Art Suppliers 11/02/2021 | By Mary-Anne Bartlett | 0 Comments Here are some art suppliers for you to delve into – for your own continuing voyage of discovery. Be aware that you might need a large cupboard, then a room, then an art shed or studio. And you’ll find your own favourites. For now, keep it simple and don’t buy too much kit or get too geeky about it, it’s the picture that matters more. (Try never to buy more kit that can fit in one bag.) I usually advise people to go to their local art shop, but online shopping is where it’s at currently (local art shops may still be able to deliver or arrange collecting times). Paper People Two Rivers Paper – https://www.tworiverspaper.com/ for lovely handmade high quality watercolour paper & pads – these are the guys that made the underwater paper for us. St Cuthbert’s Mill – http://www.stcuthbertsmill.com/st-cuthberts-mill-paper/saunders-waterford-watercolour/ for machine made excellent watercolour paper & pads Seawhite of Brighton – https://www.seawhite.co.uk/ for cartridge sketchbooks – choose a hardback stitched book if possible. Brush People Rosemary & Co – https://www.rosemaryandco.com/ for the best brushes, including Chinese ones that I often use (watch out – some brushes are monster expensive and rather amazingly nice) Pentel – for the waterbrushes to put in your pocket (available from suppliers below) Online Art Suppliers for all sorts of art products Jacksons – https://www.jacksonsart.com/ Cass Art – https://www.cassart.co.uk/ Society for All Artists – https://www.saa.co.uk/ (There are many more when you google) Look for… Favourite paints: Winsor & Newton Sennelier Daniel Smith White Nights Favourite pencils (also do paints and plenty of other temptations) An ordinary propelling office pencil Staedtler Derwent (especially the water soluble or inktense ones) Caran d’Ache (especially the water soluble ones) All of the above should also ship worldwide. Of course the USA have their own suppliers, including the charmingly named dickblick.com as well as Utrecht.com, jerrysart.com, usartsupply, allartsupplies.com and many more. As it might take me a little while longer to have written my book on wildlife drawing, you could put this book on your birthday list:- The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling by John Muir Laws. It only came out in 2016 and you could lose yourself in his brilliance and his ideas. Or you could just spend a few more 30secs on that bluetit. Happy sketching. Send me the results. 🙂
I’m painting the amazing Galapagos wildlife – from my sitting room 29/01/2021 | By Mary-Anne Bartlett | 0 Comments Our virtual painting holidays have hit the international press. We are thrilled with The Guardian feature on Art Safari, which shows how much sketching and painting can mean to us, especially during these difficult lockdown months. I was delighted to have a newbie in the group. Journalist Kevin Rushby’s enthusiasm, interest and excitement in learning how to paint is clearly evident in the sketches he made during his short journey with us. “On day one I am sitting in front of my laptop with a motley collection of art equipment, feeling conspicuously like that person who lands in the tropics wearing a woolly jumper and thick socks.” Don’t we all feel a bit like that when we’re faced with a new subject, and a new white page in front of us? Kevin’s summing up his artistic experience in the Galapagos was really special. “I’m beginning to realise how much more ambitious than any earthbound journey this is. We are reorganising our perceptions, our brain architecture. We have jettisoned our hunger to take photographs and instead are looking more deeply.” Thank you for joining us Kevin! I hope that you keep up the drawings from your writing hut. European birds are no less intriguing than greater frigate birds and flightless cormorants! I would love you to read the article, take out your photos and be inspired to paint from them. Please also share The Guardian’s recommendation to take a Virtual Art Safari to all your arty friends. We all need to keep happy and busy. We have another virtual trip to the Galapagos with Mary-Anne in March – book your place now, spaces are limited. Please look out too for the holidays with our other tutors, including Karen Pearson, Vicki Norman, Claudia Myatt, Roger Dellar, Shelly Perkins, Julia Cassels and John Threlfall. It’s great to be developing Virtual Art Safari tours delivered via Zoom to keep our minds travelling and our creativity flowing. I personally love this way of teaching and it has been wonderful to stay in touch with the ever-expanding Art Safari family. I know that we will travel again! We will be painting together around the world again, but this way of learning is also here to stay!
