5th December 2010: Who's made a mark this week?

A satellite image of a snow-covered UK taken from NASA's Terra satellite  

Photograph: University of Dundee/PA

The snow made quite a mark on the UK this week.  According to one commentator we are entering a mini Ice-Age.  All I know is that the New Hampshire snow is currently sitting on the north of England and Scotland.

Anyway what it is doing is triggering some snow painting!  I rounded up some more posts about snow painting and listed them in More about Painting Snow over on The Art of the Landscape.  Here's one of a street in Brecon by Rob Ibjema (Painting Wales)

Brecon Road by Rob Ibjema (Painting Wales)

Art Blogs

Art and Advent Calendars

• Heraclitean Fire is doing an advent calendar of paintings for December. Neat idea 
• Jo Castillo has made Jo's 2011 Art Calendar
• Michael Chesley Johnson also has a calendar for 2011

More of you may have produced one - but you haven't said so on your blogs!

Drawing and sketching

• I hadn't heard about NaNoDrawMo before but loved  Pete Scully's (petescully) 50 drawings of fire hydrants and other metal pipes that come out of the ground or the wall in some cases in November! the little fifty
• all those who managed to produce 50 drawings got to post in this thread on the Flick Group NaNoDrawMo 2010
• Check out Laura's (Laurelines) palette and sketching kits for Norway - see A little taste of Norway in our garden! A palette for Norway, too!

Coloured Pencils and Pastels

• Canadian coloured pencil artists finally have an online presence for their very own coloured pencil society - The Coloured Pencil Society of Canada which you find at http://colouredpencilcanada.ca/.  I'll be posting more about this new organisation soon.
• Underpainting Possibilities for Pastel Paintings by Richard McKinley (Pastel Pointers). Congrats to Richard on his new book getting listed in top 10 new art books in November - and it doesn't even publish until the 15th of December.
• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) has posted a video about wax crayons are made - it's quite mesmirising.
• Ester Roi has uploaded some videos to YouTube which show Layering Artist Crayon on Colourfix Paper - Exercises on Colourfix Paper

Art Business and Marketing

• I gave The Art Business - Resources for Visual Artists a major overhaul this week.  It was getting way too big for one page so it's now divided into sections with each section on its own page.  Plus I sorted out the running order so that information was grouped in a more logical order.  These are links to the new pages:
• THE BASICS
• TECHIE TIPS FOR ARTISTS
• MARKET & SELL YOUR ART
• ARTISTS BLOGS & WEBSITES
• COPYRIGHT FOR ARTISTS
• TIPS: SPECIFIC COUNTRIES
• Etsy's Storque blog has some posts which I will be adding into my art business site and other sites about selling art online
• a reminder post The Etsy Seller Handbook: All Our How-To's About Selling
• plus a post about How-To: Sell Local
• More Holiday Art Selling Tips but this time by Renee Phillips The Artrepreneur Coach
• Guess who The world's worst boss is?  Posted by Seth Godin at Seth's Blog
• to finish this week's art business highlight, I'd like a little toot for my resources for artists site How to write an Artist's Statement which had well over 1,000 visits this week.  Thank you to whoever caused this surge which is very unusual at this time of year!

Art Competitions and Art Societies

• The National Portrait Gallery in London published the CALL FOR ENTRIES: BP Portrait Award 2011
• However Call for Entries - CPSA 2011 is getting a bit ahead of itself!
• This was my REVIEW: New English Art Club Annual exhibition 2010

Art Exhibitions and art fairs

UK

• The Guardian highlighted a new exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery about the Government Art Collection from June next year until September 2012.
• Government Art Collection to go under public scrutiny for first time Peter Mandelson, Nick Clegg and Samantha Cameron among guest curators for exhibition of works normally housed in embassies and ministries
• Government Art Collection faces the public - a slideshow
• The Dulwich Picture Gallery has announced it will be marking its 200th anniversary in 2011 with an exhibition of  specially loaned paintings for a month at a time by artists such as Velázquez, El Greco, Rembrandt, Constable and David Hockney.  A self-portrait by van Gogh will be Mr July!
  
