
Scott Gellatly
Copic has released a sepia drawing pen!
What could you do with it?
Add some gouache and this is possible.
Where do you see art in your world?
Amazing mural by Wes21_schwarzmaler.
Mark your calendars
On the 1st of November the Art Store is hosting a customer appreciation day for our loyal customers. During this day, we will be lifting our bounceback receipt coupon policy of one per day per transaction. If you have been saving up those bounceback receipt coupons, this is the day to use them on all of the items you purchase for the day. The bounceback coupons are only printed directly from our registers.
This is a common question we get…In our opinion, they are Hansa Yellow Light, Quinacridone Red and Phthalo Blue. These modern organic pigments keep their intensity in color-mixing. Of course, one’s access to Color Space is increased with additional tubed colors, but if you had to limit yourself to 3, these are an excellent choice. – Scott Gellatly
November’s Art Classes
November’s Tuesdays: Introductory Pastels
Beginners to Advanced.
You can make amazing leaps and bounds in your pastel work in this class!
Don Rantz will guide you through learning and enhancing your skills in the enchanting medium of pastels. Internationally recognized as one of the best pastel artists, Don is open and eloquent in his instruction.
Join us on the first four Tuesdays’ classes from 2PM to 5PM for November. Seating is limited so please register before it is too late.
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November Saturdays: Basic Drawing
Beginners to Intermediate
If you are just getting started or are in need of a review of what you may have already learned, this class is for you. Success in other art techniques are often dependent on how well you have learned to draw. Exploring the assorted techniques of charcoal and graphite are used in this class.
Cost: During the month of November, the cost will be $60.00 for the first three Saturdays or $25 per individual session if class is already underway.
12 years and older.
**Mininum of 4 & a maximum of 10
Instructor: Keith Kendall, owner & manager of the Art Store & staff
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November’s Sundays: Acrylic Painting Class
Beginners to Advanced.
You can make amazing leaps and bounds in your acrylic painting in this class!
Hermon Adams will guide you through learning and enhancing your skills in this exciting medium. Internationally recognized and collected, Hermon is open and loves to share his knowledge of acrylic painting.
Join us on the first four Sundays’ classes from 1 PM to 4PM.
Cost is $100.00 per student for 4 sessions during each month or $30 per individual session if class is already underway.
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November’s Friday Mornings: Introductory Painting Class
Beginners to Advanced
In this class you can learn the basics and more while painting with oil and acrylic.
Neil Orlowski is a passionate painter and instructor with long-time students that love what they have learned. Neil enjoys sharing his knowledge of the skills he has honed while working as a an illustrator for Hallmark Cards. Understanding the multiple techniques of oil painting is much easier to understand by Neil’s instruction. Just some of the knowledge to be taught on a one on one basis are:
- Oil_painting_palette
- painting equipment usage and maintenance
- painting materials and their usage
- proper compositions
- lighting effects
- glazing
- color palettes and mixing
- alla prima (wet on wet) techniques
- varnishing
Join Neil on the month’s Fridays’ classes from 10AM – 1 PM. An extended schedule can be received by contacting this instructor by calling him. Use the event scheduler to find out more details on this class.
The studio is closed for Friday, the 27th of November to celebrate Thanksgiving.
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November’s Saturday Afternoons: Sculpture Class
Beginners to Intermediate
K&K Studios and the Art Store offers a course on the Principles of Sculpture & Mold making. Enjoy building a bust of your loved one! Or creating a voluptuous form in plasteline clay with the correct supports. From designing in the round, to the proper equipment and tool techniques to mold making, your imagination is your only restriction.
Sculpture: This is a water-based clay and an oil-based clay class. Firing of your projects built in class is included in the class fee. Size and quantity of projects are limited by the present equipment. Please ask about these restrictions.
The sculpture studio offers (3) throwing wheels, a slab roller and a clay extruder for your project needs. The kiln in the store also fires from low to high fire (cone 06 to cone 10).
K & K Studio’s sculpture class is held at 1pm-4pm is usually running on the first four Saturdays.
Open enrollment, all skill levels accepted. A maximum of 8 students is allowed in the studio space so one on one instruction has greater possibilities for the honing of your skills.
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To view more details on these classes and workshops, please visit our event scheduler by clicking the button below:
Where do you see art in your world?
