4th January 2009 - Who's made a mark this week?

I'd like to wish all my regular readers of "Who's made a mark this week?" all over the world a Happy New Year.

Here's hoping that 2009 will be a year in which creativity overflows, art knowledge and skills are developed, studios get revamped, art continues to sell, accounts get completed on time, your blog gets more readers and your time management skills get so good that you actually manage to finish the 'to do' list every single day!

I've had a lot of visitors this week reading Making A Mark in 2009 - The Plan. Thank you all for the very many comments - it seems as if the principles about how I want to operate in 2009 were ones that a lot of people identified with.

Lots of you have been turning your thoughts to 2009 and mapping out what you need in your plan for the year.

I listed some at the end of my post about 2009

• Tracy Helgeson - My Road Map for 2009
• Jeanette Jobson - 2009 - The Three 'Ps'
• Robyn Sinclair - Outperforming dog - which will take some beating when it comes to being focused and succinct!

Plus here are some of the more interesting blog posts about 2009 which I read this week:

• Michelle Basic Hendry (Artscapes - Musings on Art & Life) - Happy New Year! This comments on the benefits of being SMART but also on focusing on goals rather than expectations.
• Roz Stendhal (Roz Wound Up ) - Happy 2009! (One Day Early) This explained Roz's habit of setting the tone for a year by the way she behaves on New Year's day - a really fascinating post.

Space study #22: Leaves - Pen and ink on 70 lb natural white paper, 2 7/8"x9".

• Anna (See. Be. Draw ) - "Tithing" to the art spirit which introduces the concept of tithing your time. I really liked her drawing (right) - a space study picking up on her theme for 2009 of spaciousness. Using a narrow format sketchbook for a different sort of space for drawing also helps make you look at objects differently. Have you got changing your format on your 'to do' list for 2009?
  

The Art Atlas (image top right) is one of the books as I got as a Christmas present this year. It's an absolutely unique book because it's the first work to treat the art of the whole world from prehistory to the present day through the extensive use of maps. There will be a book review soon!

Art blogs

• Having visited Bali to paint twice I'm really pleased to have discoverd Jennifer Lawson's blog Jennifer Lawson "sketch-a-rama" where she posts vignettes of Balinese life wheer she is currently living.
  
• Casey Klahn (The Colorist ) has come up with a new idea - he posted his view as to the Top Ten Art Blog Posts of 2008 on other people's blogs. I've no idea how I'd get it down to just 10! I think I'm going to have to get to grips with making those little banners!
  
• I've recently discovered realist painter Jeremy Lipking's blog (Jeremy Lipking). He had an interesting post back in November about Pirates selling bootleg copies of art instructions DVDs on eBay.
• The pear people are back in The Last Kiss on Jacqueline Gnott's blog (Realism in Watercolors)
• I completed my end of year review
• On Monday I posted Blogging Art in 2008 - The Making A Mark Awards 2008 (Part 1)
• followed on Tuesday by Blogging Art in 2008 - The Making A Mark Awards (Part 2) - which contained the results of the polls for the best portrait by a female artists and best artwork on a blog in 2008 (see below).
  
• and on New Year's Eve I looked back on Making A Mark in 2008 - the results

(Left) The Making A Mark Award for Best Portrait by a female artist
Zen by Nicole Caulfield (Nicole Caulfield Art Journal )
(Right) The Making A Mark Award for Best Artwork on a blog in 2008
A Walk in the Ocean by Margaret Dyer (Small Pastels and an Occasional Oil)

Art group blogs

• Today UKCPS News is highlighting the new look UKCPS website in A new website for a new year
• A 'dog blog' came to my attention. The Canine Art Guild has a collective blog called Art with a Bark. It's not very clear how people join but I assume it's not a problem if you're a Guild member.
  
• Those interested in nature as well as art - and drawing and painting nature - might like to check out
  
• the Nature Blog Network
• Similarly people who sketch birds might like to check out Surfbirds - which has a list of sketchbooks
• the wildlife art forum of the Bird Forum
• Inspire Me Thursday is a weekly invitation for mixed media artists and creative types to nurture their muses and create - worth taking a look if you like weekly projects (Unfortunately it's Feedburner RSS feed is currently mangled)

Art business & marketing

• 1000Markets is an online gallery site for artists and craftspeople (mostly the latter). It's interesting that it's highlighting locality based artists - which underpins my notion that one of the ways forward in the current economy is to build on communities of interest - one of which is communities of artists in a locality. It's another way of marketing. So, for example we have:
• Handcrafted in Seattle
• Windy City - Chicago's Finest Artisans
• Garden State Artisans

Art economy

• This is the credit crunch - in cartoons
• Ten art market moments of 2008 By Colin Gleadell in the Daily Telegraph. This highlights the prediction by eminent art critic, Jerry Salz that 50 to 100 galleries in New York could close.
• Bloomberg (Art) had a couple of end of year posts reviewing what happened to the art market and auctions during the year
• How Monet, Freud, Hirst Records Led Art-Market Bubble to Burst Art prices extended a seven-year surge for much of 2008, with a Claude Monet painting of water lilies, Lucian Freud’s portrait of a civil servant called Sue and a Francis Bacon triptych setting records.
• Warhol, Hirst Works Languish as Art Prices, Demand Plummet at End of 2008 Damien Hirst’s record “Beautiful Inside My Head Forever” sale and collapse of Lehman Brothers Inc. in September marked the turning of the art market in 2008.
• Susan Forbes On Collecting (Forbes) comments on the flight to quality. She asserts that Contemporary Chinese art is dead.
• Ann Rafalko On Collecting (Forbes) predicts people will go back to collecting what they love rather than what is 'hot' (presumably because of the rapid cooling of the art market!) an that there will be a move to liquidate large corporate art collections and corporate sponsorship of exhibitions and free admission days will dry up.

