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

Yesterday was also the 5th anniversary of the very first Sketchcrawl - see Sketchcrawl is 5! (Plus 25th Worldwide Sketchcrawl tomorrow)

Mathew Brehm (Sketchblog) who teaches architecture at the University of Idaho and is a contributor to Urban Sketchers did a rather nice title page for his sketchcrawl in Moscow, Idaho.

25th Worldwide Sketchcrawl by Matthew Brehm

This is Urban Sketcher's interview with Enrico Casarosa (Enrico's blog) - the man who started it all- Five years later, Casarosa's sketchcrawls keep us drawing

The act of drawing has a meditative quality and that's what's great about it, it forces you to slow down and really take into account what you are seeing.

Here are some posts I found of people out sketching on Urban Sketchers. It is of course totally predictable that the east is posting faster than the west!

• Sydney Sketchcrawl
• #25th Sketchcrawl around East Gate, Seoul
• SketchCrawl Singapore Style
• 25th World Wide SketchCrawl in Tokyo
• SketchCrawl - Moscow, ID

If you want to catch the next one try following Sketchcrawl on Twitter

Art Blogs

• This month, it's five years since Cindy Woods started her blog - Learning Daily . Ronda is stil posting Cin's work - and I've still got it in my blogroll. Yesterday was the first anniversary of Cin's death - see Cindy Woods - One year on and this great photo post from Wally on CrackskullBob
• Sarah Wimperis has written a hugely inspirational from the heart post on Watermarks - Bring out Your Inner Artist and Shine!
• Roz Stendhal (Roz Wound Up) had two interesting posts last week about Writing Text in Columns on Your Journal Page—Part 1 and Writing Text in Columns on Your Journal Page—Part 2
• Charlie Parker (Lines and Colors ) marked the 1st birthday of Urban Sketchers with Urban Sketchers turns 1
• Boarding Pass - Laura Frankstone is an interview with Laura Frankstone (Laurelines) about her trips by Anne (Prêt à Voyager) = which means 'ready to travel'.
• Paula Pertile (Drawing a Fine Line) writes about The joy of prints (she's being ironic!)

More blogging about trips to France

• More from Joan (Watercolors by Joan) - sketching in Provence

• Rural Provence Scenes
• The Charm of Provence
• Eygalieres Plus
• and by me in Normandy - Auberge du Terroir, Servon

Early evening at the Auberge du Terroir
8" x 10", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Moleskine
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Art Business & Marketing

• I've been checking out the new ArtBusiness.com website and I don't think I've seen this article before - Hopeless Artist Emails and How to Make Them Better. This is how it starts - you have been warned!

I have no idea when this started or who the original perpetrators were, but I get more pointless, idiotic, ill-conceived and just plain lame single-sentence (and sometimes slightly longer) email communications like these (examples provided) from artists the world over trying to get exposure for their art-- way more than I would have ever imagined possible.

Art Collectors - and the art economy

• Lee Rosenbaum (Culturegrrl) reports thatthe Metropolitan Museum’s Red-Ink 2009 Annual Report, Now Online Total endowment funds down 26%. Museum's deficit: $8.4 million. It's not going to 'go broke' as it has assets of $2.9 billion and revenue of $213 million - however it just goes to show how the recession is affecting every part of the art economy
• She also came up with a novel approach to blogging CultureGrrl’s Pay-to-Play: No Donors, No Posts - and got 3! Not quite sure what that says..........
  
• This is a past about How Art and Stocks Trade: Relationship between Art and Equity Prices - ie if wealthy people have a lot of disposable cash then the price of art goes up - which means it's absolutely nothing to do with any intrinsic value.
  

In summary, evidence suggests that: (1) the wealth of the wealthy drives art prices; and, (2) art prices tend to evolve with, or somewhat behind, the equity market at a similar pace.

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

Art school

• I think I know what I might be writing about on Tuesday! According to the BBC Saatchi says 'Don't be an artist'. This is by way of a prelude to the BBC 'X-factor' type programme School of Saatchi which starts on BBC2 on Monday 23 November (9.00-10.00pm BBC2), the synopsis being................
  

Powerful art world supremo Charles Saatchi sets six unknown artists up in their own East London studio for 10 weeks and commissions them to make a series of ambitious artworks, as he begins a search for the next generation of creatives............In today's opener, a shortlist of applicants bring their work to a London warehouse for scrutiny by the panel – artist Tracey Emin, critic and broadcaster Matthew Collings, art collector Frank Cohen and Barbican curator Kate Bush. They are confronted by an array of bizarre and wondrous work that constitutes contemporary art today

Demonstrations / guides

• Jana Bouc (Jana's Journal & Sketchblog) has a great three part demonstration on her blog of a painting she is doing for a book. It's so nice to see a LONG explanation of what she is doing and lots of photos of how the painting progresses. I hope that's how it gets treated in the book too. I've highlighted books Jana has contributed to on this blog in the past and it looks like there's another one in the pipeline - it's called “Must Paint Watercolor Flowers” (Quarto Publishers, London)
  

detail of the painting of "Sunny Serenade" by Jana Bouc
watercolor, 15.5"x10.5"
copyright the artist

• Painting for the book: “Must Paint Watercolor Flowers” – Part I
• Painting for the book: “Must Paint Watercolor Flowers” – Part II
• Painting for the book: Part III ~ Finale

Step by Step - cats's eye demo by Gayle Mason

• Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint) provides an excellent Demonstration - How to Draw a Cat's Eye (there's a link to purchase it in the right column of her blog). This is the demonstration which sold out at the UKCPS stand at the Art Materials Live event at the NEC recently. You can read about this on UKCPS News - UKCPS at Art Materials Live which also provides a link to other guides produced by UKCPS members
  

Classes

• The Princes Drawing School has published its Spring Term course publication - and has also set up a dedicated website for the part of the school which operates out of the Kensington Palace Studios
  

Art Exhibitions

Exhibitions involving artist bloggers

• Belinda del Pesco (Belinda Del Pesco Fine Art Blog) is at the ArtFest of Scottsdale Nov 21 & 22

Don't forget to contact me if you want your blog post about your exhibition highlighted here.

