14th March 2010 - Who's made a mark this week?

Katherine Kean has a very unusual series of posts on her blog Katherine Kean Fine Art

• Looking at Art's Influence on Motion Pictures: Part One - Edward Hopper
• Looking at Art's Influence on Motion Pictures: Part Two - Andrew Wyeth
• Part 3 of Looking at Art's Influence on Motion Picture Design: Thomas Gainsborough and Jean-Antoine Watteau

It's absolutely fascinating and very persuasive. Below is the composite image she came up with in relation to her Weth post. Has anybody got any other suggestions?

Andrew Wyeth's influence on motion pictures in the USA
composite image by Katherine Kean

Art Blogs

Blogger published its new Blogger Designer Templates this week in Blogger in Draft and I've taken the opportunity to use them on two of my blogs. See A new look blog! and What's the colour code for a Moleskine sketchbook?

It's been interesting this week to see who has also made the jump!

Coloured Pencils and Pastels

• I'm greatly intrugued by the texture and colours that Lesley Hawes (Leslie's Drawing A Day) achieves on a surface which is unfamiliar to me called Alphamat which is an archival mat by Neilson Bainbridge which meets and exceeds the Fine Art Care and Treatment Standards (FACTS) Expanded Guide to Permanence in Paper, Mat and Mounting BoardsCartoons. I'd love to know more about what it's like to work with.
  

Landscapes

• In Stavanger - the Virtual Paintout in March, I used a screen from a webcam for the image - and it turned out that Sarah Wimperis used to buy her fish from the place I was showing when she used to live in Stavanger! How weird is that?
• Deborah Secor continues to publish the chapters of her online blog book Landscape Painting in Pastels
  
• Chapter 4 - Letting Value Lead - which is relevant to the composition of any painting in my media
  
• Chapter 5 - Aerial Perspective - a particularly useful chapter for all would-be landscape painters

You must compose your painting using the focus that will best express what you see. Too much detail in the distance and too little in the fore can result in a flat painting with little sense of depth. Select areas of emphasis to detail more highly and allow other areas of your composition to remain softer. Manage details to enhance the focal point and give the painting the needed sense of space.
Deborah Secor

Painters and Painting

• I was impressed with the botanical watercolour paintings of Sarah Bent as seen on Brush - Paper - Water, Sarah is a member of Artists Abroad, Hong Kong, a Juried Member of the International Guild of Realism and a Full Member of the Australian Guild of Realist Artists. Her website is Sarah Bent Watercolours and you can see more of her botanicalshere
• Jana Bouc has been using acrylics to paint Stavanger and comments on their properties in Virtual Paintout Norway & Golden Open Acrylics (YES!)
  
• Dianne Mize: Bagatelles and Meanderings... is now Dianne Mize: One Artist's Journey. It's nice to see Diane getting back to painting after her recent lengthy time-out to care for her partner although sad to know the reason why.
  
• This week I spotted Gouache Paintings by Deborah Secor which has been posting small original paintings for a set price with no commentary since September last year. Deborah generously explains the paints and paper she uses in the left hand column. Other gouache bloggers are: Virtual Gouache Land by Eric Tiemens and
  
• Daily Paintworks is now on Facebook

Sculpture

• The Times has identified Ten of the best sculpture gardens in the UK
  

Textiles

• check out the gorgeous Aurora Borealis created by Amanda Sheridan (Amanda J Sheridan - Parasol Arts) in Norwich
  

Art Competitions and Art Societies

• A reminder to all those want to wanting to enter the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition that the form needs to be in by 18th March - and that's next Thursday! (correction - 16th March) This is my post on How to enter the Royal Academy's Summer Exhibition 2010. It's had rather a lot of visitors in recent weeks!
• The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition - The 2010 competition will be launched in the Sunday Times Culture Section on 28 March. I'll be doing a detailed post on this blog as always when it launches. Submission dates and venues will available throughout the UK in June with deadline for entries 8 July 2010 at the Mall Galleries in London. Entry Forms and labels will be available soon to download from www.parkerharris.co.uk. The big news is that the Royal Watercolour Society is no longer the major sponsor and the competition is returning to its original home at the Mall Galleries after a brief stay at the Bankside Gallery. The new sponsor is Smith and Williamson
  
• The Jerwood Drawing Prize 2010 will be launched shortly. For more information on how to apply visit www.jerwoodvisualarts.org. Registration opens online from 1 April
• The Sussex Coast College Art Prize, supported by the Jerwood Gallery, invites artists resident in Sussex to submit a proposal to exhibit new work in the Circle Gallery at Sussex Coast College in Hastings. The winning artist will be awarded £3,000 to fund a solo exhibition, including the production costs of work. For further information and entry online visit www.parkerharris.co.uk

