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

Many congratulations to Urban Sketchers - which is celebrating its first birthday today - see Our 1st anniversary, and looking forward to many more

barcelona - casa batllo (Gaudi's House) by Lapin

Here's some of the vital statistics from the last year for Urban Sketchers

• 100 correspondents.
• More than 3,500 blog posts with drawings from 56 different countries.
• More than 3,000 blog subscribers.
• More than 2,000 members on sister flickr group
• Nearly 20,000 drawings on flickr.

Also some major news

Looking ahead to the coming year, we're taking the steps to formalize Urban Sketchers as a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the artistic, storytelling and educational value of location drawing. I know, that sounds serious. But I'm sure it's going to be an exciting new adventure for USk. As a nonprofit, we plan to raise money to give grants and scholarships to artists. We also aim to publish a book and organize an international meetup every one or two years — so start saving for that trip!
Our 1st anniversary, and looking forward to many more

Next some news for all those artists who enter art competitions hoping that something will come of it............

I'm also extending my congratulations to Sheila Wallis (age 37) who won this year’s £25,000 Threadneedle Prize, for her nude self-portrait. She's decided to give up her job working for the NHS in order to concentrate on painting. Sheila has been a support worker for adults with learning disabilities for nearly 12 years, but since winning the Prize she has decided to take her art more seriously. So the first she's getting a studio and moving to Guildford to rent one. In fact she's moving house and quitting her job on same day!!! She is about to have an exhibition in Basingstoke (New Contemporaries Saturday 21st November to Thursday 17th December 2009) and has spent October doing workshops for the Big Draw at Watts Gallery in Compton, where she is Artist in Residence.

“I don’t do things by halves. Winning The Threadneedle Prize has given me the financial opportunity to get a studio and a website. I’m excited for the future.”

Plus I've had an email from Kate Clarke who won first prize in the UKCPS Annual exhibition 2009. She's also been changing her set-up but this time online. She's used her prize money to have two new and separate websites created (kate-clarke.com for portraiture - which is due to go live in November - and katydiddesigns.co.uk for all her illustration work). She also sent me a link to a stopframe animation of how she creates her work - which is well worth taking a look at.

It's all GO when you're a successful artist!

Art Blogs

• I'm very pleased to be able to highlight a new blog to you - written by no other than Vincent Van Gogh! The Van Gogh Blog has been set up to coincide with the exhibitions about Van Gogh's letters (it comes to the Royal Academy in January) - here's what the Van Gogh Museum has to say about the Van Gigh Letters exhibition and the Van Gogh Letters project.
• You can see more sketches by Lapin on his blog Les Calepins de Lapin and more of his drawings on his illustration website and follow him on Twitter
  
• The Virtual Paint out Blog was in Belfast, Northern Ireland - October 2009 this month world
• Tina Mammoser (the Cycling Artist) wrote to tell me about her a new Flickr Group she's just started - the Self Portrait Thursday Sketch Group. The idea is you're never without a subject for daily sketching is you do a self-portrait! Any kind of self-portrait sketch is welcomed - even nudes - so it's an 18+ group on Flickr. Each week people post their self portrait image.
• Daily Paintworks seems to have undergone another roster change in terms of the 12 artists it features - however Carol Marine is still coming up with new and delicious perspectives on apples in her very attractive still life paintings

More sketching from France (plus photos and videos of work by famous artists

This week, when I had time away from writing reams of stuff protesting about planning nonsense, I learned how to make movies! Which is why this week I've started posting links to videos for the first time (some would say it's taken me a long time - and they'd be right!). So here's this week's posts covering all the posts about Paris - except for a couple about the Louvre which will be posted next week. Then we're off to Giverny and Rouen!

Montmartre
from the Musée d'Orsay roof terrace
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

• Making A Mark
• The Musée d'Orsay
• Video: Vincent van Gogh at the Musée d'Orsay
• Video: Claude Monet at the Musée d'Orsay
• Travels with a Sketchbook......in Paris
  
• A day in the Musee d'Orsay - tips on sketching
• Dining out in Paris - Montmartre and Saint-Germain-des-Prés

Joan was also sketching in Paris at about the same time - see Watercolors by Joan

Plus Laura (Laurelines) has posted Brittany sketches, part five!

Art competitions

• The Art Calendar 2010 Self-Portrait Cover Contest - deadline for entry is 23:59 on December 11, 2009, Eastern Standard Time.

Art education / art videos

• Botanical artists and botanical art lovers may be interested in my Botanical Art Bookshop Review - Kew Gardens - with pictures of the bookshelves - including botanical art instruction books
• I've only just found Robert Genn's How to beat painter's block which was posted while I was in France.
  
