6th February 2011 - Who's made a mark this week?

100 Faces BUST-ED by Karin Jurick

Congratulations to Karin Jurick (A Painting Today) who has completed her 100 Faces project - see 100 Faces #100.  She has also created a new book (see 100 Faces Video, Book & Mentionables for more details - and the cover above) and uploaded a new movie about the project to YouTube.

Art Blogs

I've just noticed that my widget in the side bar says that the Blogrank Index for Art Blogs has now got Making A Mark ranked as the 17th most popular art blog in the world!  Whoohoo!  Charley Parker's Lines and Colors is in 8th place.

Botanical art

• Linda Warner Constantino (Wet Watercolours) is a College Professor of Illustration - and a student on the Society of Botanical Artist's Distance Learning Diploma Course.

I am busy painting for a Distance Learning Class in Botanical Painting through the Society of Botanical Arts in England. It is the most challenging thing I have ever done.

Drawing and sketching

• The illustrated journal as lifeline by Laura Frankstone (Laurelines) reflects on the practice of keeping a jounral about art and life in one place
• Liz Steel (Liz and Borrowmini) had A Big Sketching Day in Sydney last Saturday
• Adebanji Alade (Adbanji Alade, My art, my passion for sketching) shows us his toolkit for sketching on the bus and train
• The postcards in A Postcard from My Walk are now arriving at their destinations and are being posted to the blog by their recipients - today's is Hoar Frost - Misty Morning greetings by Vivien Blackburn.

Hoar Frost - Misty morning by Vivien Blackburn acrylic on paper

• Jeanette Jobson (Illustrated Life) has created a page on her blog for daily drawings.  Neat idea!
• I was recently Sketching the Dodo at the Natural History Museum.  Have you ever tried drawing stuffed animals?  The nicest comment I'vce had about my dodo is that he looks alive! ;)

The Dodo at the Natural History Museum
pen and sepia ink in Moleskine Sketchbook, 8" x 10"
all images copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Coloured Pencils and Pastels

• Barbara Newton (Barbara Newton Art Journal ) tried a new approach which you can see in my bright idea and 35 thumbnails.  Check out the pastel paintings which follow to see the impact.

Illustration

• Squint News is the blog for the students, alumni, faculity and friends of the MFA in Illlustration at Hartford Art School 
• Creative Quarterly is the blog by Creative Quarterly: the Journal of Art and Design

Landscape

• A couple of posts from The Art of the Landscape
• Sherrie York draws and prints the landscape underfoot highlights a video of Sherrie York (Brush and Baren) talking about her stunning relief prints of the landscape.  Thanks to Alyson Stanfield for drawing my attention to this video and Sherrie's current exhibition.
• The Faraway Nearby: Georgia O'Keeffe and the New Mexico Landscape is the title of a a video piece created by composer and multimedia artist Nell Shaw Cohen. It features a chamber music score and footage of the New Mexico landscapes where painter O'Keeffe found inspiration.  I found it mesmerising and can now well understand why Georgia O'Keeffe painted this landscape.
• The Virtual Paintout is in Romania this month

Painters and Painting

• memory and Richard McKinley - Loriann Signori (Loriann Signori's Painting-A-Day) on the topic of memory painting.  For the reason why Loriann is doing memory painting rather than painting plein air see bravery and memory
• Getting into art festivals is a big deal.  This post Sedona Plein Air Festival - And the Grand Canyon Painting is about two festivals and Michael Chesley Johnson (Plein Air Painter's Blog).  Note especially that well known winter phenomenon - the artist painting in the studio complete with woolly hat.
• Carol Marine got 85 entries to her new challenge project last week's Daily Paintworks Challenge.  So far she's got 23 entries for this week's challenge - The Ten Minute Challenge.  I'll be writing more about this next week.

Each challenge consists of an image - either a photo or a painting - and a description or instructions. In most cases, participating is as simple as submitting your version of the image.

