7th September 2008 - Who's made a mark this week?

Lots of people to congratulate today and this week! There are some more listed in the sections below. Congratulations to:

• Doug Dawson, who was elected a PSA Master Pastelist in 1985, will be inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Pastel Society of America (PSA) at their 36th Awards Dinner next weekend associated with the PSA's 36th Annual "Pastels Only" Juried Exhibition which opened last Friday [More details about the exhibition in art competitions and exhibitions below. Find out more about the way Doug works in the art education and workshop section below.]

Pastel Society of America - 36th Annual Exhibition Featured artwork by Doug Dawson

• France Belleville over at Wagonized - who has just quietly slipped in to her latest post that she's just got married to Tom! Many congratulations from me. As somebody said the only clue was the drawing of "Our Birks".
• Google celebrates its 10th birthday today - Larry Page and Sergey Brin incorporated it on 7th September 1999 and ten years later they are billionaires! I was expecting a super razzle dazzle logo for the Google browser page but nothing as yet....... The BBC commented about Google at 10 and CNET had this overview - At 10 years old, whither Google? [More comments about new Google products in websites and blogging.]
  

Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.
Google mission statement

Art Blogs and Artists

• Duane Keiser (A Painting A Day) has a brand new blog for his oddments (these are his very small paintings typically about 3"x2.5.") called Oddments - a thousand small paintings
• I discovered Robin Purcell's simply amazing watercolours this week - you can find her blogging her art at Robin Purcell, Watercolors in the plein air tradition. Robin comes from New England and used to be a studio painter. She fell hard for the American Impressionists, moved to Northern California and has very obviously found her spiritual home!
• Colorado based artist Stacy Peterson describes her blog, Blank Canvas as "Ramblings about art and life from a work in progress". She posts some great paintings plus has got clear set of goals with precise outcome measures and does a monthly review to see how she's getting on. Nice and simple and very effective - both paintings and blog posts!
• You get more pics of Nicole Caulfield's new studio in downtown Keene, NH in her post Art in the Park 2008, Roses and Lemons, and more Studio Pics on her blog Nicole Caulfield Art Journal.
• This morning Vivien Blackburn told me that she was going to be visiting Leicestershire artist Jenny Cook on an Open Studio Day. When I saw her website I was 'blown away' - really amazing work - and a real original! Her workshop/studio/gallery studio is pretty nice too! She doesn't have a blog - but I'd love to see more about her work.
  

Art Business and Marketing

• On Monday, I looked back at my very first (but certainly not the last) Making A Mark Poll in What's the MAIN way you sell your art? - The Results
• Alyson B Stanfield's (Artbiz Blog) post about Things to look for in software for your mailing list and inventory adds to the review I did back in June Which is the best e-mail newsletter software?
• My Shared memories - and a breakthrough! post is about how somebody approached me about buying a giclee print of an image on my portfolio website - and how easy it is to produce on demand prints.

The Lemon Tree House - fine art print
available here

Art Collectors I'm trying to develop a bit of a theme about art collectors, art collections and collecting this month.

• On Tuesday, I started a new poll about collecting art and wrote a post asking Do you collect art? Are you an 'art collector'? It's had a great response to date - but if you've not voted yet please do so. The results to date indicate, guess what? Exactly as I suspected, most artists also collect art! The only limitation appears to be financial rather than interest. The post has had lots of really great and detailed comments about how people collect and why people collect (or don't collect) for which many thanks - and if you've not read them I do suggest taking another look at this post. I'm hoping that a little prompt every Sunday will generate enough votes and comments for some really interesting analysis - along the lines of what I did for my first poll. I'll post an interim chart next week.
  
• I like the way some people use Flickr to really demonstrate the power of collections of similar subjects and/or subject matter done in one media. For example check out France Belleville's wonderful sets on Flickr and, in particular, her drawings with a pen, with a pencil and her 'ladies'.
  
