22nd February 2009 - Who's made a mark this week?

The latest edition of American Artist - featuring Ed Terpening

Congratulations to..............

Ed Terpening (Life Plein Air) who I'm very pleased to see has contributed to an 8 page feature article in American Artist written by the Editor, Stephen Doherty. Ed also has his painting, “Secluded Cove” is featured on the cover. As longtime readers of Ed's blog (like me) will know, Ed has had lots of experience in trying out new ways of marketing art on the Internet and explains the focus of the article 'Sell Traditional Art in modern ways' in his post American Artist Cover as follows.......

The focus of article is my experience in social media (eg, Facebook, YouTube, etc) and this blog. After 390 posts and 1,414 reader comments, it’s your participation that has made this possible! I’ve really enjoyed your feedback, and the opportunity to learn from you by reading your own blogs.
American Artist Cover

and also to........

Zen by Nicole Caulfield

Nicole Caulfield (Nicole Caulfield Art Journal) - it's that portrait yet again! As well as being the portrait that you voted The MAMA Prize for The Best Portrait by a Female Artist on a Blog it's now also won 3rd Place in the Children's Portrait Category in the National Portrait Society of America's 2008 Members Showcase Competition (which even though it's not the open competition is a very notable achievement - check out the quality of the portraits winning prizes) and the People's Choice Award at the Thorne Sagendorph Biennial Show. (I'm not quite sure why the NPA decided to have the titles of the categories in a colour nobody can see!)

Congrats also to Dianne Mize who made it to her first anniversary of her blog - Bagatelles and Meanderings - earlier this month see First Anniversay - Wow!

Art Blogs

• Some sound advice from Roz Stendhal (Roz Wound Up) in Journaling Superstitions #. Personally speaking, I'm a follower and great advocate of Tip #2.
• I was greatly amused by Germaine Greer Lost Her Muse on Joanne Liksko's Living of Art which includes The rules for attracting your muse
• I've been calling it "communities of interest" and Linda Blondheim (Linda Blondheim Art Notes) is calling it "Circle of Influence" - but I think we're talking about the same sort of thing. Read this blog post to find out more about Linda's great idea

It's easy to become overwhelmed with the problems that we are facing in America, and particularly as artists. We have to move away from that feeling of despair. We all have a circle of influence in our personal and professional life, a circle of acquaintances and friends who we can help in some way.
Art Notes Blog - The Circle of Influence

• Birds might just take over my blogging by the end of thisyear. I bought an RSPB 'identify a bird' book this week - while down in Cornwall Sarah Wimperis (Muddy foot Prints) has released her Cormorant (see right)

Cormorant by Sarah Wimperis

• One of the paintings In enjoyed the most this week was also produced by Sarah in Stones on her painting blog The Red Shoes. That triptych format is really working!
  
• Continuing with the printing theme for 2009, Vivien Blackburn has been doing a whole series of posts about her linoprints and monoprints on Paintings, Prints and Stuff
• Meanwhile over at Have Dogs Will Travel, Robyn has acquired an apprentice and continues to make great progress on the lino printing front - see Pumpkin Linoprint (right)

Pumpkin Linoprint by Robyn Sinclair
Linocut 13 x 20cm printed on cream paper

• Summer must just be around the corner - over in Postcard from Provence land, gessoing of boards is now taking place outside in the sunshine according to Meanwhile here in France....! It's certainly been noticeably milder in London this last week.
• Watch out for all the new paintings for her exhibition which are being posted on Karin Jurick's blog A Painting Today in the next several days

Art - Group Blogs

• The Week 23-24 Challenge - Wigs for the folks over at Different Strokes from Different Folks is an interesting one.
• Virtual Sketch Date has a new challenge posted which you can find at February 2009 Reference Image
• There's a new challenge painting group - but it doesn't see to have its own group blog as yet. Read more about it here Challenge Painting Group Debut on Dianne Mize's blog Bagatelles and Meanderings

Art Business & Marketing

The Ecology Park Pond series #8 - The Bull Rushes
by Katherine Tyrrell

More of my series about marketing art:

• On Tuesday, Marketing art - people buy you as well as your art #1 was about the "About the Artist" bit of your website. It starts.............

As an artist, how often do you regard yourself as part of the selling experience?
Do you regard yourself as personally relevant to whether or not people collect or buy your art - or not?

This post is about the notion that people buy YOU as well as your art.

• on Wednesday I published what I've learned about Marketing Art - How to write an Artist's Statement. If you'd like to keep track of the various resources that I highlighted you might like to bookmark the information site I also created How to write an Artist's Statement - Resources for Artists
• Luann Udell (Luann Udell) also writes about how to write a better artist statement
• Zen Habits identifies some quick steps for forming the Action Habit in Task Ninja: Form the Action Habit
• Dan at Empty Easel has reviewed MyArtSpace.com - which I guess I would characterise as "mixed".
  
• PS For those of you who are twittering you might want to read Twitter to begin charging brands for commercial use

Art Economy

• On Monday, I looked back in history and reflected on How does a recession impact on artwork and art jobs?. The main lesson I learned from digging around in the archives is that it's all happened before and it's almost always necessary to change the way we operate in order to cope.
• The New York Times reflects in The Boom Is Over. Long Live the Art!

“Quality,” primarily defined as formal skill, is back in vogue, part and parcel of a conservative, some would say retrogressive, painting and drawing revival..............Will the art industry continue to cling to art’s traditional analog status, to insist that the material, buyable object is the only truly legitimate form of art, which is what the painting revival of the last few years has really been about?
The Boom Is Over. Long Live the Art!

