3rd August 2008 - Who's made a mark this week?

Painting La Tour by Rob Ibjema

Today I've got much droning from high speed planes going on outside my window as the Red Bull Air Race gets underway along the River Thames in London.

A slightly quieter event, except of course when the crowds were cheering, was the recent Tour de France. Rob Ijbema, of Llandrindod Wells (Painting Wales Diary) has captured images from the race in a brand new blog called Painting La Tour

Fancy doing the 2008 Tour de France?
with nothing but a paint brush...
and telly ITV4, computer broadband history and NOS radio Tour de France....
Following the ups and downs of this magnificent and colorful spectacle round the whole of France.
Taking in the Alps and Pyrenees,the highs and lows, the whole way lined with millions of crazy spectators. Three weeks of nothing but pain and torture, why am I doing this to myself?

Have you ever created a blog for a specific event or a specific trip? My Travels with My sketchbook blog grew out of my two big trips to the USA and wanting to have one place where I could record them.

If you've done a big trip this summer why not create a blog for it?

Congraulations to.......

• all the people who won awards on Friday night at the Colored Pencil Society of America's awards banquet. I've got a blog post about this and the 16th Annual International Exhibition on either Monday or Tuesday.
  

Congrats also to the various people who are celebrating blog birthdays and awards.

• Karen Winters (The Creative Journey) Flint Canyon Trail, Autumn - Five Years of Blogging
• Amy Ross (Nature Morph) has been blogging for a year - see her post random bits. Her work is fascinating and you can see more if on her website. You can also find it in galleries in Los Angeles, Boston, Washington and New York City.
• Janie Pirie, a coloured pencil artist who won a silver gilt medal for her 8 coloured pencil works showing soft fruits at the RHS Show in June. Thanks to Bob and the UKCPS blog for the information - see More CP Success. I one hundred per cent endorse Art Societies using Blogs to to publicise the success of their members!)
  
• Julie Oakley who got a Commended at her local art society show in St Albans.
  

Art blogs

• Duane Keiser (A Painting A Day) has provided a welcome focus on art for art collectors with his new initiative - Keiser Collectors - a new website community for collectors of work by Duane Keiser. I was also hugely chuffed to find out that my blog has been added to Duane's very short blogroll (a small shriek left my mouth though!)
• As a result of Duane's new venture I discovered a new (to me) blog called Skating at the Edge of Infinity written by one of Duane's collectors - who has also written a really wonderful post about A Way to Collect Art, Inexpensively. Do read around on this blog because there are lots of great posts including ones about what it's like studying with Robert Liberace. It struck me that I see very few blog posts about collecting - and I'm now on the look out for some. Please use the comments on this blog for any suggestions you may have.
  
• Maggie Stiefvater (Greywaren Art and Word on Words) has developed the art of butt-kicking, which is much appreciated by many artists and bloggers. I wrote about it this week in Six secrets of success - more butt-kicking advice from Maggie Stiefvater.
• Melody Madden (Melody Madden Mixed Media Art) - who works in thread - has done a lovely post - both text and images - about her visit with Tracy Helgeson (Works by Tracy Helgeson) - see Part Two ...A Visit with Tracy Helgeson ...........
• Mattias Adolfson (Mattias Inks) produces a blog which has very, very words - but lots of exceptional drawings. It's quiet and makes me smile.
  
• for all those who followed Julie Oakley's One mile from home she's found a BBC video of the area near her home where she used to walk and which is to become a new national forest
• I came across wonderful sketches by Cathy Gatland (A sketch in time) Walking the Talk again
• Another person sketching people is Adebanje Alade (Adebanji Alade: my art, my passion for sketching) in this post about sketches done last month "Sketches on the tube, train, train station and bus in July XV"
• I posted on Monday about my visit to sketch The Long Border at Great Dixter. You can read more about this in Travels with a sketchbook - Great Dixter, East Sussex - and you can find out more about Great Dixter at the end of this post.
  

Art business and marketing

• Dan at Empty Easel needs feedback on how his new writers are doing. I sent him some feedback this week and if anybody else would like to do likewise, Dan suggests that you send any comments to him at EmptyEasel@gmail.com (or via his contact page).
• What's the MAIN way you sell your art? So far 23 people have voted in the poll in the side column. Selling offline is way out in front........... If you've not yet voted, you might like to take a look at the options and select the one which best describes how you sell your work.
• Linda Blondheim (Linda Blondheim Art Notes) has a post Listing prices, what to charge? about putting prices on artwork websites and setting prices for your art - plus a cautionary note about how galleries can make your sales dry up if they get the pricing wrong.
  
• If you can't afford to collect Julian Merrow Smith's Postcards from Provence you might like to take a peek at some boxed notecards created from some of postcards which are now being published by Teneues the German/US publisher. There are two sets Flowers from Provence and Still Life from Provence. Apparently they're available in retail outlets and direct from TeNeues.com in the US/Canada or Uk/Ireland.

Art Demos

• Andrea Pratt (Drawing outside the lines) in Vancouver has done a step by step drawing demo post of how she does one of her mixed media drawings.
  

Art Exhibitions and galleries

• Bankside Gallery has a new exhibition which opened on Friday - Summer in the Sity. This is a joint exhibition by the Royal Watercolour Society and the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and will run until the end of the month.

Art materials and supplies

• Thanks to Casey Klahn for alerting me to the Daniel Smith Art Supplies Blog.
  

websites and blogging

• A number of people with Blogger blogs had problems last week with their blogs and were unable to post because their blogs had been designated spam blogs. Edward B. Gordon (Edward B Gordon) in Berlin, Germany and Tracy Helgeson (Works by Tracy Helgeson) in New York State and Linda Blondheim (Linda Blondheim Art Notes) were three of the people caught by what has turned out to be a major !!!$%^&*!!! by Blogger. Such a timewaster!!! Here's the explanation , such as it is, on the Blogger Status site

Some blogs have been mistakenly marked as spam. Affected users are not able to post to their blog and received an email indicating Blogger classified their blog as spam. We are actively working to correct the issue.

Update: We have restored all blogs that were mistakenly marked as spam due to Friday's bug. If you are still unable to post to your blog, you can request a review by clicking Request Unlock Review on your Dashboard.
Blogger status

• I'm loving the Blogger widget which lets you say what is the title of the most recent post on a blog - I'm opening up blogs in my blogroll a lot more often as a result!
  
• Niff (Feathers of Hope) reports back from a visit to Moutain View (home of Google in California) and has some very interesting details about Feeding the Googleplex! ;)
• Blogflux has set up a groups facility - and has one category for design which I fully expect will be taken over by the shopping blogs within a matter of milliseconds. No sign of a category for art and illustration as yet.

and finally......

As many readers know I love flowers and gardens and visit as many gardens as I can manage throughout the year. Posts about my visits now appear on my Travels with a Sketchbook blog.

For those who like gardening you might be interested to know that I've started to develop a series of information sites about the various gardens I've visited and last week I published the first two. You can read more about this development in The gardens of England.

Naturally, I started with two of my favourite gardens - Sissinghurst and Great Dixter.

• Sissinghurst Castle Garden - a great garden in Kent
  
• Great Dixter - a great garden in East Sussex.

It's interesting that both gardens were created by two people - Vita Sackville West and Christopher Lloyd - who wrote about gardens on a regular basis and who both produced exceptional planting schemes for colour. They truly knew how to 'paint' a garden.

I know I have a lot of gardeners amongst the people who read this blog - so I hope this provides an interesting diversion - and maybe a virtual visit - for your Sunday. Enjoy!