10th January 2010 - Who's made a mark this week?

This week we have experienced once in a generation weather here in the UK as the Arctic reminds us of what happens at our latitude if the Gulf Stream weakens or switches off. I guess a number of you may have seen the NASA photo which showed the UK under a complete white-out. I can't ever remember this happening before.

I've been a hermit all week as my very dodgy ankles can't cope with slush and ice. It seemed appropriate therefore to feature some UK art bloggers who have been out and about painting the snow!

Here then are some images by Rob Ibjema (Painting Wales Diary) and Adebanji Alade (Adebanji Alade). They provide a complete contrast in terms of where they are painting. Rob is in deepest snowiest central Wales and Adebanji is in south east London - compare the roads!

(left) B Roads by Rob Ibjema
(right) Norman Road Intersect, Belvedere by Adebanji Alade

Most of the minor roads here in Wales are not cleared or gritted, without a 4x4 you don't go anywhere if you live rural...
Rob Ibjema

Meanwhile, Sarah Wimperis (The Red Shoes) in Cornwall painted Swans in the Snow.

Art Blogs

The Art of the Landscape

First off - thank you to the 54 people who have already subscribed to this brand new blog!

This week I''ve tried to give a bit of a flavour of what this blog will be about while I continue to work through my very long lists of future topics and build the ning community before opening it up. Posts this week have included:

• A learning project for art bloggers focuses on the purpose of the blog and how it is different from other places where landscape art gets discussed online
  
• Landscape art - where to start...... at this point I was still feeling a bit overwheleed by my lists of possible topics

If I knew I didn't know enough before I started, I now know for certain I had no idea how much I didn't know!

• A new book about landscape painting highlighted my book review (see below) of a new book about landscape paining which published in the UK this week
• Van Gogh's approach to drawing landscapes - this references a post which was part of my 2007 project on Van Gogh. The blog will continue to focus on the approaches to landscapes by important artists from the past. (Wirting this prompted me to get out both my books about Van Gogh drawings and my reed pen and my walnut ink and I had fun with a drawing which you'll doubtless see soon!)
  

Wheat Field with Cypresses at the Haude Galline near Eygalieres
Vincent van Gogh - 1889
Drawing Height: 47 cm (18.5 in.), Width: 62 cm (24.41 in.)
Van Gogh Museum (Netherlands)

• Free e-book of tips for painting a plein air landscape - the blog will highlight links to learning online. In this instance it was one of Art Daily's e-books which can be downloaded for free.
  
• Self-critique: Marie Theron - this blog is about supporting learning and one of the ways that can be done is through critical review of our own work. Marie volunteered a piece which has become the first self-critique to feature on the Art of the Landscape

If you would like your self-critique to feature on the blog please see the above post for what you need to do.

Painters and Painting

• The Virtual Paintout for January is in Corsica. People are painting various places in the Island and lots have been posted already to Corsica - January 2010. I think I might just join in this month.
• Adebanji Alade has a good review of the work of different painters in Some artists that caught my attention at Art Liberating Lives 2009

Portraiture

• Karin Jurick filled in for the people who didn't honour their commitment to the end of year portrait project on A Painting Today and produced some really great portraits in Different Folks
• A new reference photograph will be posted to Different Strokes from Different Folks
• on January 20th.
  
• Gwenn Seemel (Face Making) wrote to tell me about the Subjective portraiture series she undertook in a blind collaboration with artist Becca Bernstein. You can read about the upcoming exhibition in the art exhibition section below.
• Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint) has found that her switch to experimenting with Sennelier oil pastels for macros of cat faces has proved to be very successful. This first work Silver Tabby Cat in Oil Pastel sold last week for a VERY impressive sum on e-bay. The second is now posted - see Silver Tabby Cat in Oil Pastel 2

Still Life

• Susan Abbott (A Painter's Year) has been producing some stunning still life paintings of late. Her work has been featured in an article about Still Life Strategies in The Artist's Magazine, January/February 2010

Art Business and Marketing

More achievements in 2009 and plans for 2010 by art bloggers

• Tina Mammoser (The Cycling Artist) - Achievements - measuring up 2009
• Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint) - Review of 2009
• The Plan for 2010 by Charlene Brown (1150 words)
• Resolutions for a New Year in Pastel by Richard McKinley on the Pastel Pointers Blog
  

Elsewhere

• Barney Davey on Art Print Issues has@:
  
• Barney Davey's Top Ten Art Business Tweets - September - December 2009
• plus a further post which is a Decade in Review for the Art Print Market - which I found fascinating - it certainly explained quite a few changes in the marketplace to me
  

• Artists Daily - A Simple Formula for Pricing Artwork by Lori Woodward provides a clear explanation of how to avoid giving the client the frame for free when selling through a gallery
• Empty Easel always starts the year with a focus on art business topics - here's a couple from this last week
  
• 7 Tips for Successful Art Marketing in 2010 by Lori McNee
  

• How to Start Licensing Your Artwork - 8 Art Licensing Resources for Artists by Jeanette Smith

Art and the Economy / Art Collectors

the marketplace, from Miami to Moscow to Mumbai, remains pockmarked with shuttered galleries, smaller auctions and scaled-down art fairs. In the U.S., many museums have postponed pricey exhibits.

