14th June 2009 - Who's made a mark this week? (#100)

This is my 100th "who's made a mark this week?" which I guess makes it the centenary edition! :)

Plus in the next 7-10 days this blog will notch up its visitor #500,000 - as in half a million unique visitors since it started back in December 2005.

"Who's made a mark this week started two years ago because I ended up with too many interesting bits of information to share and needed a weekly blog post devoted to sharing what I'd found interesting in the previous week. I found it also helped me to theme my posts around topics which interest me.

Lots of people ask me how I do it. The answer is I do it because I have both the time and the inclination and I get an awful lot of pleasure from highlighting the work of other people as well as my own

I'll be celebrating with a virtual party as soon as statcounter hits 500,000 visitors - watch out for the blog post and/or tweet!

Art Blogs

Sketchercise

I'd like to say a big welcome to all the new people who took up Sketchercise this week. Laura (Laura's watercolours) is really getting into the swing of it - see becaming and A rare sunny day. Plus Rose Welty has this very helpful post What if you want to but cant get started?

• you can read about Sketchercise! on Making a Mark. I'm sorry to all the people who asked to join the ning community - but we've decided to grow slowly and limit new members for the time being to people who have already got the sketchercise habit
  
• plus there's now a second group Sketchercise - on Flickr too! for all those who'd like to give it a go. Get the habit here and then graduate to the ning community. (I'm still trying to work out why only some of the images are showing up in the Flickr Group Pool!)
  
• plus for those who now need to get a sketching chair or stool I've reviewed the ones I use - see Art Supplies below.

Now that I wear a pedometer all the time, it was very interesting to see how my steps dropped right down after I fell off the tree on Wednesday and sprained my ankle. It really showed me how little exercise I get if I just sit at my computer all day - which was all I did the day after while I resting it. Plus how bad for our health, desk jobs can be are if we don't make an effort to move around and just move from desk chair to car to armchair to bed and around again. Gosh I'm sounding really preachy - but as somebody who has mobility problems I'm feeeling so much better for taking more exercise and losing weight.

Drawing and sketching

The Bird Lady and the lake in St James Park (with Horseguards in the background)
8" x 10", pen and ink and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

• I Stole Your Images and Now I'm Suing You is hysterical!
• Roz (Rozworks) pondered on Where Do You Find Birds?
• On Tuesday I was Sketching the Pastel Society's Private View and on Friday I sketched Horseguards Parade and the Lake in St James Park

Coloured pencils and pastels

• I did A pastels workshop with Felicity House on Friday.
• Nicole Caulfield (Nicole Caulfield Art Journal) highlighted her work in Ann Kullberg's new book
  
• On UKCPS News you can see the image which got Karen Coulson in final of the BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year

Painters

• Jan Blencowe has rechristened her blog The Poetic Landscape
  
• There's an interview with Nita Leland Interview on My Creative Journey
  

Art Group Blogs

• Did you spot that June 8th is World Oceans Day? At Watermarks we've got quite a strong emphasis on sustainability anc conservation and this was a natural follow-on to our recent postings about Earth Day.
• Plein Air Artists on Ning are
• using the events function to highlight exhibitions eg Landscapes by the Hudson Valley Daily Painters
  
• using the groups function to link to groups of people who have created plein air organisations 'in the real world' - Watermarks is now one of them!

Art Business and Marketing

• A couple of interesting and useful posts from one of my favourite art business blogs edward winkleman
  
• That Primary Gallery Discussion

In the gallery system the term "primary gallery" means an artist's main gallery, or #1 in the pecking order. This is the gallery that maintains his/her master archive, does much of the communications promoting their career (i.e., with institutions planning exhibitions), will work to raise the money to produce most of the work in situations where that's part of the artist's practice, and generally resides in a high-profile market, meaning they get the kind of traffic/critical attention for the artist that other galleries in other locations just can't. In return they may stipulate terms for representation by which their investment in building the markets for their artists is returned to them through commission on sales in other galleries.

• The Re-Pricing Question : Open Thread - Consider this an open thread on the perils or possible advantages of readjusting one's prices for this economy.

