18th May 2008 - Who's made a mark this week?

There have been quite a few people drawing a cat this week! Jeanette Jobson (Illustrated Life) and Rose Welty (Rose's Art Lines) have banded together to participate in a virtual sketch date each week.

The idea is to have fun but also to see how each person responds to working from the same photograph. The idea has taken off and a small group of people now participate each week - including me this week (see right).

Tripod
pencil (fine and 4B)
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

This week everybody is working from a photograph supplied by Jeanette of her cat Tripod (he's got three legs!). The participants are - as at 15th May 2008 - Jeanette, Rose, Jeanne, Stacy, Belinda, Jennifer, Gayle, Teresa, Katherine and Paulette.

I don't normally draw at all from other people's photos - but I like Tripod and liked this week's photo! It's also really interesting to examine options for how you can translate photo to sketch and then to see how your interpretation compares to those of other people.

Tripod
Graphite, graphite dust and indian ink

Gayle Mason

You can see mine above and see other completed sketches in the following posts:

• Rose Welty (Rose's Art Lines) and Teresa have their cat sketches posted in Virtual Sketch Date #2: 3 Three-Legged Cats
• Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint) Virtual Sketch; Cat in Graphite and Indian Ink (see above)
  
• Jeanne Grant (Jeanne Grant) Mr T
• Jennifer Rose Phillips (Fuzzy Dragons) Virtual Sketch
• Paulette (Becoming a Renaissance Woman) Tripod
• Jeanette Jobson (Illustrated Life) Virtual Sketch # 2
• Stacy Rowan (Stop and Draw the Roses) Virtual Sketch Date - Tripod

Now for the rest of 'who's made a mark this week' - and it's a long one!

Flowers in art

With the Chelsea Flower Show coming up this week, I'm keeping an eye on the 5 day weather forecast and am in the middle of a spate of posts about flowers, painting flowers and botanical art. So read on for a few more related links that I found for 'who's made a mark this week'

• Birgit O'Connor ( see her gallery) has been doing a series of articles for the Artists Network about painting flowers in watercolour. These are linked to the release of her new book Watercolor in Motion and have been featured on The Artists Magazine Blog which has had a series of posts linked to more detailed articles about how to paint flowers in watercolour. These are the articles:
  
• Painting Flowers Step by Step: Radiant Reds
  
• Painting Flowers Step by Step: White Tulips
  
• Painting Flowers Step by Step: Pansy Power
  
• Painting Flowers Step by Step: Multiple Stamens
  
• How to Paint a Water Drop

• Jeanette Jobson (Illustrated Life) has been writing about Art in the garden and the 31st Annual Garden and Nature Art Exhibition at the Memorial University's Botanical Garden in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.
• Tracy Hall (Watercolour Artist Diary) has recently painted a Bearded Iris and Red Squirrel in watercolour. I love irises - one of my favourite flowers. This post also announces that Tracy's painting 'Red Squirrel' has received the Mary Scott Kestin Award for Animals and Wildlife at the Hilliard Society's International Annual Exhibition of Miniature Art. Congratulations to Tracy who only started miniature art just recently. Details of the show below.
• my posts concerned a couple of book reviews of Besler's Book of Flowers and Plants and Richard G Hatton's 1001 Plant and floral illustrations from early herbals plus posts about a couple of trips - A visit to the Chelsea Physic Garden and a sketch of Spring at Sissinghurst.(see right). More book reviews - and hopefully sketches of gardens - next week.
  

Art Blogs

• First - very many thanks to Jana Bouc (Jana's Journal and Sketch Blog) for telling me that Making A Mark had been listed as a 'Hot Blog' by the June edition of The Artist's Magazine - I can't wait for my copy to arrive so I can see for myself! However I've just discovered I'd inadvertently let my subscription lapse. I say inadvertent - it's mainly because I ignore all their subscription reminders because they usually start about a fortnight after I renew and then carry on for a year - so I just stop reading them!!! At the moment I'm having to content myself with being listed on the June 2008 links page for that edition. If anybody would like to scan and send me a jpeg or pdf of the mention I'd be most grateful!
  
