24th May 2009 - Who's made a mark this week?

Peony and his Buds by Jacqueline Gnott
26" x 21" ~ Watercolor on Paper
copyright Jacqueline Gnott / used with permission

I love peonies and I was stopped in my tracks this week when I saw Peony & His Buds by Jacqueline Gnott (Contemporary Realism). Despite being a scribbler I do really appreciate somebody who can paint flowers in watercolour in a way which is carefully controlled but not too tight. It's those luminous wet in wet washes which get me every time!

Do also have a read of Jacqueline's talks about the little routine she uses when she finishes a painting - one which I know I recognise and I guess a lot of other people do. Why not go and admire and see if you do the same thing?

Art Blogs

Drawing and sketchbloggery

• Thanks to Roz Stendhal (Roz Wound Up) for alerting me to the fact that Danny Gregory has relaunched the Danny Gregory website. I love the new design - it looks really great and also seems to make everything much more accessible! There's also lots to look at as Roz explains really well in her post so I won't try and repeat the same messages here!
• Pete Scully (Pete Scully) is responsible for the 'sketchbloggery' in the heading! He's recently started a new series of drawings which looks like it might be interesting - here's the first but it's still mightier than the sword
• Enrique Flores (acuarelista on YouTube) videos of his sketchbooks are always a treat. He hasn't posted any for quite a while. However he recently posted a new video on YouTube of his Moleskine sketchbook for his visit to Paris. I really love the way he really works the format of the double page spread of his (landscape) watercolour Moleskine
  
• Check out Sketching in Mauritania on Urban Sketchers
• Casey Toussaint has been visiting San Francisco and Jana and Casey Do Berkeley was posted by Jana Bouc at Jana's Journal and Sketch Blog. We haven't had Casey's version yet so keep an eye out on her blog Rue Manual Bis.
• I'm seriously getting into sketchercise - see Sketchercise - and my new pedometer! on Travels with a sketchbook......
• and here's a very nice article in the Indendent's Great Works series - with a bit of art history thrown in - about taking a line for a walk Great Works: Ambleside (1786), Francis Towne

Coloured Pencils and Pastels

• Gayle Mason has posted another work in progress on her blog Fur in the Paint. If you follow this link - cat in coloured pencil - you can review the different stages the latest kitten went through in getting to Kitten finished!
• Plus for those of you who were following my work in progress this week - here's a montage of where it's got to. The drawing has now gone for a little rest so I can then look at it with a fresh eye before deciding whether any more needs to be done
  

Miss Victoria Stiefvater - a portrait in progress
8" x 8", coloured pencils on Sennelier HP
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Painters

• The Guardian met Sir Howard Hodgkin - "the painter who hates painting" - in Remembrance of things past. Another article from 2006 is True colours
• This month I've been looking at a lot of blogs by painters some of which are new to me. Here's a sample of what caught my eye
  
• Marc Hanson (Painting My Way Through Life)- the work in this post OPA...Award of Excellence! earned him a prize from Kevin Macpherson
• Marc Dalessio (Marc Dalessio)
• Chris Beck (I'm painting as fast as I can)
• Ricky Holtman (Journaling Thru Cancer) - go read Faith? and say hello....

The same is with journaling and art.....You must get started and build the frequency of doing it before you can take notice that there is a change starting to happen inside of you that will finally come out and change your very environment. WOW that was a mouth full.

• Robin Purcell (Robin Purcell, watercolors in the plein air tradition)

Miniature Art

• Tracy Hall (Watercolour Artist Diary ) is painting another miniature in Blackbirds, Bees and Blues

Art Group Blogs

• The reference for Virtual Sketch Date has been posted May 2009 VSD Reference
  
• The Virtual Paintout is in Paris this month and this is the link for the map of Paris with the little man
  

Art Business and Marketing

• Joanna Mattera (Joanna Mattera Art Blog ) has written a really excellent post about Vanity Galleries - with particular reference to New York - see Marketing Mondays: The Vanity Gallery. Do read the comments as well as the post. Joanna writes consistently good posts and provides wise advice and I commend her blog to you.
  
• Check out another of her posts if you've ever anticipated going full time as an artist Marketing Mondays: How is your pie sliced?
  