Art Safari Virtual Holidays – how to use Zoom 08/10/2020 (updated 08/10/2020) | By Mary-Anne Bartlett | 0 Comments Most of you have been busy zooming for ages! But in case you haven’t here’s a quick lesson on how to use Zoom for the first time… Zoom is a video-conferencing app that enables you to connect with people over the internet. You are able to see and hear others in the same session as you and interact in a normal conversation with them. Getting started with Zoom Zoom works across multiple devices, including mobiles, tablets, laptops and computers. If you are using a computer, you will need to make sure you have a webcam. You will need the Zoom app. You can either download the app before you start your first session, or you will be prompted to download the app a little further on in the steps. To download the app before you start go to the place on your device where you normally download apps. For Apple devices, ie iPhone or iPad this is the App Store. For all other devices you download apps from the Google Play Store. Search for the word Zoom in your store and a few options will come up. You need to select the Zoom cloud meetings option. Download the app and complete any prompts that your store asks, you should now have the Zoom app on your device. On a computer, go to the website Zoom.us and click ‘Sign up, its free button’ in the top righthand corner. After you enter your e-mail account and password upon signing up for Zoom, you’ll be taken through the process of actually getting the client software. Note: If you’re an individual or you have little need for frequent video conferences, the free Zoom Basic package gives you the ability to chat with up to 100 participants and hold unlimited one-on-one meetings. Be aware, however, that you’re limited to 40 minutes in group meetings. What happens next? The organiser of the Zoom session will send a link to you. This link will give you access to the session. The link will look something like this: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6628591615 They will also send you a Meeting ID which will look something like this: Meeting ID: 662 859 1715 And a meeting a meeting Password which will look something like this: Password: 8BEfyX A few minutes before the meeting is due to start click on the link you have been provided with. The next screen should show an option to Join a Meeting and you need to click it. You may then be asked to type in the Meeting ID and then the Password which you will have been given by the session organiser. You are nearly there now! The next screen will ask if you want to join with video this will allow you to see others in the session and for them to see you, this can be turned on and off during the session if you wish. You will then be asked if you want to join with audio this will allow you to hear others in the session and for them to hear you, again this can be turned on an off during the session if you wish. You should now have gained access to your session. During the zoom session At the bottom of the screen there are some icons: The video camera allows you to turn video on or off The microphone allows you to turn sound on or off The speech bubble icon allows you to send chat (text) messages to other users within a meeting, a private message to an individual user, or you can send a message to an entire group. The host, you can choose who the participants can chat with or to disable chat entirely. Changing the video layout: In the top right corner of the screen click on the Speaker View or Gallery View button to change the view of the meeting participants. Speaker view displays one large picture of the person currently speaking, with smaller pictures of everyone else across the top of the screen that you can scroll through. Gallery view displays smaller pictures of up to 25 people across your screen. For more information – video tutorials and user guides – visit the Zoom Help Centre We hope you enjoy connecting with other artists!
Live virtual Art Safari to Morocco with Vicki Norman 12-14 August 2020 06/08/2020 | By Mary-Anne Bartlett | 0 Comments Join Art Safari tutor Vicki Norman on a virtual holiday in magnificent Morocco! 12, 13, 14 August VIRTUAL HOLIDAY on Zoom. We’ll spend four wonderful days painting the ancient alleyways of the colourful medina, the grandeur of the Atlas mountains and the vast desert valleys of the visual feast that is Morocco! For more information and to book your place, click here today Tuition will include lessons on how to tackle busy market scenes from the Medina and capturing the vast landscapes of this unique landscape.
The Art Safari Cookbook 29/05/2020 (updated 29/05/2020) | By Mary-Anne Bartlett | 0 Comments How about this for an exciting idea – The Art Safari Cookbook!! Yes, we’re writing a cookbook – featuring all the countries we’ve been to – with drawings, photos, stories and recipes! That’s 7 continents of food and art!!! It’s going to be fun, informative, and colourful. The cookbook will make people travel in our minds while they cook. I would like its sales to help raise money to help support those people and conservation projects in our host countries struck by the absence of tourism $s during Covid-19. The book will have contributions from Art Safari guests and also from our tutors. These contributions and memories might be from a special breakfast in the rainforest / villa / dunes or out in the bush, a welcome drink when we arrived on a boat or to a lodge or hotel, a picnic lunch en route between one place and another, or a lunch at an Art Safari workshop here in Suffolk, a snack and a favourite sundowner, a special dinner under the stars, in a restaurant or a hotel banquet. We’re putting the ideas together at the moment, and hope that we can have enough recipes for breakfasts, lunches, snacks, main courses, desserts, drinks etc. We may find that one country has a favourite ingredient, and we could do a little piece just on that (eg ema datsi in Bhutan, or vanilla from Madagascar, or delicious elderflower juice in Austria, or Bull’s Blood wine in Hungary to go with the goulash) or we might find that we had far too much of one thing and still remember the huge halibut from Norway, the squid in Tuscany, the hot spice in Delhi… Between us we will have some fascinating travel stories (not necessarily 100% food related), as well as some arty ideas too. I’m so excited about it – and I might have to try out some of the recipes! best wishes Mary-Anne
Mary-Anne Bartlett Artist in Lockdown 07/05/2020 (updated 29/05/2020) | By Mary-Anne Bartlett | 0 Comments Corona has turned my life upside down. It was a roller-coaster of emotion when everything first ground to a halt. We had to unpick sooo many plans. Three tours had just come to an end, and thankfully most of our guests were back in their home countries, though there was a lot of flight logistics to work out. Thank you for all the messages of support for Art Safari. Now I’m still itching to get back to painting properly. Rescheduling tours and workshops displaced by Covid-19 seems to have taken huge amounts of my time. I’m confident that Art Safari will emerge from lockdown just as strong. We will be ready when you are, and we’re ready to adapt. We’re hoping that regional travel will be possible relatively soon and European travel soon after. I’m feeling amazingly positive in this lovely weather. The office swallows are back – and I have fixed up the swift boxes too. The new website is sooooo nearly ready – it’s taken a year of building! I was quoted in the Telegraph last weekend, encouraging people to take sketching materials out on a walk – there’s so much information you can put into a small sketch that you can then paint when you’re back indoors. I’m also taking time to make quick sketches locally, go through old sketchbooks and photograph sketches and making exhibition plans – something I never have time for normally. Here’s where I should be with some of you next week: Any guesses where it is? Art Safari has been given a small grant to help with running costs during this tough time and (even more pleasing) another small grant from the local ANOB to help run the Suffolk SketchFest here in Woodbridge at the beginning of September (4,5 & 6 September) to which you are of course welcome – I’ll tell you all about it another time. Who knows what the scene will be like then, whether we’ll be socially distanced along the river wall and then have to scuttle back home to upload our paintings into a digital exhibition, or whether it will be possible to run workshops as we’d originally envisaged? Like everyone, for me it’s a game of wait and see, with yoga every day instead of swimming, with time time at home to clear out old files and boxes, to do some diy and dig out the whole garden….and soon to be painting more.
