11th January 2009 - Who's made a mark this week?

The result of the End of Year Portrait Challenge
copyright Different Strokes from Different Folks and the artists

These paintings were was done from by a photograph provided via the Karin Jurick's group blog Different Strokes From Different Folks, where artists are encouraged to paint or draw their own interpretations of the photographs supplied. You can see all the results of the Year End Challenge - to paint each other in pairs - in Painting Us Different Folks.

I thought the artists did a great job at painting the people rather than the photograph. This project is really demonstrating and underlining all the different styles of painting which are possible even if your only source material is a reference photograph. Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) also did a review of project in Different Strokes from Different Folks portrait swap

21st Sketchcrawl

Yesterday was the 21st Sketchcrawl and it was anticipated that it was the biggest yet. I have to confess I wasn't a participant yesterday - the weather is too cold for me contemplate sketching outside at the moment plus I have an active dislike of Museums on Saturdays - the London Sketchcrawl Group proposed going to the Natural History Museum (see results ).Jeanne Grant (Jeanne Grant) also stayed at home due to fog but made sure she sketched and quite put me to shame! See My Sketchcrawl Day

So here to make up for it I'm sharing links to the blogs of some of other people who participated:

• Masses of people and sketches - as per usual - from San Francisco - CA [Results]
• Nina Johansson (ninajohansson.se ) says there were 10 people in the Stockholm part of the 21st sketchcrawl - a big increase on previous ones
• This is the Urban Sketchers
• Yong Hwan Lee's Sketch Crawl in Seoul and the SEOUL - KOREA (Result)thread
• Gabi Campanario's Seattle sketchcrawl at the Universoty of Washington campus. Here's the rest of the Seattle Sketchcrawlers and their sketches
  
• The Plein Air Austin group joined an international drawing marathon - see Laurel Dainel's (Laurel Daniel Oil Paintings) efforts at Sketchcrawl
• Here's the people who participated in the New York Sketchcrawl at Grand Central Station
• There were also some great photos and sketches of Sapporo Station in Sapporo / Japan [RESULTS]
• Thomas Thorspecken (Analog Artist Digital World) did some fabulous watercolour sketches in Orlando, Florida - see the Orlando results thread
  
• Shane Corn (Piles and Piles of Drawings ) in Valencia, California had fun drawing people at the Sketch Crawl in Glendale at the Americana
• Marcello painted olive trees near his home in Galilee, Israel

Art blogs

• Luann Udell (Luann Udell) has an article "You Might be an Artist if....." in The Crafts Report - see The Crafts Report - February 2009 - Departments (Page 78)
• I came across Shawna Lemay's Calm Things - a place to meditate on still life this week and was most impressed. It looks new but isn't. I gather the previous blog started to malfunction hence it's switch to this site.
  
• Developing skills in the use of different media is one of the ways artists continue to develop. Barbara Benedetti Newton(Barbara Benedetti's Art Journal and Barbara Benedetti Newton Paintings) and is a coloured pencil artist and author (remember her book with Janey Gildow) who has transferred to using pastels and is now taking up oil painting. Her blog is now in my regular reads - primarily because I very much like her work but also because she has some interesting things to say. Try reading her post about her critique group
• Another artist who works in pastel and whose work I admire is Sheila M. Evans (Sheila M. Evans. Check out the gallery option in the right hand column to see more of her work. She's also another pastel artist taking up oil paints again - see about my art. Casey Klahn (Pastels Blog) did an interview with Sheila back in 2007
  
• Sue Favinger Smith (Ancient Artist ) wrote about Developing a Signature Style. Fellow artist and friend, Martin Stankewitz responded by starting a new squidoo lens titled "Art Style - how to bury your talent to which Sue responded with The Great Style Debate is Getting Hot. Personally, I think the phrase "signature style" is used by different groups of people to mean different things and that signature style very definitely has meaning outside the field of decorative arts and a didactic approach to what you need to paint. For example, Martin has, to my mind, a very strong signature style!
  

There is no secret to a signature style: it's the result of the way you think and respond to what you want to communicate. And the more that you work in your chosen medium, the more you will find those ideas that make your work unique.

Artists

• Check out the new Facebook version of Robert Genn
• The Times Online has an interview with Michael Craig-Martin - the artist who became the godfather to the Young British Artists when he was teaching at Goldsmiths College - see The god of small and ordinary things

Years ago Craig-Martin took the view that it was more interesting to deal with the things that people deal with all the time. “It was much easier to be interested in the extraordinary and the special, whereas what is really interesting is finding interest in things that are not automatically extraordinary and special and to try and make them special.”

• while The Guardian has a Q&A with Howard Hodgkin
  

Art blogs - groups

• The Flying Pictures project has finally finished
  

Art business and marketing

• Check out the official Etsy handmade blog The Storque and its news feed
• A very interesting post on Alyson B Stanfield's ArtBizBlog about signing off your emails.
  

Art economy

• The Times Online Visual Arts section had an in-depth articles
  
• a review of Jay Jopling: crunch time for Mr Brit Art (there's a bit of me which wants to ask how come he doesn't realise he's going to become the subject of a song by Lilly Allen?)
  
• Art for art's sake; money for God's sake - an absolutely fascinating read about patronage and how artists - and relevant to all artists irrespective of whether or not the credit crunch is making big inroads into the level of your artistic activity

• The Gagosian Way is an email from Larry Gagosian to his staff from FlashArtOnline. In 2004, the annual chart compiled by the British magazine Art Review called Gagosian "the world's greatest art businessman" and the emal indicates his business practices.
  