Exhibitions elsewhere

• In New York, I'd not noticed that the Metropolitan Museum has what looks as if it's a very interesting exhibition American Stories: Paintings of Everyday Life, 1765–1915 which also had its own dedicated blog. I love the way the exhibition images change fast as you go through the links to the different sections of the exhibition. I'd really like to see an artist index with hyperlinks though.
• Two major exhibitions in London - with a competitive entry - occupied my blog posts this week
  

• Exhibition review: Toby Wiggins wins Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2009
• An Interview with Toby Wiggins RP
• Exhibition Review - ING Discerning Eye 2009
  

• Susan Angharad Williams, one of the past winners of the ING Discerning Eye Award, had an exhibition of New Paintings and Drawings (19 November- 5 December 2009) open this week at the Jonathan Cooper Park Walk Gallery. Click here to view the exhibition
  

Art Societies

• I've created a new resource - Art Societies in the UK - Resources for Artists. Do let me know if you'd like your art society listed - I've had some people write to me already with ones I didn't know about.
  

Art Supplies

• Making A Mark Reviews - Opinion Poll: Which is your favourite make of artist grade coloured pencil? which announces my decision to make this an annual review poll of different coloured pencil brands from January 2010 which will enable me to monitor changes in the marketplace
  

Book reviews

• This is the New York Times' Best Illustrated Children’s Books of 2009
• My resource site The Best Books about Drawing and Sketching was awarded a 'purple star' by Squidoo last week
• I've now got my copy of Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist by James Gurney and it's my current bedtime reading and it's has me riveted from the off!. This week however sees one of the reviews of the book which I was looking forward to reading. Charlie Parker over at Lines and Colors posted his book review of Imaginative Realism. Definitely a recommended read - my review won't be nearly as good! I loved the way his review reflects on the context for the production of art instruction books.
  

Rarest of all, there are art instruction books that are born out of the artist’s sheer enthusiasm for what they have learned and the desire to share it with any who are inclined to benefit from that knowledge. Imaginative Realism is one of those rare gems.............I also haven’t seen many art instruction books as information dense as this one. Not that the book feels visually cramped in any way, the book design is clear and elegant, but every one of its 200+ pages can be mined for nuggets of art technique gold.

• Postcard from Provence - the book is being published in Spring 2010. Julian Merrow Smith and his wife Ruth have been very busy this week advertisng and responding to a very special pre-order opportunity for his mailing list of his new book. This has raised the capital sum required for the printing costs and indicates this is going to be a pretty popular book. As many of you will know I've been following Julian since I started blogging and am a huge fan. I passed on the subscription offer but will certainly be buying the book. The standard edition is going to be available to pre-order next week in time for Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving - which is when the serious shopping for Christmas really starts. One has to admire the timing! ;) Julian's plan is to offer a stocking filler card so that people can gift a copy and offer a discount or free shipping for all books pre-ordered before a certain date. The book will have a softcover holding 160 pages and 140 full colour plates (which I'm guessing are probably going to be mainly 'life-size'). Price likely to be very affordable.
  

Opinion Polls

• Lots more people have responded to this month's opinion poll (in the right hand column). Have you answered the question yet - What makes a good art teacher?

Social Media, websites, blogging and webware

• I am really enjoying my Google search widget and now have it installed on all my blogs. It makes searching through the archives so find a past post so much faster and so much easier! I also get to search anybody I link to as well which makes it good for you too! I totally recommend it - see Widget reviews - Google Search on Blogger on Making A Mark reviews.....
  
• Tim O'Reilly (Radar Oreilly) writes that it looks like the The War For the Web is in the offing - it should make life interesting and I can't help thinking it might also create a lot of extra work in trying to keep up.
  
• Twitter premium accounts for business users due by end of the year - says the Guardian and Stone makes an interesting point.
  

"When we look at where we can grow we look to the more than four billion active mobile phone accounts in the world, opposed to the 1.65 million active web accounts."

• If it's the way to go for the BBC (see BBC bows to SEO) it's the way to go for you too when thinking of titles for blog posts!
• From ReadWriteWeb:
• Gmail Users Better-Connected, More Likely to Tweet than Members of other Webmail Services - have you ever thought about differentiating your mailing lists by what types of email they use?
  
• There's a new trend towards "giving the trolls what they deserve" and some people are even going to court - see Leaving a Vulgar Comment Online Might Cost You Your Job
• for those worried about their nerd like tendencies and the amount of time they spend in front of their computer - there's more on the notion that Social Media is Actually Social. Which nicely links back to Sarah's post at the top of the art blogs section in this post.

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

I'm hoping that one of my favourite art suppliers hasn't been flooded in the "once in a millenium" rainstorms and floods in Cumbria (the Lake District) last week - 314.4mm (12.3in) of rain for a 24-hour period were recorded at Seathwaite Farm in Borrowdale.

Heaton Cooper is in Grasmere (in the next valley east of Borrowdale) and I viewed a BBC video of a car driving down the road to Grasmere into a flood caused by waterfalls coming over the top of the stone walls! The message on their website is that they hope to be back to normal after the weekend.

This is a link to photos of the floods in Cumbria