29th November 2009 - Who's made a mark this week?

I was in the country this weekend for a housewarming. Then got home to find out there had been a family emergency so "Who's made a mark this week?" didn't get posted yesterday and is a bit shorter than usual.

Wallace Collection - Judy and the horses (27.11.09)
11.5" x 17", pen and sepia ink in Daler Rowney Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

My double spread pen and ink sketch above is from my visit to the Wallace Collection on Friday. I visited the new display of their nineteenth century paintings - which were a great surprise to me. Read about why and see more sketches on my sketchbook blog next week.

Art Blogs

Drawing and sketching

• Tina Mammoser had an interesting post about process - Sketches vs Photographs on The Cycling Artist
• I commented on the process of developing sketches once you get back home in From sketchbook to studio. (Just in case you were wondering which one I liked the best - see right.)

Mont-Saint-Michel from the Rue De Rivage
coloured pencils on Arches HP
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

• ...after posting about Le Mont St Michel......
  
• and Petit déjeuner at the Château de Boucéel in Travels with my Sketchbook......
• More from Joan in France on her blog Watercolours by Joan. I keep having deja vu moments as she posts about places I know very well - and paints on the same spot I've painted from!
  
• Beaucaire & Gordes
• Abbaye & Koi Pond
• Lacoste & Bonnieux
• Nature Art Journal was recommended to me

Coloured Pencils and Pastels

• Brenda Boylan's blog is called Dusty Fingers. It's a new (to me) blog by an artist using pastels. She's a member of the Northwest Pastel Society, the Portland Plein-Aire & Studio Painters and her work has been published in the Best of America Pastel Series II.
• Plus a new post by a pastel artist I know much better - this is Gesa Helms's Plein air pastel sketches: Scotland, Germany and Chile on her new 'art for sale' blog Gesa Helms Art.

The Meadow 2
plein air sketch by Gesa Helms

• Pauline Longley (Pauline Longley's ArtBlog) discusses how she used an iron to melt wax from her coloured pencils in Owl on a sheet of Pastelmat.
  

Painters and Painting

• Boy artist's landscapes sell for £17,000 - I'm never quite sure with stories like this whether to wonder why people get so carried away, or to be really pleased for prodigal child who enjoys success at a young age or to allow my inner green eyed monster to be seriously miffed! Take a look at Kieron Williamson's website and linked gallery and decide for yourself.
  

Printmaking

This is the Printsy Interview with

• Travis Weller who is a screenprinte
• Mandy Laschon- a linoprinter who likes intaglio
  

Textiles

• I'm really enjoying Lisa Call's South African Impressions textile paintings (on Lisa Call - Contemporary Textile Art) following her visit to Africa in August

Art Business and Marketing

• Experian Hitwise writes about seasonal online sales traffic in Thanksgiving and Black Friday Seasonal Traffic Patterns. Is there any reason to suppose that shopping trends will vary when people are buying art?

Experian^® Hitwise^® announced today that online traffic to a custom category of Black Friday advertising Websites increased 87 percent for the week ending Nov. 21, 2009.

Black Friday Traffic Up 87 Percent Pre-Thanksgiving Week

• Seth Godin makes a good point - What sort of accent do you have?
• Lisa Call has a new fan page on Facebook and a page for small artwork for sale on her blog

Art and the Economy / Art Collectors

• I posted on Saturday about the The Artists and the Economic Recession Survey conducted by LINC
• Bloomberg informs us that Koons’s $25 Million Dangling Train Derailed by LACMA Shortfall - the project was initially pushed back a couple of years but is now looking very doubtful - unless somebody comes up with the funding. I guess the notion that even in a recessopm there's always enough money around for art-buying/sponsoring by themega rich is now being tested. Either that or whether people really like Jeff Koons?
  

Art Competitions

• Wet Canvas has a competition where members can vote for the best still life, best portrait and best landscape. I'm afraid I wasn't blown away by the choices on offer - I've seen much nicer work on blogs this year. What did you think?
  
• All the good ideas get copied sooner or later! ;) I'll be starting the nomination process for the best artwork on a blog in early December - with voting taking place over the seasonal festivities - as I've done for the last two years. Now to decide whether I should vary my categories!
  

Art Exhibitions and art fairs

Art Galleries and Museums

• 'Botanicals: Environmental Expressions in Art, the Alisa and Isaac M. Sutton Collection' at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Hunt Library, Fifth Floor, Carnegie Mellon University, Oakland (free admission). The link is an interview with the collector.
  
• British Museum - Manga comes to life at the British Museum’s Room a review by the EyeBlog
• I walked fairly quickly through No Love Lost, Blue Paintings by Damien Hirst at the Wallace Collection. 1. Admission is free and it's impossible to avoid as you walk round the Wallace Collection. 2 The man cannot paint - they are really bad paintings which regurgitate old themes. 3. We discussed it at lunch and as somebody commented "Why does he need to produce paintings". I understand the Wallace Collections benefits to the tune of £250k as a fee for making the space available and handling his merchandising - so that bit's OK!

Art Societies

• The Annual Exhibition of the New English Art Club opened last week at the Mall Galleries and I got distracted by the Wallace Collection yesterday so didn't get to see it as planned and will probably now visit early next week. The exhibition closes on 7th December. Very sensibly NEAC has set up a separate trading company and also makes work available to buy online. What's also good about this is you get to see the sizes and prices as well.

