23rd March 2008: Who's made a mark this week

Four of the Daily Paintworks community of daily painters
(L to R) Justin Clayton, Karin Jurick, Carol Marine and Qiang Huang

Workshop demonstration at Karin Jurick and Carol Marine's workshop
at the Williamson County Art Center in Round Rock (north of Austin), Texas

Daily Paintworks colleagues and very popular daily painters Karin Jurick (A Painting Today) and Carol Marine (Carol Marine's Painting A Day) recently got together in Round Rock Texas to teach a workshop to some very lucky people. I gather it was particularly fascinating for people to see the similarities and differences in approaches of Karin, who works from her own photographs and laptop screen, compared to Carol who works from life and her own still life set-up.

• Read Karin's take on her first ever week of teaching a workshop in this post My Week. This includes an account of her driving all the way from Georgia to Texas and back again. For those not familiar with the journey (that'll be me!) I checked Google Maps and the map query made it 949 miles across Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas!!!
  
• Plus Carol's post "Demo Apples" & "Self Portrait".
  

They were joined at the end of the workshop by fellow Daily Paintworks people Justin Clayton (who lives in Round Rock) and Qiang Huang. (who like Carol lives in Austin). Their website provides more details about workshops in the USA and Canada given by members of this community.

Portrait by Karin Jurick
and self-portrait by Carol Marine
copyright the artists

I always really enjoy reading the blog posts from students after a workshop - so here are all the ones I could find!

• Mary Spires (Mary Spires) from Ohio posted about Value Study Workshop with Carol Marine & Karin Jurick - see if you can work out which work is which) and Carol Marine & Karin Jurick Workshop Day 2

I've been so busy with "ah ha" moments, I haven't even thought of taking pictures of my own paintings. I can truly say this has been one of those "Things" that happens on your "Art Journey" that is a major step in the way you think about painting and the way you execute it! It's like Carol & Karin have flipped on another circuit breaker in my brain!
Mary Spires

• Pattie Wall (Dust off the Butterfly) - living in central Kansas posted twice about the workshop - Texas and Back Again and Add Peppers, Garlic, Stella d'Oro Lilies and Call it a Day!
• Nancy Rhodes Harper (Daily painting studies) - living in northern Alabama who posted about her Workshop Study and what she learned; and
  
• Mark Bridges - in Texas who's now started a blog as a result and wins the award for the most original blog title I've come across this year so far Give me a Lobster roll

Art supplies

• Yippee - a NEW BRAND of lightfast coloured pencil!!! Nicole Caulfield has been reviewing Luminance from Caran d'Ache on her blog (Nicole Caulfield Art Journal) and providing an assessment of what they are like. She was asked by Caran d'Ache to test the pencils during their development and some of her artwork is included in their promotional material.
• There are 76 colours in the range - you can see them across the top of this page which shows some of Nicole's artwork - it looks like I may have solved my problem with reds (see yesterday's post)!!! 61 of them meet the ASTMS 6901 Lightfastness 1 standard while the remainder are at least 80% lightfast. This is a really major improvement. I guess that means CPSA will need to do a version 6 of the Lightfastness Test Book!
• So far I've only been able to locate two sites Artifolk in the UK and Vicenç Piera (Barcelona) which is selling the pencils - in Euros! It's worth noting that these are VERY EXPENSIVE and, as yet, they are not available as single pencils from open stock. A 38 pencil tin works out at £2.27 a pencil and the 76 pencil tin is no much less at £2.10 per pencil.
  

Art Blogs

• Sarah Wimperis (Muddy Red Shoes) - the English member of the Daily Paintworks crew - is reminding us that Spring is here. One of her posts last week comprised step by step photos of painting a landscape from life while sat in a field in Cornwall. This is of course why we call them Field Sketches !
  
• Thanks to Charley Parker over at Lines and Colors who highlighted the Dani Jones' list of 75 Artists You Must Know and Where to Find Them on DaniDraws.com. This is a list of artists who have influnced illustrators - lots of really great links. That's not just 75 folks - that's 75 multiplied by about 5-6 per artist!!! I think Dani likes big numbers - he had a post last year called 101 Projects for Artists and Illustrators! Any of you feeling 'stuck' might want to take a look.
  
• Tracy Helgeson (Works by Tracy Helgeson) has A Reminder of How Subjective Art Is
• Vivien Blackburn (Paintings, Prints and Stuff) has been addressing the question why mix media? why not stick to just one as in 'pure' watercolour? I find it interesting that some artists - like Vivien - mix media all the time without a second thought while others have never even considered mixing media. But why not?
  
• I came across a new blog by Todd Hosfelt (Todd Hosfelt's weblog) - living in California - which hasn't been going for very long but already has stacks of good and interesting images to look at.
• Martha of Trumpetvine Travels visited Monterey and Pacific Grove in northern California last month (which I visited in 2006 - so nice to see them again in somebody else's sketchbook). Check out Monterey Sketchbook I (Jelly Fish), II (sketching at the Acquarium) and III (Out and About).....
• ......while Laura Frankstone of Laurelines has been sketching in Paris with Casey Touissaint (Rue Manuel Bis) and Ronell van Wyck (African Tapestry).

