Reply to UKIP's Mr Sen in response to their "Clockgate" open letter to me

By chance yesterday I came across an open letter from UKIP to myself on the UKIP West Lancs website. Since UKIP have denied me a right of reply, I have published my return letter to them below.

EDIT: I omitted to say that, unlike Mr Sen, I did the courtesy of emailing this letter to him more than 24 hours before publicly publishing it. With no acknowledgement and no appearance of my letter on their website as requested, my only recourse was to publish it here and on my blog.

Dear Mr Sen, 
Thank you for your open letter to me which I stumbled across this morning. I do not frequent this website often and am fortunate indeed that I found yourletter and am able to respond.

Most of the points you raise in your letter were discussed with you at length on my facebook page last night, however since you have now deleted all of your comments, along with some of my replies to those comments, I will respond again here. 

  • Regardless of UK copyright law (which guards against theft of all images whether they are created by professional artists, hobby artists or students) it is common courtesy to ask permission before taking an image and using it at will. A simple reverse image search would have brought you right back to my website from where you could have easily contacted me. The answer would have been a polite no, and “Clockgate” as you are now referring to it would never have happened. I am alarmed that even now, in possession of the relevant copyright facts, you still seem to think that it is OK to use the work of students and hobby artists without asking for permission first. 
  • I have NOT known about this for months as you claimed last night in one of your (now deleted) facebook comments, nor have I known about it for more than 6 weeks as you now state. 
  • I contacted the echo just over a week ago as I felt it was important to highlight UKIP’s lack of commitment to your manifesto pledge of ‘Protecting jobs and increasing prosperity’ and the local party’s statement that ‘UKIP will incentivise small businesses’ - not, as you imply, to self publicise or to politicise. 
  • At no time have I claimed any hardship and I have not at any time asked for any financial compensation for your use of my painting.
  • I stress that I do not want my work associated with ANY political party, your being UKIP is completely irrelevant.
  • The UKIP response to the Echo newspaper group acknowledged the image and promised to remove it ASAP. That message was passed on to me last Thursday so you have had a week to take it down, plenty of time to action your website developers. Furthermore, contrary to your (now deleted) facebook comments last night, at no time did I request that my details should be kept from you.
  • I do not deny that I wanted to maximise impact and I stand by my comments on my facebook page; indeed you will notice that I have not deleted any of them. The issue of copyright theft is very important to ordinary working artists and photographers and this kind of thing needs to be brought into the spotlight.
  • If visitors to my facebook page feel strongly enough to contact you then that is their absolute democratic right. 


Now addressing your reporter’s points in the blog post but not included in your letter to me.

  • The article was not printed in the Liverpool Echo, only in the smaller Ormskirk Advertiser - a weekly publication relevant to the people of Ormskirk. 
  • It really does not matter how much of your website the image occupies, it was still used without permission and I find your unwillingness to acknowledge this fact disconcerting. Again, it doesn’t matter that the piece’s title and my name were missing – a quick and easy reverse image search would have found me. 
  • Further, if you click on the Pinterest link that you have provided in your blog post you will be taken directly to my old shop. This shop is now empty but my name is very clearly provided along with contact details and a redirection to find my new shop. 
  • I only came across your open letter to me by chance. You posted some, but not all, of the content on my facebook page last night, content which you have now deleted.


Finally, as a dedicated mother myself, I am utterly horrified that you have brought your 3 year old daughter into this discussion. Regardless of whether your wife and daughter chose the image for the banner, it was very clearly your decision to use it on your website. I find it appalling that you feel it is acceptable to hide behind your 3 year old, exposing her to media attention in this way. I sincerely hope that you have not made her feel in any way to blame for her father’s current predicament. 

Since there is no way for me to create a login ID in order to publically respond on your blog I would like to exercise my right of reply and expect to have this letter published in full within 24 hours alongside your open letter to me. 

If you’d like to communicate with me, please feel free to write to me via email on StephanieGuyFineArt@gmail.com – something you could quite easily have done all along if only you had done that reverse image search. 

Kind regards,
Stephanie Guy

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You can read Mr Sen's letter to me here 

West Lancs UKIP have stolen my Ormskirk Clock Tower image to use on their website!

West Lancs UKIP have stolen my Ormskirk Clock Tower image to use on their website!

