5th September 2010: Who's made a mark this week?

Drawing London Group on the Grand Staircase, St Pancras Hotel

On Friday I spent a day with the Drawing London Group drawing the Grand Staircase at the St. Pancras Hotel, currently under development as a luxury hotel and apartments.  It's a Grade 1 listed building which means it is of great interest to English Heritage and the development is bringing the beautiful interiors back to Gilbert Scott’s original standards.  Some of the heritage features internally make a very attractive - if challenging - subject for sketching and painting.  The perspective just hits you head on!  Below right you can see my sketch of the staircase.

Above is the photo of the Drawing London Group on the Grand Staircase - with many thanks to Marion Wilcocks (second from left) who organised our trip. I've got my special hi-vis t Shirt on!

Thanks also to Manhattan Loft Corporation for allowing access and Roydon Stock the Building Manager and Historian for an extremely informative introduction to the building. This is their website bout the building.

If you like "art in situ", you can see photos of the amazing architecture on the Grand Staircase and structures and decoration in some other parts of the hotel in my Flickr site Drawing London Group visits St Pancras
 
We also learned the Royal Academy is going to be showing art at the hotel when it opens.

Art Blogs

Part of the Grand Staircase
of the St Pancras Hotel - under refurbishment
11.5" x 8" coloured pencils and pen and ink
in Large Moleskine Sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Drawing and sketching

• This is my sketch of the Grand Staircase in the St Pancras building.  Everything is created from materials from the Midlands (post on Travels with a Sketchbook to follow)
• Do take a look at the sketch which goes with Moore's law on Mattias Ink 
• Pete Scully attracted my attention with a novel title for his sketches on Urban Sketches where streams of whiskey are flowing
• Joan Tavalott (Watercolours by Joan) has been sketching again this time in Venice - as always she's done a terrific number of small watercolour paintings of the buildings, canals and the Lido
• Another sketch of mine - which I thought was a bit daring! see Tate People - Get a room!

Coloured Pencils and Pastels

• I've had a number of positive responses to my post this week about  A Lightfastness Standard for Pastels: current status.  Hopefully more pastel societies will become active supportes and promoters of the new lightfastness standard for pastels which is being developed at the moment.
• IPAP's Plein Air Painter this month features pastel artist and Plein Air Painter - IPAP member Marsha Hamby Savage.  Check The Feature Page HERE This is Marsha Hanby Savage's website.
• These are a series of posts by Ester Roi about the recent CPSA exhibition, the workshop she did and the silent auction and awards banquet.  You can see a number of the works, some of them with their artists and other CPSA members.
• The Los Gatos Museum Exhibition
• My Workshop at the CPSA Convention
• Silent Auction and Awards Banquet
• Plus some riveting tips on her studio organisation!  My Art Studio: Part 2

Landscape

• The Virtual Paintout is this month in Manhattan Island, New York - September 2010
• This is The International Plein Air Painters  blog .  IPAP celebrates its 10th anniversary next year and jas a new logo to highlight this fact.  The blog highlights the fact that next weekend is the Plein Air Painter- 8th WORLDWIDE PAINT OUT

Painters and Painting

I'm focusing on artists who are new to me this week.

• Matthew D Innis's blog Underpaintings has been around for some time.  I love blogs which focus on art from the past and talk about it.
• I loved Observations of Gammell: Jessica by Dennis Miller Bunker. 
• The post which posed the question Can You Spot the Impressionist? was also a neat way of illustrating how impressionism isn't always what we think it is.
• Jenny Grevette came to talk to an art group which my friend Vivien belongs to.  This is a film of her talking about her work and the textures she works into her paintings.  It's surprising we don't see more of these on artist's websites.
• Two new blogs for me - both of which I found through comments on my blog!
• Mary Byrom (Mary Byrom) is a new blog to me but I like her style of blogging - lots of photos to accompany the story.  See Painting Large in the Marsh where her paintings are stopping passers by and Big Paintings Need a Big Easel 
• Bridget Hunter's blog Bridget Hunter's Paintings contains some attractive paintings
• Did you know Prince Philip was a painter?  No - I didn't either - but now we have the evidence in this painting of the Queen at breakfast in Windsor Castle. 