• Please all go and take a look at the brand new Printsy blog of the group of Printmakers who sell on Etsy. It includes a great interview with a printmaker called Fustian. You can also see their work in their new Printsy Flickr group
• Martha (Trumpetvine Travels) has been in New York and has posted her sketches in New York Sketchbook, 2008, Part One (I recognise the back views of Shirley sketching!) and New York Sketchbook, 2008, Part Two (You've got to go look at the sketch of the Koons Balloon Dog!) You can see a photo of Shirley and Martha in New York in Every Day in May-3 on Shirley's blog Paper and Threads and also see Shirley's sketches too.
• I also love Shirley's new series of drawings of "My Homes" - what a great idea! I went to see the second home I lived in just recently to see if it was still the same - but it wasn't - it looked much better than before!
  
• Lindsay Non-Linear Arts has done a 'best of' for her waterways project Waterways Project: One Year Later
• Jonathan Jones (amongst others) commented on the death of Robert Rauschenberg on the Guardian Art Blog.
• more posts from blogs in "tips and techniques" and other sections below.
  

Art business and marketing

• I keep trying to find time to write about The Orphan Works Act of 2008 and it looks like Charlie over at Lines and Colors has been stuck as well. Although it's not as comprehensive as he would have liked neverthless he gets to the guts of the issue which I'm repeating below - as it's pretty much my take on the whole thing. Follow up the links in this post and make representations.
  

I’m not opposed to the original stated intention of the bills, to provide for the use by museums, libraries and other cultural institutions of works for which the copyright is no longer being actively defended; but the bills as they are worded don’t put the necessary definitions in place to restrict the provision to those kind of institutions and non-profit use, and go way beyond that into the creation of a bureaucratic nightmare for visual artists, who will now have to devote unreasonable time and resources to defending their art against opportunists, image thieves and copyright sharks.

The bills as they stand basically undermine many of the copyright protections we now enjoy and blithely take for granted. They need to be changed to protect those of us who don’t have the resources of Warner Brothers or Disney to constantly monitor use of our work with armies of lawyers.
Charlie Parker - Lines and Colors - The Orphan Works Act of 2008

• The Guardian Art section had a story about the new Arts Council new funding scheme. It makes a change to self-assessment and peer review
• Empty Easel - The Printing Checklist: 7 Steps to Ensure a Quality Print Job for Your Art written by Kaitlyn Miller
• I had a post yesterday about a new service to address the no negative feedback for bidders problem on eBay - Techie Saturday: Fair play returns for eBay sellers

Art competitions and prizewinners

• You will recall I announced that RWS is now sponsoring the watercolour competition previously always referred to as the Singer and Friedlander. (seeThe RWS / Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2008 invites entries). Well it appears that Parker Harris have finally sent out the leaflets (I got mine yesterday) and have also got the details on their website about the RWS/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2008. See my post later today which provides an overview check on details and deadlines.
  
• The Parker Harris website also looks like it has finally had its revamp and now has a new look - let's hope that this bodes well for the availability of information. This is the page for artists which provides the links to the various art competitions. Look to the left hand column for the details about the other art competitions that they administer.
• Four artists up for Turner Prize - The nominations for the Turner Prize have been announced - these are their profiles and these are the Turner Prize nominations in pictures. You can also see/hear an audio slideshow on the BBC involving the Chair of the Jury.
• There are five proposals for the Ebbsfleet Landmark - including last year's Turner Prizewinner Mark Wallinger's horse at 5 times normal size!!!
• The Guardian has a story about another Turner Prizewinner Rachel Whiteread - Ghosts of childhood past. It's a fascinating interview - and, for me, enabled me to understand her work much better.
  