• Last week, PanPastels posted a video of Deborah Secor doing a landscape painting using PanPastels on Vimeo. I've not been able to review all of this as yet as I've been very busy and it seems to be just short of half an hour long.
  

Art Exhibitions and Art Galleries

• The Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology has emerged from its revamp - and The Guardian has a slideshow of what it now looks like and a comment on what looks to me like major reconstruction. You can find out more about what happened to the museum here. The transformed museum reopens to the public next Saturday.

The Ashmolean has always had one of the finest collections of any institution, an eclectic cabinet of curiosities of the very highest quality: Cromwell's death mask; Guy Fawkes's lantern; medieval Islamic tapestries; Michelangelo drawings; blue-and-white Iranian pottery; neolithic skulls. After a £61m building project, the world's first public museum is now also one of the most modern and accessible.

• Bigger Trees near Warter has gone on display at Tate Britain in the David Hockney Room. I guess a sure sign that you've definitely made it is when you get a room in a national museum before you die! Here's Jonathan Jones on David Hockney: not just bigger, but better and David Hockney himself in an interview with the Guardian on David Hockney: portrait of the old master in connection with David Hockney, 1960-1968: A Marriage of Styles which opens at Nottingham Contemporary on 14 November
• The Annual Exhibition of the Royal Institute of Oil Painters opened this week at the Mall Galleries and is on until Sun 8 November 2009, 10am - 5pm (closes 1pm on final day). I'm hoping to get to see it next week.
• 62 pieces of work by 25 members artists of the Botanical Artists of Canada, are to be displayed in BAC's biennial juried Exhibition November 4 to 15, 2009, The theme of the show this year is on the theme of Trees: From Root to Crown and the exhibition can be seen at the Todmorden Mills Heritage Museum and Art Centre Papermill Gallery, 67 Pottery Road in Toronto, Ontario. (Gallery hours are Wednesday to Friday: 12 Noon to 4:30 pm, and Saturday and Sunday from Noon to 4:00 pm.). The show is for members of the society, is completely organized by volunteers, and paid for by BAC's members, without any outside sponsorship. I'm hoping to feature the prizewinners when the awards are announced. Two guest artists include Dick Rauh, President of the American Society of Botanical Artists, who is due to speak at the Opening Reception on November 7.

Making A Mark Opinion Poll

• MAM Poll (October) Results - What has influenced your style of art? was posted yesterday. The main influence on your style of art is YOU!

Websites and blogging

There's been lots of news recently on the computer, internet, websites and blogging front. Here's a summary

• You can download Microsoft's Windows 7 Upgrade Adviser if you want to scan your PC for potential issues with your hardware, devices, and installed programs. It also recommends what to do before you upgrade. I'm sure you've been reading odd article about this. I read one (now a lost link!) which suggested that a clean install was the way to go. Anybody else got views or seen good articles?
• Google Social Search is new in Google Labs - here's a comment from PCWorld Magazine Google Social Search Unveiled Sans Facebook
• I don't know how long it's been around because I only noticed it this week(!) but Blogger's got a new post editor. This is An overview of the new post editor. I tried it and didn't like the clunky way it inserts images. Since mine are image intensive psts I've gone back to the old post editor. All I want is a greatly increased window for writing posts and I'd be happy!
• if you like to keep up with who are the post popular tech Twitterers try taking a look at Twitter Users Most Followed by the Web 2.0 Summit Crowd
• Here's a couple of links to articles from the Guardian's technology pages about an important new development Internet regulator Icann approves web addresses in multiple languages and Web addresses to get non-Latin characters (do read the bit about the potential for scamming)
• Facebook wins $711m in spam lawsuit - but will they ever get it? The culprit has to pay off the multimillion pounds awarded against him for doing the same thing on MySpace.
• Making A Mark is massive - and takes longer to load than most blogs. I hope you all think it's worth it. Google has suggestions for how find out how I can make my blog load faster. Alternatively you can try measuring your sitespeed. My blog takes four seconds to load. How about you?
  

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How can I make my blog load faster?

and finally.......

I started making some twitter lists yesterday - and got a little carried away! However I'm finding that it's already making checking up on what I've missed and what people are up to sooooooooo MUCH easier. These are my lists - and I'm very happy to be listed!

• art-education
• sketching
• art-business
• drawing-illustration
• botanical-art
• art-societies
• art-bloggers
• authors-i-like
• art-materials-supplies
• arts-journalists
• art-museums-and-galleries
• website-blog-tips
• widgets-for-artists

Meanwhile Tim Berners Lee has ventured on to Twitter and managed to acquire 10,000 followers in just FOUR days!