9th March 2008: Who's made a mark this week?

Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint) draws and paints animals and excels at pencil art. This week I'm featuring aspects of the three sides to Gayle Mason's art - dogs, cats and wildlife - and a field mouse called Harry.

• Dogs: Gayle breeds and shows her family of prize-winning Rough Collies - hence the title of her blog "Fur in the Paint". She started her art career by drawing dogs and now displays a wide range of breeds on her website. I was supposed to be with her at Crufts yesterday (except I cried off) on the Working and Pastoral Group day. Instead she scampered round the ring while showing her youngest bitch Roxie in the Rough Collie class.
• Cats: Gayle does simply wonderful cat drawings which are extremely popular and exhibits at the Society of Feline Artists (with me!). She's currently working on this year's submissions. However, last week she found time to create a wonderful new information site called How to draw and paint cats. I've added it into my Squidoo group Resources for Artists.
  
• Wild Life: One of the little known facts about Gayle is that she has a zoology degree which helps her with her drawings of wildlife. Arising out of this week's debate about the rules for future UKCPS exhibitions (see and finally....or is it?), she's started a new series of posts on her blog designed to help all those artists who have to comply with new rules and/or tight constraints about allowable photographic references for wildlife art. Obtaining Wildlife Reference Photographs for Artists: Part 1 and Part 2. In the first post you can see some of the local wildlife in her garden - where Harry currently holds court.
• All keen animals artists should be aware that Gayle is very generous in sharing techniques for how she approaches her work. She's also very keen on experimenting with new surfaces for her art. Two years ago, Gayle led the revival (in the UK and online) of the use of drafting film among coloured pencil artists. You can read about it here in
  
• Wet Canvas CP Frum: : CP on drafting film - a demonstration work in progress drawing of a dachshund (March 2006)
  
• Wet Canvas CP Forum: Norwegian Forest Cat on drafting film, another WIP demonstration (March 2006)
• Fur in the Paint: Art Materials Part 1: Drafting Film - in which Gayle summarises key points about her use of drafting film (December 2007)
  

So what has everybody else been up to this week?

Please accept my apologies for not getting 'out' much this week to visit other blogs. I've been a little preoccupied this week plus I've had a horrendous head cold for most of the week which has had me groaning with the wearisome nature of the symptoms - something I've not done in years! I'm on the mend and in dire need of a chap stick!

Here's my pick of what I did see.

Art Business & marketing

• Maggie Stiefvater has started her down to earth and very practical series of posts on the topic of 'commissions' - here's the story so far
• The Art of Commission Portraits, Part I
• The Nuts & Bolts of Commission Work
• Luann Udell has a unique voice when it comes to the business of being an artist and her blog Luanne Udell - an artist's life and the business of craft has gone straight on to my regular read blogroll. She has some really great posts on her blog which include:
• a FANTASTIC series of posts (she's upto #9) called Getting People Out of Your Booth about how to get difficult people out of your booth at an art fair. They're lengthy but for anybody anticipating having a booth at an art fair this is a 'must read'....about the #1: The “Free Milk” People; #2: Shadow Artists; #4: He-e-e-ere’s Eeyore!; #5: The Design Diva; and #8: Your New Best Friend amongst others.........
• MEAN PEOPLE SUCK #2a: Professional Jealousy Part Deux is about friendship and professional jealousies. Read it if it has happened to you. Read if it hasn't happened to you yet - it will.

“Your job is not to judge what you make. Your job is to make it, and get it out into the world. Others can judge it once it’s out there, but you can’t hold it back by judging it beforehand.”
Susan - quoted in Professional Jealousy part 2

• Finishing with where I started which was her post last week A six year old can do it, you can do it too which is about the power of 'why'?
  

• Sue Smith (Ancient Artist) has a really good piece about Can You Find Your Artistic Voice Even When No One Is Listening? - which in part is her response to the impact of the recession/"economic slowdown" (pick your pundit) in the USA which I gather is now 'official'. Readers may recall I wrote about other aspects of this in What should artists do about marketing their art in a recession?

I believe that in response to the expanding access that technology brings into our culture, there will be a response back toward small, community oriented, face-to-face human contact between the farmer and the cook, the artist and the home owner. Art will become personal again, a hands on, in the studio, smelling the wet oil paint while arguing with the artist kind of thing. It will be the total experience that people crave in response to the isolation of sitting for hours in front of computer screens. My job as the artist is to discover how best to facilitate this concept .
Sue Favinger Smith

• Thanks to Alyson Stansfield for highlighting last month's New York Times piece You’ve Seen the E-Mail, Now Buy the Art in her Art Biz Blog post (plus podcast) about mastering digital images
  

“I don’t know if this is the beginning of something wonderful, or the end of something wonderful,” said Amy Cappellazzo, co-head of postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s. “But we’ve seen the use of JPEGs increase dramatically, exponentially, in the last few years. It’s all about the speed of the market. Without the use of digital images, this market would come to a grinding halt.”
New York Times JORI FINKEL

Published: February 4, 2007

Art Competitions and Exhibitions

• CAUTION: I recommend that any US resident thinking of submitting an entry to Prismacolor's National Art Competition 'For Art's Sake' reads the official rules very carefully as they include a requirement (see below) which concerns me.
  

