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

James Lloyd and Iris
standing in front of Iris and me,
the portrait which won the RSPP's
Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture

It's not every day that your father paints your picture.

And it's not every day that you get taken along to a very big gallery space which is packed out with lots and lots (and lots!) of people because somebody wants to announce he's won a big important prize with your picture and to give him £10,000 and a gold medal.

This is my drawing tutor James Lloyd and his daughter Iris standing in front of his painting Iris and me, which won the Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture this week at the annual exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters at the Mall Galleries. You can read more about Iris's big day in James Lloyd wins The Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture.

I'm very sure Iris is going to remember having her photo taken at the big gallery with all those people when she grows up. If she's got any sense she'll engage her Mum as her agent right away to start negotiating with Dad for a new rate for her model fees!

Thanks to Jack at the Mall Galleries for the photo. My apologies to Leonard Rosoman (an artist I much admire) whose fine painting just behind James had some very insistent red which I've 'doctored' out.

The chef and his shadow
Ilaria Rosseli Del Turco

Expressing your views on your blog about other artists' work means that other artists always know that people are looking!

One of the really nice things about having this blog and writing about other artists whose work I see in exhibitions is that some of them then write to me. I had a lovely letter commenting on my blog from Ilaria Rosseli Del Turco whose portrait painting The Chef and his shadow in also in the RSPP exhibition.

Art Blogs

Thanks to Tracy Helgeson (Works by Tracy Helgeson) for some of the suggestions below. It's always great to see art bloggers recommending the blogs that they enjoy reading - and I'm always very pleased to pass on the ones that appeal to me when I take a look.

• Randel Plowman in Northern Kentucky is making A Collage a Day. I'm always intrigued by how people start and how they know/choose what paper and other materials to use when making a collage. I wonder if it's the birds or his skill as a collage artist which means that these are a sell-out?
  
• Kimberley Applegate describes her blog Joie de Vivre as being about trial size paintings posted often. It contains a wealth of repetition around the painting of chairs and paintings. Some are better than others but they all make you look! I loved the Thiebaud painting/George Nelson chair combination.
  

Other items on art blogs this week included:

• Duane Keiser (A Painting A Day) has produced another 'big' painting - this time it's a slice of lemon.
• Jeanette Jobson (Illustrated Life) has a wonderful story The artist's trade about how she acquired the paintbrush which she has drawn. I think Vivien has started something with her paintbrush challenge!
• Rose Welty (Rose's Art Lines) posted last week about why artists should have a blog:
• Why You Should Have An Art Blog - Part 1 - about what her blog has done for her art
• Why You Should Have an Art Blog - Part 2 - about what a blog can do for you
• Why You Should Have an Art Blog - Part 3 - about the difficulties you can face while blogging and what you can to do to address them
  

When I was sketching last week, I noticed how confident I had become in making marks on the paper. I noticed that I was having an internal dialog with myself about composition, values, etc. It made me realize just how much I have benefited from my blog.
Rose Welty

• According to the Guardian Art Blog, spray paint is just so passé for graffiti art - just as I notice that my local art store has moved all of its spray paint behind the cashdesk and away from would-be pilferers. The latest thing for graffiti art is apparently lights, lasers and LEDs.
  

Here's a few more in Vivien Blackburn's 'Drawing from Memory cartoon strip' project - as featured last week. I'm wondering about when I'm going to pull out the proverbial and have a go at this!

• Jeanette again with A day in my life in Newfoundland
• Maggie (Greywaren Art) sketched out her Thursday - complete with novel-writing, two small children, two dogs, a cat, a husband and cookie dough!
• Anita (Anita Davies) - used a manikin for a neat twist for her cartoon in Monochrome
  
• Following on from last week, even Dermott (living with Robyn Sinclair in Castiglion Fiorentino) rose to my challenge to respond on the question of whose bum looks biggest in a cartoon strip - see Dog with Opposable Thumb

Art Business and Marketing

• In Clueless about art? the Guardian highlighted a new online lending library for contemporary art. This is the site they were referring to Art-Switch. I liked the synopsis (below). I can imagine a lot of people responding to that. For artists who are interested this is the Letter to Artists - which certainly seems to press a number of the right button - plus they have a nice section on Care for your Art.
  