• Masterpiece a Month: Presiding Genius - will take place between 9 January 2011 - 31 December 2011 will feature a loan masterpiece every month in star position
• they also have one of the more unlikely pairings - with Twombly and Poussin: Arcadian Painters 29 June 2011 - 25 September 2011

USA

• The art world has gone to Art Basel Miami Beach although I have to confess I tend to regard this as tedium of the first order and I don't read any of the articles.
• In New York Sargent and Impressionism is on at the Adelson Galleries - buit closes 18th December

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

Workshops

• Michael Chesley Johnson's (Plein Air Painter's Blog) 
• The Artist's Magazine is resurrecting points made in past articles of magazines - hence:
• Tip File: Ways to Maximize Your Next Drawing Class (part 1)
• Tip File: Ways to Maximize Your Next Drawing Class (part 2)

Tutorials, tips and techniques

• organising an exhibition part 1 venue, timing, opening hours, sharing the work and making ground rulesVivien Blackburn (Painting Prints and Stuff) provides excellent advice about the planning process and what's involved

Art Galleries and Museums

• The Art Newspaper highlights a Proposed scheme for reforming museum deaccessioning.  This other ideas for the reform of deaccessioning will be debated at the National Gallery in London on 10 May 2011

Art History/ Art Crime

• A couple of posts about John Singer Sargent
• I loved the story which James Gurney highlights about John Singer Sargent and his habit of talking to himself while painting - see "Mutter and Growl"
• Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) highlights the new exhibition at the Adelson Galleries in New York in Sargent and Impressionism and makes the important point that Sargent was not an Impressionist but rather a painterly Realist.
• 271 unknown Pablo Picasso paintings and drawings discovered in France - can you believe it?
• In Spain meanwhile Picassos were disappearing - see this Guartdian artuicle Thieves drive away from warehouse in Spain with €5m of artworks.  Sculptures and paintings in stolen van include pieces by Pablo Picasso, Fernando Botero and Eduardo Chillida

Art Studios

• Artists & Illustrators Magazine have a post about visiting the studios of members of the Royal Academy - A Snooper's Paradise

Art Supplies

• This is an article on the Wuinsor & Newton website about the palette used by famous British artist JMW Turner

Book reviews

• James on publication day! Release Day for Color and Light
• Makingamark's Top Ten Art Books in November highlights how "Color & Light: has shot to the top of the charts.  Looks as if a lot of people are giving themselves an early Christmas .  I certainly think it's going to become one of the classic instruction books.

Opinion Poll

• On Tuesday I published the results of the November Making A Mark Oinion Poll - What price is affordable art? (Poll Results)
• The Making A Mark Opinion Poll for December is asks Are you selling or giving art for Christmas?

Websites, webware and blogging

• 8 quick tips for designinga  great website is very accessible and provides some great and simple tips for the design challenged
• Growing Your List: Improving Engagement is Feedblitz's latest post in a series about list building.

In this article you will learn about:

• Quality vs. quantity.
• Measuring engagement.
• The human and technical factors that affect engagement.
• The role of branding.
• Subject lines.
• Focusing your list.
• Custom fields, segmentation and personalization.

• A new study about happiness indicates that the more our minds wander, the less happy we are.  So one response is an article about 8 Ways to Control Your Internet Addiction

and finally........

I feel like I'm doing too much again - and these Sunday posts have started getting later and later (which makes for one easy New Year's Resolution), however this month and this week marks the start of  the Making A Mark: End of Year Review 2010

Which in turn means you get the opportunity to says lots of nice things about the art bloggers who you have been most impressed by or enjoyed the most in 2010......for the Making A Mark Awards 2010 - coming up!