Art Business and the Economy

• One of those perennial questions is tackled by Joanne Mattera in Marketing Mondays: When Your Dealer Won't Tell You Who's Bought Your Work. What's your experience been of this?Another useful post is Marketing Mondays: Demystifying the Art World
• Micah Condon (Artisbroken.com) who runs the online gallery, www.dailypainters.com comments on Boundless Gallery closing - what does this mean for artists, galleries, and collectors? and comments on the different financial models for an online gallery businesses
• Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint) is musing on Changing Direction - I wonder if you've been in the same place? She has also recently created an Etsy store.

Gayle Mason - prints on Etsy

Art Market / Art Fairs and Art Collectors

• A wonderful post by Belinda del Pesco (Belinda del Pesco Fine Art) about some thoughts on collecting daily paintings - a recommended read!
  
• Yes, art fairs are foul – but we need them argued Ben Luke in The Guardian who notes that one gallery owner who says that collectors are increasingly waiting for the fairs to make their move.
  

It's just that fairs are, on the whole, a deeply unpleasant way to see art. With rare, beacon-like exceptions, you get booth after booth of cluttered group shows where artists with nothing in common are pitched in with each other simply because they are represented by the same gallery

• Joanne Mattera (Joanne Mattera Art Blog) provides us with an Armory Week Report: The Overview PLUS she has a quiz which provides a somewhat salutary answer (or at least that's the way I looked at it!)
  

Wandering the fairs last week, there was a brief moment when I couldn’t remember where I was. Call it Art Fair Alzheimer’s. Was I in Miami? New York? Maybe Basel? It's not that I was like The Sleepwalker, left, but that the same galleries had brought many of the same artists they always bring. No wonder I didn't know where I was.

Art Galleries, Museums and Exhibitions

• I've developed a list of the The top ten art galleries and museums

Winter Greens by Tessa Shedley-Jordan (sold)

• This is my Exhibition review: Royal Watercolour Society Open Competition which includes the above painting - which I liked very much.
  
• An exhibition to celebrate the man known as "the father of English watercolour painting" opens at the Royal Academy of Arts yesterday. Paul Sandby RA: Picturing Britain, A Bicentenary Exhibition which features over 80 works of art by Paul Sandby (1731 - 1809), celebrates the work of one of the founding members of the Royal Academy and also marks the bicentenary of his death. I went to a preview on Tuesday and this is my Review: Paul Sandby - Picturing Britain Exhibition at the RA
• Londoners found Antony Gormley's sculptures (of a standing man) while Gormley’s sculptures make New Yorkers jumpy. That's because 27 of the 32 statues in Manhattan are on rooftops - as they were in London. The Guardian has a slideshow: Antony Gormley takes his statues to New York
• The ICA's deficit has ballooned from £100k to £1million. Massive redundancies at London's ICA, but will senior heads roll?
• The Nagoya/Boston Museum of Fine Arts in Japan is the sister museum of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) Gardens in Perpetual Bloom: Botanical Illustration in Europe and America, 1600-1850 closes on April 4th
  

The purpose of botanical illustrations was twofold. Firstly, they recorded the anatomy of plants and, secondly, they allowed a wide audience to see the beauty of flowers and plants from colonized countries at the time when gardening was evolving from a regal art to a pleasurable activity for ordinary people. The exhibition presents more than 100 works created between the 17th and 19th centuries that combine botanical accuracy with sumptuous bloom.

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

Art Education

• Malcolm Cudmore has provided a Coloured Pencil Demo on Gessoed Board on Wet Canvas
  

Art Videos

• I LOVED the videos about Rosie Sanders and large scale flower painting referenced by her Gallery in their announcement about her new exhibition. Great at introducing the artist, her work, and what inspires her - plus some very practical tips about how to paint large botanicals. These are definitely recommended viewing for all botanical art lovers
  
• dad and Albert is a video by Gretchen Schmid of her father Richard Schmid and Albert Handell at Putney Painters in Vermont. Richard is doing a sort of advert for his new book about landscape painting (The Landscapes) and it ends with both painters 'kinda' doing a portrait demo. I love the fact it's NOT commercial (she's even forgotten to put in a link in the accompanying text to his website) nor is it sophisticated and was intrigued to hear about plans for reaching the European audience in the future through books on DVD.
• I was intrigued to see if the Village Arts of Putney barn was on Streetview - and it is - so this brown barn just outside Putney is where the above video was filmed! It's also the barn which you can see in a number of the photos and paintings and DVDs!
  

