19th December 2011: Who's made a mark this week?

Enjoying the Ice (c. 1630-34) by Hendrick Avercamp
Oil on canvas (25 x 37.5 cm)

This week the UK and Europe have again been deluged with snow due to the artic air jet stream which is currently visiting this part of the world.  I'm minded to go and study those artists such as Hendrick Avercamp who created such interesting paintings of The Little Ice Age in the seventeenth century. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam currently has an exhibition of his paintings of Dutch Winter Landscapes in the seventeenth century at Schipol Airport - Winter mood at Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.  This is

• the trailer for the exhibition complete with American accent! 
• Jonathan Jones on the topic of Avercamp's winter paintings - Cold comfort in Hendrick Avercamp's snow paintings

This Amsterdam-born artist was born deaf-mute, and you can picture him standing apart from the crowd, observing it unnoticed. His paintings are in fact suspended between joy and stillness: the fast-moving figures skate and sledge under iron and silver skies. It's like seeing a little world enclosed in a bottle.

So if your flight gets delayed and you get stuck at the airport, maybe ask why your airport doesn't have art exhibitions!

Making A Mark Awards - deadline for nominations 24th December 06:00am GMT

The nominations for the Making A Mark Awards are coming in but I'd love it if more of you nominated the people you think deserve an award.

These are the complete set of links to all the threads about the various awards:

YOU can Nominate the Best Art on a Blog in 2010:

• The Best Portrait/Figures
• The Best Place/Landscape
• The Best Still Life
• NEW!!! The Best Nature

PLUS you can nominate established art blogs for the various awards in the following categories

• Generating Art
• Getting Out of the Studio
• Learning about Art and the Art Business
• The Home Front

I'll be adding my own nominations when I announce the shortlists after the nominations have formally closed on 24th December.

Make somebody feel good before the end of 2010 - and tell them you like their blog by nominating it for an award!

Don't forget!

• you can nominate your own blog for all categories awards and/or artwork for the best artwork category
  
• nominations formally close at midnight GMT on Friday 24th December.  I'll then publish:

• my review of those who have been nominated on the Friday
• the shortlists for the voting on Saturday 25th December.  So after you've eaten your fill and need a break from the family, pull up a seat and start reviewing and voting.

Art Blogs

Coloured Pencils and Pastels

• Many congratulations to Casey Klahn whose blog The Colorist has made it to his 4th blog birthday - see A Letter for You - Four Years of The Colorist
• Congratulations also to a fellow Katherine - Katherine van Schoonhoven (Art and Music) - because this week she posted Kitty Wallis painted my portrait today! Great to see a photo of Kitty with her pastels.  Kitty Wallis also has a blog, called predictably enough Kitty Wallis,  but unfortunately she doesn't post much.
• There a post about painting with pastels in the art education section.

Painters and Painting

• People painting snow include:
• Painting Snow by Armand Cabrera provides advice on how to go about it

Snow is almost impossible to photograph effectively so your only real alternative is to paint it from life. Colors must be organized for maximum effect, compositions carefully thought out and value ranges keyed for each picture.

• Roy Connelly (Roy Connelly - Oil Painter) - see Snow! which includes photo of painter and painting on snowy location. Roy's obviously comes from the royal marines school of plein air painting as this post shows him painting Venice at night and in the rain.
• Derwentwater Magic is by Jane Ward (Jane's Blog) who lives in the Lake District and works as a professional artist and art tutor.  Her other blog is Lakeland Gallery which features finished paintings of the Lakes for sale.
  
• David Pilgrim (David Pilgrim Paintings and Drawings) captured the look of snow when there is no sun in Snow (without sunshine!)

Watercolour 20cm x 50 cm or 8 inches x 20 inches 

by Sarah Wimperis

• Sarah Wimperis (The Red Shoes) has been capturing the snow in Cornwall.
• Snow, snow and more snow! Arnhem, Holland was painted by Rene of Rene Plein Air
• Snow! by Kevin Menck (Kevin Menck Fine Art); he writes about the challenge of the "eye squinting glare".  He's a member of The Cumberland Society of Painters which is a collective of seven Tennessee artists strongly rooted in the methods and materials of traditional painting.
• I liked Colin's Page's (Colin Page Paintings) Snow Painting a lot.  That's a real challenge to paint snow up close like that with a limited palette.  He gives the snow an abstracted fell which underlines that otherworldiness that we sometimes get from the landscape when it snows

• Following on from last week, here's some more about Adebanji Alade's paintings (Adebanji Alade: My Art, My Passion for Sketching) on The Art of the Landscape
• Coastal Painting with Adebanji Alade is about a video he has made.  I saw one of the paintings it features in the ROI exhibition last week
• Places to Paint: Adebanji Alade's Bath Painting Marathon is about his recent plein painting marathon in Bath in which he produced 212 paintings of Bath with dimensions 6" x 8" in 8 weeks.

