More things I have learned in the art world

1. TY – as in ‘TY for retweet’ – means thank you. Omygoodness, I was puzzling over this for aaaaages.

2. Friends and their jobs/creative outputs can suddenly become very relevant to what you are doing.

3. Things that previously didn’t mean an awful lot (the rooms and rooms of paintings at the National Art Gallery) will now take hours to walk around and you’ll actually start to recognise artistic styles. It will make you feel very cool and sophisticated.

4. You will become a little dreamy and imagine your life in watercolour.

5. Sometimes painters of royals (I’m thinking of paintings of Charles II and Elizabeth I in particular) only used another painting to go off, rather than having had a proper session with the sitter. This will result in, frankly, quite unflattering portraits. The one of Elizabeth I made her look totally like a man whereas in the original, she just looked quite stern. The Charles II one – well, he just looked like a slightly grumpy old man. A slightly grumpy old man with a long black wig and a big nose. Did Elizabeth/Charles see these paintings and think, “Gosh, that’s a nice portrait. It’s very like me.”

6. There is a photograph in the National Portrait Gallery where a photographer got loads of actors to sit for a Last Supper reconstruction thing. It is brilliant. You should go and see it. If you live too far, check it out on the NPG website. It’s fabulous.

And those are my extremely insightful observations for today. Enjoy.