Art-Switch is a library of original art where you can easily borrow or buy art at trustworthy prices you can understand. If you think finding original art is full of risks and hassle, Art-Switch is for you: it’s the only no-risk and hassle-free way to enjoy original art.

• Now - here's the thing. This doesn't need to be done only through an organisation like this. Why don't local art communities set up and organise a similar scheme for their own local areas? It might well encourage people to buy more art, brings artists into contact with people in their local community, provides some extra income to those artists whose art gets rented out and makes more space in the studio!
• Tina Mammoser (The Cycling Artist) has started a blog for her co-op gallery and is getting very organised doing press packs
  
• Linda Blondheim's blog Linda Blondheim's Art Notes offers tips for a successful studio sale (plus a shrimp marinade recipe) and strategies for pricing art
• Luann Udell (Luann Udell) has found some Great Packaging Material - which is so good it got a blog post!
  

Art Competitions

You can download the prospectus for the 2008 Annual Exhibition of the Pastel Society of America from the Exhibitions Page. The exhibition is to be held in the National arts lub between 5-20th September. Doug Dawson will be admitted to the Hall of Fame.

Art Exhibitions

I saw some statistics this week that suggested that more people went to museums last year than went to football matches. I wish I could find that reference - but here's a page that lists the top 10 free tourist attractions in 2007 - and it includes 7 museums of which 3 are art galleries. Tate Modern came second with 4.9 million visitors and the National Gallery came fourth with £4.5 million.

This is by way of introducing a rather longer exhibitions section than usual!

• The National Gallery in London and Eurostar have got together to launch the very first interactive digital art gallery for travellers anywhere in the world - at the newly refurnished St Pancras International. Travellers waiting for trains get to choose from a 100 masterpieces from the National Gallery collection, including works by Leonardo da Vinci, Caravaggio, Van Gogh and Monet.
• The first major exhibition to be devoted to Cranach is halfway through its run at the Royal Academy of Arts - the end date is 8th June.
• Blood on Paper - the Art of the Book is a new exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. This article Page Turner in the Guardian comments on the birth of the livre d'artiste, or artist's book.

At a time when the notion of the book is challenged by the advent of the screen and computer, this exhibition aims to show the extraordinary ways in which the book has been treated by leading artists of today and the recent past. Blood on Paper will focus on new and contemporary work, and on books where the artist has been the driving force in conception and design. The past twenty years have seen outstanding work by some of the most influential and respected artists of our time.
V&A Museum

• Exhibitions opening next week include the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers at the Bankside Gallery. I'm hoping to be at the Private View on Wednesday evening. The exhibition is then open to the public through until 1st June.

I've been a very busy this last week with botanical art and portraiture and visits to exhibitions and posts about exhibitions:

The Mall Galleries Ladies
4" x 8", pencil and coloured pencil in Moleskine
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

• On Saturday I was at Kew for the opening day of the Shirley Sherwood Gallery - Kew opens the world's first dedicated botanical art gallery and bought a catalogue of the exhibition which I then reviewed on Tuesday in Treasures of Botanical Art - a recommended read
• On Tuesday I also went to Westminster for the annual exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists - The Botanical Palette exhibition. I made a return visit on Wednesday, mainly because I'd left my sketchbook behind my mistake the previous night but also because I didn't have time on Tuesday to review the coloured pencil contingent - numbers are definitely up from last year!
• Followed by a visit to the Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries on Wednesday: James Lloyd wins The Ondaatje Prize for Portraiture (see story at top)
  
• Just as I was finishing that post, an e-mail turned up in my inbox which was all about the BP Portrait Award and which resulted, on Friday, in BP Portrait Award shortlist announced - a woman will win! This includes some staggering statistics as well as images of the finalists plus I commented in my post about the gender aspect of portrait painting!

