Introducing Watermarks

Ice Lake at Sheffield Park

20cm x 30cm, coloured pencils on Arche HP
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I'm pleased to finally be able to introduce you to Watermarks. This is a new team blog for a small community of artists who create art from water - and I'm one of them!

Basically we're a group of nine artists who like to sketch, draw and/or paint all forms of water - the sea, the coastline, beaches, rivers, streams, waterfalls, fountains - in all styles, genres and media.

Our main aims are to use our brand new group blog to:

• display our works in progress as well as art as it is completed
  
• highlight other artists (past and present) whose art involves water
• highlight exhibitions of relevant artwork and
  
• discuss media matters and tips and techniques for creating art out of water

You can see the members in Welcome to Watermarks. You'll also find links to all our individual blogs in the sidebar plus links to the various drawing and painting projects and series we've undertaken in the past.

Over the next week or so there's going to be a series of posts on the blog introducing all the members of the team who are:

• Vivien Blackburn - who loves painting at the coast and who came up with the bright idea for the blog
  
• Laura Frankstone - who this year has been developing a project all about water
  
• Gesa Helms - who does seascapes and see studies
  
• Jeanette Jobson - who has the Atlantic providing a backdrop to her everyday life in Newfoundland
  
• Tina Mammoser - who continues to develop her English Coastlines project
  
• Lindsay Olson - who has been working on a waterways project
• Sarah Wimperis - who moved to Cornwall this year and is painting the Helford River and its boats as well as parts of the coastline of Cornwall
  
• Ronell van Wyk - who lives right next to the River Loire in France
• and me - and I live very close to the Thames and sketch it often, plus I'm very partial to a nice lake or canal!
  

It's actually very interesting how many of us either live near to a major mass of water or have lived very close to water in the past.

Incidentally, we've also started a ning community as a private forum - and it's working really well. I can certainly commend it to anybody who's also thinking about developing a small art community. (Plus now you know why I wrote about Artists, Art Societies, Art Groups and Ning
just over a month ago!)

I'm just wondering whether you picked up on any or all the clues that some of us have been leaving around the place..... ;) Here's a list for those who were looking:

• Gesa Helms was first up with Wait and sea
• Jeanette Jobson was Looking ahead
• Sarah Wimperis - had What's Up? and To The Sea
• Vivien Blackburn announced that an exciting new group project was coming soon.....
• Tina Mammoser also suggested you Wait and sea...
• and I had lots of links to watery things in my post yesterday from the paintmaps belonging to Lindsay and Vivien to the Kelpies!

Did you pick up on any of these?

What do you think of the idea and the new blog? Do come and visit and tell us what you think.