2nd March 2008: Who's made a mark this week?

Rosa #2

coloured pencils on Arches HP - 8" x 10"
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Today is Mother's Day in the UK - which is always on the fourth Sunday of Lent, exactly three weeks before Easter. You did all remember didn't you? Congratulations to one of my readers whose son has already cooked her Eggs Benedict this morning! Can anybody top that?

I had a very late change of plan relating to the image for today - so what you have instead is the latest in what's turning out to be a series of macro perspective of roses which are getting a little abstracted and sculptural - you can see other examples here. I'm getting a bit addicted to creating these - you may see some more........

Art business and marketing

• Author and artist Maggie "I've just finished the first draft of my third book" Stiefvater (Greywaren) has been having a series of blog posts about Marketing this week. She's responding to queries on her blog today (Sunday). Check out:
• Marketing Maggie Style - Part I - which is an overview of the diverse ways in which you can market yourself and your art - plus some pointers about bad publicity
  
• Marketing Maggie Style - Part II - this is about Hype, Consistency, & Flexibility - there's a taster below
  
• Marketing maggie Style - Part III - about the time required to balance out art and marketing efforts and about the necessity of getting exposure offline as well as online.
  

Sales and success come along because:

• preparedness
• consistent branding
• honesty
• a willingness to share your knowledge
• a passion for your product
• a desire to honestly please your client
• networking
• acting & passive marketing
• a constant drive to improve
• a willingness to listen
• and absolutely last on the list, because I really believe it belongs here and not at the top -- talent

Maggie Stiefvater - Marketing Maggie Style II

• Maggie and I are joining forces this week to write about commissions. See my 'and finally......' section for a trailer for what I'll be writing about.
• Unfortunately Deborah Fisher has shut up shop on Sellout and gone back to making art - this is her final post. I hope she'll leave it up as there's some good posts to read over there.
• Petra Voegtle (Images and Imagination) has an interesting and thought-provoking article about What does your Signature mean to You?
• you can find out more about selling your art via art websites at Empty Easel's 10 Art Websites’ Monthly Visitor Stats">Tracking the Online Art Market: A Look at 10 Art Websites’ Monthly Visitor Stats

Art Competitions

• The Pastel 100 winners are posted on the Pastel Blog - And the Winner is - and will form part of the April edition of The Pastel Journal. The winners are Ron Monsma, Barbara Groff, Brian Cobble, Bill James and Diana De Santis. Such a pity that the full set of images are only available in the Journal. It would be great if existing subscribers could access an online version of the magazine and all the exhibits in Pastel 100. Maybe next year?
  
• You can see a gallery of the recent entries to the American Artist self portrait competition. It's great to be able to see entries without having to wait for the magazine!
  

Art education and workshops

• I came across Outdoor Painting this week - the goal of the site is to provide the best source of information for painting outdoors. The sites includes a great overview of past traditions of outdoor painting together with a long list of notable artists who have painted outdoors and a great range of articles - including a really good one about art ethics
  
• Ed Terpening (Life Plein Air) has been blogging from a painting workshop in Hawaii with Camille Przwodek - a plein air colourist painter who was taught by Henry Hensche. (DO check out this website). Read Ed's blog to see what both he and she got up to each day last week. I guarantee those who have not seen this colourist approach before will be intrigued. Check the link to see her website and some of her paintings. It's interesting to see how her colourist approach and palette varies between Laguna Beach, the South West and Maryland. She describes her approach here.
  
• Gayle Mason has a useful post for animal artists Reference Material and Acrylic Tiger. Apart from displaying her half finished tiger in acrylic on drafting film, she also comments on how she finds references for her wildlife art.
• This week I updated my Advice on Sketching page on my website - this post Advice on Sketching - tips, techniques and toolkits describes the changes. Many thanks to all the people who have subscribed to the mailing list for this page.
• Plus I did a round-up in relation to the temporary end of the Composition and design Project in Composition: a range of perspectives
  

Art Galleries, Art Museums and Exhibitions

• New York Historical Society has an exhibition about AUDUBON'S AVIARY: PORTRAITS OF ENDANGERED SPECIES. You can read what the curator had to say about this exhibition and see more bigger images on Art Info here.
  
• Jeanette Mistress of Long Ears (you just have to look don't you!) alerted me to her local museum in Kansas Missouri when commenting on the Monet which graces the front cover of The Art of Impressionism - the book about Impressionist technique which I reviewed this week. The Nelson Atkins Museum website certainly suggests it's a very fine museum with an interesting collection - I was impressed.
  