• according to the Wall Street Journal the Art Market Still Suffering Recession-Induced Blue Period. Sotheby's earnings from contemporary art were down 68% compared to 2008.
• an interesting comment on the world of fake art Chicago man pleads guilty to selling fake Picassos, Lichtensteins to naive collectors on eBay amazing pricing abnd mark-ups
• Bloomberg (Arts and Culture) highlights the theft of Les Choristes a Degas pastel (on Loan from the Musee d'Orsay) at the end of December and provides a summary of thefts in recent years in Stolen Cezanne Still Missing, Leonardo da Vinci Found: Timeline
  

Art Competitions and Art Societies

• Jeannette Jobson's (Illustrated Life) Blog stoppers? is a MUST READ. It concerns images for competitions which have previously been displayed on blogs or Facebooks.
• On Thursday I detailed a schedule of the annual exhibitions of the major national art societies in UK National Art Societies: 2010 Open Exhibitions - dates and deadlines
• Yesterday I posted details about The Pastel Society 111th Annual Exhibition - Call for Entries - note that it has reverted to its traditional dates for submission and exhibition after a change last year
  

Art Exhibitions and art fairs

• Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction is at the Whitney Museum until January 17th then travels to The Phillips Collection, Washington DC, February 6–May 9, 2010, and to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, May 28–September 10, 2010.
• images | video
• In London, art lovers are waiting with baited breath for the opening of The Real Van Gogh: The Artist and His Letters (23 January—18 April 2010) at the Royal Academy of Art in the year which marks 120 years since his death.
  
• If you want to see it - and you're not a Friend of the RA as I am - now is the time to start booking your ticket - this one is going to be VERY popular as it's the first major Van Gogh exhibition in London for 40 years! There are only a limited number of daily tickets for sale each day and hence no guarantee you'll be able to get in if you just turn up. I fully expect that this exhibition will break the currect record of 800,000 visitors which is held by the 1999 RA exhibition of Monet in the twentieth century.
  
• You can read A beautiful mind an online version of an article in the RA magazine written by Martin Gayford in which explores the Van Gogh beyond the canvas through Van Gogh's letters and what they reveal about his thought processes and what he was really like
• Behind the scenes is an article in which the Curator Ann Dumas and Exhibitions Director Kathleen Soriano explain the complex negotiations involved in putting together ‘The Real Van Gogh’

Art Studios

• Holly Bedrosian (Holly Bedrosian Fine Art) has a New Year, New Studio
  

Art Supplies

• When I'm reviewing art blogs I often see product reviews. When they make the grade they get referenced on Making A Mark reviews...... The latest is Product review: Brushes by Gwen Semeel

Book reviews

• This week I posted a book review about a new book about landscape painting which published in the uSA in November and in the UK this month. See Book Review: Landscape Painting by Mitchell Albala Who should read it? see Landscape art instruction book for artists who read!
• [Update: I forgot!] My information site The Best Books about Drawing and Sketching has made it into the top 100 sites on Squidoo - which is quite something considering Squidoo has some 1.3 million sites!
  

Opinion Poll

• On Monday I highlighted the responses to MaM Poll (Dec. 2009) Results: Which art gift would you like for Christmas? How did you compare to what other people wished for?
  
• There have been a lot of responses already to the MAM Poll (Jan. 2010): How do you archive your digital images?. If you've not yet voted and would like to (or are interested to see what other people are doing!) the poll is in the right hand column.
  
• The two brand new coloured pencil opinion polls are doing very well on Coloured Pencils - Resources for Artists. It's already indicating a completely different pattern to the one indicated by the old poll. It's also interesting to see how the different brands fare between artist grade pencils and watercolour pencils
  
• 2010 POLL: Which is your favourite make of artist grade coloured pencil?
• 2010 POLL: What's your favourite watercolour pencil?

The Web: networking, blogging, webware and websites

• FAQS about posterous - I really must explore this more!
• 5 Elements for a Successful Artist's Blog is the topic of a recent blog post on Observe Closely
  

and finally........

The BBC has a slideshow of pictures which honour "The King" on the 75th anniversary of his birth on 8th January 1935 - see In pictures: Elvis exhibition birthday

One Life: Echoes of Elvis opened at the National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution) on
January 8 and continues August 22, 2010.

Early in Elvis’s career, Andy Warhol illuminated the role he played in the new and youth-powered popular American culture; later, Ralph Wolfe Cowan, Red Grooms and others created mythical, spiritual and earthly images of the man whose legacy includes multiple superlative moments in music, entertainment, life and afterlife. To this day, both the historical Elvis Presley and the fantasy-based vision of Elvis are the subject of poetry, literature, music, film and the visual arts.