Art exhibitions

• The National Gallery of Australia in Canberra has the unique distinction of having one of the best and worst website introductions to its exhibition Turner to Monet - The Triumph of the Landscape that I've ever seen.
• First the worst - there is the introduction to the public - which is in Flash and, if it doesn't crash your browser as it did mine (twice), has lots of images of female with swirling hair and soulful brown eyes floating around an art gallery. In my opinion it looks very like an advert for a chocolate bar. What do you think?
  
• Compare this (if you ever get to see it) with the more educational site. This has an excellent introduction to the exhibition, a very good video and it's a very nice touch to actually have all works in the exhibition also available to see as a digital display. A further plus is that you can enlarge up to a decent size plus can 'select by artist'. The contrast between the two 'views' of the exhibition is simply staggering! Any other comments?
  
• Hilliard Society InternationalMiniature Art Exhibition - This is one of the few major UK miniature shows and a great chance to see some of the finest work in the field from Britain and abroad. It opens to the public on Saturday May 31st at the Town Hall at Wells in Somerset and then runs through the first week of June.
  
• MuseumsonUs has changed and now provides free admission to a very large number of museums and art galleries in the USA on the first weekend of every month if you have a Bank of America card. Check the website and click for details of which museums are participating amd what are the dates of the first weekends.
  

Art Supplies

• You may have missed my review - with photographs of the art supply heaven that is Green and Stone in the Kings road, Chelsea - see Art shops in London - Green & Stone. Judging by the comments I've received it seems like it has many international fans!
  

Tips and techniques

• For all those wanting a concertina sketchbook (this is all down to Laura!) take a look at a very long post Modified Concertina Book Format by Lindsay on Non-Linear Arts.
  
• Carol Marine (Carol Marine's Painting a Day) has been teaching a 5 day workshop in Santa Fe this week - which is as always fun reading. Don't you just love the end of class pics? See Carol's Kids :) Plus this post tells what she's learned in the last 500 paintings!
  
• Belinda del Pesco (Belinda del Pesco Fine Art) loves doing monotypes and then using coloured pencil. You can how she does this in Monotype: Dreaming and a very nice example of a monotype with CP in Monotype: Learning to Love Books. I wrote to ask Belinda about printing presses and I've got an interview with Belinda coming up as a blog post in the very near future - possibly even tomorrow!
  
• Deborah Paris (Deborah Paris - A Painting Life) has an interesting post about problems with varnish - and solutions.
• Marion Boddy Evan's Painting Tip of the Week: Using an Old Credit Card on About.com:Painting concerns using an old credit card for oil painting was suggested by Mickey Oberman.

Websites and blogging

• Please go and vote on my POLL: How often do you post to your blog? on Blogging for Artists. The purpose of the poll is to give artists who are new to blogging some idea of the frequency range for posting by artists who blog. People who respond very fast have a chance to help tweak the descriptions for each option by leaving a comment on this post. (Guess who the "fanatical blogger" is!)
  
• Two posts from this week
• Yesterday I posted about a new service which aims to tackle the problem about being unable to leave negative feedback about bidders on eBay - see Techie Saturday: Fair play returns for eBay sellers
• I also did a test run on Friday of the new Blogger function for scheduling the future publication of posts - and have some comments to add to their 'how to' blog post - see NEW - Automatic publication of future-dated Blogger posts
• Empty Easel has a post about Should Artists Put Ads on their Websites? Pros and Cons
• Darren Rowse at Problogger has answered an interesting question with some very sensible responses How to Respond to Individual Requests for Help From Blog Readers. Check out some of the comments as well.
  

and finally..........

I love typography is a website for all typography addicts (that'll be me!). It has the rather difficult font game - which is very difficult to avoid if you are an addict and I can imagine it would be easy to get hooked! However it's excellent for a quick 5 minutes time out. I got 21 out of 34 first time round - but I will do much, much better very soon!