• Robert Genn wrote about options for selling art if you live in "the boonies" - including selling on the Internet. Read Off the beaten track for his views and the comments of other artists. I'd have liked to see him recognise that many artists now in fact sell art via their blogs and don't always need premium sites to do so..........
  
• I've been corresponding with Tony Moffitt since he started his new blog Tony Moffitt's Art World and passing on a few tips of my own. Check out The 21-Day Action Plan for Shy Artists (in the side column).

Art and the Economy

I just loved watching the The Great Contemporary Art Bubble on television - in fact I was cheering from my amchair at the exposure of something which I've not been a fan of for some time - see The Contemporary Art Bubble and Art Omerta. Plus I learned about the real purpose of the major art fairs - tax haven banking opportunities! [expletive deleted]

Art Education

• Cindy Procious (Art Studio Secrets) writes TIP: Color Charts - Whys, wherefores, and how-tos
• Sue Favinger Smith (Ancient Artist) has 5 Tips for Photographing Your Art
• There's a Susan Ogilvie Workshop Summary on Wet Canvas
• Cathy Johnson has uploaded an image which shows 3 ways to paint with WC pencils to Flickr plus she compares 3 brands of watercolour pencils
• Ed Terpening is experimenting with using a high key paltte for his painting and provides an informative post at "High Key" seascape
• If money is no object you can go plein air painting with Kevin Macpherson in China in September! Now there's a thought!
  

Art Exhibitions

Exhibitions in London

This major exhibition is Richard Long's first survey in London for eighteen years and is a unique opportunity to understand afresh the artist's radical rethinking of the relationship between art and landscape. Long's work comes from his love of nature and through the experience of making solitary walks.

Tate Britain - Richard Long: Heaven and Earth

• Richard Long: Heaven and Earth opens at Tate Britain on 3 June (finishes 6 September 2009. I'm getting very keen on solitary walks at the moment and Richard Long's work interests me. Pre-exhibition publicity is ratcheting up and we have:

• a Richard Long interview: free spirit of the hitchhiker generation in The Daily Telegraph (I've become a Daily Telegrah fan in the last two weeks!)
  
• Nicholas Serota discusses how his A Line Made by Walking (1967) changed our whole concept of sculpture in Nicholas Serota: How Long's artwork changed our world in The Independent
• while Kate Muir in the Times highlights how eco-art is becoming more popular as the art backlash against bling gathers pace

Now that the scientists, and to some extent film-makers, have done the spade work on our ongoing destruction of the Earth, it’s the turn of artists to bring the issues upfront and in your face.

• Nina Murdoch, winner of the Threadneedle Prize in 2008 has a new exhibition of work Nina Murdoch : In the Dark at the Fine Art Society at 148 New Bond Street, London W1S 2JT
• The Independent's review of Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition, Mall Galleries, London only gave it two stars but I thought the reviewer somewhat naieve as to the nature of portrait commissions!
• The A level Summer exhibition Online - which is the only online exhibition in the UK for A-level students - is due to be posted on The Royal Academy's website on 8 June. These are the images from the 2008 A level summer exhibition

Exhibitions in the rest of the UK

• Colour Chart: Reinventing Colour, 1950 to Today opens at Tate Liverpool (Albert Dock) next Friday.

The exhibition looks at the moment in twentieth-century art, when a group of artists began to perceive colour as 'readymade' rather than as scientific or expressive.

Exhibitions in Europe

• A retrospective of the work of Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923) opens at the Prado on Tuesday. I'd love to see that! Brave the Spanish and explore the links and commentary - the images are sensational!
  

Exhibitions in New York

Here's a little bit of a feature for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York this week - for friends who are visiting this next week!

• Francis Bacon: A Centenary Retrospective is a new Francis Bacon exhibition which opened on Wednesday and continues until August 16th. I don't personally like Francis Bacon's work - however I do like to see to see artists producing work in what the New York Times calls "the fault lines dividing abstraction and representation" - even if at the end of the day it's not to my personal taste. This New York Times article provides a review of the exhibition - Art Review | Francis Bacon: If Paintings Had Voices, Francis Bacon’s Would Shriek. I think that captures my view of his work - his paintings have always felt really noisy to me and I'm averse to noise!
• Part 2 of the The New American Wing (The Charles Engelhard Court and the Period Rooms) have opened
  
• Incidentally I do love the way the New York Times has developed a suite of webpages devoted to different organisations. Although you have to remember it's a bit like a teelphone directory it does include a whole webpage devoted to the topic of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (plus ones for all the other museums). It's a great bookmark for finding out what's going on.