• Rhiannon Connelly (Starry Blue Sky) based in Edinburgh also showed us one of the ways people have of showing off how items can look good together in a collection in Etsy Treasuries - a secret addiction. She even got hers on to the front page of Etsy!
  
• I like Duane Keiser's description of the connections between artist and collector in On Collecting in his blog On Painting

When a painting finds its way into the home of a collector it becomes part of a story. It is the story of paths crossing, of a painting having a serindipitous encounter with someone who was ready, at a specific moment in their life, to feel some connection to what the artist, at a specific moment in his life, felt the need to paint.
Duane Keier - On Collecting

• The V&A Museum in London have acquired a rather unusual item for its permanent collection Wealth and taste: V&A buys original Rolling Stones logo

Art competitions and exhibitions

• I was very pleased to find out the result of the public vote for the Threadneedle Prize - see Nina Murdoch wins the Threadneedle Figurative Prize 2008. I voted for her - and I think quite a few of you may have done so too. I was even happier when I had a nice note from Nina thanking me for my support.
• I'm also was incredibly pleased for my friend Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint ) this week. Her elevation to full membership of the Society of Feline Artists was also marked by a really good start on the sales front as well - Gayle Mason SOFA sells before the SOFA Annual Exhibition is even open!

Aristocrat - in stages
coloured pencil and Neocolour II on Ampersand Pastelbord
copyright Gayle Mason

• the Pastel Society of America (PSA) opened its doors to the 36th Annual "Pastels Only" Exhibition in New York last Friday. It's on from September 5-20, 2008 in the Bernhard Gallery of the historic National Arts Club, New York Cit.
• Popular artist, author and teacher Nita Leland (Exploring Color & Creativity ) last week wrote, in her post AWS Gold Medal endangered, about the controversy surrounding the hyper realist "painting" which won the American Watercolor Society's Gold Medal this year. I've been following the big debate about copyright as it raises a number of important issues - expect to see a blog post from me early next week.
• Exhibitions opening this next week include:
• The Twentieth Century how it looked and felt opens at Tate Liverpool tomorrow - 8th September and but has various end dates for contributors up to end of April 2009
• you can see the work of artists selected for the exhibition associated with Royal Watercolour Society/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition from Wednesday 10th September at the Bankside Gallery - right next to theTate Modern. It closes on 21st September. (See my post about the selected artists and prizewinners - I'll be writing another post once I've seen the exhibition)
• Francis Bacon at Tate Britain - opens in 11th September until 4th January
• Plus there's not long left to see:
• Cy Twombley at Tate Modern - closes 14th September
• Women Impressionists at the Legion of Honour in San Francisco - it closes on 21st September. If you can't get to the exhibition then try finding the catalogue - I've got it and think it's a splendid overview.

Art education and workshops

PSA's Hall of Fame inductee - Doug Dawson
photo courtesy of Michael Chesley Johnson

• Michael Chesley Johnson (A Plein Air Painter's Blog) has been hosting a workshop by Doug Dawson - you can see what happened on Day 1 and Days 2 and 3 and Days 4 and 5 on his blog. Michael very helpfully explains about the processes that Doug advocates. You can find more information about Doug's workshop schedule on his website.
  

We made sure to work hard on our value designs first. "I never used to do them," Doug said, "until I started teaching them. Then I found that they really do improve your compositional skill dramatically."
Doug Dawson Workshop - Days 4 & 5

• Cindy (Skating at the edge of infinity) has posted some great shots of a Robert Liberace workshop - which includes life drawings done using a Prismacolor pencil. This is Robert Liberace's website and Charley Parker's (Lines and Colors ) review of Robert's drawings back in 2005.