Art and the economy

• Surviving as an artist in a bad economy is a popular post by photographer Daniel Sroka's blog (which I originally spotted on Kirsty Hall's blog) I loved this comment

One nice benefit of working for yourself is that you can’t be laid off. You may not be bringing in the money like you should, but at least no one can take away your ability to make money.

• Some interesting developments in the art economy. Reuters comments that Christie's sees shallower art market downturn.....
• While at the New York Times they're writing about A New Concept in Handling Art. Edward Winkleman comments here on the same topic Everything but the Villa Straylight
• Meanwhile Graffiti Gains Gravitas, And The Crowds Love It

Art Competitions

• I'm going to the BP Portrait Awards on Tuesday evening and there'll be three posts next week about who won, the exhibition and the exhibition by the chap who won the travel award last year. See BP Portrait Award 2009 - the shortlist
• Meanwhile, coloured pencil artists are gearing themselved up to submit their work for the UKCPS Annual Exhibition by the deadline of 24th June.

Art Education / Tips and techniques

• Sue at Ancient Artist asks Is There A Creative Age?
• While Anna (See. Be. Draw) asked How do you nourish your inner artist?
• On Friday, I posted about Working with Pastels - Tips #1 after gathering and sharing tips at the Pastel Society Private View on Tuesday night.

Art Exhibitions

• According to The Guardian, Banksy's exhibition in Bristol is pulling in the crowds and also delighting the council - read Banksy: The graffitist goes straight and see Banksy at Bristol City Museum. This is the Telegraph review
  
• On Wednesday I posted an Exhibition review: The Pastel Society's 110th Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries until next Sunday.
• The New York Times commented on A Wealth of Art in Venice
  

• Edvard Munch: Prints, Hunterian Art Gallery, Glasgow, opened June 12 and continues until September 5. Opportunities to see Munch's prints in the UK and Ireland are extremely rare simply because there are so few prints in public collections. You can see selected works here.
  

Edvard Munch: Prints is dedicated to prints by Edvard Munch (1863-1944) and is the most substantial Munch print exhibition in the UK for over 35 years. Featuring 40 of the artist's finest prints, the exhibition has been selected to illustrate his development as a graphic artist as well as the important themes of his art. The show will include the lithograph version of the iconic The Scream, which is one of the most famous pictures in the world.

• More on the Richard Long exhibition at Tate Britain Richard Long takes art for a walk at Tate Britain

Art History

Check out a couple of listings of top artists and see whether you agree with either of them

• First The Times/Saatchi Top 200 Artists of the 20th Century to Now. The top 10 is dominated by dead artists. After that I personally find the voting figures to be "very curious". That's the code I use when I mean it's absolutely nonsensical in both a qualitative and statistical sense!
  
• Pablo Picasso
• Paul Cezanne
• Gustav Klimt
• Claude Monet
• Marcel Duchamp
• Henri Matisse
• Jackson Pollock
• Andy Warhol
• Willem De Kooning
• Piet Mondrian

• The Art Wolf has a list of 101 painters you should know - also topped by Picasso. Is the difference the fact that one is about artists and the other about painters? I'm liking this one a lot better than the Time/Saatchi list - but then I can't help feeling the latter tends to manipulate the status of some contemporary artists.
  
• then there's two more items about Picasso
• first a notebook of sketches by Picasso - said to be worth £7million was stolen last week - see Picasso Sketchbook Stolen In Paris
• in Provence, Pablo Picasso's Château de Vauvenargues, near the Provençal town of Aix-en-Provence, is open to the public for the first time
• Charlie Parker (Lines and Colors) came up with a post about one of my favourite painters James Abbott McNeill Whistler on Monday
  

Art Journals

The Art Wolf is an online art magazine which tries to provide a global, international overview of the contemporary Art, with a special interest in the artists of today. In addition, it publishes the most important news about the Art world and Art market, and highlights the most relevant exhibitions of the Art world. It started just after this blog and has grown and developed over the last 3+ years and has become a useful reference site. However it lacks a feed - which is sad.

Art Societies

• On Thursday I asked Does your art society do events and workshops? and suggested some reasons why those that do succeed and fail. Do you have any success stories you'd like to share as a comment on that post?
  