It seems to be the season for openings of refurbished museums or new extensions! I'm running into announcements everywhere I look.

• Art Institute of Chicago’s massive extension opens
• On June 2nd 2009, the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, in collaboration with the Magritte Foundation will open the “Musée Magritte Museum” which will also have a new Magritte Museum website
• Facebook is more than a fad—and museums need to learn from it says The Art Nespaper
  

Art History

• The sort of story which must make a newspaper's day - the £100k Winslow Homer found in a tip!
• Marc Dalessio (Marc Dalessio) has posted about The great Russian landscape painters - it has some great images
  

Art Supplies

• Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint) has done a neat comparison and summary in Comparison of Pastelmat, Pastelbord and Fisher 400 paper
  
• I followed up with Product Review : Clairefontaine Pastelmat and will also be writing about the others. Do let me know if you've got blog posts about your experience with these supports.
  
• Jim Harris (Art Studio Secrets) writes about What is the Best Oil Paint?
• Why not take a look at Viewfinder Innovations
• and if you sort out and prepare your own frames you may well be interested in Product Review - Renaissance micro-crystalline wax polish on MAM reviews
  

Art Studios

• Thanks to Tina Mammoser (The Cycling Artist ) for alerting me to the existence of The National Federation of Artists’ Studio Providers (NFASP)
  

Book reviews

• Book Review: Japanese Art in detail is all about the British Museum publication of the same name. It's a good introduction to Japanese Art.
• Take a look at Marc Dalessio's choice of Ten books on painting

Websites and Blogging

I've been doing a mini-series all week in which I've been reviewing the results of 2007 SEOmoz survey Search Engine Ranking Factors v2 and looking at the ones which are tagged as positive, negative and controversial and identifying what the implications are for artists. You can read more about this in:

• 5 positive ways to help your art website rank well in Google - the top five factors for helping your website or blog do well in search engine enquiries
  
• 5 more ways of helping your art website to rank well in Google the next five top factors
  
• 5 approaches to avoid on your art website or art blog - what you want to make sure you avoid. Note some of these are highlighted in the next post as being controversial
  
• SEO for Artists - which factors help or hinder? - which identifies those factors where experts agreed or disagreed the most as to their importance

Back to the rest of what I came across this week

• SEOMoz Blog has got a really helpful guide - which they've been reviewinng - see Rewriting the Beginner's Guide Part VIII: Search Engine Tools and Services
• Google Webmaster Tools have had a redesign and refresh to make it easier to use - see Spring time design refresh! for an explanation of the changes which have been made
• Plus I have a Widget Review: LinkWithin. It's looks good - but security policies are defective - and they don't respond to emails.
  

and finally.........

The cartoonists and the graphics design people have been having great "fun" - if fun is the correct word for all the cries of outrage, heckling of MPs and historic Parliamentary events which have been going on this week!

Moats, Maltesers, bath plugs, Tudor beams, loo seats... It's a rich, glittering mine for us.
Expenses and a mine of cartoon images

• Matt of The Daily Telegraph has been having a field day - as well he might given he would have a jump start on each new awful revelation hitting the headlines. My favourite is the duck house - with two ducks swlmming around, eyeing it up and asking "Do you think we could fit a plasma tv in there?" The cartoons have been coming thick and fast and you can have a quick review of recent ones if you're so minded. Maybe they'll end up as a best selling cartoon book next Christmas?
• The daily Telegraph blog had The Speaker is history: we need an historic cartoon - and highlighted Peter Brookes in The Times and Dave Brown at The Independent
• Visualising MPs' expenses: the best may yet to be done demonstrates various graphical explanations about just how awful it all is. The one which hit home with me was the one which demonstrated very clearly that it was those with the safest seats were the ones claiming the most expenses for things! It's based on this exercise done by Mark (Mark Reckons) and posted inHas our electoral system contributed to the MPs expenses scandal?

I wonder if we're going to have a brand new - and ironic - meaning for "The Untouchables" on wikipedia? It truly is really ironic that Elliot Ness's Untouchables were picked for their incorruptibility

I'm now off for my walk - and there will be more images posted later.