17th August 2008 - Who's made a mark this week?

Miniature Paintings - RMS entries © Tracy Hall 2008
Winner of The Royal Miniature Society Gold Memorial Bowl (Rook & Red Admiral)
Winner of The Llewellyn Alexander Award (The Sentry -Meerkat)

Congratulations to...........

Tracy Hall (Watercolour Artist Diary) - last September Tracy started to paint miniatures. Then, after seeing my blog post last October The Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers - Annual Exhibition, she decided to start entering her miniatures in Miniature Society Exhibitions.

Tracy Hall (Watercolour Artist Diary) is a professional artist living in the Orkneys (islands off the north coast of Scotland) and has a deep interest in nature and animals...... Tracy tells me that as a result of my recent blog post about the Royal Society of Miniature Painters, Sculptors and Gravers exhibition that she intends to submit work to various exhibitions next year.
4th November 2007: Who's made a mark this week?

In June she won the Mary Scott Kestin Cup for Animals and Wildlife from the Hilliard Society (see Tracy on the right accepting the Cup from President Rosalind Pierson.

This week she was informed by the The Royal Miniature Society that she has won

• the premier prize awarded by the Society each year - The Royal Society of Miniature Painters Sculptors and Gravers Gold Memorial Bowl for Rook & Red Admiral (2.25" x 1.75")
• AND The Llewellyn Alexander Award for The Sentry - Meerkat (watercolour on Crescent rag board 3" x 2").

She doesn't say a lot in her post Royal Miniature Society Annual Exhibition but there are a lot of people using the comments function to congratulate her on her really stunning achievement. I can imagine there'll be quite a few collectors of miniature art lining up to subscribe to her blog as well in the very near future!

Back in July, Tracy said a little bit more about the painting which won the Society's premier award in a blog post in - Rook painting in miniature. Before you read it and look at the work in more detail just get a ruler out and measure off 5mm.......

This week I completed my latest miniature - a rook and red admiral butterfly perched on a tumbled down dyke. I enjoyed this one hugely, as I love old rocks and rooks - and also wanted to see if I could get the butterfly to work at 5mm wide. Miniatures are brilliant fun.....I often combine several elements from several photos as I have done here; so the wall is on the shore at the edge of one of our fields, the butterfly was actually sitting on a hebe bush in the garden and the rook was waiting for a bit of my fish supper (he was in luck).
Rook painting in miniature

I've also been corresponding with David Lawton of late. David also wrote this week to tell me that he has won the Anthony J Lester Art Critics Award for his portrait submitted to the same exhibition. David doesn't have a blog but he and I corresponded after my blog post about the winner of BP Portrait Award this year - David won the 2nd prize in the BP Portrait Award in 2007.

I'll be meeting up with both Tracy and David at the Private View on Monday 13th October and will be posting an interview with them both as well as reviewing the show. The exhibition was fabulous last year and is definitely worth seeing - it's on at the Mall Galleries in London from 14th-26th October. For those interested in finding out more about miniature art try my information site Miniature Art - Resources for Artists

Paul by Felicity Grace
juried into the 7th Annual Open Exhibition 2008,
of the UK Coloured Pencil Society

Congratulations also to Nicole Caulfield (Nicole Caulfield's Art Journal) and Felicity Grace (Felicity's Philosophies and Other Curiosities).

After I highlighted the CPSA 16th Annual International Exhibition 2008 - Award winners on Monday, Nicole, Felicity and I all heard a couple of days later that we have all had work accepted for the 7th Annual International Exhibition of the United Kingdom Coloured Pencil Society. Many thanks to all the people who left a comment on my post I've been juried into the UKCPS Annual International Exhibition.

You can read about Felicity's beautiful portrait on her blog here UKCPS Annual Exhibition 2008. Nicole will doubtless be posting to hers when she gets back from holiday!

I've had one person already ask me why UKCPS don't do a List of people and artwork accepted for the exhibition (like CPSA ) - and I guess I'd like to know that too! My apologies to anybody who has also had work accepted but I haven't cottoned on as yet!