Adebani Alade presenting "The Circus" 15 x 120 cm oil on board. 
It is a complete panorama of one of Bath's uninique landmarks and archutectural highpoints

• Check out the Painter's Table - which is aggregating links from different sources to create a site about painting.  It looks very promising but I'm guessing it's true value will depend on how it develops.

Miniature Art

• I met Carmela and Roger Arturi Phillips who are miniature art collectors and authors of a book about their very interesting collection at the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters.  They've got a blog which I'm going to do a blog post about - but in the meantime here's their account of what it's like to be invited to Buckingham Palace to mark the publication of the catalogue of H.M. The Queen’s Victorian Miniatures - see An Invitation to Buckingham Palace. 

Art Business and Marketing

• See How to price art for news about my new "resources for artists" called How to Price Your Art

Art and the Economy / Art Collectors

• California Hall of Fame names Wayne Thiebaud
• The Telegraph has identified what it considers to be the:
• Top 10 art shows of 2010
• Top 10 art sales of 2010

Art Competitions and Art Societies

Calls for Entries

• I've updated Call for Entries - CPSA 2011 to reflect the following - links to:
• the CPSA End of Year 2010 Update on Colored Pencil Society of America News (I've reported that the link in the post to the prospectus is currently returning a 404 error)
• the 19th Annual Exhibition Prospectus which is now available from the CPSA website.  The deadline for entries is 31st March 2010]
• This is the link to the Call for Entries for the Royal Society of British Artists
• Don't forget that Wednesday 12 January 2011 is the deadline for the Entry forms for the Royal Watercolour Society Open Competition to be returned to Bankside Gallery

Prizes

• I don't formally cover photography - but I always make an exception for Landscape Photographer of the Year 2010 because of the great pics!  Click the lick to read more about the prize and the other award winners.

Landscape Photographer of the Year 2010: Antony Spencer - Winter mist at Corfe Castle, Dorset, England copyright Antony Spencer - all rights reserved / used with permission

• The winner of the Bath Prize 2010 was Adrian Sykes for his impressive pencil drawing Buildings of Bath. The winner of the Plein Air Prize 2010 is David Pilgrim (David Pilgrim Paintings and Drawings)

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

art workshops and classes

• This is a link to the workshops and drawing classes run by the New English art Club
• if you are an art blogger and are running a workshop or art class in 2011 drop me a line with the details and a link to the information on your art blog and if suitable I'll include it in "who's made a mark this week?"

tips and techniques

• Roy Connelly has some tips and guidelines about The Art of French Easel Maintenance
• Terry Miura (Studio Notes) has a post about handling the Ambient Light in a landscape
• Richard McKinley (Pastel Pointers) has some tips about:
• The Art of Practice | The Importance of Doing Our Exercises He concludes

There is one aspect that all successful painters share: a dedication to frequent artistic exercise. Exercise may be no fun, but the long-term benefits are well worth the effort. With a little discipline and hard work your painting muscles will bulge with confidence.

• Loosening Up | Pastel Painting With Confidence
• Problogger is actually talking to techies but the wisdom applies to anybody trying to provide a tutorial - see 5 Tips for Creating a Truly Valuable Tutorial

Art History 

Big Think tackles a knotty subject and a question which should/could be asked more often A Matter of Interpretation: Is All Art History Western Art History?

Books and Book reviews

• Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) has written an excellent review Confident Color of Nita Leland's book about colour (published in 2008)
• Digital Publishing:  Seth Godin, well known marketing author, inspirational speaker and general all around business guru launched The Domino Project this week to reinvent publishing, partnering with Amazon. Read the FAQs and subscribe for updates here.  This is Seth Godin on why he's launching a new publishing venture called The Domino Project.

Book publishing is changing. It’s changing faster than it has in a hundred years. I’ve been persistent enough to be part of that change, provoking and poking and wondering about what comes next.

Websites, webware and blogging

• Portland Plein Air & Studio Painters have developed a new feature on Blogger blogs - the use of a Google Calemndat imported into the footer of their blog to record their outings. That's the sort of thing which might be useful to those of you using blogs to market workshops.
• In Email List Building for Bloggers I've recommended that you should read the series of posts being written by written by Phil Hollows, the Founder and CEO of FeedBlitz .
• I came across an art blog this week which using a coloured font on a dark background for titles and links - and I have to tell you I couldn't make out a word!  It's absolutely essential that you have good contrast between background and foreground.  Two colours of the same value just merge.
• 9 Tips to Managing and Growing a Successful Facebook Community. Essential reading from someone who's grown her community organically to 12,000 friends on Facebook and over 20,000 Twitter followers.

Forbes said: “Facebook, the largest social networking tool in the world, is dominated by women,” with 57% of members female and women being more active (aka: social) on Facebook.

 and finally........
I celebrated five years of blogging on Monday last week.  More about this tomorrow (which is of course today as yet again I'm late publishing this post!)