10th August 2008 - who's made a mark this week?

Katherine Tyrrell on Lines and Colors

It's really great when other people "make a mark" about what you do. This week two close friends and I all enjoyed a big boost to our profiles delivered by the actions of others - what was really odd was that they all happened on on the same day!

• The Art and Artistry Forum used its monthly newsletter to deliver a long interview with professional full time artist Vivien Blackburn (Paintings prints and stuff)
  
• Maggie Stiefvater (Words on Words by Maggie Stiefvater) - author and artist - found out a facebook fan group about her new book Lament has been started and Jennifer who created it is also very busy recruiting new members to it. It contains news about the book launch in October as well the cartoons about specific events that Maggie is doing for her 'Teaser Tuesday'. It's a nice artistic twist on conventional book launches.
  
• Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) gave me a totally unexpected and rather nice surprise. His blog now contains a profile of Katherine Tyrrell - that's me! Many thanks to all those people who have left compliments and comments about this on my blog and Charley's.
  

Art Blogs

First off - I'm NOT theming my blog for the Olympics - this is an art blog not a sports blog!

Bloggers seem to be having a lot of downtime this month for various reasons - including breaks for holidays. I'm certainly enjoying the new regime for this month which means I get time to do the other things that need doing right now - like getting ready for exhibitions!

However I'd like to make a couple of important points

• I really enjoy reading the blogs of those who keep writing even if they're not creating. Tracy Helgeson (Works by Tracy Helgeson ) has been an absolute star in this respect just recently - we've moved out of the new studio, into the old one, out to the flowers, across the veggies and into the chicken hut - A Chicken Update While I am At It! I, for one, am loving every minute of it - I feel like I've moved in!
  
• At the same time, for all those who are experiencing enforced blogging breaks due to ill health (self or family) do please know that many of us keep you in our thoughts and wait eagerly for fresh posts when you have the time or feel up to it. It was really great to see Cindy Woods (Learning Daily) back with several new sketches this week and at the same time sad to know Vivien's posting will need to take a back seat for a while - see re absence.

Back to art bloggers who were blogging last week. Those who've had their holidays include:

• Rose Welty (Rose's Art Lines) is back from her holiday fresh and invigorated - and has started oil painting! (Three cheers for Rose!) For all those who've wondered whether to have a go her posts make great reading.
• She started from an interesting perspective The Importance of Failure
• Then wrote about The Failure I am Risking
• Before moving on to A Beginning - which is about her starting to paint in oils and what she enjoyed and what she felt was a challenge - and what she'll be doing next time.
• Kirsty Hall (Kirsty Hall) has been on holiday in Edinburgh. You can see the Rosslyn Chapel in this one and read about the Tracey Emin: 20 Years exhibition at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art. IMO this is really GREAT review.
  
• Laura Cumming in the Observer also commented in It's time you made that bed, Tracey plus here's the pictures of the exhibition.
  
• Jonathan Jones reveals why the fourth plinth in Trafalgar square is available for contemporary art in Should a statue of the Queen replace the fourth plinth commissions? Apparently the plan is that it's being kept intentionally empty for a statue of the Queen on a horse after her death. John Tusa, Chairman of the University of the Arts in London, is not impressed.
• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) provides a much more entertaining post about his Music Poll Results. This tells you what people like listening to while they make art. Rock (both classical and contemporary versions) take the # 3 and #4 slots while "prefer silence" is down at #7!
  

Art business and marketing

• My poll about What's the MAIN way you sell your art? (see side column) is gathering pace. Out of the 33 responses to date some 39% sell most of their work online - but interestingly only one person sells most of their work via an online art gallery! Personal blogs and websites appear to be much more effective at achieving sales. There's 20 days left if you've not voted so far.
  
• This week I discovered The Voluntary Arts Network. This aims to promote participation in the arts and crafts across the UK and Republic of Ireland. This is the list of Visual Arts groups listed in the Directory (I'm not quite sure why the young farmers think they're artistic - maybe it's the crop circles?) - including some which don't often get much of a profile on the internet such asthe National Society for Education in Art & Design. I think I'll be doing another post about this network and what it has to offer in the near future
  

Do not--ever ever--send an email with your entire list in the To or Cc line.
Alyson B Stanfield

• Why? Alyson B Stanfield (Art Biz Blog ) reminded us of the reasons why on Saturday in Preview: Tweak your email habits. Sending an email with your entire list in the To or Cc line is the fastest way I know of telling people you don't really know enough about how to protect their privacy or security - or worse still don't even care!
• The Artists Network has created a fan page on Facebook for the fans of The Artist's Magazine, Watercolor Artist and The Pastel Journal.

Art collections and collectors

• The Art News Blog, commenting on the introduction of resale rights for artists in Australia, is not convinced that artists should receive royalties on resale of their work - see Artist Royalties. DACs is the Design and Artists Copyright Society in the UK. Last year they paid 12,500 artists and visual creators their share of the £3 million resale royalties that they collected. I think Art News Blog misses the point about how artists have previously never had an opportunity to share in the increasing value of their work. Should art galleries and collectors be the only people who share in any profits which are made? What do you think?
  
• The Guardian's Money section is proving to be an interesting place to look for pointers on the art market
  
• How much does a sound art investment cost? - was a question posed (with a bit more detail) on the 1st August - and a variety of answers have now been assembled and printed alongside it. Click the link to read their responses.
• I was alerted by one of my readers to an interesting piece yesterday about collectables. It focused on how investors switch to "recession-proof" collectables (such as stamps and signatures) as a hedge against soaring inflation. It's an interesting message for artists who are not just trying to generate sales but instead prefer to create collectors.