Entries become the property of Sanford, L.P. (“Sponsor”) and will not be acknowledged or returned...........By submitting an Entry into this Competition, entrant unconditionally assigns and transfers to Sponsor all rights, title, interest and claim to entrant’s Entry and Artwork, including, without limitation, all intellectual property rights therein. Sponsor shall have the right to use, publish, alter, assign, edit, sell, license or dispose of such Entry and Artwork however it sees fit without approval of, or compensation to, entrants...............Entrants shall not receive any compensation or credit for Sponsor’s use of Entry or Artwork, other than as disclosed in these rules or as determined by Sponsor in Sponsor’s sole discretion. Entries/Artwork may be featured on Sponsor’s website (www.prismacolor.com), and may be used in packaging for sponsor’s product(s) with or without credit given to the entrant.
Prismacolor Official Rules

• You can create an original piece of art using the materials identified in one of the following categories: Colored Pencil, Art Markers, Graphite/Charcoal, Pastels, Pen &, Ink or Mixed Media. Prizes of $5,000 are available and the deadline is 31st May
  
• BUT make sure you read the official rules carefully before you submit any work. They are very detailed and VERY unusual. They state that if you enter you sign away all your intellectual property rights irrespective of whether or not you win a prize. This means if you submit you give them your artwork - and all uses they may find for it - completely for free with no 'comebacks'. Very odd - I've never ever seen rules like this before - I wonder if they are a mistake?
• If you have any queries you need to direct them to Prismacolor - except I can't find a contact e-mail address for the competition but there is a form for comments and queries.
  
• If you have a view please comment below. Many thanks to Judy (Kats in Klompen) for alerting me to this.
  

• See the end of this post for a round-up of the comings and goings and bloggings in relation to the UKCPS exhibitions this week

Art Education - 'how to.....'

• Have you ever wondered how people get just one colour into black and white photos? I came across this blog post on Lifehacker this week which was being recommended as explaining all - Add a dash of color to black-and-white photos. by Rick Broida However it's a little bit old (December 2006) and I'm just wondering whether anybody has seen any advances on this posted anywhere.
• Vivien Blackburn (Painting Prints and Stuff) explains about the usefulness of sketchbooks and sketching, plein air and in the studio - they can be a source of information for years to come

Art Materials and Supplies

• Helene Keough (Helene Keough) is an artist who likes to draw animals and the wildlife around her home (check out the squirrels!). She wants a non toxic oil based paint which won't cause problems for either her husband or dog in her air-conditioned house. She's recently been researching water miscible paints and associated mediums in these posts
• In search of the perfect medium
• Let there be light, oh, and zest-it
  
• Water soluble paint and an ode to a squirrel

Art Videos

• One of my favourite watercolour painters, Charles Reid has a new video out "Charles Reid, Painter: The Figure in Watercolor". The page for the details of the video includes both a photo gallery and a link to a video clip (which can also be seen on the American Artist site). I have some of his earlier DVDs and they are always absorbing as well as educational. You really need to see the video to see his talent for bold washy watercolour.
• If you would like to see the inside of Quentin Blake's studio and hear him comment on the work of an illustrator who is starting out take a look at Hogarth Brown's interview of Quentin Blake found in the The Guardian books section. (Quentin Blake - who illustrated all the Roald Dahl book - is the only person I know who has a section called Fossicking on this website. It made me realise that this blog post comes about each week through a process of fossicking!) He also talks about illustrating a book.
  

Featured Artists

• An interview with Holly Bedrosian (Holly Bedrosian Fine Art) - who is a coloured pencil artist - is March's Guest Artist on Marsha Robinett's blog, The Extraordinary Pencil
  

Websites and Blogging

• On the topic of blog feeds, feed burning and feed readers we have:
• my post yesterday - Blog feeds - and how to set up a Feedburner subscription facility on your blog. If people have any queries after reading this I'll update the text before transferring it to a free pdf publication available from here later this week.
• Feed Know How...for the FEED frazzled by Marsha Robinett (The Extraordinary Pencil)
• Lisa Call (Contemporary Textile Art)takes a different perspective to me in Blogrolls and Feed readers. I definitely endorse her use of Bloglines Beta.
  

and finally...... or is it?

Some of you will have been aware that the internet lines were humming this week in relation to the proposed new rules for exhibitions of coloured pencil art with the United Kingdom Coloured Pencil Society.

For those who missed it here are the bloggers' contributions to the debate PLUS links to the relevant posts but I'm starting with the pages which explain the outcome for exhibitions in 2008 and 2009 and concluding with a NEW blog post at the end which relates to CPSA.

• United Kingdom Coloured Pencil Society
• UKCPS News Blog: - Revisions to Rules for UKCPS Exhibitions and 6th Annual "World of Coloured Pencil" Exhibition
• UKCPS Website: UKCPS 2008 Exhibition (Royal West of England Academy, Bristol Friday 3rd to Tuesday 28th October 2008) - and form to download which contains rules and conditions
• Making A Mark - blog posts which relate to the UKCPS exhibition
• UKCPS have changed the exhibition rules....again
• CPSA and UKCPS: originality in concept, design and execution
• The rules for the 2008 exhibitions of coloured pencil art
• Other Blog contributions to the debate
• Gayle Mason - (Fur in the Paint) Changes to the Conditions of Entry for the 2008 UKCPS Exhibition
• Maggie Siefvater - (Greywaren) Original Works for Exhibitions
• Vivien Blackburn - (Painting, Prints and Stuff) Painting from photographs - good or bad? should they be your own photographs?
• Nicole Caulfield (Nicole Caulfield's art Journal) - New Rules for UKCPS AND Why I believe in photo restrictions for competitions
• S G Chipman - (Wax Bloom) UKCPS rule changes AND Stephen's post for today Deja Vu - which demonstrates very clearly the risks of using photographs from a copyright free library for a competitive exhibition. I think the revision of the CPSA's rules for 2008 will exclude any further repetition but I too am left with thoughts which are similar to those of Stephen - and I doubt I'm alone...........
  

I remember being really blown away by this drawing when I saw it at the Strathmore, but to be honest - I feel kinda cheated now......Sort of makes me wonder how many other drawings in that show were staggeringly well executed yet meaningless reproductions.
S G Chipman Deja Vu - read his post to find out why