9th December 2007: Who's made a mark this week?

Postcards from Provence - as signed and limited edition prints
Top left to right they are: "Field of Sunflowers" (sold out); "Track through the vineyards";
Bottom L to R they are: "Wheatfield with cornflowers" and "Near Gigondas"
copyright Julian Merrow Smith, Postcard from Provence - prints

I looked at the calendar this morning and got a shock - how can it be just over two weeks to Christmas already???

OK - so who's done all their Christmas present shopping - and more importantly who got their websites licked into shape in time so that people can choose and buy from you really really easily?

• Julian Merrow Smith told me this week that he'd managed to get a change made to the coding for his website template so it now has categories for his signed limited edition prints. If you want to see how he now presents them you can see them on the prints part of the Postcard from Provence website. You can see some of his images at the top of the page - I always feel that there's nothing like having a blast of Provencal sunshine on grey rainy days in London in December! But note that these are SMALL limited editions - and the field of sunflowers one (top left) has already sold out!
  
• the Daily Paintworks people got their new website up and running just in time - see my post on Thursday for more details (listed at the end).
• I noted that Belinda Del Pesco (Belinda Del Pesco Fine Art) has got all her 'shop for art' details at the top of her right hand column where they are really easy to spot
  
• So what have you done to highlight opportunities to buy your art?
  

Art blogs

• Val Webb is a professional illustrator who lives — and gardens – in Mobile, Alabama. She teach workshops in nature journaling and botanical art and she has a wonderful blog called The Illustrated Garden. I'm sure it will be of interest to both botanical artists and evrybody who loves gardening.
  
• Belinda Del Pesco (Belinda Del Pesco Fine Art) provides an explanation of monotypes and ghost prints. Belinda is ace at printing - and providing information for people wanting to know more about how she does what she does so well. She's also got a blogroll specially for printmakers. (And I now have a section in the blogroll specifically for the fine art printmakers).
  
• Karin Jurick (A Painting Today) is also no longer alone in painting people looking at art in museums - I've been sketching people doing this for some years and since October we now also have oil paintings by Linda Apple (Art Journal of Daily Life). Anybody else tried their hand at people in museums and art galleries? Edward Gordon (Edward B Gordon) seems to be painting performers......

Art Communities and artists communing

• I met up with Sarah Wimperis (The Red Shoes) on Friday. We sat and had a coffee, then looked at the NEAC exhibition, then had lunch at the National Gallery followed by a swift tour of highlights of the National Gallery. I think we talked for about five hours straight about artwork, blogging, art blogs, making art, selling art - you name it! For those who 'know' Sarah you'll be pleased to know that she's very perky after her operation and is doing lots of travelling and seeing people in England this month and will be back in Britanny and blogging in January.
  
• Laura's (Laurelines) report on the 2007 Biennale du carnets des voyages Clermant Ferrand that she went to - At Clermont Ferrand and after. Lots of links to other sketchbook travellers.
• The date of the World Wide SketchCrawl #17 (the first drawing marathon of 2008) has been announced - and it's scheduled for Saturday January 19th!
• The OC Arts Blog isn't located in California - it's an art blog about a group of artists exhibiting in East Cambridgeshire
• The Colored Pencil Society of America has announced dates and details for its 16th Annual Convention. Workshop instructors are Carlynne Hershberger, CPSA and John Smolko, CPSA and the hotel is the Renaissance Seattle. John is the coloured pencil artist who is really challenging the boundaries for the nature of artwork in coloured pencil and his workshop will be a blast I'm sure - I'd love to be there for it! Click this link to see images of his work on this blog. See also my blog post yesterday for details of submitting work to the annual international exhibition.
  

16th International Colored Pencil Exhibition/Convention - Seattle, WA
hosted by District Chapter 207 Seattle
Exhibition Dates: July 2 to September 29, 2008
Gallery: Washington State Convention and Trade Center, Seattle
Convention Dates: July 29 through August 2st, 2008
Prospectus available after November 1, 2007
CPSA website - for details

Art Competitions

We're in art competition season. They're either announcing results or kicking off the ones which will be exhibiting next summer! As you may already know I had two blog posts about art competitions this week (see end of this post) and here's yet more links!

• We got the result on the Turner Prize this week and Mark Wallinger won. Well done to the Tate for transferring the exhibition and announcement of the Turner Prize to Liverpool so so that journalists had to travel outside London. And the press said...
• The Guardian: Wallinger takes Turner prize with re-creation of parliament protest

Mark Wallinger was shortlisted for State Britain at Tate Britain, a direct representation of the banners and paraphernalia of Brian Haw's protest in Parliament Square. The jury commended its immediacy, visceral intensity and historic importance. The work combines a bold political statement with art's ability to articulate fundamental human truths.
Tate Liverpool - Turner Prize

• Personally I didn't understand why the prize wasn't also given to Brian Haw who created the protest display and sat outside parliament with a megaphone for a very long time before his protest was dismantled by the police...........
  

