Simple Step-by-step Guide to Posting a Blog

Publishing a post on our blog is very simple, and this post aims to show you how in easy step-by-step stages.

First of all, you need to have 'contributor' status - just ask me at the next meeting or email at the club, and I'll send you an invite. Just follow the instructions in the email and click 'accept' and you will be up and running.

To create your first post, navigate to our blog pages ( http://marketharboroughartclub.blogspot.co.uk/ ) and click on the orange 'B' in the top left-hand corner (fig.1).

fig.1

This will bring you to the dashboard page that lists all the blogs you can contribute to. You will probably only see the club's blog if you need this tutorial. Next click on the new post icon (orange pencil in fig2.) This will bring up the post editor, where the first thing you need to do is enter the title (1 in fig.3). Now you are ready to type your article in the large box (2 in fig.3)

fig.2

You use can any of the tools in the toolbar across the top of the editor to format your text, or if you prefer, use your usual text editor/word processor and just paste it here. To add an image or photo, click on the little picture icon (after the 'link' button in the toolbar). Now you need to tell the editor where to get the image from, by selecting from the list on the left, or upload from your computer by selecting the 'choose files' button  to the right.

fig3

Once you've uploaded your image(s), select the one(s) you want so they have a thick blue border around them, then click on 'add selected' at the bottom right. They will now appear in your blog post, where you can drag them to where you need them or add a caption.

Don't forget to spell check your post by clicking on the ABC icon in the toolbar. You can preview your post before publishing by using the 'preview' button along the top of the page. This will show the post in another tab, if you are happy with it, close the tab, and then click on the 'publish' button highlighted in orange.
Your post will now appear along with the others in our blog.

Holiday sketch book, February 2012.

We have just enjoyed a cruise to the Caribbean. Whenever I go on holiday

I take a sketch book and a few pens, watercolour pencils and my small

travellers’ watercolour box. They make a light, easily packed painting gear

and for every drawing I usually write the day’s journal. It helps my memory. I

tend to use a pen, which is not permanent, one which will bleed when water

is added. This helps with tones. I usually only get at the most 15 minutes to

get down an impression and then paint later that day whilst it is fresh in my

memory, aided by a photograph of the location.  I suppose I should try 
to use some of these sketches to make a larger completed painting

later when at home.

 

I have attached a look at my recent trip’s sketchbook,

when we were on the island of Antigua. It’s a view of Nelson’s dockyard from Shirley battery point. The bus driver had given us 15 minutes to look around. Nelson commanded the Windward Islands from this base protected by artillery batteries at this point, and others, all able to communicate about French ships approaching, using signal flags. 




                                        
The Naval dockyard is now an interesting museum and docking for some very expensive yachts. 
I use a Daler Rowney 150g/m2 acid free cartridge paper, A5 landscape sketch book, fully bound. It allows me to paint over two pages .I won’t buy one with a ring binding.

The painting on the left here is a watercolour painting on ‘proper’ paper that I did on the previous cruise to St Petersburg. June 2011. That was a different experience but a great one. At least the paint didn't dry so quickly as in the Caribbean where it was a glorious 80 degrees every day we were there, away from the winter blues at home!

Catherine the Great's Palace,St Petersburg  

Abstraction

As our speaker did not turn up at our last meeting, vice-chairman David quickly organised an impromptu workshop, where we were each given a sheet of paper and some artists leaflets and asked to create an abstraction of the artist's work. We were more or less left to our own idea of what constitutes an 'abstraction', other than it should be something very simple based on the original work.







As I feel that art itself is for the most part an abstraction from life, I decided to do an abstraction of a photograph of the artist; well two actually as, these were speedy sketches!




Andrej Kahn was really just a straight sketch of the artist in biro and probably not really anything like what an 'abstraction' should be, but most of us were working in the dark here.


At this point I had a rethink, and set about my interpretation of 'abstraction' with the second drawing of Marc Chagall. This I think is was the very minimum I could bring the photograph down to without losing a likeness for the character, though I know that some talented artists can do just a couple of squiggles and it looks like the subject!


Well, I think we learned something from the evening, even if our speaker didn't turn up, and most of us got some enjoyment from it.