Favicon Mosaic Gallery

Project Icon was launched today with a palette of Favicons from around the world. The concept of the project is to create 'paintings' from all the coloured favicons. The first painting due in May or June will depend on the number of Favicons submitted to art4arts8.
If you are reading this and wondering 'what is a favicon?', it is the small image that sits next to the web address at the top of your browser. These tiny pieces of art are also next to the links in you Bookmarked pages. Favicons are either business logos or inspired pieces of minature art by website developers. If you need a favicon for your website or blog, you can easily create one here.
This blog image shows a small snapshot of the favicons gallery. You can already see that the variety of colours would be pretty cool for creating a painting from these tiny pics. Check out Project Icon and submit your Favicon to the project!

Web Design - Which Screen Resolution?

When designing a website it is important to take into consideration the different screen resolutions used by internet users. But a website that has been designed for 'modern' screens, that is 1024 pixels wide or wider, will not look good on the older screen resolutions such as 800 x 600 pixels. Such designs create a very annoying horizontal scroll bar, which does not allow user-friendly browsing. The latest figures suggest that 93% use screen resolutions of 1024 plus. For web designs by art4arts8, I have purposefully targeted the 7% minority. When considering the millions of internet users across the globe, this 7% works out to be an awful lot of people! Until the figure falls below 1%, I think web designs should take this into account. For the full facts and figures, click here.

Combining art with web design

The art4arts8 website is now on its fifth iteration. It started out using a pretty dull free website builder but I soon got fed up with lack of utility and horrible advertising features. It was time to do something about it. Over the years, a working knowledge of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) allowed the creation of websites that were to my liking. However, every now and again I get tired of the look and need a yet another change. The refreshed art4arts8 website will not only feature original art on sale but a new web design section. The art pages are currently being developed to provide a simple gallery for the paintings.

Aviation Art - Spitfire and FW 190

Another awesome aviation drawing from James Baldwin has been placed on the website. The perspective is unusual for an aviation art piece and this drawing of a Spitfire and Focke Wulf 190 really does capture the close combat experienced by World War II fighter pilots. Also, it is unusual to find a Spitfire drawing of one of the Polish squadrons of that time. Hopefully, limited edition prints will be available soon. Great work James!

The Last of The Few

For some reason, I thought I would have a go at painting some Aviation Art in watercolour. This genre is definitely more difficult than I thought it would be. First, when painting with watercolours there is little room for mistake, unlike with oil or acrylics with which mistakes can be painted over. My main issue was to get the Spitfire looking like a Spitfire! This Spit probably has a few flaws in the eyes of an aircraft-spotter or Spitfire enthusiast but what the heck. It is near impossible to add detail with watercolour. I'd welcome any comments if any blog-readers happen find the Art4Arts8 blog.

Art4Arts8 copied on ebay

In a way I'm flattered that another 'artist' should copy my paintings. His mistake was to try to sell them on ebay as original works. Therefore, flattered no, surprised yes, cheesed off YES. I work in an academic environment in which plagiarism is the biggest crime and, if students are caught then they are thrown off the Degree course. The Oxford English Dictionary defines plagiarism as 'to take and use another's work as one's own'.

Don't take my word for it, see for yourself and make up your own mind. The first image, dated 2007, has been on the Art4arts8 website since then. The second image, dated 08, was on ebay this week. The only originality of the so called artist was the third tree and putting the signature in the right hand corner instead of the left.

Had this been a single event, one could argue that it was purely coincidence. But no. The same 'artist' then copied another painting from the art4arts8 website and again described this imitation as 'original'. Unfortunately, ebay is now so huge and therefore not in a position to regulate what is sold on the site. The bottom line for ebay customers is that original art on ebay may not be what it seems, particularly from MTW (see signature on the copy). This is a great shame because there are many genuine, original and good artists trying to make a crust from their work.

Acrylic Painting on the BBC

Until now I had not searched the BBC for art. It's amazing what is on the site. Of interest was painting with acrylics which has been a new adventure for me. In addition to pop art, like Bob Marley below, my focus has been on nudes. Using the same technique as described with Bob, the subject only strikes you when the black paint is applied. The effect is good for paintings of all sizes. The smallest I have done was 5 x 3 inches and the largest, 5 x 3 feet. I think I may be obsessed with the technique, or is it the subject!? Wasn't it Renoir that said, 'When I've painted a woman's bottom so that I want to touch it, then the painting is finished.' ?