Maxine Relton Artist in Lockdown 07/05/2020 | By Mary-Anne Bartlett | 0 Comments I’ve embarked on a year-long project with other Gloucestershire artists to document a particular nearby spot or object. I’ve chosen the only tree in my garden (a silver birch) which I’m recording in many different ways in the form of a concertina book. My monthly poetry group continues to inspire many new creative projects, including this earlier poem I wrote “in the voice of the artist’s sketchbook”. The Artist’s Sketchbook I wait in silence, one among the many, wait for your knowing hand to recognise my qualities. I have it in me to inspire, for I am born of other practised hands, the craft of centuries. I know the heft and touch, the tone and shape of your desire, your need to anchor your identities. I can be what firms the ground beneath your feet: what links you to the world, your hold on life’s complexities. I give you courage to take risks, make leaps into your dreams, transform the everyday in re-imagined memories. I am your stay against all loss.
Vicki Norman Artist in Lockdown 07/05/2020 | By Mary-Anne Bartlett | 0 Comments Here in Shropshire I’m spending lockdown delivering my workshops live online and creating bite-size lessons for you to stream at home – it’s so exciting! So far I have recorded lessons to help build skills in drawing, brushwork, values, colour and various other painting methods and processes, they will all be available imminently! In between all that, I’m popping out to the garden to enjoy painting the little things that make me smile in the sunshine.
Shelly Perkins Artist in Lockdown 07/05/2020 | By Mary-Anne Bartlett | 0 Comments Here in Worcestershire I have been working back through reference sketches and images from my Art Safari to Zambia last year. It is amazing how evocative the memory of a place and time becomes when viewed through sketches, it’s almost like being there all over again and how I wish I was! – wonderful memories of a wonderful trip! You can watch a Youtube video of the Carmines evolving too. Still, lots of inspiration to work with, there’s a prowling Leopard in progress too..
Alison Street Artist in Lockdown 07/05/2020 | By Mary-Anne Bartlett | 0 Comments I am keeping myself busy in Zambia during this time painting although its taken me a while to get round to doing anything as my head’s been all over the place since January. I’ve been down to the Lower Zambezi a couple of times, I love the bush and we are so lucky to still be able to get about, there’s no lockdown as such here in Zambia although all the lodges are closed so its very quiet. You know my favourite charity is Conservation Lower Zambezi? I raise funds for them every year through my art. I’ve just spent time with the CLZ people and they are struggling with fundraising at the moment with all the lodges closed so I’ve decided to do a small painting every day to sell for $100, first come first served basis. So I’m busy organizing the logistics of that, I’ll put the paintings up on Instagram and Facebook, it will be interesting to see how that goes. I was supposed to be in London for my solo exhibition right now and that was also to raise funds for CLZ, so I will do this instead. My Wild dog painting came about through a commission. Long story, this couple gave me a photo of four of the dogs that they had taken some time ago and wanted a painting. I don’t really like doing commissions so tried to put them off by saying I would have to add another dog, couldn’t have four, etc etc but they wouldn’t be put off. Anyway I had endless trouble with the background cos normal backgrounds are not really my thing. So after three attempts and hating them all I decided to go with my gut and put up what I felt was happening in the world today with wildlife slowly creeping back into our towns and cities. I wanted to leave something to the imagination so not too definitive. I was quite thrilled with the outcome, loving the colours too. Honestly, it was quite weird the way my brush almost went its own way without much thought process from me, it was like a spiritual moment. I know, it sounds a bit wacky!! It turned out that the couple who commissioned the painting didn’t want it after all because of the background, anyway I’ve had other enquiries to buy it. Not sure of the title of the work though, I can’t very well call it ‘Corona Dogs’ can I?