25th November 2007: Who's made a mark this week?

Extracts from The Watercolour Flower Artist's Bible
paintings (above) by Jana Bouc
paintings (below right) by Tracy Hall
copyright to paintings - Jana Bouc

Congratulations to.........

Two bloggers who number amongst the eighteen artists who contributed artwork to The Watercolor Flower Artist’s Bible which was published recently.

Jana Bouc (Jana Journal and Sketch Blog) has had a number of her paintings published (see 4 of them above) and her artwork can be found on pages 72, 85, 86, 101, and 152 of the book. Jana is a watercolour artist living in the San Francisco area and is one of my 'regular reads'. You can see larger versions of each page if you click the image. Read more in this post.

Tracy Hall (Watercolour Artists Diary), a watercolour artist living in the Orkney, also has a painting in the book and wrote about it here (see above right). You can also see more of the books she has contributed to on her website here (scroll down the page). Other artists also contributing to this book include Lucy Willis and Maud Durland.

Congratulations also to the United Kindom Coloured Pencil Society which now has 560 members as a result of its membership drive at the recent Art Materials Live show at the NEC. On the basis of number of members relative to UK population, this now makes the UKCPS the most popular coloured pencil society in the world!

You can read more about it here on the NEW UKCPS Blog. She says with a big beam on her face having prompted its conception at the AGM and acted as midwife at the birth of the blog! ;) Bob Ebdon, the UKCPS Founder and webmaster is looking after this new blog. The aim is to provide an additional way of communicating with UKCPS members and it will focus on news about and information from UKCPS and its members. It has currently got five times more subscribers than blog posts in a very short time so looks like it's going to be very popular with the online UKCPS community! Note that you don't have to live in the UK to join UKCPS. It's possible to pay for membership online and an increasing number of international coloured pencil artists are now joining the society and sending work to the annual exhibition. In the meantime, if you're interested in coloured pencils can I suggest you subscribe to the blog and let Bob and UKCPS know what you think about how it's doing so far!

Art Blogs

• I saw my first skaters of the year on Wally's Crackskull Bob. I sketched skaters last winter and enjoyed the experience a lot (great practice for drawing people who are moving!) so will try to sketch some more between now and January - maybe at the two outdoor skating rinks near me at Canary Wharf and the Old Naval College at Greenwich. Maybe we should all line up our skating sketches at the end of the season and give them marks out of 10 for technique and style? ;)
• I find a lot of art blogs by looking at people's blogrolls and clicking on the links of any I think I've not seen before - and that's how I found the amazing sketchbook blog of Ivo Kircheis - whose website is pretty amazing too.
  
• Vicky Taylor Hood of Seastrands Studio wrote Some Hints on beginning a Landscape Quilt Part 1 last year - but virtually all the advice is applicable to any of us in whichever medium we choose to work and whatever subject we choose to use.
• Cin (Learning Daily) has found a new and what looks like an interesting site - see her post about it here in 'take a look'. Lookybook launches 'for real' on 1st December.
  

Art Education and Workshops

• Nancy Standlee (Nancy Standlee Art Blog) has been posting a number of detailed and interesting posts about her recent Arne Westerman painting workshop hosted by the Southwestern Watercolour Society at Irving Centre for the Arts in Dallas, Texas. If you've ever felt like having a 'virtual' workshop try this one!
• Day 1 - tips on how to work
  
• Day 2 plus Day 2 slideshow - emphasis on the figurative plus tips and Nancy's slideshow from tips
  
• Days 3 and 4 and Nancy's slideshow - colour mixing and more thoughts and tips
  
• Day 5 - more tips from Arne and pics of Nancy's workshop work. I think the first one is a stunner! Here's her recommendation..........
  

Arne is very talented, witty and loves people and if you can take his watercolor workshop, run and sign up now. He's in his early 80's and has gained lots of "people wisdom" and painting knowledge along the way. He possesses great teaching and communication skills.

• Carol Marine (Carol Marine's Painting A Day) recently demonstrated in Double Row how a neutral grey background can really enhance the colour of objects in a still life. Also read her blog for a series of posts about how she has been focusing on values in her colours and trying to improve her lightest lights.
• Jerry at sixty minute artist has a riveting blog post about colour and Joseph Albers - Color - do you see what I see? He also has a useful post about how to make low cost box frames for canvases.