A couple of blogs about parenting and children's art development

• Jean Van’t Hul (The Artful Parent blog) - in Northern Carolina - has done an interview with Laura (see above) about developing your children's art skills .
  
• For all those who have created blogs to record their kids art, Gwynn at My Kids Art provides a sad note on which to end her blog last week.
  

International Sketchcrawl

A quick reminder that the 18th Worldwide Sketchcrawl is next Saturday - 29th March.

If you go to the Sketchcrawl Forum you can see all the places where people are indicating they'd like to go. Lots of places but not a lot of posts as yet - unless you live in San Francisco or Milan! The posts build during this week so it's a good idea to keep checking back. If nobody is being specific, decide where you'd like to go and make a definite suggestion as to start point and destination.

Vivien Blackburn and I will be sketching around and about the Mall Galleries (in 'The Mall') where we'll be visiting the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Institute of Painters in Watercolours.

Art Education

• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) provides some really good insights into the nature of Dappled Light and the Transparency of Water (which also contains links to his earlier posts about water and reflections). James is one of the artists listed in 75 Artists You Must Know and Where to Find Them.
• Maggie Stiefvater (Greywaren) continues with
• Maggie on Photographic References, Part III which looks at correcting for poor colour in photographs and changing the background of your subject matter - and all the other adjustments needed as a result.
• Maggie on Photographic References, Part IV which looks at combining two subjects into one piece of art and altering a photo to suit your own personal artistic style.
• Shirley (Paper and Threads) (who has a brand new granddaughter as of yesterday!) has done a wonderful illustrated post about Recycling an Old Book as a Watercolor Sketchbook

Art videos

• The Dulwich Picture Gallery website has a wonderful set of videos about paintings included in their latest exhibition Coming of Age American Art, 1850s to 1950s. The 'movies' introduce the exhibition and then there are four films about individual paintings by Winslow Homer, Thomas Eakins, John Singer Sargent and John Sloane.
• Ed Terpening (Life Plein Air) has been posting about his workshop in Palm Springs (Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3) with Mark Kerckhoff and has done a video Two Desert Demos of a couple of his paintings made from snapshots taken while painting plein air. He's also posted a video of a Mark Kerckhoff Demo - which starts with him painting in ink and then he continues in oils according to Carlson principles

He then washes in his first transparent paint layer based on the landscape planes described by John F. Carlson (from lightest to darkest): Sky, Flat Plane (eg, ground), Slanted Plane (eg, hillside), and Upright Plane (eg, tree). He selects a mid-tone gray wash in the middle of the darkest dark and lightest light FOR THAT PLANE. He then brings up the local color for each object.
Ed Terpening - commenting on Marck Terckhoff

Art Business and Marketing

• I came across a new (to me) art business site this week. Jackie Battenfield is a professional and practising artist (website) who also teaches professional development classes to artists at Columbia University, on the The Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) Program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the Creative Capital Foundation. She also
• maintains a professional development site Artists Career Guide,
• writes reality check articles and interviews
  
• gives lectures and workshops around the USA and
• has a new book out later this year - The Artist's Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What you Love.
• This is what Deborah Fisher (Sellout) had to say about Jackie in New Career Guide In The Chute! You can also read an interview with Jackie by Christopher Howard, editor of CAA News - Good Business Is the Best Art: Artist in the Marketplace (pdf file)
  
• Aisling d'Art has republished her old site in a new and much more accessible format - The Business of Art.
• Just in case any eBay sellers out there hadn't noticed - all the art categories have changed on eBay. See this page on Seller Central which explains all the category changes and this thread on wet canvas which comments on the changes.
• I've not seen Big Cartel before although it's apparently been around for a couple of years. It styles itself as "a deceptively simple web store service specifically designed for the independent, do-it-yourself, creative type." These are the artists' stores - it seems rather T shirt oriented to me. The ebiz profile interview with e-commerce guide last November indicates 12,000 stores for musicians, artists and T shirt designers and all advertising being done by 'word of mouth'. It doesn't look to me like a site which is going to cause any headaches for places like Etsy.
• In case you were wondering the E-commerce guide is part of the Small Business Computing Channel of Internet.com. They all look like they provide a good source of news, articles and tips about matters relating to being online and e-commerce for those who are using the internet to sell their art.
  
• Did you all read about Japan appointing a Cartoon Ambassador?!?
  

and finally......

Did you know that Easter is apparently fantastically early this year? Apparently it will never ever be as early as this again in our lifetime because it's 220 years until the next time it's Easter Sunday on March 23rd. For the explanation read what Dinah Mow wrote on her blog (Idle thoughts of an idle woman). Good thing too - I woke up to snow this morning!

Happy Easter Egg hunting! Don't forget - too much chocolate makes your hair fall out! ;)