They didn't ask for permission and didn't credit me as the artist. Supporting local businesses? I think not. They have apologised but still not taken it down - why do they think that this is OK?

This is the image



And this is their website

http://www.ukipwestlancs.org/

They've had a week to take it down and it's still there. I'm not a happy bunny!

Sketch Diary January 2015

Following on from my previous blog post about my new sketch diary here are my entries up to the 1st of February 2015.

Week One

Week Two

Week Three

Week Four

Week Five

I'm really enjoying this challenge. My aim is to complete each day's sketch on the right day within a maximum of 15 minutes, and although I have to confess that on a couple of occasions I've done the sketch the next day, it's going really well so far.

It can be tricky to find something relevant every day - the process of choosing something and then drawing it is making me really appreciate the every day mundane things in life. There isn't something exciting happening every day but there is always something sketchable to be found - shopping for a new radio; cooking dinner; spending 2 hours getting a bike on the roof of my car in the cold (and hail); my daffodils going from fully closed to fully in bloom in just 2 days and so on - all worthy subjects!

It's not too late to join me - grab a bargain diary and get sketching!

Keeping a sketch diary

A Happy New Year to all my readers, I hope you all enjoyed the festivities! I had a lovely time with my family and friends, it was kind of sad to take down the decorations today.

What was your best Christmas present? I have two favourites - one was a blackboard mug which is surprisingly good fun, but the one I want to show you today is this:



and inside it looks like this...




I'm super excited about this - there's just enough space for me to record my year in sketches! This is an idea that we saw in the museum of life in Leamington Spa, where a lady from bygone times kept a sketch diary of all her social outings. It was really very interesting and much easier to browse than a written diary.

My diary's very first outing was to Costa Coffee in Ormskirk, one of my daughter's favourite destinations for completing homework and revising for exams.



By the end of the first week it looks like this:



Tuesday: my budgies Chiquitita and Lollipop

Wednesday (New Year's Eve): Jules Holland's Hootenanny - I love that program!

Thursday (New Year's Day): a cup of tea in my Edwardian teacup; our handmade chinese lantern fairy lights that we bought in Germany just before Christmas; and a fox screen cleaner that our Xmas house guest forgot to take back to the USA with her :( 

Friday: a gorgeous fox red labrador that daughter was puppy sitting

Saturday: a small part of our family New Year's meal and my birthday scooter (enjoyed by most of the oldies and only a couple of the younger more self concious adults of the family) 

Sunday: surprise surprise, we're back in Costa - the Maghull one this time for a change :D


I do hope you like seeing my sketches. I'll show you some more over the course of the year here on my blog and will be showing more regular updates over on my Stephanie Guy Fine Art facebook page

Did you get any good arty Christmas gifts this year? Share your favourite ones with me in the comments!

Dolls House and Miniature Scene

Whoopedidoop!! The "Dolls House and Miniature Scene" Christmas edition magazine is out and I have a two page spread in it all about me and my mini paintings 

I'll be writing a bi-monthly piece on how to reproduce old paintings in miniature starting with Van Gogh's Sunflowers which will be in the January edition, and working my way through 7 famous paintings, all in a simple to follow format with lots of tips and techniques.




You can get hold of a copy here and follow their facebook page here.

And of course you can follow my very own facebook page here!

Derwent Graphik Line Painter Review

Last week I treated myself to a couple of new sketching pens.

I've been torn between the Derwent Graphik Line Painters and the Winsor and Newton Watercolour Markers, and after a coule of trips to Rennies Art Shop in Liverpool where they very helpfully let me try them both, I decided to go for the line painters on the grounds that the drawn lines were easier to wash away.

I chose 2 pens: Brilliant Blue and White.

I wanted to use the white pen against a dark background to give a striking and luminescent effect, so I began by painting card with dark blue, red and purple acrylic paint.

Once the acrylic background was dry, I opened my white pen. The ink is dispensed through a nib operated by depressing it slightly, and once it began to flow I found I could get a lovely fine line that washed out very nicely with my waterbrush. However after a very short time the flow stopped and I had to gently depress the nib again....at which point the pen started to blob and drip. Fortunately I'm used to working fairly loosely with my paints and am very fond of flicking paint around, so just worked the blobs into my painting.