• Duane Keiser (A Painting A Day) has very definitely got collectors (and we're all having a great time on Keiser Collectors) but has raised the price of oddments to $150. On Tuesday I was very pleased to announce that I got Duane Keiser's last $100 oddment.

Art galleries, museums and exhibitions

• Jonathan Jones is critical of the way MOMA in New York displays its collection of pieces by modernist masterpieces in Nice collection MoMA - shame we can't see it
• The National Gallery of Art in Washington has developed a microsite for Robert Rauschenberg which includes works, images, a biography and podcasts
  
• I'm planning to get into town very soon to see the The Courtauld Cezannes at the Courtauld Gallery - the exhibition closes on 5th October.

The Courtauld Gallery holds the most important group of works by Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) in Britain. This exhibition presents the entire collection for the first time with major paintings such as the iconic Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1887)and Card Players (1892-5) shown alongside rarely seen drawings and watercolours.

• I posted yesterday about the current exhibition at the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery - Not the Royal Academy - a Salon des Refusés
• which I saw when submitting my furry friends to their annual scrutiny - I'm really pleased to have had four feline artworks accepted for the 14th Annual Exhibition of the Society of Feline Artists at the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery. I'll be posting one a week between now and the opening of the exhibition.
• I've only just discovered the Yahoo site Upcoming. It's a social calendar website and allows you to add in events. It looks to me like it's being heavily used by the geeks (this is Robert Scoble's Upcoming), musicians and performing artists - maybe it's time for the visual artists to get involved and start promoting their events.
• I've got a few posts coming up about submitting work to juried exhibitions, both national and interational, so people interested in drawing and dry media should stay tuned!
  

Art fairs

• I've only just come across a very sound batch of posts by experienced craft artist Luann Udell (Luann Udell ) - which have as a common title Good Booths Gone Bad. Luann is very experienced at showing at art fairs - and she's been at League of NH Craftsmen’s 75th Annual Fair all week. Here's a sample

• GOOD BOOTHS GONE BAD #4: And the Walls Come Tumblin’ Down
• GOOD BOOTHS GONE BAD #7 What Lies Beneath
• GOOD BOOTHS GONE BAD #21: Give Me Space!

• Luann also highlights Bruce Baker from time to time - and here's his website with what look like some interesting products for those who attend art fairs.
• Plus an interesting blog by Tom Young (Tom Young - business tips for artisans and craft people ) which is aimed more at artisans and craft people - but which has some posts of generic value - here's an example What does attitude have to do with sales?

Art materials and supplies

Inquiring Mind by Laura Hardie
10x14 inches, Coloured pencil

• Animal artist Laura Hardie (Animal Art Adventures) in Edinburgh produces her wonderful animal portraits in coloured pencils on Fabriano Artistico. She wrote to let me know you can now buy individual Caran D'Ache Luminance 6901 pencils at Artifolk (www.artifolk.co.uk). She went to stock up on her usual Derwent Artist pencils and finished up adding ordering 32 Luminance pencils as well. I'm trying to resist these as I feel £2.75 per pencil could make them a very expensive habit. I suppose I should just take a look at my stock of pencils I can no longer use because it turns out they aren't lightfast - and then have another think about the real cost of buying lightfast colours! (See Making a Mark: How lightfast are your artist grade coloured pencils? to see just how many pencils I'm talking about!)
• On Monday I reviewed the poll about Which is your favourite make of artist grade coloured pencil? Faber Castell Polychromos was in the lead after 177 responses - and is now dead level with Sanford Prismacolor after 200 responses.
  

Colour

• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) has been asked a brilliant question about colour - Color Wheel Question. See if you can answer it.

Tips and Techniques

• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) is on a roll at the moment - with consistently interesting blog posts. This one is about Technique and Training and doesn't provide quite what you'd expect. You might end up wondering where technique and training begin and end.............
  

Websites and Blogging

• Casey Klahn (The Colorist) has introduced some pictorial links to labels attached to his blog posts. He explains how to od this in Blogger in Quick Key Link Buttons
• Tina Mammoser (The Cycling Artist ) wrote about domain names in Thoughts from a domain name addict...
• I've just started taking a look at Woopra - a new web analytics program - after reading Whooping Woopra Blog Statistics Program on Lorelle on Wordpress. Here's the FAQs. It's not yet available for Blogger but looks very interesting.
  
• Lorelle (Lorelle on Wordpress) - who is one my 'must read' bloggers on blogging - last Friday issued a Blog Challenge: Where Do You Consistently Find Inspiration?

Blog about where you find your inspiration to blog.

Share the tips and techniques you use to inspire blog posts. In this blog challenge, I don’t want you to tell the back story of a specific blog post, but the techniques you use in general to keep the river flowing on your blog.
Lorelle

• Here's a list of some her past blog challenges

• Blog Challenge: Does Your Blog Make a Difference?
• Blog Challenge: What’s Your Blog’s Story?
• Blog Challenge: How Do You Judge a Blog Post as a Success?

and finally.....

After last week's post people have been asking me all week what "chuffed" means. It took the English2American Dictionary for me to realise why I can happily use this word with English friends and get funny looks from American ones.

Here's the definition of "chuffed"

chuffed adj generally happy with life. You can also get away with saying you are “unchuffed” or “dischuffed” if something gets your back up. Make sure you only use this word in the correct tense and familiarise yourself with the meaning of the word “chuff,” too (see previous entry).
English2American Dictionary

For the previous entry 'chuff' I refer you to the English2American Dictionary page for words beginning with 'c' - and I can confirm I NEVER use this word!

If you'd like to know when the 'real' paper copy of the dictionary hits the shelves leave your email for Chris Rae who's the bright spark who had the original idea.