21st March 2010 - who's made a mark this week?

Morning Light (£2000)
by Francis Bowyer P.P.R.W.S., N.E.A.C.

Royal Watercolour Society - Spring Exhibition 2010 at the Bankside Gallery
copyright the artist

I was out sketching with the RWS Friends by the Thames yesterday which is why this post is a day late. While down at the Bankside I visited the Bankside Gallery to have a quick look at the paintings in the members Royal Watercolour Society Spring Exhibition.I'll be writing about this again once I go back to have a proper look. There was a workshop in the gallery yesterday and consequently it was difficult to see the paintings properly. However Francis Bowyer's paintings stood out as very effective in their use of watercolour and body colour and you can see one of them - a painting of the sink in the corner of his studio ina shaft of light - above.

Art Blogs

Drawing and sketching

• Last week my good friend Nicole Caulfield (Nicole Caulfield) and her two daughters were at a workshop with James Gurney (Gurney Journey) - and you can read all about it at James Gurney

From left clockwise:
James Gurney, Nicole Caulfield and her two daughters

• This week marked the two year anniversary of Larry Roibal's blog and his doodle
• Fellow Sketcheriser Ronell van Wyk (African Tapestry) has some lovely Sketches from Oslo
• I've added some new modules to The Best books about Drawing and Sketching and highlighted these in BOOKS: how to draw animals, plants, flowers and nature
• This week I was Sketching at the Brokers Wine Bar where my work will be on exhibition from the end of the month

Landscapes

• Deborah Secor (Landscape Painting in Pastels) continues with her blog book about pastel kandscapes - CHAPTER SIX -- MOUNTAINS - she's developing quite a following! You can now check out the table of contents of the blog book in the left hand column.
• On The Art of the Landscape I've started what will probably be a 'slow' series of quotations about art in the landscape and from the landscape - starting with Landscape quotations #1 which is about Henry Moore
• Adam Cope also has some good quotes about landscape painting in Landscape as the Mirror of the Soul
  

Painters and Painting

• I had a go at the Virtual Paintout of Stavanger - this is my effort Between Bjørnøy and Roaldsøy - looking west (see right)
  
• I came across this site this week - the Outdoor Painters Society
  

Portraiture

• Adabanji Alade has posted a drawing he's been working on for a long time Self Portrait at Lots Road Studio, Graphite, 2007-2010

Street Art

• Banksy’s Graffiti – clever, but is it art? asks the Telegraph
  

Art Business and the Economy

• a nice post I've only just spotted by Michelle Basic Hendry Working With Your Gallery
  
• BoundlessGallery artists, you've got options says Dan at Empty Easel. Read his post and Clint Watson's post
• Boston Globe -How to start an art revolution30 Valuable Lessons Learned Using Social Media for Small Business
• I thought the chap from the Boston Globe had an interesting point last week about the extent to which individual places can make a difference to the nature of the art economy - see Does your city need to create an art revolution?
  

Art Criticism

Art criticism starts with love and hate says Jonathan Jones in the Guardian. Overanalysing art, as opposed to intuitively rating it, is fraught with peril

Some of you ask why reviewers (or this reviewer) are always just saying what's good and what's bad, what we like or don't like. According to critics of the critic, this is typical of, well – typical of me. But I beg to differ. It is actually typical of artists.

Art Museums, Exhibitions and Fairs

• I previewed(without seeing) Henry Moore at Tate Britain and have received an invite to go to the launch of the 2010 season at Perry Green - so there will be more about Henry Moore at the beginning of April.
• In a first, the Prado is to display John Singer Sargent's "The Daughters of Edward Darley Boit" from Tuesday beside the painting which inspired it -- Diego Velazquez's "Las Meninas". This is the Prado museum website link. Singer's painting, one of the top draws at Boston's Museum of Fine Arts, has been loaned abroad only twice before, to museums in Britain (when I saw it at the National gallery) and Japan.
• Crime et Châtiment (Crime and Punishment) is at the Musée d'Orsay every day except Monday until 27 June
• The Printmaker's Art at the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh until 23 May presents around 30 works selected from the National Gallery of Scotland's outstanding collection of artists' prints.

