David Chen Exhibition at Without Pier

Opening Night at Without Pier

I was one of the honoured guests to be invited to the opening night of David Chen’s exhibition at Without Pier Gallery in Bay Road Cheltenham.

For those that know of David, he is a highly qualified and experienced artist and teacher. His formal training in China before moving to Australia in the early 1990s set him up as not only an internationally known painter, but also a teacher qualified to teach at university level. His understanding of the medium of oil paint alone sets him apart from many artists in Australia and overseas.

McClelland Survey 2014

Official Opening

Sunday 23rd November was the day for the official opening of the 2014 McClelland Gallery and Sculpture Park Survey. This exhibition of open air sculptures showcases some of the most inventive and creative works I have seen in ages. This is only my personal opinion from a first visit, but I felt that on the whole the work this year surpassed those of previous years, which is saying something.

Tonal Painting with Purple as Dominant

Final of Five All Day Workshops With David Chen

The goal of today’s workshop was to paint either from a still life in the studio or from our own reference. We were to keep to the composition but change the colours to follow the theme of purple as the dominant, but not the only colour. As with the other four workshops in this series, the idea is to have a pool or puddle of your dominant colour on the palette and dip into it very lightly to introduce that colour to others you may use in the painting.

Copyright for Artists and Designers

During my career as both artist and graphic designer/artist I have had experiences concerning copyright that I would like to pass on to impress upon fellow artists the need to be wary of copyright infringement and the various things that it covers.

Many of us use the Internet for information and inspiration, as we study we may also use it for research. Whilst using your computer there are things to keep in mind.

Copyright for Artists

Assigning Copyright Versus Licensing – What’s the Difference?

When you exhibit you may be asked to sign a document to allow reproduction of your work for an event. I want to talk about the difference between assigning copyright and licensing copyright.

I will put this in the easiest way to remember, which is what I use. One is like selling something so you don’t own it any more, the other is like leasing or renting something, which you still own and will get back.

Assigning copyright is like selling it off. Once you assign copyright of your image you have given away your rights to it. Whomever you have assigned it to now holds the copyright and you will need to get permission from them to use the image you created. This may sound strange as you created it, but you are in fact selling off ALL your rights to use that image or artwork in any of your material for promoting, advertising, reproduction etc.

Licensing copyright is for a given time or event. You may license it for an exhibition for advertising purposes, but once that show is over your copyright reverts to you and the event organisers can not use it again without your permission.

When you read contracts for events, exhibitions etc, do so carefully to make sure that the wording covers you getting back your copyright for your artworks and prevents further use without your permission, or worse, cuts you off from using your original work for your own business.

Painting the Seated Male Nude

Painting Workshop with Artist David Chen

Today’s workshop was was the last for this year painting nudes. For this workshop we painting a seated male model. The main aim in this session was again to understand skin tones and how they include many more colours than the usual reds, yellows and white that many of us may initially use as well as the different proportions and colouring of a male model in contrast to that of a female.

Of course there are issues of race to consider as well when thinking about the colour of skin. We humans come in a beautiful array of skin tones and colours. From the darkest black I have seen on one stunning lady walking around the city to the very palest I have also personally seen on an albino person years ago. So considering all these differences, we worked on the model in front of us, who was a athletic and well toned young man who provided us with some extremely good poses for our initial one minute and three minute sketches.