I'm very much into sketching whilst I'm out and about, one of my favourite activities is drinking coffee and painting in my local coffee shop. Sadly this pen isn't going to be accompanying me on many of my painting adventures...the second painting took far too long to dry, over half an hour. This is too long for me to wait, and I ended up carrying it around the shops with me in my hand until it was dry enough to pack away.





With the blue pen I chose to paint an owl that I had seen the same day that I bought the pens. The blue lines did not wash away quite as well on my 300gsm "NOT surfaced" watercolour paper, and to make adequate washes I had to wet the paper first and then very gently drop ink in, then wash it away. Not ideal, but not insurmountable!




The main problem I had with my blue pen was that the next time I came to use it, the ink would not flow at all. If I depressed the nib I got blobs but no flow - so I have taken that pen back for a refund.

I decided to keep the white pen for adding highlights to my work as it really is very very white, but on the whole I cannot recommend these pens.

Taking product photos on a budget

Taking photos for on line selling is a big problem for many sellers, especially when there isn't a lot of money around to buy fancy light boxes etc.

So I thought I'd show you my photographic "studio" set up and a selection of my product shots, and explain how I get there with minimal cost.

My biggest sellers on line are small paintings for miniature collections and dolls houses. Folk who are new to mini paintings often don't know how to display them, so for my first product shot I like to show one on an easel on its own - that one usually takes centre stage in my product listings.



My easel is made out of matchsticks - the instructions for you to have a go at making your own are here.

Next I usually take a couple of context shots - here I've used one of our many Sylvanian Families rabbits in one photo and a coin in the other to give an idea of size. Sometimes I include a photo of my fingers holding the painting but the light has to be good enough for a quick snap to work well as I'm not very good at keeping still!









Alternatively I sometimes show them propped against a pebble







They look quite good don't they? So how do I do it without a light box?


My photographic "studio" is simply a piece of white watercolour paper to use as the background, a piece of white glossy foam core mountboard (or matt, as some of our friends around the world call it) to use as a reflective sheet to increase the light. and a camera on a firm surface. Depending on the light I use these in different ways.

[I only own one camera so the next 2 photos were taken with my phone camera so that I could show you my proper camera in action.]

  • If the natural light is very bad (dark clouds) I set up on a stool by the window like this, with the mountboard as the base and the watercolour paper behind. There's plenty of reflected light in this set up.







  • If the light is brighter but not sunny (white clouds) then I set up on my mantle piece with a tripod like this. I just hold the glossy mountboard so that I can adjust the angle to get the correct amount of reflected light.





  • And if the light is good (sunny day) then I don't use the glossy reflector at all.



I like to have my paintings slightly backlit - this helps make the background appear less grey. In both of these set ups the window is on the right hand side and the paintings are turned with their backs ever so slightly to the window.

And I always use either a tripod or a flat surface to put the camera on and use a 2 second delay to eliminate camera shake so that I get a nice clear image. This is SO important - if your photo is blurred how can anyone see how beautiful your product is?

While we're on the subject of cameras, I use a compact bridge camera that I was lucky enough to win,, however a simple point and shoot camera is just fine. The important thing is to be able to have that 2 second delay in between you pressing the shoot button and it taking the photo.

After taking the photos I head over to my pc and I ALWAYS do some editing in Corel Paintshop Pro, taking great care to that my photo looks as good as, but not better than, the painting. I'm very careful to make sure that my customers are not going to be disappointed - I'd far rather they thought "wow this is amazing, so much better than the online photo"!

  • I know my paintings are square or rectangular but sometimes the camera angle turns them into odd shapes - if this has happened then I perform a perspective correction.
  • I adjust the white balance, saturation, lights and darks so that the colours in the photo of the painting appear more like the real thing. This can take 10 to 15 minutes per painting to get right!
  • I crop my photo to a square to give a nice contemporary feel.

I'm sure you can do the same sort of editing in Photoshop although I've never got my head around that one. And if you don't have either of those you can download Picassa for free - there's a one click photo processing button that works wonders.


You can see how I use all three shots in my product listing here.


I really do hope that you found this article interesting and useful for your own product shots. Feel free to share with your online shop buddies, and do please leave me a comment to either let me know how you get on or to share your own top tips too!