Monday, November 22, 2010

21st November 2010 - Who's made a mark this week?

Liz Steel in New York - from her second sketchbook on Issuu
Liz Steel (Liz and Borromini) is busy scanning and posting her sketchbooks from her Long Service Holiday (11 weeks) - aka her 'round the world sketching trip/adventure' which finished last month.

Liz has been publishing her complete sketchbooks on issuu - so the first link is to her post and the second link is to the issu publication.  Liz's sketchbooks focus on two things - architecture (she's an architect by day) and tea rooms (she's a complete tea addict) and little stickers associated with places where she's been.  If you've never ever kept a sketchbook as a journal before when on a trip take a look at Liz's.
  • Volume 1 (on issuu) - sketches from the USA, starting with the Urban Sketchers meet-up in Seattle
  • Volume 2 (on issuu) - more sketches from the USA, including Portland, Kansas focusing on New York
  • Volume 3!  (on issuu)- which is all about Scotland (mainly the islands of Lewis and Harris) - and Scottish tea rooms
Meanwhile this is my long overdue post about my meeting up with Liz and Alison Staite (Art Journey) at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in September.

Kew Palace
11 x 17", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Large Moleskine Sketchbook

copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Liz has so far got all the sketchbooks I saw in person - but when she left Kew she was going to the airport to jet off to Italy - so sketching her sketchbook about sketching in Venice and Tuscany is still to come!

If you start in August and read forwards on her blog Liz and Borromini you can see all the posts as they happened.  This is what you can do when you're posting with only a phone to provide text and images!

For those who've not come across Issuu before (like me), it's a leading online digital publishing platform that allows for realistic and customizable viewing of digitally uploaded material, such as portfolios, books, magazine issues, newspapers, and other print media. It also integrates with social networking sites to promote uploaded material.  There's a free option and a pro option.   It's globally oriented (ie not just the USA), the client list is very impressive (we're talking major players) and its growing very fast - check out the numbers.   Time magazine identified it as one of the 50 best sites in 2009 - and you can read the Time review here.  You can follow the issuuu blog here.

I can't tell you any more than that because I'm not using it as yet but after seeing what it does for Liz's sketchbooks (and the client list) I'm going to start exploring in more depth!

[Actually, being an ex-number cruncher, I couldn't wait so published this review of the traffic that the different sites attract this morning on Making A Mark reviews...! My post Online publishing platforms - the numbers compared gave me a big surprise - and will probably surprise you too ]

Art  Blogs

Drawing and sketching
Coloured Pencils and Pastels
  • Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint) is at The 2010 Supreme Show this weekend - which means an awful lot of cats and an awful lot of people who like having drawings and paintings of cats!  I'm always a bit puzzled as to why the Society of Feline Artists don't take a stand there.  Gayle's been pondering on her marketing strategy now she's a full-time professional artist and envisages a change of direction prior to the fairs in 2011
Illustration and Fantasy Art
  • It's fascinating to see how Hugh MacLeod (Gaping Void) pitches for commissions to draw what he refers to as cube grenades
Landscape
Painters and Painting
Art Business and Marketing
  • Yesterday I posted about a very welcome innovation - the Axis Art Map - Cardiff.  Axis hopes to develop Axis Art Maps in other UK cities and regions.  This particular map was developed with the assistance of Arts Council Wales.  Nice to see the Arts Council spending their money on initiaitives of with a practical impact on artists as digital mapping technology takes off.
  • If you're sending or selling artwork as Christmas gifts don't forget you may get some useful tips on my resource site How to pack, post and ship art - Resources for Artists
  • Plus Etsy's Storque Blog has its own tips about how to make an impact in Etsy Success: Packaging for the Holidays
Art and the Economy / Art Collectors
  • You can view the e-catalogue for an auction in London on Tuesday of nineteenth century european paintings on the Sotheby's website. You can also view the video about the auction in which Sotheby’s Head of Department Adrian Biddell as he discusses two outstanding paintings by Joaquín Sorolla in the sale: Pescador, Valencia (Young Fisherman, Valencia), and Niños en la playa (Children Playing on the Beach).  Monet called Sorolla "the master of light".  It includes a wonderful photo of Sorolla's set-up on the beach - not the sort I've often seen in other phtoographs of artists painting and definitely wirth taking a look
Art Competitions and Art Societies

UK Art competitions

This week has been a heavy duty week on Making A Mark in terms of art competitions and their exhibitions.  I don't normally get quite the overlap we have this year between the ING Discerning Eye competition and that of Lynn Painter-Stainers.  Anyway here are all the posts from Making a Mark:
New art prizes
  • the Robert De Niro Sr. Prize is a new yearly $25,000 award funded by the painter's actor son of the same name.  It's aim is to celebrate midcareer artists who have demonstrated outstanding talent in the field of American painting.  The prize will be administered by the Tribeca Film Institute, a nonprofit co- founded by De Niro.  Artists interested in being considered for the prize should email prize@robertdenirosr.com.
The prize will recognize “an American artist whose work over a considerable period of time has made a significant contribution to the field of painting,” according to a press release. A committee of “distinguished individuals in the art world,” as yet unnamed, will select the winner from among three finalists.
Art Exhibitions

UK
USA
Though often well versed in the traditions of Italy and Flanders, artists on the Iberian Peninsula developed their own signature techniques and departed from academic conventions of representing the human figure

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques
Tonality is the quality of light that bathes everything
  • Another use for Issuu - theartleague is the online Art League Catalog 2010-11 (a wide range of visual arts courses in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, Metro Washington, DC). More info: http://school.theartleague.org/.  It makes interesting reading.
Art Galleries and Museums
The new Art of the Americas wing at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is home to more than 5,000 pieces spread over 53 galleries.
Art of the Americas Galleries in the new wing of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Art Supplies
Book reviews
  • Figure Drawing for all it's worth by Andrew Loomis is available on Issuu.  It's very weird - it seems to have loaded in reverse.  certainly the page sequence doesn't work as it should but I guess that won't matter to those who like looking at Andrew Loonis books.
Copyright
The trial between the estate of Joseph Beuys and the Museum Schloss Moyland (p13) illustrates from a legal and an ethical perspective the complications of this entanglement and the difficulties of separating the “document” from the “work”.
Opinion Poll
  • The Making A Mark Poll for November is progressing - you can find links to the dollar and sterling versions of What price is affordable art? in the side column.
Websites, webware and blogging 
and finally........
Twenty years ago this month, Tim Berners-Lee published his proposal for the World Wide Web.
Here's the Official Google Blog with A curious guide to browsers and the web and an online guidebook called “20 Things I Learned about Browsers and the Web.”

Plus this is a link to the website of Christoff Niemann who did the illustrations

3 comments:

  1. Interesting about the MoMA apps. I just posted an MP3 about an artwork in their collection, which I think is a cool new tool - de Kooning's Woman 1.

    Now, to study some of your other links.

    ReplyDelete
  2. some great links this week, thanks! Going to check out that DeNiro award (as an American).

    Feeling slightly old now knowing I was using the internet before the WWW was even proposed! :D (and yes, before there were browsers)

    ReplyDelete
  3. thank you for the timely info on packing!

    ReplyDelete

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