Winters Morning  oil on canvas 36 x 48 inches

Ken Elliott Making it Fine Art Workshop: Moving to the Next Level

www.kenelliott.com

Denver Metro / Castle Rock, CO

Sat-Sun, March 23-24, 2019

2 1/2 days

Complete info and registration

Limited to 6 artists, $390 each   4 spaces left

Open to artists in all media. Ken will discuss strategies for creating better artworks with a variety of common and creative tools.

The workshop will focus the strategies for making better artworks, going to new places in your work and how to make fine art. He will use informative videos and pass on strategies not the literature, but handed down from the very best teachers.

Also, Ken will present simple Photoshop techniques for taking your works to the next level and creating better pathways for finishing your artworks. You will be given a Photoshop instruction guide and have access to Ken's personal photo file of over 1500 inspiring images by various artists.

View the Fine Art Workshop Video

in the class

in the class / oil

in the class / pastel

At Auction: Have Fun Watching James Bond's Aston Martin sell at Christie's for £2.4 million

The big art auctions are very interesting to watch. Heck, it's fun to watch just about any big auction. Here's an interesting example with proceeds going to Doctors Without Borders.
Ken

James Bond’s Aston Martin DB10 sells for £2.4 million
007’s Aston Martin DB10 is the top lot in the first part of Christie’s charity auction of memorabilia from the movie Spectre, with 100 per cent of lots sold.

The first part of Christie’s charity auction of James Bond Spectre memorabilia realised £2,785,500, with ten star lots attracting bids from 25 countries across four continents. The sale was led by 007’s Aston Martin DB10, the top lot, which sold to a bidder in the saleroom for £2,434,500, after four minutes and 42 seconds of competitive bidding.

More about the auction


RESULTS
Final totals from James Bond Spectre: The Auction
Read more

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New Work: Gold Progressions II oil on canvas, 48 x 60 inches

Gold Progressions II,   oil on canvas 48 x 60     $10000 unframed

I've been thinking about this oil for about a year now. In early 2014 I painted a 48 x48 version and ever since I've wanted to do it again as a brighter and larger horizontal.

Gold Progressions I   oil on canvas, 48 x 48   $8950 framed

Doing another version doesn't necessarily make it any easier. I did have that earlier template as a roadmap but happily there were some problems to solve along the way. Each difficulty required solutions that took the painting down another path, adding uniqueness to the new version.

Problems came up right away with the background. There is a lot of space running from left to right and to keep it interesting, three ideas were brought into play. The appeal of that original oil was the glowing blue field and it was the primary reason I wanted to do this bigger version.

Once the blue background was in, the painting was insisting on more interest and complexity. After a couple of weeks experimenting with different ideas a simple solution presented itself. I tried painting in a considerable amount of background yellows on the right, covering about half of the background. It was just too much yellow, so on the left I added a hint of barely discerenable trees with the reds and purples.... too much again.

After letting it all dry, I began again by putting the middle blues back in place and carefully watched what effect it was having - a lovely blue haze was appearing. Once I used the blues to subtract the yellows on the right, a nice solution presented itself. I let the blues outline the yellows and submerged the blues into was was becoming hints of foliage into the left.

It is difficult to see here, but I made sure that the yellows on the ground were different from those in the background.

Once the top trees had the mass and weight they required, I added a variety of colors to provide interest with hints of ambient and direct light in that upper mass.

After starts, stops, dead ends, solutions and and hundreds of marks, these delicate trees came to life, surrounded by a glowing blue haze. It was nice to put it into the frame and watch it breathe and glow.

FYI: Interactive Art Auction Feature - Are You Smarter Than a Billionaire?

Here's an interactive quiz from the NY Times

Take the quiz here

It's always interesting to see what the current art auction markets are doing. Have fun with the interactive quiz. The questions follow below.

Ken

By DANIEL McDERMON Nov. 10, 2015

Via Christie’s

A painting by Amedeo Modigliani, “Nu Couché,” sold on Monday night for $170,405,000, placing it among the most expensive artworks ever purchased at auction. The sale, at Christie’s in New York, saw 34 works change hands for a total of $491 million, including fees. But auctions can be unpredictable. See how you match up below. RELATED ARTICLE

Which of these works of art sold for more at auction in New York in the last week?

