The Art of Lavina Marie: materials

For my current Work and Society class, I'm undertaking a research project concerning art and copyright - "the ugly side of art", as my friend called it. As I scoured the library for sources, I came across a book that pretty much has everything that I need; entitled Legal Guide for the Visual Artist and authored by Tad Crawford, the book is a complete 101 with regard to the need and acquisition of copyright for artwork. I'm surprised at how complicated the legal side of art can be... and how daft I am at this stuff, basically :|

Here are some things that I've discovered:

Apparently, there are two kinds of copyright that can be attributed to an artwork: common law, and statutory. Common law copyright ensures protection of an artwork as soon as it is created, and until the work is published, at which protection will be terminated; and statutory copyright protects artworks that have been registered or published with copyright notice;
Artists do not only possess the claim to legal rights, they also possess inherent moral rights that exist independently of legal rights. These moral rights ensure that an artist can demand or refuse recognition of authorship - of a distributed work, say, or a distorted version of his or her own work;
Since I plan to sell my work some day, I should, according to Crawford, first produce written contracts indicating items akin to a library card: my name, purchaser's name, date, title, description of the artwork, price, sales tax due, total amount payable. The receipt, formally known as Bill of Sale, acts as a record of transaction as well as a means of keeping track of sales, so if a painting gets lost somehow (knock on wood), you can use the Bill of Sale as a sort of recourse to insurance coverage.

It's all very technical, what I've gathered so far, but very interesting, and it makes sense; I always thought when someone buys your painting, you just give it to them :P Shows how little I know! I can't wait to thoroughly read the book.

Speaking of selling works, I mentioned before that I'm working on my future exhibit pieces. Here's the sneak peek I promised:

Haha, you can see how messy I am when I paint; usually I just paint the areas that appeal to me at
the moment, and then I work my way around. :3

Also, I recently bought varnish and a giant paintbrush to paint the varnish with, but I discovered that the brush is less than ideal (I got one with course bristles when it should have been soft). I'm trying to comb the internet looking for directions on how to use this particular brand of varnish (the bottle label doesn't give any), but without much luck. I figure I'm just going to test it out first before applying it to my landscape.

Speaking of art materials, I plan to invest in paint retarder, which slows down the drying time of paint. Acrylics dry incredibly fast, and it usually happens that while I'm painting a color I mixed, the mixture itself dries faster than I need it to - and this can get slightly frustrating for me especially because I mix on the canvas, not on a palette.

I'd better get back to studying; to think I have only six weeks of school left (six weeks!!). Hope you're all doing well, readers! :)

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Eep, I suck at watercolors :(

Hello, everyone! I mentioned in my previous post that I'd talk about watercolor pencils; the ones that I have (or borrowed, rather) are a 36-pencil Derwent set, one of my favorite brands of art pencils.

Now, watercolors have never really been my forte (and I don't think they ever will be!), but I find these watercolor pencils easy to handle because they act just like ordinary pencils, which I'm already familiar with. Funny thing is, though, I use them like anything but pencils; the way I paint with them is the way I paint with my acrylics, that is, straight from the tube - or, in this case, straight from the tip of the pencil.

They're fun to use, but of course they've got their cons; for one thing, they're not really suitable for drawing details, especially if you're using textured paper - which is most watercolor paper, really. Even if I sharpen the pencils to a point, (for which I always use a blade/ cutter rather than an actual sharpener; you lose less lead that way, apparently), they still leave a rather granulated trail on the paper. Also, when you wet a particularly large penciled area, the lead tends to bunch up at the edge of the water, creating an outline darker than the rest of the area, and this becomes a problem especially when you want to do some smooth overlapping:

Thus I stick to taking the paint straight off the pencil tip; it achieves a much cleaner effect, in my opinion. But I'm not really one to talk, I actually think I suck at watercolors. For the painting above, I was completely unsure of myself when I was working on it; there were so many times I paused and thought, 'What am I doing?' I'm sure you can see my struggle in the painting; the face is completely botched because I had/ have no idea which colors constitute to skin color. Well, it's fun to do, nonetheless, enough for me to continue painting it to its finish. I still enjoy myself for the most part, and at least I get some practice out of it. I'm definitely going to try more; can't let all those pencils and watercolor paper I bought go to waste!

By the way, I made a Flickr account for my artworks; I have some artworks posted there that can't be seen in this blog, so please check them out here! :) Also, a very BIG hug to my new followers, I'm so happy you like my work! Please do drop a hello now and then :) Take care!

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