Van Gogh Festival Parade
Busting a Forger –
Investigators in London are using innovative ways to determine a painting’s origins – from pigment analysis to building a Renaissance-era version of Facebook. Sophie Hardach reports.
In a discreet laboratory south of the River Thames, Nicholas Eastaugh and Jilleen Nadolny are trying to find out who might have created a 16th-Century mystery painting. Scholars have failed to agree on a plausible artist for the work, which was produced in Florence. So Eastaugh and Nadolny, two art investigators trying to bridge the gap between traditional scholarship and cutting-edge science, went for a less conventional approach.
We created a social network, a Facebook of the early 16th Century – Nicholas Eastaugh
“We created a social network – a Facebook of the early 16th Century,” says Eastaugh. “We were trying to see who was connected to who. For example, people were connected through the workshops where they trained, which influenced their choice of pigments and how they were used.”
Big data – large data sets that can be analysed to reveal patterns, links and trends – has transformed how we work, shop and socialise. Eastaugh believes it can also change the way we look at art. In the case of the mystery painting, the Renaissance ‘Facebook’ helped him and his colleagues identify potential candidates they had not considered before, though he does not want to give specific names to protect client confidentiality. (Nadolny and Eastaugh work with clients across the art world’s spectrum, from auction houses and museums to private owners).
Many Renaissance artists were connected, enabling today’s investigators to build a kind of 16th-century ‘Facebook’ of their relationships (Credit: Brian Harris/Alamy Stock Photo)
A trained physicist, conservator and art historian, Eastaugh gained global fame for his role in unmasking a 16 million euro (£12 million) forgery scandal in Germany in 2010. His company Art Analysis & Research investigates around 200 paintings a year. But his deeper interest is in bringing a scientific, transparent approach to the art world – a world notorious for inside deals and the snap judgements of all-powerful connoisseurs.
Painting patterns
“I’m a physicist. I like models,” says Eastaugh, who delights in pointing out the art scene’s hidden patterns. During our interview, he draws a series of peaks and troughs in the air to illustrate one of his recent discoveries: data analysis shows that high points in Europe’s creative output, such as the Renaissance and the Dutch Golden Age, have tended to occur in startlingly regular 130-year intervals.
Eastaugh and Nadolny’s data often comes in unusual forms. Tucked inside an unassuming set of drawers in their lab is one of Europe’s largest provenance pigment collections, gathered to help establish where a painting might have come from. Some 3,000 vials contain jewel-toned powders from every chapter of art history: white, yellow and blue from Pompeii, ancient Chinese “Han Blue”, Japanese glass pigments in a range of colours, a special white from Papua New Guinea. The investigators pore over old paint formulas, visit chemistry departments and collaborate with colleagues all over the world to build up a better understanding of how artists worked.
One way to date a painting is by testing its paint pigments (Credit: Stockbackground/Alamy Stock Photo)
This in turn can directly link to present-day authentication efforts. Red pigment, for example, used to be so expensive that artists would boil cast-off garments to extract and recycle the red dye. As a result, bits of fibre can still be found in paintings by certain artists, including Titian. It is this complex web of information, rather than a single test, that leads to a final decision.
“It’s the data in context that allows you to see the larger picture,” says Nadolny, who like Eastaugh is a trained conservator. “If you put an ordinary scientist in front of a painting, it’s a disaster.”
Eye of the beholder
In fact, art historians and scientists do not always see eye to eye. Thomas Hoving, the late director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, once wrote that the Met’s scientific tests were frequently at odds with non-scientific art expertise – what is known in the art world as connoisseurship – and that connoisseurship was usually the winner.
If you put an ordinary scientist in front of a painting, it’s a disaster – Jilleen Nadolny
In 2010, Wolfgang Beltracchi was arrested and ultimately found to have forged at least 16 million euros (£12 million) worth of avant-garde paintings over the space of 25 years. The case remains one of the biggest forgery scandals in recent history. For decades, museums and auction houses failed to spot the fakes.
One Beltracchi forgery, sold as Red Painting with Horses by the German expressionist Heinrich Campendonk, fetched 2.4 million euros (£1.7 million) at auction in 2006 – a record price for a Campendonk, and one of the highest prices ever achieved on the German art market.
