1st February 2009 - Who's made a mark this week?

Sherrie York - a selection from RioSalidaArt - her Etsy Store
copyright Sherrie York

The focus on printing grows and the theme of selling art online continues - and they're both combined in the selections from the Etsy Stores of artists Sherrie York and Amie Roman.

Printing and linocutting - the links are multiplying!
The interest grows! Here's just a few of them.

• Printsy - Printmakers of Etsy had an interview with Sherrie York (Brush and Baren). See also Sherrie's website and etsy store for examples of fine workin linocutting
  

Amie Roman - a selection from the Ploverwing Etsy Store
copyright Amie Roman

• Amie Roman (Burnishings) aka Ploverwing (Etsy and Squidoo) has got several online resources for printmakers on Squidoo - see:
  
• Printmaking Artists on the Web
• Printmaking Resources about suppliers, inks, papers, materials and equipment
• Printmaking - all about techniques, tools, and artists
• Printmaking Studios, Groups, Galleries & Ateliers
• Printmaking Resources
• First Impressions - Printmaking Art
• Roz Stendhal (Roz Wound Up ) has been posting about eraser carving - which is new to me. Apparently the same techniques apply to the creation of lino block prints. See Learning Your Craft (and the notions of muscle memory and how long it takes to learn how to engrave wood) and
• How to Make an Eraser Carving—Part 1: Selecting an Image lots of useful comments about materials, selecting images and printing techniques
• How to Make an Eraser Carving—Part 2: Tools - a tremendous resource in terms of comments about tools and inks and other essentials for approaching printing the way Roz teaches it
• How to Make an Eraser Carving—Part 3: Transferring Your Image to the Carving Block
• plus two more still to come - of which one is about cutting techniques!
• I posted this week about identifying both line and tonal shapes as a preliminary to getting to grips with lino printing
  
• On Wednesday - greatly taken by Sarah and Jeanette sketching the Atlantic in the cold - I decided to write about How to identify and assess value and tone quickly
• followed on Friday by Lines and Values, Notan and the Cut-Out Tool

Art blogs

• Thanks also to Roz for highlighting Maira Kalman's drawings from The Inauguration at last in her blog for the New York Times
  
• Sara Wimperis (The Red Shoes) posted about her keep fit training session - for her art in Training session on Watermarks
• Luann Udell (Luann Udell) asked what is Your real career after writing about the pressures of the present in Turning the tables. Thought provoking stuff.
• Dan at Empty Easel posted about Overcoming the Fear of Rejection: A Guide for Artists
• Meanwhile while Andrea Pratt in Canada (colouring outside the lines ) posted about that ever present threat the art of procrastination
• Laura Frankstone (Laurelines) had a few life events rather than procrastination going on in January which delayed an important post but yesterday it arrived - 2009, the plan, at last! which includes lots of projects and trips as always!
• Vivien Blackburn (Paintings, Prints and Stuff) highlighted a lyric by Suzanne Vega in her blog post visual language - marks, colour, tone. speed and a bit of collage

Art business and marketing

• The selling art online theme (which started on my blog 10 days ago) continued this last week with some more posts about selling art online- and a couple of new information sites.
  
• On Monday I looked at Selling art online - print on demand services for artists (which got lots of positive comments about Blurb although interestingly there were no comments about the fine art print sites!). I also published a new information site Print Art on Demand - Resources for Artists.
• On Tuesday I looked at Selling original art online - auctions, galleries and stores which covered sites for online auctions, online art galleries and online art stores. Plus, of course, there was Online Art Galleries and Stores - Resources for Artists.
• The charts from compete.com which I've included in the new squidoo site make for interesting reading - if you're the sort of person who likes reading charts about site traffic - the numbers of monthly visitors and the average length of stay. I've included a couple of sample below which contrasts Etsy with the Saatchi Gallery.
  