Art instruction ebooks / DVDs

• This has been the most popular post this week on my blog - an ebook by Benoit Phillipe (My French Easel) Does your artistic creativity need a stimulus? It's a a really helpful FREE resource: for hobby artists to share with their friends; for tutors to share with their classes and for semi-professional and professional artists to use as a 'wake-up' call if their creativity or art has lost a certain "je ne sais quoi"
  
• Margaret Dyer (Small Pastel Studies) has produced The Figure in Pastels - How to paint the figure which is a step-by-step instructional video.
  

Art Tips

• Two posts this week about composition from About.com Painting
• Top 10 Tips for Painting Composition
• Painting Problem: Trying to Include Too Much in a Landscape Painting

Workshops

• Botanical artists Ann Swan and Billy Showell are both doing short botanical workshops in Sri Lanka in 2010
  

Art Supplies

• I did a post which compiled all references to Roz Stendahl tests Stonehenge Paper
• I've been starting a review of pencil sharpeners on Making A Mark reviews. Here's where I'm up to
• Product review: Jakar Electric Pencil Sharpener
• Product review: Derwent Battery Operated Helical Pencil Sharpener
• Product Review - Round Solid Brass Double-Hole Pencil Sharpener
• Meanwhile Toni James (Dancing with the colors of the wind) has news about both Prismacolor Pencils and Panasonic sharpeners in Mexico & Prismacolor and Discontinued Panasonic Sharpeners
• Marion Boddy Evans (About.com: Painting) has complied some tips for Art Materials on a Budget
• Rob's Art Supply Review Blog has been having a Derwent Fortnight - here are some of his reviews
• Derwent Pastels
• Derwent Coloursoft colored pencils
• Derwent Pastel Pencils Reformulated
• Derwent Fortnight #2: Watercolour Pencils
• Derwent Fortnight #1: Pencil Extenders!
• London Graphics Centre Closing Down Sale is about the fact that one of its shops in London is closing. Plus I reminded people about My Favourite Art Shop

Colour

James Gurney (Gurney Journey) continues with his posts about colour. These are the latest ones

• The Color Wheel, Part 7 concerns a digitally created colour wheel and the Yurmby wheel which is short for YRMBCG
• Peak Saturation Value which is about the notion that a given colour reaches its greatest chroma at one particular value. It includes some excellent charts to illustrate this point

Techies

• Today is Day 8 of the iMac conversion programme and you can follow my views of progress to date in Journal of an iMac Virgin #1 and Journal of an iMac Virgin #2. The former is initial impressions and the latters is more a more detailed perspective after using it for a week.
  
• while Crunchgrear reports that Consumer Reports says Apple has the best tech support, Acer/Gateway/eMachines the worst. This Apple convert is smiling! I would have given you the link to the report but Consumer Reports has made it subscriber only.

The Web: networking, blogging, webware and website

Blogger

• This link goes to the colour names supported by all major browsers. It took me a while to find the right colour for the moleskine sketchbook which I decided should be new post colour for my new-look sketchbook blog. Take a look in What's the colour code for a Moleskine sketchbook?

Blogging

• Blogger Buzz asked us all us Blogger bloggers to Express yourself with the Blogger Template Designer in Blogger Beta
  
• While YouTube - Introducing the Blogger Template Designer is the video which explains it all very FAST
• Meanwhile this post on Blogger in Draft provides details of The Blogger Template Designer
• and you get all these links and more in my blog post about what I learned when I changed my format in A new look blog!
  
• PS I'm desparate to work out how to get my CSS code for my tinted blockquote boxes back into the template - any suggestions (I'm using Awesome). I've got the code I just need to define blockquote as a style.
  

Networking

• very sensible - Techcrunch announced last week that Twitter Starts Routing All Links Through New Anti-Phishing Service

software/webware

• Softpedia says that Drawing / Painting Apps Will Shine on the iPad and highlights the likely impact on Brushes which is a painting application designed from scratch by developer Steve Sprang for the iPhone and iPod touch which is used by David Hockney among others.

and finally........

Apparently the exhibition drawing the longest queues to enter in London this week involved 40 zebra finches playing 8 electric guitars.

I kid you not.

Read Art lovers flock to see Jimi Henchicks at the Barbican and view the video on YouTube. The finches appear to be having a great time. See French artist Céleste Boursier-Mougenot's exhibition at The Curve, Barbican, London until 23 May 2010

By this weekend more than 640,000 people had viewed the video on YouTube. The way its popularity has grown is another illustration of the power of the internet to bring audiences to lesser-known artists.