You can read more about the action at the CPSA Convention and Annual Exhibition on Cindy Haase's blog Color On! Pirates Captured Me.......not really! Cindy is the Membership Director on the Governing Board of CPSA - so this is an insider's view!

Now - after an extended feature item I return you to my normal Sunday blogging..........

Art Blogs

• Maggie Stiefvater (Greywaren Art) posed an interesting question this week - When the Lights Go Out, Are You Still an Artist? It's attracted masses of comments and different perspectives - and two of them were mine!
• Check out a sample of Some recent work by Cindy (Skating at the Edge of Infinity ) - who would have guessed that she's new to life drawing!
• For all those wildlife artists who insist that they can't do wildlife art without photographs please take a look at Sketches at London Zoo in August XI by Adebanji Alade (Adebanji Alade: My art, my passion for sketching). Adebanji has won a number of awards for his portrait work - see his CV and as a result now also does a blog for Winsor and Newton - see A Blog by Adebanji Alade. I first saw his work when he won First Prize in the “Winsor and Newton under 35” category at the Royal Institute of Oil Painters Exhibition.
• Stephanie Levy (A Studio with a View ) in Munich Germany blogs has an interview series 'artists who blog' - it'a always good to see a creativity from a different perspective
• I've got to start making a note of who recommends people/blogs to me as I've done it again and just put the blog URL in my draft of this post. Many apologies to the person who recommended Pete Scully - I've come across Pete before but I'm very happy to flag up his sketchbook (of London and California) again as well as his blog. Really great sketching - and this time he goes in the blogroll over at Travels with a Sketchbook as well!

Artists

• Mary Herbert is currently exhibiting with Leicestershire Pastel Society and The Horse in Art exhibition plus her zebra painting, ‘Marula Shade’ has earned a place as finalist in the ‘Favourite Subjects’ competition, and is featured in the current issue (Aug/Sep 08) of International Artist Magazine with a double page spread. Click here to read more.

Art Business and Marketing

• Jeanette Jobson has done something I've been thinking about - creating a separate blog just art sales only which cover a range of prices, making art affordable for everyone - see The Starving Artist's Daily Sales. Maybe I need to get on with doing a post - the blog has been set up for ages!
• I also visited her Etsy shop and then ended up looking around the Etsy site and, in particular, at some of the very sensible advice in articles on Etsy's own blog The Storque. For example, check out The Numbers Game: Ratios and Your Shop's Inventory
• Etsy continues to have a steep upward trajectory in terms of visitors, although there seems to be a view it works best for a certain price category.

Afternoon tea in the Annenberg Courtyard
8" x10", pencil and coloured pencil in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Art Exhibitions

• "He who must not be bored while I sketch" and I went to the Royal Academy of Arts on Thursday and
• saw two exhibitions which I'll be writing about next week - Vilhelm Hammershøi - The Poetry of Silence is a wonderful exhibition, as is The Magic of a Line: Drawings by Dame Laura Knight RA (Library print Room)
• raced around the Summer Exhibition ('must not be bored' gets very bored with this!) and took a peek at sales. I need a new career as a gallery owner - all the pieces I liked had sold and all the pieces I really disliked were still hanging there without a red spot. For those thinking of entering next year have a read of my post about this on my other blog Which art sold at the Summer Exhibition?.......
• The Magic of a Line is timed to coincide with Laura Knight at the Theatre, an exhibition of Laura Knight's paintings and drawings of the ballet and the stage, at the Castle Museum and Art Gallery in Nottingham until 28 September 2008 (daily 10.00am - 4.00pm).
• Thanks to Cindy Haase for highlighting the Inspiring Impressionism exhibition at the Seattle Art Museum (until 21st September) which explores the relationships between the Impressionists and the painters before them. It also has a great website slide show where you can explore the paintings on display and also learn about them.

