27th January 2008: Who's made a mark this week?

Derwent Catalogue - Artists Pencils spread

including my drawing of Ashness Bridge

Who made a mark this week and what's the above picture all about?

Well - small toot and a 'tada' - that'll be me and the drawing that Derwent commissioned me to to do for the 2008 Derwent Catalogue which was published this month. Derwent have done a good job of reorienting their catalogue to make it much more consumer oriented and attractive. Each set of pencils now has a complete colour chart on its profile page - including all 120 colours of the Artists Pencils which I used for my work.

My drawing - shown above in the catalogue - is of the world famous Ashness Bridge in the English Lake District. You can read more about the work I produced here Ashness Bridge - my drawing for the new Derwent Catalogue.

My work is on page 2 and also on pages 12-13 of the brochure (10-12 of the pdf file). I even get a personal mention in the news section of the Derwent website (if you page through) and the reason why they chose my work for their catalogue. (I must speak to them about the mispelling of my surname on the website though!).

If you're interested you can now download the 2008 catalogue. (3.22MB pdf file) . You can also see work by other coloured pencil artists including Bob Ebdon, founder of UKCPS and a recent convert to blogging with UKCPS News.

Congratulations to....

• Armand on the 4th birthday of Moleskinerie and the First Annual Moleskinerie Exhibition being held to celebrate it with a retrospective of selected works from friends and supporters around the world. Armand invited me to participate - for which many thanks - and I committed the cardinal sin of not dealing with the request straight away. I remembered I needed to get my images and details off to him and then my laptop hit the skids the next day! So hopefully we'll sort that out for the future. In the meantime take a look at the exhibition.
  

Art Blogs

Tumbling Down
10 x 14 - mixed media on watercolor paper
copyright Karen Winters 2008

• Karen Winters is absolutely having a ball with both oils and watercolours at the moment. I loved this post about painting a waterfall - Tumbling Down. You can see the painting she produced as a result - but the most important bit is the description of how she did it.
  
• Michelle Hendry in Muskoka, Ontario has a fascinating post about the use of limited palettes and Field colour on her blog Artscapes - Musings on Art and Life. She also explains about making a field colour chart and has an example about more painting with field colour. I've already talked to Michelle about this concept and we'll be revisiting it during the colour project on this blog later this year.
  

Field colour is a colour method that was used by the Masters from the Renaissance right through the 19th century and has become less common since the rise of Impressionism.

• I'm very pleased to note that the Artist's Magazine blog is now including 'Making A Mark' in its blog roll of recommended blogs
• I include blogs which have a strong visual art aspect although not about drawing or painting from time to time.
  
• If you've ever been interested in Fiber Craft blogs, and stitching in particular, take a look at the extraordinarily long list of blogs which are currently involved in Sharon B's Take It Further Challenge on her blog In A Minute Ago. For those who like their stitches take a peek at the 6x4 fiber postcards produced (with photos on Flickr) and the Take A Stitch Tuesday challenge.
• I discovered this week that The Met Museum has blog.mode addressing fashion

Do any of you know any of the blogs highlighted in the arts and crafts section of The Bloggies? I don't! Click the link and then scroll an awfully long way down the page to get to the blogs which have got through to the final five of each section. Somebody please explain to the person who designed the site how to use hyperlinks and anchors!

Art exhibitions

• "One damn masterpiece after another" is Adrian Searle's review of the 'From Russia' exhibition at the Royal Academy.
  
• I wish I was in New York and could see the exhibition for the reopening of the Galleries for 19th and early 20th century paintings The Metropolitan Museum - check out the paintings on display
• The Turner Exhibition has moved on from the NGA in Washington but you can still download a pdf copy of the Turner exhibition brochure
  
• A review of the Space to Draw exhibition I saw at the Jerwood this week
  

Art history

• The Sistine Chapel was created 500 years ago by Michelangelo... or was it? Peter Popham, The Independent commented this week on a recent report about the authenticity of Michaelanegelo's drawings - and in doing so highlighted some of the workshop/aterlier/studio approaches to the creation of work from Leonardo da Vinci to Damien Hirst.
  

Art materials and supplies

• A great post by Tracy Helgeson (Works by Tracy Helgeson) for all you people who like painting with oils on panels. Tracy writes in great detail about the birch panels she uses and how she gets them prepped and ready to roll. Tracy's taking on an apprentice this summer! ;)
  
• Can all pastel artists please go and vote in my new poll on Pastels - Resources for Artists - I want to know which is the most popular brand of pastel! So far, Great American Art Works has its nose in front! (I do like their colour charts for earth, greys unique and pealescent and chromatics!)
• I took a peek at Michael Skalk's Anatomy of Art Materials. This is an Artist's Magazine's blog which looks interesting although it has very few posts as yet.
  

Art scams and fraud

• Alan Bamberger has published a new article. Alan's articles are always a good read and this one is being added to my recommended read list on my The Art Business - Resources for Artists site. Just in case you are at all uncertain what it's about Alan has called it Dead Ends, Money Pits, Time Wastes, Flimsy Promises and Scams

Art spaces

• see Marissa Lee Swinghammer's - and baby Blee's - handmade art space on the Modish Spaces blog. You can also see more handmade spaces where the handiwork of artists and crafters gets done. One day I'll be taking photos.........................(and I'll stop fibbing too!)
  

Art videos

Not one, not two but THREE videos about Wolf Kahn. These are:

• New Art TV - video 1 and video 2 about Wolf Kahn.
  
• WGBH Forum Network - 6 Good reasons not to paint a landscape by Wolf Kahn. This is a php file and I haven't quite figured out what to do with it (and hence haven't seen this one yet) - so any tips would be most welcome.
  

Websites, webware and blogging

• So far 23 people have responded to a poll I set up on on Blogging for Artists - Resources for Artists. I asked "Which is the most popular blogging platform for art blogs?" and 'Blogger' is being used as the webware/software by two thirds of the respondents - with Wordpress having about a quarter. The rest are with 'something else'!
• Yesterday I had a tip about using tags for Squidoo lens in a post about new lenses Resources for Art Lovers - Hockney, Turner and Hokusai.
  
• compete.com has done a list of the top moving sites of 2007 - those moving up AND down. Ones worth which are the way up are Squidoo and Stumbleupon. On the way down is McAfee....
• Seomoz has a detailed outline of what to do if a splogger starts scraping your blog for all those AdSense millions! See Four ways to enforce your copyright, what to do when your online content is being stolen.
  
• the Financial Times has an interesting post about there may well be a need for standards around data portability between social networking sites in future.
  

and finally - sketching and small works

A french painter produces portraits of his fellow Metro travellers while travelling. He uses a lip gloss tray for small dabs of oil paint and uses a Metro ticket for his 'canvas'. Read more about Luc Grateau and his 1,000+ mini-portraits here.