• Contemporary art is a fraud, says top dealer, according to Andrew Johnson of the Independent - with art having had a price which is not matched by its value. This quote from the dealer is a classic.

“There are a lot of embarrassed people who bought art that is now not worth what they paid for it. For the past three or four years it’s been a very, very thin market, with just two or three buyers pushing up prices by bidding against each other. Unfortunately, a lot of people knew the game. So those people who did not know are realising it now. It’s almost a fraud. I would never advise my clients to buy contemporary art.”
David Nahmad in Contemporary art is a fraud, says top dealer

• For all those who ever tempted..... do read Seth Godin's Get rich quick.
  

Art Competitions

• This week I did a round-up of all the Major art competitions in the UK in 2009 - dates and deadlines and I also started a new information site for these - Art Competitions in the UK - Resources for Artists

Art conferences and conventions

A new category - as marketing for conference season gets underway!

• The Portrait Society of America 's 11th Annual The Art of the Portrait® Conference is now taking registrations. Dates are April 23 - 26, 2009 and the venue is Washington, D.C.
• the Eighth Biennial Convention of the International Association of Pastel Societies takes place in Albuquerque, New Mexico between May 28-31, 2009.

Art Exhibitions

• The articles have started for the major Picasso exhibition at the National Gallery which opens on Wednesday. The Times Online have three. We were at the National Gallery on Friday - and the catalogues are already in the book shop (and the big book shop is closed!)
• my post on Thursday was a summary of all the open exhibitions of national art societies - see National Art Societies in the UK - Open Exhibition dates and deadlines
  

Copyright

• Vera Curnow CPSA has a very useful article about "Working from Reference Materials" in The Artist's Magazine, March 2009, p. 23. Unfortunately there's no internet reference to this on the F&W site.
  
• The New York Times discusses the Shepherd Fairey/AP issue about whether there really is a Web-given right to remix copyrighted images to create new works of art in Web Users Make Their Own ‘Obamicons. This is the website which creates your very own Obamaicon - totally legal if you use your own photo - or is it? Check out the gallery !
• Check out the Ed Terpening version - as seen on his blog! (see right)
  

Tips and Techniques

• Dianne Mize has written a useful article about Rhythm & Art: How to Create Effective Visual Rhythm through Marks and Motifs for EmptyEasel.com. Watch out for some of my work which is being used as an example on an upcoming article on repetition!
  

Websites and blogging

• These are the 25 Best Blogs of 2009 according to Time Magazine (how many do you read?)
• Plus the Facebook debacle!
• On February 4th we had the original Facebook Blog announcement - you all knew this didn't you? Update to Our Terms
• and Consumerist noticed and wrote Facebook's New Terms Of Service: "We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever." which generated a fair bit of comment..........

750+ articles have been written about it so far in places like, New York Times, NPR, AP, Reuters, USA Today, SF Gate, AJC, Chicago Tribune, ZDNET, CNET, and NBC.

Plus mentions on CNN, MSNBC, Sky News, and others, and two days after we broke the story, it's still one of the most talked about subjects on Twitter, and over 64,000 users have joined a Facebook group protesting the terms of service change, plus 6,000+ Diggs, 528,000+ pageviews and 350+ comments on the original post... Facebook Privacy Fallout Goes Nuclear

the blog Consumerist cited them and interpreted them to mean that “anything you upload to Facebook can be used by Facebook in any way they deem fit, forever, no matter what you do later.”

• then on Monday Mark Zuckerberg came out to deliver the defence against all the criticism from all quarters On Facebook, People Own and Control Their Information
• which was followed by comments on illustrious blogs like Mashable such as Facebook Responds to Concerns Over Terms of Service and
  56 Percent of Facebook Users Want the Old ToS Back
• which was swiftly followed 24 hours later on Tuesday by the official climbdown Update on Terms
• and the comment - such as this post on Mashable Facebook Reverts to Previous Terms of Service

If you'd like to get involved in crafting our new terms, you can start posting your questions, comments and requests in the group we've created—Facebook Bill of Rights and Responsibilities. I'm looking forward to reading your input.
Facebook - Update on Terms

Workshops

• For those who love the landscapes painted by Deborah Paris (Deborah Paris - A Painting Life) - as I do - Deborah has been writing about Virtual learning. You can now check out her 2009 Workshops & Virtual Classes

and finally......

I've only ever mentioned music in this section once. In this post a year ago I wrote

This is a little bit different this week.

Talking to a singer about her website in my drawing class on Thursday got me to thinking about all those other independent artists who are now making it big because they found their 'voice' and got online.

One such - in the music field - is Adele. For those of you outside the UK who have not heard of Adele take a look at her website and/or her My Space page (c.1.9 million views of her profile) and hear some tracks (my favourite is 'Chasing Pavements') from her new album which I bought yesterday. It's called 19 - because that's her age. She writes all her own material and last week she won the very first Critic's Choice award at the Brits - for artists yet to release an album. This is what the BBC had to say about her. My bet is she'll be winning Grammys within the next two years. You can read more about her here - she's a genuine original who's been influenced by some of the 'greats' but who got noticed and got her break by being online.
24th February 2008 - Who's made a mark this week?

Last week she won two Grammys for the Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for Chasing Pavements and Best New Artist.

Should Simon Cowell be worried? ;)