The only way to understand painting is to go and look at it. And if out of a million visitors there is even one to whom art means something, that is enough to justify museums. (Pierre-Auguste Renoir)

Art Materials and Supplies

• Richard McKinley (The Pastel Pointers Blog) has done another two great posts. The first is A visit to Dakota Pastels in Washington State - one for all the devotees of this store and online supply set-up. The second is about how to tackle Downsizing a Palette for Travel

If you're not able to visit, be sure to acquire a catalog and visit the website for the stores (www.dakotaartstore.com/) and for the mail-order catalog (www.dakotapastels.com/).

• Mary Herbert has a web page which reviews different surfaces for pastel work
• Many thanks to Cindy (Skating at the Edge of Infinity) who tipped me off about the product information available in Mark Golden's blog about Golden Acrylics Mark Golden on Paint

Art Videos

• Watch Tina Mammoser (the Cycling Artist) paint in Glazing caught on camera

Colour

• I wrote about a super little booklet I came across recently in Winsor & Newton - Notes on the composition and permanence of Artists' Colours

Tips and Techniques

• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) has a number of very useful suggestions for Getting a Fresh Eye on a work
• Jana Bouc (Jana's Journal and Sketch Blog) has written about Light and Comfort in the Studio (& How to Light a Still Life)
• Cindy Haase (Color On)writes about Dry Brush Technique with coloured pencils
• After getting artwork ready for exhibition the previous week I decided it was time to try and remember everything I know about How to mat and frame your artwork. It attracted a lot of useful comments.

SOFA 2008: Flying the Flag
10" x 8" coloured pencil on Arches HP
available from the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Blogger

• Updates and Bug Fixes for August 14th explains how Blogger has had an update to its dashboard. It quite unsettled me when it came up for the first time with no prior warning! Take a look if you bypassed it..........
• Spice Up Your Blog with Google Gadgets! If you've not been near your Blogger side column recently, you're in for a big surprise. Read more about adding Google Gadgets to your blog.

My Blog and Blogroll

• I continue to love the way the Blogger widget shows up who has posted and when. I'm finding I visit more blog as a result so I'm gradually converting all the sections of my blogroll.
• I've added in some new blogs to My Regular Reads.....
• ....However, I've also set up 'My Regular Reads'so that only the most recent 25 posts appear - which looks like it will mean that anybody who's not posted in the last 5-7 days will drop out of sight - as will anybody who's not got an RSS feed which works! This is great because I can add more people in and you always see those who have posted most recently. I'll be setting different limits on maximum posts showing in different sections and in some I won't convert them at all.
• I've also been tinkering - with the summary (see A summary change for Making A Mark) and links and format in the side column. Personally I call it housework avoidance........

Websites And Google

• I've got a feeling there's something odd going on re Google search and the Google servers. First my statistics look odd - and that might just be because I've not been posting every day. Next search results have changed. Plus gmail went down during the week.......for more than a few seconds - which is almost unheard of. Following on from the recent tagging of most active Blogger blogs as spam blogs it's got my eyebrows raised. Can those servers take the strain? Or is Google cleaning house? Have you got your address list backed up?
• Google Blogoscoped have a cautionary tale The Web Developer and His Wife (A Fairy Tale)
• Lifehacker provides Top 10 Obscure Google Search Tricks - definitely worth a read. I tried some of them and got much more relevant search results. Plus it's where I found......
• Give me back my Google (http://www.givemebackmygoogle.com/) which provides you with a Google search minus all the irritating affiliate links in the results.
  
• Dan at Empty Easel has a very useful post about The Evils of Splash Pages (And Why Art Blogs are Still the Best Choice for Artists). Can I just add how really unimpressed I am by any website which requires me to download the latest version of any software (ie no minus whizzo features version available) - so I don't - on principle. I just move on very quickly to the people who understand that it's their job to make life easy for me! End of small hissy fit!

PS Many apologies to Tracy Hall - and many thanks to Tracy Wall for pointing out my extremely silly typo in the first words of this post! (Now corrected!)