Art materials

• Jana Bouc (Jana’s Journal and Sketch Blog) made me laugh out loud when I scrolled down to this title Ladies, Stand Up for Your Right to Pee Standing Up! I have to emphasise that Jana has made a very serious contribution to the plight of the plein air artist minus a bush.
  
• Lisa Bachman (The Studio News) has two good articles about Pigments and Toxic Shock
• Will Stevens (Beginners Art Classes) - a new subscriber - comments on materials for beginners and whether you should opt for cheap or expensive and prompted some thought on my part, which led to..........
  
• Yesterday, I revised and updated the Art Materials and Other Resources page on my website - I'd be grateful for feedback about the new front end (or should that be new 'top of the page'?). I'll be doing a post later this week about at least one of the items added in yesterday.
  

Art trends

• Apparently The Thing (quarterly) is the Next Big Thing! Thanks to Art Info for the alert. To my mind there is no question that there are a set of people out there who like to collect. However, I don't remember seeing any bloggers doing subscription series per se on their blogs - do tell me if I'm wrong.
  

Art Videos - and now TV too!!!

• Duane Keiser (always a key innovator - first 'painting a day' blog; first painting videos on a blog) did a major live TV broadcast this week - using ustream.tv. This is the link to Duane's channel on ustream.tv. There were 50 of us sat watching when I was looking in.
• Mashable.com - the social networking site - has done a post about the competition around live TV for anybody thinking of getting into it. Apparently YouTube is going to start live videos soon - but take a look at the numbers and the comment in You Tube will Win Live Video?
  
• a Guardian video of Banksy's graffiti art in the underground car park of the Swiss Embassy- it takes a little time to come up but then you can see Lenin with a Mohican!

websites and blogging

• Lots of you may have been affected by the Feedblitz database going down - they reckon it's all sorted. On the contrary I'm hearing reports that it's not..........
  
• I've promised Mika I'll do a post next Saturday about setting up Feedburner on your blog. Let me know if there any other requests.
  
• Some of you may have noticed that I've been having a major spring clean / sort out on my website this week. I just need to get my head round this post from Lifehacker now........
  
• this week I've been working on keywords and site descriptions and as a result had the following on my blog - and I have to tell you that I've noticed those keywords are already 'making a mark' on the stats!
  
• Keywords, site descriptions and meta tags - how search engines find your website and content
• How to find and change key words
• Marsha Robinett (The Extraordinary Pencil) wrote a very useful post about Do You Write Scannable Content? Although she's writing about the internet, the advice actually also applies to press releases.

and nearly finally......

I'm having a little toot at the top of the post for this blog, which went through the 200,000 unique visitors in just under 2 years threshold this week. I started collecting my stats some time in January 2006 and, apart from the blip related to my two trips to the USA in summer 2006, it's been a steady climb.

Plus I found out yesterday, 'Making A Mark' is poised to break through into the top 1 million websites in the world - which for a non-commercial (ie no advertising) site is not too bad! Well that's if you believe Alexa stats! ;)

and finally......The Burrow!

What's "The Burrow"?

Well it's the home of the Weasleys in the Harry Potter books/films. But it's also the name of both an imaginary studio and the new studio of my friend and artist Nicole Caulfield (Nicole Caulfield's Art Journal).

I think I've mentioned I've decided to make myself a studio... we have this little grubby room in our house behind the stairs on the lower level. It has a small window, a space that could be a closet (but has no doors), a secret opening in the wall to access under the stairs (ok its a hole in the wall), and it is only about 9 feet x 10 feet. :-) Top that off with the bookcase my husband created out of 2 x 4's, without a level, and the room reminded me of the Weasley's house, the Burrow, in Harry Potter.
Nicole Caulfield - Something for me!

Nicole Caulfield holding her commissioned drawing of The Burrow by Paula Pertile copyright Katie Caulfield

Those of you who have been following Paula Pertile's blog Drawing a Fine Line will know that Nicole commissioned Paula was asked to do a commission - an imaginative drawing Nicole's new Studio. This week Nicole got her drawing - she looks rather pleased doesn't she!

On Tuesday 4th March I'm going to be telling the story of this commission. Having sat on the sidelines of a commissioning process I'm aware that this was a risky process which worked remarkedly well. My blog post will be highlighting a number of learning points for all those commissioning or doing commissions or considering them for the future.

....and tomorrow I'm kicking off my new project for March and April about the Japanese art and artists who influenced painters in the late nineteenth and early 20th century.