Etsy (top) versus Saatchi Gallery(bottom)

• On Thursday my post was about Selling art online - 10 benefits of a recession - which quite a few people found helpful. It was great seeing suggestions about other benefits we can expect to accrue
  
• Sue Smith (Ancient Artist: Developing an art career after 50) now has her business plan available as a Lulu book Ancient Wisdom Emerging Artist - available as a free download
  

Art collecting

• Tina Mammoser posted a really good idea on her blog this week - Art Upgrade it's about a marketing tool and a way to upgrade your art collection.
• The Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Bergé collection is on view to the public until 4 February at Christie's London, with the sale taking place on 23-25 February at the Grand Palais, see For sale: the £270m designer collection from Yves Saint Laurent). The Guardian has a slideshow of some of the work

art economy

• Jonathan Jones asked Is it all over for contemporary British art? in Friday's Guardian. The notion is the YBAs found their voices in a recession but in the public's eyes they are now linked with the age of easy credit.

The rise of art fairs and middle class art consumerism, which actually has only happened in this decade, long after the Hirst generation broke the ice for British art, will now prove damaging. Money will drag art down with it, irrationally, because if galleries close, this will be seen as a mark of failure by those who were shallow enough to simply have respected art's fashionable status. Art need not sink with the market but it will, because of what the markets call "sentiment".

• Art Info in Salesroom Sanity suggested that...

The splendid news is that auctions are at last reverting to a natural balance that seemed lost forever as a result of speculation that spiralled ever faster out of control.

• Sotheby’s Stops Accepting Credit Cards - well I guess it had to happen!
  

Art exhibitions, galleries and museums

• The Bonnard exhibition has opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. I've developed a recent interest in both Bonnard and Vuillard and you may be seeing more about them on this blog soon.
  
• Van Dyck and Britain opens at Tate Britain on 18th February. Lisa Jardine for the Times contributed an article Van Dyck and Britain: great pictures; shame about the framework
• The Guardian highlighted the appointment of Lord Browne as the new Chair of the Tate - but more importantly gives us an image of what the Tate will look with the extension at the rear
  
• The BBC is to put all public art on the net - but some are questioning why that is the responsibility of the BBC.

Books and book reviews

• Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint) has been watching my close encounters with the local birds - which I think may have prompted her review of Drawing Birds by John Busby
• Those who are fans of Richard Schmid's books might want to keep an eye out for a new three-volume series. The first volume, on landscape paintings is due to be published later this year. All the books will focus on being 'picture book' rather than instructional. For more information visit www.richardschmid.com.
  

Tips and techniques

• Barbara Benedetti Newton (Barbara Benedetti Newton Artist's Journal) has been displaying different types of underpaintings for pastel work. Using a support likes Wallis Paper really makes a difference to the options you have.
• one with a watercolour foundation
• and one with an oil under painting - here's the oil underpainting and here's the finished version
• Eric Tiemans (Virtual Gouache Land) of Bay View, California has got a nice post which shows you view, the palette, and stages of his gouache painting in an untitled post about scenery near Pescadoro.

Websites and blogging

• I posted How often do you post to your blog? - RESULTS of the January MAM Poll earlier today. Over 80% of us post to our blogs at least once a week with over 10% posting virtually every day. The most popular option (45%) is to blog consistently and regularly 2-3 times each week. A new poll will be posted tomorrow.
  
• The techonology sector is not immune to the recession. It's worth bearing in mind if you MUST buy new technology. It appears that the general strategy is to cut back all costs to the most basic essentials. Nobody is expecting this to be over in 2009. This quote from Steve Ballmer (CEO of Microsoft) is a classic!

I'm thinking the bottom is deep, but less deep than the 1929 bottom, for example

• I hope the technology sites get their act together BEFORE they start losing more staff. What is it with these major technology sites/service providers at the moment? Getting the basics right doesn't appear to be their strong suit right now.
• Upload from your desktop — more better! NOT!!! Flickr has messed up YET AGAIN with its new Flickr Uploadr 3.1.3 (DO NOT USE!). Not only does it not work properly for an awful lot of people, but it has also managed to mess up reverting back to the old uploadr (2.5.0.15) for quite a few of us as well. So that means right now I can't upload anything to Flickr - and probably won't be able too for quite a while (judging by their track record on how long it takes to get these sort of things sorted). I wonder if they know that Carol Bartz the new CEO at Yahoo is nicknamed the "buzzsaw".
  
• Google blacklists entire internet How many of you were online when Google decided to characterise every site on the internet as malware? Well I was one - and it was scary for all of two minutes until I realised it had to be a great big Google 'gone fishing' disaster! It got them huge press coverage though for a very basic mistake.
  

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

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