Art Exhibitions and Galleries

• The London Transport Museum, in Covent Garden, reopened last week after a major refurbishment. Two aspects to interest art lovers

• there's an exhibition Picturing our Project: The watercolours and sketches of Bruce Rowling. I do like projects which are both living art and historical records.
  

Rowling's sketchbooks and watercolours describe in detail the week-to-week activities as the old Museum was dismantled, exhibits removed and the building contractors moved in. As buses were driven away, trams swung through the air and massive steel girders delivered, Bruce's drawings recorded the machinery, the men and the mayhem of the building site.

• there's also the 5,000+ posters in the London Transport Collection. As anybody who knows London well, these posters have always provided a very strong element of graphic design as one moves around the capital. This is the top 10; these are the artists which have contributed work and this is a timeline of the posters over the decades from the 1900s until the present day.
• Next Saturday, Vivien Blackburn and I are going to the Private View at the re-opening (in a new location) of the new John Davies Gallery - which has moved to Moreton on the Marsh in the Cotswolds. We're also planning a bit of a trip around the galleries in that area. Read more about the artists exhibiting with John Davies on this post on Vivien's blog - Painting Prints and Stuff
  

Art Fraud

Have you ever felt a grudge about the way the art market works or wanted to fool it? Or do you subscribe to the 'honesty is always the best policy' line of thinking? Read here (and below) about what happened to Shaun Greenhalgh - an 'artful dodger' who did resent the art market and who set out to defraud it - with the help of and his conspirators in crime - his elderly parents in their 80s.

A man was jailed for four years and eight months yesterday after earning £850,000 from making fake art treasures with the help of his parents in their 80s in their terraced house in Bolton.
The Guardian - Arts

Art Resources - Traditional Printmaking

• Amie Roman (Burnishings) - based in British Columbia on the west coast of Canada - has set up a new Squidoo Group about the Printmarking Arts. It looks very promising as a group - all about traditional printmaking approaches - and already includes a few names which are very familiar to me including Martin Stankewitz (Blog: Edition Handdruck Lens: - Creative Monotypes) and Marissa Lee Swinghammer (Blog: MLee Fine Prints Lens: MLee Fine Art - Woodcuts) - who featured recently in an article in the Boston Globe. Amie's new group also includes my paper and supports - resources for artists lens - which includes paper for printmaking. If you have a relevant printmaking lens which she's not found yet give her a call........
  
• Amie also has two other lens
• Printmaking - all about techniques, tools, and artists - lots of great links
  
• First Impressions - Printmaking Art - which shows of Amie's own work - and very impressive it is too
  

Art Videos and slideshows

• Cin (Learning Daily) provided the link to the New York Times slideshow of the Best Illustrated Children's Books of 2007.
  
• American Artist has a video of Richard McKinley giving a demonstration of producing a pastel on Wallis paper which has an underdrawing and then a watercolour underpainting.
  

The Big Drawing Book Review

Two more of my reviews for this BIG review. I'm hoping to get on to the 'How to keep a sketchbook' ones this week.

• Experimental Drawing by Robert Kaupelis (there's a small number of people expressing an interest in maybe doing exercises from this book next year)
  
• Drawing Realistic Textures in Pencils - JD Hillberry
  

Websites and Blogging

If you were busy around Thanksgiving you may have missed my post on Wednesday about Blogging - an update on rights, liabilities and spam attacks (....and I want to know if there are any more turkey sketches out there?)

And finally.......

Held over from last week where it got bounced by The Last Supper............

You know what they say about first impressions. That’s why both Hollywood and independent studios are spending valuable time and resources to create the most appropriate main title sequences for their films..... On SubmarineChannel, we love a good main title. That's why we've started an online collection of the most stunning and original ones. Some are engaging or wildly entertaining, funny, exhilarating or deadly beautiful. Some are oozing with visual treats while others hit you hard with their bold and audacious style.
About Submarine Channel and 'Forget the Film, watch the Titles'

One that I found on Lines and Colors. Charley P excels at highlighting interesting niche sites and this one is no exception. His review of Forget the Film. Watch the Titles got me interested, the animation section of the website grabbed my attention and then I noticed that last week it made it on to the list of Top 100 Coolest Film Sites on the Web list by Fade In Magazine. Make your hot drink before you start looking.......