PABLO PICASSO

“La Gommeuse,” 1901

OR

PABLO PICASSO

“Nu aux Jambes Croisées,” 1903

YAYOI KUSAMA

“Infinity Nets OPRT,” 2004

OR

DAMIEN HIRST

“Rhodanine,” 2008-11

HENRY MOORE

“Mother and Child With Apple,” Conceived in 1956 and cast during the artist's lifetime

OR

JEAN ARP

“Squelette D'Oiseau,” Conceived in 1947 and cast in 1968

MARK ROTHKO

“No. 6 / Sienna, Orange on Wine,” 1962

OR

MARK ROTHKO

“Untitled (Lavender and Green),” 1952

CLAES OLDENBURG AND COOSJE VAN BRUGGEN

“Leaning Fork With Meatball & Spaghetti III,” 1994

OR

MAURIZIO CATTELAN

“Frank and Jamie,” 2002

ROY LICHTENSTEIN

“Crying Girl,” 1964

OR

ROY LICHTENSTEIN

“Nurse,” 1964

HENRI DE TOULOUSE-LAUTREC

“Au Lit: Le Baiser,” 1892

OR

LUCIAN FREUD

“Naked Portrait on a Red Sofa,” 1989-1991

Note: Listed sale prices include auction fees.


Image credits: Pablo Picasso, “La Gommeuse”: Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York, via Sotheby’s; “Nu aux Jambes Croisées”: Estate of Pablo Picasso / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Yayoi Kusama: Yayoi Kusama; Damien Hirst: Damien Hirst and Science Ltd. All rights reserved / DACS, London / ARS, NY 2015; Henry Moore: Via Sotheby’s; Jean Arp: 2015 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn; Mark Rothko, “No. 6 / Sienna, Orange on Wine” and “Untitled (Lavender and Green)”: 1998 Kate Rothko Prizel & Christopher Rothko / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen: 1994, Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen; Maurizio Cattelan: Maurizio Cattelan; Roy Lichtenstein, “Crying Girl” and “Nurse”: Estate of Roy Lichtenstein; Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec: Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec; Lucian Freud: Via Christie's


Produced by Jon Huang, Alicia DeSantis, Laura O’Neill, Cornelius Schmid

FYI: Who Are the Top 100 Most Collectible Living Artists?

A very interesting article from the Christie's Auction house and ArtNet News by Elieen Kinsella using auction data from ArtNet.

The art market is a Very Big Place.
Ken


Eileen Kinsella, Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Jeff Koons, Balloon Dog (Orange) (1994-2000). 
Photo Courtesy of Indechs.

With the help of the artnet Analytics team, we present the current list from the artnet Price Database, tracking four years' worth of sales data

Presented below are two two intersecting lists. The first presents the highest-selling individual lots for living artists, which contains a number of entries by Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, Peter Doig, and Christopher Wool, to name just a few. (Yayoi Kusama is the only female artist to make the cut.)

Guatier Deblonde, portrait of Yayoi Kusama in her Tokyo studio in 2013. 
Photo: Courtesy of David Zwirner Gallery, New York, NY.

The second list shows the top 100 living artists based on the total value of secondary market sales from January 2011 through mid-October. It ranks artists by the total value of works sold and indicates the number of individual lots. The handful of female artists on this list include Kusama, Cindy Sherman, Julie Mehretu, Cady Noland, and Vija Celmins, among others.

This list also features a number of Chinese contemporary artists who have proved to be top earners in recent years, including Zeng Fanzhi, Cui Ruzhuo, Zhang Xiaogang, and Zhou Chunyu accounting for four, or roughly half, of the top ten.

Also notable is the ranking of Howard Terpning, a painter who is prized by Western art collectors. Terpning is known for creating realistic, highly detailed historic paintings depicting 19th-century Native American life. He ranks at number 91, with cumulative sales of over $22 million for just 83 works.

See the artists who made the list below.

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