"I am indebted to all those people who contributed to the making of State Britain," said Wallinger.

• But that was before I read the piece in the The Observer today (The Guardian's sister paper) The Turner judges have been hoodwinked. It's an interesting comment on Haw and the original protest, its reproduction by Wallinger and what it all means for art. (Not a lot of comment on the art in the comments though).
  
• Meanwhile most of the rest of the newspapers were getting excited that the Prize was won by a man who dressed up as a bear to wander around a museum.
  

• John Moores 25 Contemporary Painting Prize - This prize aims to showcase the best of new British painting. The John Moores is held approximately every two years, is a prominent events in the British art world and attracts a broad spectrum of artists. It now forms one of the four main strands of the Liverpool Biennial. Next year the John Moores exhibition coincides with Liverpool’s year as European Capita of Culture 2008.

No preference is given to levels of experience or particular practices of painting. The work is selected anonymously from an open submission by the jury, who also award the main prizes.

• The deadline to register is 15 February 2008. The first prize is £25,000 along with four further prizes, each of £2500.
• The Exhibition runs from 20 September 2008 until 4 January 2009.
  
• The jury for 2008 are Jake and Dinos Chapman, artists; Sacha Craddock, art critic / curator; Graham Crowley, artist and Paul Morrison, artist.
  
• These are the links to the archive of previous competitions and winners (1980-2004 and 1957-1978) who include David Hockney, Peter Doig and Euan Uglow.
  

Art exhibitions

• Bankside Gallery: Mini Picture Show Wed 12-Dec-2007 to Mon 31-Dec-2007. On Tuesday, I'm going to be going to the Private View of this exhibition which focuses on new work on a small scale and the scope to purchase original and affordable art as a Christmas present. Works by Members of both Royal Societies will be available framed and unframed and may be taken away when bought. The review will be posted later this week.

Art Books

• Robert Genn (The Painters Keys) wrote about the launch of his new book.
• I did a review of The Tao of Sketchingfor the ongoing Big Drawing Book Review.
  

Art business and marketing

• I came across the Trunkt site on Melissa Lee Swinghammer's blog (m.Lee Fine Art). Looks and sounds interesting - but note that there are some quality controls and not everybody can show with them.
  
• Sales of Art: Dan at empty easel currently has a survey about Where do Most Artists Sell Art? Online, in a Gallery. . .Where? There aren't a huge number of responses to date but they do suggest a wide variety of outlets for sales. If you've not voted why don't you go and take a look.
  
• Facebook advertisements: If you're experienced in or thinking about advertising your art online then you will be interested in the opportunities presented by advertisements of Facebook
  
• Here's the original post about Facebook Ads on The Facebook Blog.
  
• More importantly - here's Ed Terpening's (Life Plein Air) very informative post Facebook Advertising Update which shares his experience and data (and charts!) of running different advertisement campaigns on Facebook
• Dan (empty easel) has a post providing an overview of how to create a targeted advert on facebook - Advertising Art on Facebook: How Artists Can Use Facebook Ads to Target Buyers.
  
• ....however read more about Facebook below.
• If anybody has used any other form of online advertising (eg Google AdSense) and is willing to share information (or has already done so and I missed it) can you let me know.
  

Internet, blogging and websites - and data security

Facebook has not been having a happy time recently.

• Thoughts on Beacon - on the Facebook Blog is an apology from Mark Zuckerburg for messing up with a new initiative - which is about sharing personal data. I find it ironic given that around about a year ago we could read Lessons From the Facebook Riots - an article by Bruce Schneier on Wired which recounted what happened when data was shared by Facebook in ways which people felt breached their privacy. I thought the benefit of making mistakes was that you could learn from them..........
  
• the long and short of it is that providing personal data anywhere on the Internet (not just facebook) can deliver both benefits (eg sell paintings/buy paintings) and bad experiences (yet another 'bright spark' will decide to share your data with the whole world - read this article (on Many 2 Many - a group weblog on social netware) for an example and a commentary on the public and private face of blogging). Think before you share!
  

and finally......

Congratulations to me! I track my statistics on a daily basis and this week is the first week ever that I've managed to get over 500 unique visitors on every single day last week (plus an awful lot more page views).

It was a jolly good week for blog posts though - and the stats just got better and better..........

• Sunday: 2nd December 2007: Who's made a mark this week?
• Monday: The Tao of Sketching
• Tuesday:
  
• New English Art Club - plus commentary and discussion
• The Blogger 'fix' for image enlargement does not work
• Wednesday: Daily painters, paintings and paintworks - and where you can see them
• Thursday: BP Portrait Award 2008 (call for entries) and BP Travel Award
• Friday: So you've got a new idea.............
• Saturday: CPSA - call for entries for 2008 annual international exhibition in Seattle