Art Bloggers

Clouds and Fields (2009) by Lisa McShane
30" x 40", Oil on Canvas.

• Lisa McShane (1,000 Paintings) wrote today to let me know that her art is available for one night only - this coming Friday. See Babes and Byways Art Exhibit this Friday! for more details. The location is 1220 Bay Street, corner of Bay and Holly in downtown Bellingham in Washington state. 5% of all proceeds goes directly to Conservation Northwest. You can also check out Lisa's Washington Landscapes on the gallery pages of her website

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

Workshops

• Deborah Paris's online workshops are proving to be very popular. So much so that she's created another opportunity. Here's a link to her virtual class on Painting the Luminous Landscape January 8-February 5, 2010 - but there's only 4 spots left in this 10 person class
  

Tips and techniques

• Gayle Mason has created a information website on Squidoo - How to draw and paint birds
• Meanwhile I posted All About Cats which has only a little bit to do with art but will greatly interest feline artists!

Art History, Art Galleries and Museums

• I went to see the Wallace Collection on Friday - and had a great sketching day. More about this next week.
• For anybody thinking of visiting Paris in the near future, take note that French Unions Threaten to Shut Paris Museums Over Job Cuts

Art Societies and Art Groups

• I continue to develop Art Societies in the UK - Resources for Artists which is beginning to get a lot of visitors as I add in more websites. Still lots to do though! Do send me your recommendations and/or point out any important omissions.
  
• This week I posted 10 questions for Art Society websites which is really a comment on what I've been finding on art society websites. Why not check out your society's website and see how it measures up?
  
• Subject to Interpretations was created for the Portland Plein Air and Studio Painters and is a winter project for sharing painting experiences. A referece photo is posted twice a month. Brenda Boylan highlighted it on her blog and says it was inspired by Karin Jurick's successful Different Strokes blog. It's very early days but it looks like a potentially good model for enabling artists in art groups to keep in touch over the winter months

Art Supplies

• There's a new blue pigment - discovered by scientists at Oregon State University. Here are some of the relevant links
  
• Accidental discovery produces durable new blue pigment for multiple applications
• A picture of the new pigment against a value scale on Flickr
  
• An article by the New York Times about the discovery
  
• Jackie Simmonds is no longer supplying Wallis Paper in the UK. She recommends importing it from Art Supply Warehouse - who supply both the Museum and Professional grade in sheets and pads
  

Book reviews

• We had Black Friday last week - plus two announcements about new books being published by artists. It's interesting to see two different approaches to book production.
  
• Julian Merrow Smith (Postcard from Provence) announced the publication of the 'ordinary' version of Postcard from Provence, Paintings by Julian Merrow-Smith.($29.95 plus free shipping - which is a limited offer for pre-orders) which is being published in Spring 2010
  

The first edition is in Softcover, 160 pages, 8&frac;12" x 10" and printed on acid free heavyweight Japanese art paper. With 140 full color plates

• Robert Genn (The Painters' Keys) announced the publication of a new book ($30.00 plus shipping). That means $5 shipping for USA orders but US$20 shipping if you live outside North America. Prices for Canada and the USA are in their respective local currencies.
  

The Robert Genn Twice-Weekly Letters, 960 pages--10 years of over 1,000 unabridged letters including an 82-page index. Six by nine inches and more than two inches thick, it's hardbound Red Cayenne with a separate dust jacket, a red ribbon, and a protective book box.

Opinion Poll

• I hope you responded to my opinion poll for November about what makes a good art teacher. See AM Poll (Nov. 2009): What makes a good art teacher? The results will be posted later today.
  

Websites, webware and blogging

• Blogging: Lorelle writes helpfully about Blog Struggles: How Do You Know When to Stop Writing a Blog Post? If this strikes a chord you might like her 2007 series of posts about Blog Struggles
  

If you don’t have enough story, don’t publish. If you have too much story, edit it down. When the story is right, publish.

• Twitterfeed - I noticed Seth Godin was using Twitterfeed (Twitterfeed blog) to automate posting of blog posts to Twitter and Facebook - so I signed up mid-week. I then removed the Twitter feed midweek before I found the button for altering how the updates post to Twitter. However I'm not happy with automatic retweets if you update your blog or go back to sort out grammer and spelling! This is the blog http://twitterfeed.wordpress.com/ and it sounds like they've been growing fast. Here's Guy Kawasaki on twitterfeed – SES 2009 Keynote (that particular tweek on twitterfeed made my jaw drop!) Let me know if you have any comments.
  
• Most influential websites: ReadWriteWeb told us The Most Influential Websites in the World: Wikipedia #1, Twitter #4 With a Bullet - except this is WRONG! I checked mine out and the only links which were recognised were the ones from NON blogspot URLs - which makes just a teeny weeny bit of a difference!
• Looks like Plaxo could be a site to stay away from. It appears to be sharing too much personal information - according to Stephen Fry (who) accuses Plaxo of telling too much about him

and finally........

In the meantime, I'm going to be trying to produce quite a few book reviews for those who are looking for suggestions for their seasonal present list.

Starting with my book review of James Gurney's Imaginative Realism: How to Paint What Doesn't Exist which I've just finished reading and which should be published later today.