Rob usually prepares his paper using an wash of ochre watercolor and then covers this with a diluted shellac. The shellac allows him to get the most out of the prismacolor pencils that he uses and seems to help prevent a waxy buildup.
Robert Liberace Workshop, Mashfield, MA

Art Supplies

• Cindy (Skating at the Edge of Infinity) also gives details of how to use Pelican Plaka, which is a casein paint, as a ground in her post Pelikan Plaka Sources
• While Cindy's sister Penny (Measure by Measure) also has a very useful post about drawing using a metalpoint

Art Videos

• Duane Keiser (A Painting A Day)has produced another video - this time it's all about how to make a PB&J

Colour

• copies of Nita Leland's new North Light book about Colour Confident Color are going to be available very soon (probably midmonth). Check out the order page on Nita's website.

Tips and techniques

• Marion Boddy Evans over at painting.about.com has been writing about Top 5 Ways to Ruin a Painting
• have you Downloaded a free PDF of the special report, “73 Best Websites for Artists,” from the October 2008 issue of Watercolor Artist? It's a really nice idea in principle but has a couple of problems.
• First any article which declares something to be the 'best' always makes me want to ask "Who says?" because unless there's been a vote then it's only ever an opinion not a fact!
• Second, rather a lot of the sites listed are good but really quite generalist in nature and, if that approach is to be adopted, there are some really glaring omissions - plus why stop at 73?.
• Personally speaking I'd have much preferred to have seen a listing which was dedicated to the very best in every aspect of watercolour art. Mind you, it's given me an idea .........;)
• Luann Udell made ma laugh with CLEANING YOUR ATTIC Tip #3: Curb It!

Blogging and Website matters

A couple of techie posts from yesterday:

• Three ways to make it difficult for people to contact you Do you ever test and check out the user experience on your site? How about checking out how people can find you, contact you and write to you? Are you the subject of this salutary tale?
• Matt Cutts discusses the importance of alt tags for images As in Matts Cutts the man at Google who enforces Google's Webmaster Guidelines and cracking down on link spam. But he has a nice side too - he loves his cat!

In the ever expanding world of Google (and Blogger and Picasa) there are a lot of things going on. I refuse to use the Google toolbar and I have a policy of trying to find applications which are not owned by Google. I've recently started to use search engines which are not Google (more about this in next week's Techie post) plus my photos are archived on Flickr etc. - however I'm not averse to sharing what's going on! :)

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

• Google has launched a new internet browser Chrome which can work with or Windows Vista/XP SP2 - I've yet to see the video which simply won't start for me!

• You can find out more about what people think of it here with CNET's Reviewing the reviews of Google's Chrome
• This is one internet user who will not be using it (see policy above) - I guess it'll take an awful lot to get me to switch from Firefox!
• I'm also not recommending it - in fact quite the reverse if anything (there are security concerns) - plus CNET News has suggested that Google's Omnibox could be Pandora's box

If you're not careful with your privacy settings, Google has the right to log every keystroke you type into the browser's address/search bar.
Google's Omnibox could be Pandora's box

• If you're a Blogger blogger, have you noticed how the Blogger dashboard page has changed?

• There's the Reading List- which I have partially implemented - it seems to be linked to Follower. The partial is because it only lists the feeds in Google Reader and I stopped using that and now use Bloglines beta.
• Blogger also seems to have the Follower function up and running and I'm trialling it -but found I only had one follower! I'm hoping this is because it's very new! I guess I'm also more than a bit concerned that it's going to further increase the load time - and of course it's only ever going to show Blogger Bloggers. I'm going to be trying to do a post about the pros and cons of it at some point in this next week.

• Picasa 3 beta has been launched - which you can read about here. It apparently includes "plenty of new photo-editing goodies". This is an overview of the features in Picasa 3 plus you can find out more about it on the Google Photos blog.

and finally......

Test your colour IQ with this test from x-rite. Vivien told me about it - and then told me she got a big fat zero - which means she's totally perfect! I got 12 which means I'm very nearly perfect - and I'm going to have another go after I've not been staring at a computer screen for several hours!

Do have a go at the test - it's Munsell oriented and a really good way of seeing how good you are assessing gradations of colour. Your result will also tell you which ranges of colour are giving you problems in assessing relationships.