Art Studios

Check out tweets about "open studio" and see just how many hosts on Twitter neglect to provide any indication of where and when! ;)

Art Supplies

• I got a MAJOR tip from Felicity House on Friday about kit to carry pastels round in - and I followed through with some investigations of my own on Saturday- see Product Review: Really Useful Boxes (for art media and crafts). However I've still to identify the perfect face cream container! Puzzled? Read the post!
• For people contemplating plein air sketching for the first time here are some reviews I've done of my sketching stool and chairs
• Product Review: Blacks Compact Stool (for sketching) - my latest acquisition - it goes in my backpack
  

I cannot recommend this chair highly enough for people who want a very good quality chair which will be robust, reliable and longlasting.
Product Review: Phillips De Luxe Folding Chair

• Product Review: Phillips De Luxe Folding Chair - I've had two (in nearly 20 years) and they've travelled with me all over the world. I only needed to get the second one as the first one got left on an airport trolley by mistake
• Product Review: Blacks Eurohike Compact Chair - great for people who do watercolour and have a car, a bit cumbersome for everybody else

• Pen Addict is for people who are picky about the pens they draw with
• Did you know that Dick Blick has an events blog?

Art video

• Take a look at Art Babble - it's the first channel oriented, tag accessed art video website that has looked remotely interesting to me - although I have to confess I've only scraped the surface. I like the way you can access videos via tags which describe the genre or type of art they're about (eg
  

ArtBabble was conceived, initiated, designed, built, sculpted, programmed, shot, edited, painted and launched by a cross-departmental collection of individuals at the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA). It is intended to showcase video art content in high quality format from a variety of sources and perspectives.
ArtBabble was created so others will join in spreading the world of art through video.
Babble on.

The Techie bit - computers, websites, blogging and digital copyright

• For those, like me, who have temperamental laptops, you might like to take a look at what seems to me to be a very useful article about How to Extend Your Laptop’s Life.

Next week the Digital Britain report will be published. This is the Digital Britain website and you can read the Interim Report - published in January and today the Sunday Telegraph comments on Lord Carter's Digital Britain report. Although largely related to telecommunications, broadband and radio it does also cover digital content rights - so is of interest to those who put their content protected work on the Internet.

On 29 January 2009 the Government published a plan to secure Britain’s place at the forefront of the global digital economy. The interim report contains more than 20 recommendations, including specific proposals on..........a new deal for digital content rights

• WordCamp San Francisco 2009: Cali Lewis on Community Building by Lorelle VanFossen Live Blogging from WordCamp San Francisco 2009 in The Wordcamp Report

Rule One – Know Thyself – Know They Blog!
Rule Two – Start Compelling Conversations!
Rule Three – Value.
Rules Four – Make Friends Not Fans
Rule Five – Reward Participation.
Rule Six – Take Breaks!
Rule Seven – Always Upgrade.
from Cali Lewis on Community Building

• If you want to review your blog stats take a look at:
  
• 55 Best Ways To Track Your Website Daily Traffic - I found this last week but have been taking some time to look at review the various software I wasn't familiar with
  
• Plus Lorelle van Fossen (Lorelle on Wordpress) comments in the same area Where is Your Search Traffic Coming From?
• I like fonts - and I like knowing which fonts work well when reading onscreen or print. So I was immediately interested in 21 fonts most used by professional designers and also 22 Most Used Free Fonts By Professional Designers on the basis of their usability and popularity. They're not the same!

and finally........

I'm a great admirer of Joanna Lumley (Ab Fab / human rights activist etc) so am always interested in her various projects. I absolutely LOVED seeing recently pin a government minister down for an admission of rights which will be granted to the Gurkhas while standing in front of BBC TV cameras in her recent fight on behalf of the Gurkhas.

So I was greatly intrigued by a couple of articles in The Times to see that her next acting venture is described as Joanna Lumley goes to war again in satire on modern art world. The film Boogie Woogie is adapted by Danny Moynihan from his dark comic novel of the same name and premieres on 26th June at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. This depicts the contemporary art world as "an incestuous jungle inhabited by heartless agents, controversy-courting artists and corrupt dealers". Damieh Hirst has apparently acted as an adviser (see Damien Hirst turns to film with the art satire Boogie Woogie). Part of me thinks, given the people involved in making it, that this new film might yet be another bit of art world manipulation by the likes of Damien Hirst. It would be really nice to be proved wrong.