“At -25C/-13F, soap bubble mixtures freeze faster than they pop, making for some very fascinating effects!”
“However, frozen bubbles are still very fragile creatures, so I’ve experimented with different recipes to create a durable bubble wall that won’t pop in the slightest breeze: dish soap for the bubbling, corn syrup to thicken the wall, and sugar to help crystallization. I let the mixture chill in the freezer to help speed up the freezing once outside.”
MIXTURE INGREDIENTS FOR YOUR EXPERIMENTING PLEASURE
- 200ml warm water - 35ml corn syrup - 35ml dish soap - 2tbs sugar - chill in the freezer
“One other piece of advice … dress warm! It’s cold out there!”
Thank you to Chris Ratzlaff for sharing his awesome experiment!
“At -25C/-13F, soap bubble mixtures freeze faster than they pop, making for some very fascinating effects!”
“However, frozen bubbles are still very fragile creatures, so I’ve experimented with different recipes to create a durable bubble wall that won’t pop in the slightest breeze: dish soap for the bubbling, corn syrup to thicken the wall, and sugar to help crystallization. I let the mixture chill in the freezer to help speed up the freezing once outside.”
MIXTURE INGREDIENTS FOR YOUR EXPERIMENTING PLEASURE
- 200ml warm water - 35ml corn syrup - 35ml dish soap - 2tbs sugar - chill in the freezer
“One other piece of advice … dress warm! It’s cold out there!”
Thank you to Chris Ratzlaff for sharing his awesome experiment!
Although art competitions ostensibly exist to benefit the artists, the contest holder is always the chief beneficiary, as shown by a local hardware store’s mural contest a few years back.
Murals
The Victor Clothing Company’s Anthony Quinn mural in Los Angeles was quite impressive when I saw it years ago. Since then, murals have come into vogue in Southern Ontario.
A competition was announced: five local artists were selected to design and create their own original 6′ x 6′ murals on the blank wall facing the Elmira Home Hardware Store parking lot.
The way the contest worked, interested folks could vote for their favourites, but voters had to pay for their ballot. In this way, the Home Hardware campaign “raised about $2,500”.
California’s Victor Clothing Company commissioned artists to create the now famous murals.
In comparison, Home Hardware got a wall full of free murals, a reputation both for “supporting local artists” and for providing the community with public art, a charitable donation, and all the accompanying publicity.
The community got some nice public art which remains in reasonably good condition almost seven years later.
And the artists?
They had to undergo a selection process, then conceive an idea, plan out the design, and then actually paint the thing.
Trevor Martin’s winning mural paid him $500; not a terrible return for work he estimates took about 24 hours.
The other four artists each received $100. If it took them each ten hours to paint their murals, they may just about have managed to earn minimum wage. My guess is that each mural took well over ten hours to paint, so except for the winner, none of the artists are likely to have even earned minimum wage.
Pretty good deal, right?
The rest of the money raised was donated to charity.
An argument is usually made that the artists get exposure from a contest like this. In some cases it can be valuable, but artists still need to eat. Plumbers need exposure, too, yet I can’t recall anyone suggesting that they should donate their work for it. Perhaps in future supporting local artists might mean paying them a reasonable amount for their work.
But even if exposure is an important consideration, is a contest like this one the right kind of exposure? Particularly when there is a “winner”, well, we all know what the word for a non-winner is. Does that kind of exposure really help an artist’s career? And who are the judges?
online
These days you can find all manner of art “contests” online. The artist is generally required to herd their family, friends and fans to the contest venue to get them to vote. Most of the ones I’ve seen don’t require a simple voting, but repetitive voting over time. And before people can vote, they have to register, and give up a lot of personal information. (Guess where SPAM comes from…) So again, the voters pay the price. Do you really want to do this to your fan base?
So I have yet to wonder about any net benefit to the artist. Although a contest dangles a prize, is that prize worth the price you have to pay for it?
know what you’re getting into
Before even creating a contest entry, let alone posting your work, always read the contest rules. Any contest submission will necessarily transfer or sharing at least some of the artist’s rights to their own work to the contest holder. [As does posting your work to any website that you yourself don’t control.] Be very sure that you know what you are agreeing to. And that you can live with it. For artists, the main advantage to the proliferation of art contests is that there is always another contest.
Because, after all, the main beneficiary of any contest is always the contest holder. After all, they get to make the rules.
Back in the days before copyright existed, it was not only common for artists to paint copies of famous art to learn how to paint, to learn their craft, but sometimes because that was the only way they could get access to the subjects they wanted to paint.
Take monarchs, for instance.
This is one of the many anonymous copies of the official portraits of Henry VIII.
[I felt that the framing of the digital image was a bit too tight; there wasn’t enough head room. So I’ve digitally reframed the picture, extending the space between the top of Henry’s head and the frame.]
Sitting for a painted portrait was a gruelling task, magnitudes worse than having your photograph taken. Still, it was one of the things that was expected of a monarch in the days before photography. In the 16th Century, the King of England was expected to take some time out of his busy schedule to pose for a official portraits on occasion.
But the King wouldn’t just sit for any artist, he’d only sit for the best.
In the same way movie stars and presidents and monarchs vied for a chance to be immortalized in black and white by Canada’s world class portrait photographer Yousef Karsh in the 20th Century, Henry VIII wanted only the best. Hans Holbein the Younger was a portrait artist good enough to be appointed King’s Painter, and his work immortalized both Henry VIII and his court. The most famous and perhaps most regal painting that Holbein created was on a mural on the wall of the Privy Chamber of the new Whitehall Palace.
“Portrait of Henry VIII … is one of the most iconic images of Henry and is one of the most famed portraits of any British monarch.”
Henry himself was pleased enough with this work that he encouraged other artists to copy the portrait. What that means to both artists and historians of today is that the work was not lost, even though the original of that iconic painting was destroyed by fire in 1698.
But the painting lives on, and continues to be famous today because it was widely copied.
None of these artists would ever have been able to get access to the king, yet being able to copy official portraits undoubtedly gave them the means to make a living in the art field. Many of artists who made these copies never achieved fame of Hans Holbein the Younger, and many of the surviving copies of this and the other paintings of Henry were in fact painted by artists whose names have been lost. The attribution customarily given the copies is “after Hans Holbein the Younger. But although their names have been lost, an important work of art is preserved for the sake of both our history and our culture.
I don’t know any artists who want to see their work lost. Had the copyright laws of today been in place back then, this work would in fact be lost forever.
