Monday 25 August 2008

50th Anniversary of the Death of Ralph Vaughan Williams


I have done a new portrait of Ralph Vaughan Williams for the 50th anniversary of his death tomorrow. The portrait is a photoetching from one of my pencil drawings and has a background of his better known works. The border is a monoprint and represents the 'Lark Ascending'

It's amazing that he is ranked at no1 and no3 in this year's ClassicFM Hall of fame (300 classical pieces ranked according to the listeners' votes).

No1 is his 'Lark Ascending'
No3 is his 'Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis'.

Saturday 23 August 2008

Benjamin Britten on 52composers.com


This week I have been adding more content to the Benjamin Britten pages of my new website 52composers.com

I tried finding some YouTube videos of him. I was surprised how little there is available. There is plenty of other people performing his work but hardly any of him conducting or playing. A few I found had "embedding disabled by request" (by who I wonder?). Anyway I finally got one of him accompanying Peter Pears singing Schubert which I was able to put on the site.

A video I really wanted to feature was one of Dudley Moore at the piano with a parody of Britten accompanying Peter Pears. Brilliant. You used to be able to see it but it has been withdrawn. (I wonder why?)

Friday 15 August 2008

2009 Opera Calendar


I have just finished a 2009 calendar featuring opera composers: Puccini, Mozart, Berlioz, Bellini, Mascagni, Rossini, Bizet, Wagner, Handel, Offenbach, Verdi and Leoncavallo.
It is at cafepress.
I am going to try various POD suppliers to see the differences. I will report here my findings.
Cafepress do three formats for their 12 page calendar
  • Standard Wall Calendar (which I have used)
    page size 11" x 8.5" (11" x 17" when hung)
    100lb cover weight high gloss paper
    wire-o binding
    Jan - Dec 2009
    US holiday dates only
  • Oversize Wall Calendar
    as above except
    page size 17" x 11" (17" x 22" when hung)
  • Vertical Wall Calendar
    page size 11" x 17" (11" x 17" when hung)
    10pt heavyweight high gloss paper
    rest as above.

Tuesday 12 August 2008

New Albeniz portrait

I have 4 of my prints accepted in the International Miniprint exhibition in Cadaques (Spain) this summer. I'll tell you about it soon in another post.

Albeniz was born near there in Camprodon so I decided to do a portrait of him. I have also done a page about him on my new website. To see it click on the above title.

I thought he composed for the guitar as you hear so much of his music on ClassicFM played on the guitar by John Williams and others. However he was a very talented concert pianist and composed for the piano. Many of his pieces have been transcribed very successfully for the guitar.

Just listen, watch amd marvel at the master Segovia playing his "Linares"


Sunday 3 August 2008

52composers.com - My new website

I am building a new website for the series of classical music composer portraits I'm working on.
So far I have been putting all my art into my www.PaulHelm.com site which just isn't getting much traffic and therefore no sales.

I have been building on-line stores at imagekind, art.com, lulu, cafepress, zazzle and various other sites with varying success. These sites are fantastic at providing a Print on Demand service but it is up to you to drive traffic to them in order to get sales. You cannot just build a store and sit back hoping for the dollars to roll in.

Having had some success with the composer portraits I have decided to build a site dedicated just to my composers. This way, if I can generate the interest I will be able to drive traffic to my stores.

I have called it 52composers.com as 52 is an easily remembered number and my plan is to produce one a week for a year. I have done over 40 portraits so far so I will have plenty of work putting them onto the new site.

Having spent a long time evaluating various site building options I have settled on using SBI for my exciting new project. I will keep you informed on progress in this blog.

Take a look at progress so far at www.52composers.com