This display comprises some of the most beautiful and accomplished prints made during the last 500 years, and includes iconic images by Durer, Blake, Rembrandt, Goya, Piranesi, Hogarth, Toulouse-Lautrec, Whistler, and D Y Cameron. These works are counted amongst some of the artists' most important artistic achievements.

Artists' exhibitions

• this week Tina Mammoser (The Cycling Artist) has a show on - see The morning after the Dark
  

DARK
On exhibition through 27 March 2010
Paul McPherson Gallery, 77 Lassell Street, London SE10 9PJ www.paulmcphersongallery.com
"Taking Down" day tea and biscuits: Saturday 27th March, 12-2pm

• I do love the music with Karin Jurick's videos of her paintings - the work's pretty good too! Currently showing at the Morris & Whiteside Gallery on Hilton Head Island
• Olha Pryymak had work in a group show Go Figurative on March 19-21 in Chelsea's Heathery's 75 Lots rd, SW10 ORN, London.
  

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

Art Education

• how to teach saturation vs value
  

Workshops

I love it when people do decent posts about the workshops they've been on. It's so helpful to those trying to choose workshops and workshop tutors to spend their money on - and it also helps the tutors too.

Fellow Sketcherciser Cathy Gatland (A sketch in time) has recently taken a workshop with Hazel Soan (nice website!) and has written up two posts so far.

• This is Hazel Soan's Workshop Day One or 'wonderful day One' as Cathy calls it! Here's another perspective from Debbie of Debbie Does Art with My week with Hazel Soan - Day 1
• Hazel Soans Workshop Day Two which was about wildlife art
• Hazel's versions of Day Two! plus comments on how Hazel mixes her colours
  

Tips and techniques

This week I focused on different sorts of picture files in

• Image file formats for artist bloggers
• Understanding image file formats

while over on Empty Easel there was a very useful little article about How to Hang Your Artwork Like a Pro! by Lori McNee

Art History

• I love Dutch still Life - and was interested to view this Prado art video of the exhibition of Dutch Painters at the Prado
• For those holidaying Spain this summer you might like to know that Turner and the Masters is at the Prado from June 22 - September 19, 2010
• This from BBC News -Boston art theft remains biggest unsolved mystery
• Forging ahead - the philosophy of authenticity, fakes and forgers
• who knew that de Niro senior was a painter

Art Supplies

Cathy Gatland has a post about Make your own scraperboard

Colour

• Last week James Gurney was Charting Pigments on the colour wheel.
• This is a Guardian photo composition about using colour - and has some interesting compositions - it also has the judges' comments on why something worked or how it could have been improved

Creativity

• Came across this post Are These Two Creativity Myths Holding You Back? last week on Lateral Action - all about the myth of the Creative Genius and the Tortured Artist.
  

Opinion Poll

• Don't forget to respond to the Opinion Poll for March (see side column) - even though it's a very one-sided response.
  

The Web: networking, blogging, webware and websites

Networking

• I can't make up my mind about The Arts Map - that's an awful lot of people in North America and nobody anywhere else - which just seems very odd tp me
  
• Facebook has overtaken google in the uSA in terms of the no of site visits
  

Software

• How I Became (Mostly) Google-free in About a Day on Zen Habits - This one is interesting given the almost insidious way in which Google tries to take over everything. What's also interesting are all the other sites which get a mention which I didn't know even existed! In entirely subscribe to the aims which are

Remember that my main reasons for doing this are that 1) I don’t want all my data in one corporation and 2) I don’t want everything I do to be pervaded by advertising.

• Sitekreator template updates was my post yesterday - after I caught up on a few changes at the site which hosts my websites
  

and finally........

I've just changed my ISP and now get a nice newsletter with lots of links to helpful articles about the internet and matters relevant to broadband users. One of which highlighted this article about passwords. A a data security firm looked at millions of passwords recently exposed in a security breach. The company analysed the data and compiled the results for a 'Consumer Password Worst Practices' report. Of the 32 million passwords involved, the four most common were: 123456, 12345, 123456789 and Password.

So - if your computer were stolen how easy would it to hack into your accounts? How many are you using really common passwords? Plus how often do you change your critical passwords?