The Bold Prediction

Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons will team up to create a giant, diamond-encrusted version of Koons' famous "Puppy," which will sell through a "private transaction" for $50 billion, and the mystery of Bernard Madoff's missing money will be solved.

Ann Rafalko On Collecting

Art - copyright

• I had a couple of useful responses from readers to my recent post The difference between "copyright free" and "royalty free". (I'm always happy to receive suggestions about useful sites from readers)
  
• Before Christmas, Julie Oakley (Julie Oakley) in Hertfordshire, UK pointed me in the direction of the set of Fine Art Registry articles about various legal aspects of Copyright - see Legal Copyrights - FAR® Exclusive Article. I've now included links to these in Copyright and Orphan Artworks - Resources for Artists
• Then Michelle Basic Hendry SCA (Artscapes - Musings on Art & Life) in Muskoka, Ontario posted Copyright Your Images which provides information about how to use Photoshop to add copyright metadata onto files for the web and a link to the organization trying to set standards for metadata.
  
• People commenting on this post also added other methods. Just thought I'd send you the link in case you found it interesting or useful! The more we can do to help protect our art the better...

Art exhibitions

• Booking for admission to the major Picasso exhibition at the National Gallery in London has opened. You can also book for talks and courses (I'm actually very surprised there are so few listed). Picasso: Challenging the Past will open on 25 February and finish on 7 June 2009. The exhibition will be in the Sainsbury Wing and there is an admission charge
• The British Council to show hoard of 20th-century British art (Times of London)
• LA Times Culture Monster blog has MOCA's Jeremy Strick, the interview
• ....while Bloomberg Art reported on Los Angeles’s MOCA Accepts Broad’s Grant, Hires Chief (Update2) following the resignation of Strick
  

Art studio

I'm going to be doing regular updates about art studios in 2009 - do let me know if you have anything particularly interesting on your blog.

• Jennifer Young (Paintings of France, Italy and beyond) is building an art studio and has a couple of posts about studio lighting which look very useful - see Still in the dark about art studio lighting and Getting lit during the holidays
• Nita Leland in Dayton, Ohio (Exploring Color and Creativity) has some studio storage suggestions.

Art supplies

• Roz Stendhal would like you all to start painting in gouache and to participate in "Project 640 Tubes" which essentially is a plan to get M. Graham & Co. to start making a gouache using PB60. I came across it because Roz has been using incentives - and this week somebody won the competition to receive on her journals.
  

Books and book reviews

• Daily Painters have published their new book Colour, Obsession, Joy and Torment The Daily Painters Art Gallery 2008. I like the fact that the website page devoted to the book provides a good range of pages to preview using the 'look inside' function. The layout looks good. It's got 165 colour pages and has over 500 images by 146 of the Daily Painters Gallery artists.
• 10 Most Popular Books in Blog Blazers should probably have been posted down in the website/blogging section as this are books which were recommended by 40 high profile bloggers.
  

Making A Mark Polls

• I started MAM Poll (January): How often do you post to your blog? This runs for the whole of January and I'll reporting the results in early February. So far, 64 people have voted!
  

Tips and techniques

• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) - winner of the Making A Mark FAQs and Answers Really Useful Medal - demonstrated Drawing Shadows, Drawing Light
• As part of her endeavours to build ner new studio, Jennifer Young (Paintings of France, Italy and beyond) has been looking doing some extensive research about lighting for studios and artists
  
• Getting lit during the holidays discuisses Fluorescent Full Spectrum Lighting, Color Temperature and Color Rendering, Quality Vs. Quantity and T12’s, T8’s, or T5’s. She also provides some very useful links to more sites discussing lighting
• Still in the dark about art studio lighting considers the pros and cons of different options for lighting a studio
  
• Carol Marine (Carol Marine's Painting a Day ) has a good tip about how to keep your paint brushes flat
• For those of you who take photographs - you'll probably find that this Lifehacker post very useful - David Pogue's Best Photography Tricks (and Ours)

Websites, webware and blogging

• cnet news did a review of
  
• the online threats to consumers in relation to their personal data and finances and scams exploiting the economic downturn - Scams up, but big Net attack averted
• holiday e-retail satisfaction rankings
  
• Lifehacker came up with the Top 10 Ways to Lock Down Your Data

• Seth Godin (Seth's Blog) had a post about A year's worth of popular posts
• (which is where I got my idea for Plus if you want to know Who is Seth Godin?
• Seth's post got me thinking......so I checked out what were Making A Mark - popular posts in 2008
• Which yesterday led to......How to find out what are the most popular posts on your blog which explains how to put Google Analytics on your blog
• Meanwhile Etsy has announced that it is working with Google Analytics to provide more detailed analytics about traffic to Etsy sellers

and finally...........

Michelle Burnett Art Studio highlighted the scope to turn an image of yours into a museum picture.

She found the 'concept' in Five Values and "Air" In The Shadows by Marian Fortunati