Art Competitions and Art Societies

• On Wednesday I went to see the Threadneedle Prize exhibition which opened on Thursday.  I was going to do a video but didn't as they were still setting up so I'll maybe try again before it closes.  See the Threadneedle Prize 2010 Exhibition opens today to find out more about it.  I'll be posting my shortlist next week.
• I didn't submit work to the Society of Feline Artists this year and had a diary clash re the Private View.  However you can see work from the exhibition on the SOFA blog - see see the slide show or the photo album in The Society Of Feline Artists London Exhibition Private View 2010 (which doesn't seem to have a unique URL)

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

• Ester Roi also provides tips on how to do glassless framing for coloured pencil artwork

Art Business and Marketing

• New Deal of the Mind is a coalition (the current 'in' word in the UK) and a new organisation (set up in 2009) which focuses on is a coalition of artists, entrepreneurs and opinion formers who recognise the economic, social and cultural value of Britain’s creative talent. I'm probably going to do a more in-depth post about them when I've found out a bit more - but thought you'd like the link now!  You can follow them on twitter http://twitter.com/ndotm

New Deal of the Mind wants to want to boost the UK economy by developing jobs in the creative industries. NDotM has the support of leading figures in the arts, entrepreneurs, politicians from across the political spectrum and policy makers. All of us recognise the urgency of protecting, nurturing and investing in the arts if we are to prevent a generation of creative talent being lost to the recession.

• The New Deal of the Mind blog (which has a very unclear URL which needs sorting) focused recently on whether the proposed graduate tax will highlight some awkward truths for arts graduates - see Guest Blog: Graduate tax: creatives will have to be more professional 
• A number of useful posts from the Huffington Post
• First a MUST READ post this week which will make you think twice about artist statements Are "Artists' Statements" Really Necessary? by Daniel Grant.  This one has been bookmarked on
• Can E-Mails Replace Printed Exhibit Announcements?
• Should Artists Publish Their Own Catalogues?
• Protecting Your Art with Paper: Invoices and Art Consignment Forms (VIDEO) by Jonathan Melber Co-author of ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (And Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career
• How to pack, post and ship art - Resources for Artists seems to have reached the #1 spot in google!  Do please review and see if there is anything for you to learn or whether you have any tips you'd like to share with other artists.  I've also noticed that I never did do that article about shipping internationally so that will be coming soon.

Opinion Poll

• Yesterday I posted the results of the August making A Mark Poll What's the MAIN way you have sold art in the last 12 months? (RESULTS) which has seen a significant change in which distribution channels for sales produce the most income for individual artists.  It looks like the galleries are fighting back.  or maybe just that online sales and commissions have dwindled a lot.  I'd be interested to know your views so please read and leave a comment about how it's been for you.
• Tomorrow I'm posting the Makingamark's Top 10 Fine Art Books for August, then...
• on Tuesday I'll start the Making A Mark Poll for September.

I'm always interested to hear what people think might be suitable topics for polls.

Websites, webware and blogging

I'm trying out tweetie for mac - having become rather disenamoured with Seesmic Desktop.  Let's put it this way - if it's good enough for Stephen Fry......  This is the story behind it Bigbird Redux

and finally......

I went next door to visit the Magnificent Maps exhibition at the British Library after our visit to St Pancras.  Although always very interested in maps (I'm a geography graduate) it had never struck me before just how much art goes into map-making.

It seems to me that we could do with a bit more art back in mao-making and I'm going to be pondering on that one as it's triggered a number of thoughts.

The first of which is that I am now a fan of Grayson Perry who produced a modern version of the Mappa Mundi which is superb - and which will be getting a blog post all to itself!