Colin Ruffell

THE FINE ART TRADE GUILD In a couple of recent blog posts I have mentioned the Fine Art Trade Guild. In particular the Guild standards for publishing prints, and the original art register OAR. Both were relevant to my blog posts. Now this invites the question as to what the Guild is and whether they do much else. FATG logo So here goes, background first; The Fine Art Trade Guild was formed in 1910 as the successor to the 1847 Printsellers’ Association, set up to oversee the f

GICLEE IS STILL THE BEST THING SINCE SLICED BREAD... I wrote a blog post about giclee printing a couple of years ago. It claimed that giclee is the best thing since sliced bread. That post is still very relevant. You can see the link at the bottom of this post. Epson 9600 and 7600 fine art printers So what is it? Giclee is really high-quality inkjet printing. Yes really high-quality, and yes it really is the best thing since sliced bread. For artists, art lovers, and art coll

OPEN STUDIOS AND OPEN HOUSES This blog-post is about ‘Open Studios’ and ‘Artist’s Open Houses’. Open Studios is an established system that artists have long used to encourage their prospective collectors. Whereas ‘Artist’s Open Houses’ is much more recent. Artist’s Open House History. The basic method of interesting customer/collectors is very old indeed. An artist operating from a studio in Italy or Holland, hundreds of years ago, would invite patrons into his workplace to s

from ‘Art and Framing Today’ magazine April 2018 Artist and Guild Past Master Colin Ruffell tackles the complex subject of intellectual property theft in the art world. Copying: Homage COPYING is it HOMAGE, PLAGIARISM or FRAUD? If an artist makes artwork that looks rather like another artist’s work, what then? Isn’t it flattering homage if an artist copies your work? Was the influence of the first artist on the second a good thing? Or is blatant copying a serious threat or ev

Right Brain Left Brain … creativity v logic The ‘right-brain v left-brain’ idea suggests that we artists thrive by using our creative right-brain while all of you ‘non-artists’ lose your right-brain creativity as you become adults. A good quote here is the Picasso one where he says that ‘all children are artists but the problem is how to remain one when we grow up.’ The responsibilities of adulthood, parenthood, contribution to society, and earning a living, challenge us with

RED, GREEN, BLUE CONES and COLOUR BLINDNESS Colour blindness (originally called ‘daltonism’ after John Dalton) There are different types of colour blindness, the most common are protanopia (reduced sensitivitiy to red light) and deuteranopia (reduced sensitivity to green light), which are collectively known as red-green blindness. These people have problems distinguishing between reds, greens, browns and oranges. Tritanopia (reduced sensitivity to blue and yellow light) is ex