A woman looks at Wolfgang Beltracchi’s forgery of Heinrich Campendonk’s Red Painting with Horses (Credit: dpa picture alliance/Alamy Stock Photo)
Eastaugh analysed the painting in 2008 and discovered that it contained titanium dioxide white. The pigment was not widely available in the 1910s, when the painting had allegedly been created. In fact, Eastaugh’s extensive pigment research led him to conclude that titanium white would not have been widely used by artists until the 1940s. He has since analysed at least eight more Beltracchis, and has grown to recognise the forger’s style. “We’re joined at the hip now,” he says with a smile.
Sellers have little incentive to question the authenticity of a work
Britain accounts for 65% of the European Union’s art and antiques market, according to the British Art Market Federation. In 2014, total sales hit £9 billion. Given the market’s size and global importance and the sophistication of anti-forgery techniques, it may be surprising that forgers in Britain can still be successful. But sellers have little incentive to question the authenticity of a work, while for buyers, the authentication process can be costly.
Testing, testing
Clare Finn is a conservator in London who works with major institutions and auction houses. She says there is often simply not the budget to order an array of tests, from pigment analysis to X-rays, that would ensure the authenticity of each painting – and clients might not see the need for it, anyway, unless they already have doubts. Each individual pigment costs from £100 to £200 to be tested.
We don’t have a machine where you feed the painting in and it says ‘Thursday afternoon in 1802’ – Clare Finn
“It’s a bit like going to the doctor: you don’t have blood tests for everything,” Finn tells me in a South Kensington studio filled with the fumes from a freshly varnished Old Master. Dating and attributing a painting, she adds, is more complex than the public might think: “We don’t have a machine where you feed the painting in on one side, and it comes out on the other side with a ticket that says ‘Thursday afternoon in 1802’.”
Dr Nicholas Eastaugh examines a sample before analysis (Credit: Art Analysis and Research Ltd)
Still, with advances in research and analysis, that machine may one day become a reality. Until then, Eastaugh is encouraging the public to question every signature and every museum label. At the end of my visit to his laboratory, I ask him why it ultimately matters whether a painting is real or fake. After all, Beltracchi’s forgeries remained popular with the public even after they were revealed.
“It’s our cultural heritage,” Eastaugh says after a pause. “There is this idea that you go to a museum and look at nice paintings. For us, it’s so much more. It connects us directly to other times, places and particular artists. Each painting can open up huge vistas into our collective past.”
This story is a part of BBC Britain – a series focused on exploring this extraordinary island, one story at a time. Readers outside of the UK can see every BBC Britain story by heading to the Britain homepage; you also can see our latest stories by following us on Facebook and Twitter.
Inktober is now!
Above Bret Blevins’ scary neighborhood house got us all started.
Jordan Palmer made us remember the classics.
Ida Kendall allowed us to see her newest creation (unfinished) before it was framed and shown in the Frame & I window. Stop by now to see what a frame can do for your artwork!
Classical Art Memes? Need a laugh for the day, visit their facebook page
Our new minion found!
We advertised for a new Art Store minion a few weeks ago. We found one with some great customer service skills. Meet Jefferson Gehlker at the store as you come in. You can’t miss his voice or his want to assist others.
The Most Incredible Pencil Lead Art
Bored with just using graphite? Inspire yourself by clicking the image above.
Earth Art
Art is a diverse range of human activities and the products of those activities, usually involving imaginative or technical skill. Seeing the possibilities with what is on-hand is what an artist does every day.
This gorgeous artwork painted on stone really pops in this frame design! What can we frame for you?? – The Frame & I
Wow them with your visions!
Click the image above to read more on this opportunity.
Its time to blow own horn!
The Art Store and Frame & I donated a large volume of non-toxic raw materials for their new wall treatment at the Mountain Oak School 
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We also donated an Art Store bag of art materials to the 
Prima Vera School for their next benefit.
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Cottonwood Comic Book Show
The Art Store also donated some sketchbooks to the first ever Cottonwood Comic Con. Didn’t hear about this? See poster below:
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The Franklin Phonetic School is having a fall festival so we donated an Art Store bag of art materials to their event.
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Need to know more about our large order discounts? Just follow the photo link below:
L.O.D.
