The Thinking Blogger Award

I'm ever so chuffed to find that Susan Borgas (Arts and Stuff) thinks I should be awarded a Thinking Blogger Award.

However I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, I know the award is sincerely meant partly because Susan is a blogging buddy but mainly because I would have personally nominated some of those on Susan's list of thinking bloggers!

On the other hand, the participation rules for this meme are one of the cutest link-building exercises I've ever come across and has certainly had a massive impact on the status of the originating blogger's blog. I can well understand why Google and Technorati and others are less than impressed with memes like this - which suggest you link back to the original post on the originator's blog if you participate. This and other memes propagated by The Thinking Blog means that since November 2006, this blog has managed to reach no 89 in Technorati's top 100 in just over 7 months. Nice one! Or is it? I have to say I much prefer a blog which gets its links and authority under its own steam by providing good quality content rather than by generating links for its originator through memes with rules like this one.

So should I participate or not? My cop-out is to participate, name the blog which started it but provide neither the URL nor a link. I think he's had enough benefit by now. If you want to know more you now have enough information to find it.

Now - how to nominate five more blogs without offending anybody - especially since Susan has already bagged some of the ones which would have been on my shortlist! Like Susan, I don't expect any of those nominated to play along and won't even be contacting them but if they do want to 'play' the suggested rules are at the end... with a comment or two from me.

My nominations for "thinking bloggers" are:

• Duane Keiser for a combination of two blogs:
• Process where Duane posts stages of works in progress. I love the fact that sometimes he comments - and sometimes he doesn't and that none of us get to disturb his thought processes with comments on this one (But have you seen what's he done to the self-portrait "after Rembrandt"?!)
• On Painting which Duane uses to talk more about painting processes in general - well he talks infrequently - but always has something interesting to say. Given he is the person who is credited by USA Today and the New York Times as having started the painting a day movement online, I found his series of observations on this - in these posts Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3 to be both fascinating and thought-provoking.
• Lines and Colors: This blog prioritieses high quality content - and I suspect has no truck with memes! I've absolutely no idea how Charley Parker manages to keep up the quality of research and output of a daily blog post about a new artist or illustrator....but he does. It's the quality of Charley's evaluation which makes reading his blog so enjoyable.
  
• Life Plein Air: I love the way Ed Terpening continues to focus on art process and learning - and sharing with us all. Ed is one my very first blog buddies and his is a very generous blog with very good quality content which I commend to you.
• Jeanette Jobson has a fascinating Illustrated Life (which is partly to do with living on a farm in Newfoundland - I like my daily dose of culture shock!) but I find her writing as stimulating and thoughtful as her approach to her art. She usually has me pausing for deep thought once in a while such as this last week when she wrote

I've found the process of thinking through to reach the concept and come up with the ideas really stretching me and I enjoy it thoroughly. Like many things, initial difficulty is perception, not reality, because once you apply knowledge and careful thought, things fall into place.

• Finally, ever since Guardian Unlimited created The Blog - art and architecture for that section of the newspaper, I've been a faithful reader. Mainly because the Guardian has always been my quality paper of choice (and is part of my mancunian educational heritage) but also due to the fact that the Guardian is way ahead of any other UK newspaper in terms of being attuned to delivering a well thought-out on-line product which often has me pausing for thought. They even seem to have fixed the typos! (the last is an insider joke for fellow Guardian readers!)
  

Study of Allium in Pot
pen and ink and coloured pencil
copyright Katherine Tyrrell


Should any of the above choose to participate, please make sure you pass this list of rules to the blogs you are tagging. (But I suggest you also read the beginning of this blog post).

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think,
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme, [Note: I've not provided a link for reasons explained above]
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog). [Links removed..and I think I'll pass....]

And finally - I'd like to wish all my American readers a Happy 232nd Independence Day. I hope the fireworks are good!

Links:

• Wikipedia - meme
• Wikipedia - internet meme