Anyone can participate by submitting an entry to anychallenge - there are no deadlines! You can even submit more than once to a challenge. Any 2D media is welcome and don't be afraid to interpret.

Art Business and Marketing

• Sue Favinger Smith (Ancient Artist) 
• sets out the problem in Create Portfolio Images Like a Pro - and 
• provides the solution in  How to Create Portfolio Images Using Photoshop.  
• Alyson Stanfield (artbizblog) says Embrace a Space and Get Your Art Out There.  This is the post which highlighted Sherrie York (see landscape above).
• Gayle Mason (Fur in the Paint) is trying out a new idea - a "print of the week" which is offered for a discounted price for a defined period. She explains it further in this post Print of the Week - Long Haired White Cat

Art and the Economy / Art Collectors

• Do you visit the preview exhibitions for major art auctions by the big auction houses?  I’ve been recommended to go and see the preview for the upcoming sale of Impressionist and Surrealist works at Christies. These are links to slideshows (including audio podcasts) and e-catalogues 
• the slideshow and e-catalogue for the Impressionist/Modern Evening Sale
• the slideshow and e-catalogue for the Impressionist/Modern day sale
• the slideshow and e-catalogue for Impressionist/Modern Works on paper
• the slideshow and e-catalogue for the Art of the Surreal Evening Sale

Art Competitions and Art Societies

• Love flowers and botanical art?  I posted a reminder about the February 14th deadline and Entry conditions for Society of Botanical Artists' Exhibition 2011

Art Exhibitions and art fairs

• The Shirley Sherwood Gallery's presence on the Kew Gardens website has improved no end.  Thanks to Jessica Rosemary Shepherd (Inky Leaves) for letting me know about the improvements.  Jess helps manage the art exhibitions at Kew.  New exhibitions this month will include ones where, for the first time, botanical artwork will be available for sale!
• It also has some new exhibitions which opened yesterday.  This is the page for the new exhibitions which in summary are:
• The Secret Garden - an exhibition by Leicestershire Society of Botanical Illustrators
• The Botanical Brush - This exhibition features the work of nine artists who have botanical paintings held in the archive of Hampton Court Palace Florilegium.
• From Eye to Hand - The paintings in this exhibition include a timeline of works that have been selected from the Kew Art Collection which contains over 200,000 items. 
• Hidden Treasure - Dr. Sherwood will also be exhibiting works from her contemporary collection of botanical art illustrating what occurs under the soil.
• The Island of Sark is to become the focus for a new project by the The Artists for Nature Foundation.  In May it will play host to a group of wildlife artists and Art for Sark from 4th to 16th May 2011.  This is the list of artists confirmed to date.  I wonder if they will do a blog of the project?

The aim is to promote the unique natural habitat of Sark through the work of renowned international wildlife artists from a range of disciplines.

New Exhibitions

• Pure Gold - 50 years of the Federation of British artists at the Mall Galleries.  I'm really looking forward to the preview on Tuesday.  The exhibition runs from 9th - 19th February.  It will include previously unseen works by artists such as John Singer Sargent, Walter Sickert and William Orpen, on loan from major public and private collections, including the Tate.
• The Guardian has a review of the upcoming exhibition of watercolours at the Tate Watercolour at Tate Britain - Review

Historically, watercolour has been perceived as the medium of the dabbling amateur. Children, ladies and gentlemen of leisure have all been drawn to its cheapness, speed and apparent ease. Its subjects, too, have tended to be minor in size and scope: a domestic scene here, a botanical drawing there, stretching at most to a charming landscape. When professional artists use watercolour, so the grand narrative goes, it is to make preliminary sketches, try-outs, what-ifs that are supplementary to the real business of art, which involves painting in oils.

Tate Britain's forthcoming exhibition, entitled simply Watercolour, aims to unsettle these easy assumptions.