Art materials and techniques

• Pastels: Richard McKinley had a very interesting post for all pastel artists on the Pastel Pointers Blog about Pushing around Pastel - whether to rub and what to rub with!
• Colored Pencils:
  
• Cindy Haase (Color On!) has a post about using marker pens for the underpainting on pastelbord prior to using colored pencils - see Psycho Pear - Markers and Pastel Pencils
• Holly Bedrosian (Holly Bedrosian Fine Art) is another convert to pastelbord and has a portraiture blog post which shows an interesting comparison of the same subject done on pastelbord and Bristol paper.
  

Artist's Studios

• The Guardian had a picture of painter Michael Craig-Martin's studio. I always think of him as being the chap with the very stylised drawing technique who does the outlines. This is his website and this is his wikipedia entry - which tells me that I should also recollect his influence over the Young British Artists, many of whom he taught. Check out the screensavers.
• Teresa Mallen is a coloured pencil artist in Ottawa, Canada with a new blog Teresa Mallen Studio and new tracklights in her studio - see New Track Lighting, Yippee! Check out the size of that studio!
  

Book reviews

• On Tuesday the Prince of Wales published the Highgrove Florilegium - which I wrote about yesterday in Volume 1 of The Highgrove Florilegium is published.

Blogging and websites

• Here are the winners of the Webware 100. These are the 100 best Web 2.0 applications, chosen by Webware readers and Internet users across the globe.
  
• Over 1.9 million votes were cast to select these Webware 100 winners, The categories include browsing, commerce and events, communication, productivity, publishing and photography and video.
• You can see all the winners in one place, or page through the winners one-by-one in the Webware 100 Navigator. Rafe's analysis is worth reading.
  
• DeviantArt made it into the top 10 sites under 'social' which is hardly surprising given it's the largest online art community in the world - with a big focus on manga/anime, cartoons and comic books and fan art.
  
• Marsha Robinette (The Extraordinary Pencil) experienced one of the less nice aspects of blogging and Blogger this week - which she explains in The Extraordinary Pencil was held Hostage by Blogger!!
  
• While I'm sympathetic to what Marsha went through, as one who has had content repeatedly stolen from this blog and inserted in spam blogs I do know how intensely annoying sploggers can be - and I am very much on Blogger's side in relation to them trying to do something about it. But Blogger really does need to get its act together on customer service as well. I really am very fed up from knowing that Google actually makes money from having spam in the system, from reading about how much money Google makes (see below) and then experiencing - as Marsha did this week - how very little of that moola they invest in the sort of customer support that Blogger needs to have. After all, the small technology companies can manage pretty fast response times - so why can't Google? Anybody else out there having problems with clumsy attempts to catch spam?

Google reported revenues of $5.19 billion for the quarter ended March 31, 2008, an increase of 42% compared to the first quarter of 2007 and an increase of 7% compared to the fourth quarter of 2007.
GOOGLE ANNOUNCES FIRST QUARTER 2008 RESULTS (my bold)

• Jeffwend has had a Special Traffic Report posted on the SquidU Blog about good sites to use to create traffic for your squidoo lenses - but, of course the principles work the same for any website which aims to inform.
  

and finally.........

If you've ever had your art or design ripped off there is now a site which fights back. Check out You thought we wouldn't notice.

Welcome to 'you thought we wouldn't notice' a site dedicated to pointing out those thing's that give you that feeling of 'haven't l seen that somewhere before?"

It posts images of 'copies' and copyright rip-offs which I guess the 'originators' thought would pass unnoticed. It's also an open blog, anyone can post their story. You need to read the About page before posting which includes the reasons why you shouldn't post work on the blog.