Art supplies

• Check out Cathy Johnson's(The Quicksilver Workaholic) Flickr set of watercolour boxes and palettes
  
• Roz Stendahl (Roz Wound Up) normally makes her own artbooks for journals and sketching - seeAdventures in Bookbinding. However recently she bought a commercial sketchbook and reviewed this in Commercial Sketchbooks: A Test of Kunst & Papier's Watercolor Offering

Book Reviews

I did a couple of posts this week which have attracted some of the most interesting comments about art books that I've ever had on this blog. I'm very grateful to all the people who took time out to write such thoughtful responses. Do read them and do also feel free to add your own particular perspective. I'm going to do a summary next week of the key messages emerging from the comments.

• Art Instruction Books #1: different ways of learning - at the time of writing this one has had 37 comments (and they're not short ones!) - including three from authors of art instruction books Nita Leland, Kate (Cathy Johnson) and James Gurney.
  
• Art Books #2 - the economics of publishing

Exhibitions and art fairs

• The UK's first major art event of 2009 is next week's London Art Fair at the Business Design Centre in Islington showing modern British and contemporary art - typically for sale at less than £10k. You can see the artists represented here - I noticed an awful lot of names of dead artists. I've got my complimentary ticket and will be going along at some point. A variety of journals have commented:
• Times Online - All's fair as crunch bites which reflects that art fairs like art dealers will need to adapt as the economic downturn continues
• The Financial Times - London Art Fair comments on its role as the pragmatic alternative to Frieze
  

The London Art Fair has been forced to find a new role. After some difficult years, it has settled on an effective but less glamorous alternative: it is the fair for the British art lover attracted to challenging 20th-century art of every period who prefers to spend up to £10,000 ($15,200) on something that is easier to live with than the provocatively avant-garde.
The Financial Times - London Art Fair

• Bloomberg - Black Rat, Expensive Brits Defy Market Crunch at London Fair suggests there's going to be a lot less impulse buying
• Meanwhile the LA Times opines that The art shows must go on in relation to January art shows in California
• The New York Times has an interesting article about art museums in the USA. Following on from the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art debacle Museums Look Inward for Their Own Bailouts is about the fate of other museums who don't have a white knight riding to the rescue with a a $30 million bailout. It focuses in particular on museums in Detroit, Newark and Brooklyn.
• Messum's has an exhibition of work by Kurt Jackson opening next week - the exhibition is called Forest Gardens (Kurt Jackson was also highlighted in a couple of posts on Watermarks last week - Kurt Jackson In Action and Kurt Jackson, mark making and influences)
• The New York Times has an Art Review Focus on Jasper Johns plus a slide-show
  
• The Daily Telegraph suggested what it thinks are the Top Five Exhibitions of 2009

Original Obama image by Shepard Fairey

• Cindy (Skating at the Edge of Infinity) highlighted the Manifest Hope Exhibition in The MANIFEST HOPE: DC Gallery which will be open to the public in Washington, DC in the weekend preceding the Presidential Inauguration (17th-19th January).
  

Making A Mark Poll - How often do you post to your blog?

100 people have so far responded to the question "How often do you post to your blog?" If you've not voted yet you can still do so as the poll runs until the end of January - see the side column (just under the Followers section)

Tips and Techniques

• On Monday I posted about Working in a series - drawing and painting ponds and what i've been learning about the different ways other people have tackled ponds as the subject matter for a series - artists like Claude Monet, Kevin MacPherson, Kurt Jackson and Joseph Raffael.

A very old watercolour - Pura Taman Saraswati (September 1992)
watercolour on Arches NOT
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

• I had a simply stunning response to Outstanding performance - a talent or 10,000 hours of practice? which like my posts about art instruction books attracted an awful lot of comments. Some people were kind enough to comment on that very rare sight - a (very old watercolour by moi!) I still think the trees are awful!
  

Fish linoprint 4 x 5.5
copyright Jeanette Jobson

• Jeanette Jobson (Jeanette Jobson - Illustrated Life and Watermarks ) has attempted relief printing for the first AND has produced an excellnt post on how she went about this AND produced a beautiful image of a fish (see right) as a result.
• For those struggling with their new way of working for 2009, Kirsty Hall (Up All Night Again) has found a new online tool to help with 'to do' lists. It's called Toodledo and it even has a special tool for procrastinators who can't make decisions where it tells you what to do! If you try it and it works don't forget to go and thank Kirsty
  

It’s early days yet but I think that Toodledo may be different - in less than a week, it’s completely embedded itself into my life. I like the fact that it plots things on a calendar and you can easily assign folders, importance and deadlines to tasks plus it’s quick and easy to alter things. It’s nice and visible on my bookmark toolbar (I’m both visually orientated and forgetful - if I can’t see something, it may as well not exist), opens instantly and most crucially, it’s very intuitive.

Yesterday I announced that I'm improving my botanical knowledge - which is about the the Botany Photo of the Day missive plus links to a group of my information sites of interest to artists interested in botanical art and painting flowers and gardens.

Websites, blogging and social networks

• I've been noticing recently how many of my posts have found their way on to Stumbleupon. Many thanks to all those who have posted reviews - you know who you are! I've taken advantage of the 'buttons' on the site to include one at the end of each post.
• Rose Welty has been sorting out the design of her blog and Cleaning sidebar clutter
• For those interested in the Ning social network webware, the (Ning Blog ) has published some plans for The Next Three Months…
• On Thursday I had Security Suite blues and ended up having to walk away - which was great idea as it turned out! You can see the result in The coldest snap for 20 years in Travels with a Sketchbook and also in a recently uploaded Flickr photo set The coldest snap for 20 years

and finally........

I found this in the arts and culture section of digg! Nothing to do with art - but very uplifting - and a reminder of what is possible.

• 6 Open Letters That Changed the World from Mental Floss

[Many apologies for the dreadful format errors which crept in to today's post - I nearly went cross-eyed removing them!]