Art Galleries and Museums

• The event of the week was the unheralded launch of Google's Art Project - streetview for galleries.  I've so far worked out that it's not possible to get the full functionality on my iPad, but seem to have worked out a bit more than some of the journalists writing about it!  How are you finding it?  The general consensus seems to be that it's very welcome but could suck up time in a major way.  The Work of Art in the Age of Google (New York Times) provides an interesting comment on the copyright issues for museums of contemporary art.

Google Art Project:  The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli (extract showing the hair)

• Yorkshire is becoming a national centre for sculpture!  Read more about a new museum in Hepworth Wakefield boosts Yorkshire's sculpture collection

The Hepworth Wakefield will open to the public on 21 May and become the largest purpose-built gallery to open in the UK since Tate St Ives nearly 20 years ago. 

Together with the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds, the new gallery helps make Yorkshire a world centre for sculpture.

• The work of Normal Rockwell can now be accessed via the Norman Rockwell Museum Digital Collections.
• Yale Centre of British Art owns a collection of John Constable's cloud paintings - which are the topic of an article Head in the Clouds on Slate

Art History

• A Lowry football match painting is expected to sell at auction for between £3.5m and £4.5m in May
• I'm at one with Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) - he's done a great post Trove of Sorolla Images to demonstrate his reasoning behind the following

Similar to my opinion of John Singer Sargent, I think that the place of Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida in the canon of great painters in art history is vastly understated.

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

• Martin Stankewitz (Draw a Tree) provides a mini tutorial for a gouache sketch - while painting ice on a pond
• To be or not to be frugal is an interesting perspective and tip from Katherine van Schoonhoven (Art and Music)

Art Studios  

• Here's an old post (but a good one) providing a tour of Barbara Newton's Studio - studio tour.  I want those Flat files for paper storage with framed painting storage below!

Art Supplies

• I've been asking& Which dark soft pastels are the best?
• Mitchell Albala recommends Gamvar: An Easy-to-Use Varnishing Solution for Oil Painters
• OK - who wants a tabletop easel as used by Karin Jurick?  Lots of you obviously as it's currently sold out!

Book reviews

• On Tuesday I posted Making A Mark's Top 10 Fine Art Books in January 2011.  
• I've also updated  Makingamark's Top 10 Fine Art Books and 
• created a new site for all the new books The Best NEW Art Books
• For those wanting to learn how to draw trees, another book review How to draw trees by Frank M.Rines a book review from Martin Stankewitz's blog Draw a Tree.  

Colour

• I'm kicking myself for not having done this blog post already!  There again I have but back when I was doing my Color Project.  Charley Parker reminds us of the fantastic Wikipedia Color Resources which exist
• For those not around when I was "doing colour" here are thelinks to my two main resource websites created as a result of the colour project which contain references to all the resources I found at the time (and since)
• Colour - Resources for Artists
• Colour science, systems and models - Resources for Artists

Creativity

• Excellent and recommended post by James Gurney (Gurney Journey) on Activating Your Imagination.  This includes a number of practical suggestions for enhancing your ability to be creative and to draw without a photo reference.

Opinion Polls

• Next the February Making A Mark POLL: Which service do you trust when you post or ship artwork?  Lots of excellent tips and comments coming in - keep them coming as I'll summarise them when I post the results.  I'll also be trying to find the answers to queries which are being posed.
• There's also a new opinion poll to find out which brand of dark pastels people prefer. Please vote in the NEW OPINION POLL Which is your favourite brand of dark soft pastels? in  Pastels - Resources for Artists

Websites, webware and blogging

• I've introduced a "jump break" into all my recent blog posts - except for "who's made a mark this week.  This means you now get a prompt to "read more" and means you scan more quickly - but won't see all the content on offer.  It's an experiment - tell me what you think. 

and finally........

If you're wondering why this is a tad late, it's because it was inadvertently wiped when two thirds finished!  I'm afraid I have to take an expletive break when that happens!

Have I told you how I HATE Google's new block text command which goes far further than you intend far too easily?  The automatic save always instantly kicks in just after you've deleted too much text by accident so it's impossible to retrieve!