Which service do you trust when you post or ship artwork? (Results)

The February Making A Mark Poll had the lowest number of respondents for any poll I've run on this blog.   Only 29 people responded.  Which tends to make me think maybe that fewer people are selling their artwork online nowadays compared to in the recent past.

Anyway - back to the question posed which was "Which service do you trust when you post or ship artwork?"

27th February 2011 - Who's made a mark this week?

A review of Travels with a Sketchbook in The Times newspaper

Well this has been quite a week!

Two of my works accepted
into SBA 2011

On Tuesday I heard that I'd had three works accepted into the Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists - see Artwork accepted into "The World of Plants".

Then on Thursday I was asked whether I could contribute some images to an article about Travels with a Sketchbook in The Times newspaper (as in the newspaper from which every other newspaper called The Times took its name!).

Thanks to everybody who commented on The Times would like to feature my blog!  I'd just like you all to know that sometimes it is worthwhile opening that email that looks like it could possibly be spam!

See above for the coverage.  Traffic shot up six fold on Friday and was nearly five times higher than usual yesterday.  As it was predominantly new readers hopefully some will come back to see some more.  :)

P.S.  Watch out for my article on Ten reasons to sketch with coloured pencils on Derwent's LovePencils blog on Tuesday 1st March 2011.

Art Blogs

Ontario Plein Air Art Society's blog took a stab at getting a debate going this week Of Art and “Art”– A discussion of what is and isn’t- but it hasn't got any takers to date.  It's a good post - why not take a look.

Drawing and sketching

• From Saturday 12 March - 18 April, the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney will host a free afternoon Sketchabout. You can meet other sketch artists and chat to our Volunteer Guides about the sights in the Garden.  See Garden Sketchabout for more details

Coloured Pencils and Pastels

• Ranjini Venkatachari (Ranjini Vi's Colored Pencil Diary) has been experimenting and has adapted a printmaking technique to drawing with coloured pencils - see Relief paintings with Linoleum
• Casey Klahn (The Colorist) has a great post and an ace piece of art on Write This Down And Put It In Italics - plus some interesting comments
  

Aperture Bright by Casey Klahn
11" x 14", Charcoal & Pastel

Landscape

Three posts on The Art of the Landscape this week

• the first is an iconic Japanese landscape Winter Landscape: Kinryusan Temple at Asakusa by Ando Hiroshige
• next up is The Great British Landscape - Watercolour competition being run by the Sunday Telegraph.
• today's post is another in the places to paint series Places to paint: Riva degli Schiavoni 

Elsewhere this is what I found this week

• Philip Koch (Philip Koch Paintings) wrote today about Cutting Edge Art v.s. Stodgy Landscapes.  Phillip writes interesting posts which are worth reading - and the art's pretty good too!
  
• three posts by Robin Purcell (Robin Purcell, watercolors in the plein air tradition) with wonderful watercolour paintings of Californian landscapes in Robin's take on American Impressionism.  You can view slideshows of his paintings on Picasa - well worth taking a look
• "Sacred Grove" Accepted into 144th AWS Exhibit, earning my AWS Signature Membership
• California Art Club's 100th Annual Gold Medal Juried Exhibition April 3rd - 24th
• Two new Mount Diablo Paintings
• a useful post About Painting Trees by reference to bonsai shapes and paintings by past masters
  

Painters and Painting

• Martin Gayford writes for Bloomberg about the role of Doug Dawson as regular model for Lucian Freud in Nude With Dog: Freud Model Still Posing, 2 1/2 Years Later.  Apparently Freud - who is now 88 - has not yet put a dent in his reputation for being a slow painter.
• Stapleton Kearns (Stapleton Kearns) highlights "Licking" and divisionist color.  It's the equivalent of what I call optical hatching when sketching.

Learn to put a note down and pull your brush away. The more times your brush hits a note, the weaker it gets. You cannot worry the paint on your canvas into a picture. 

• Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) has reviewed 100 faces (Karin Jurick)

Wildlife Art

• A Red Wolf Demo from start to finish by Armand Cabrera (Art and Influence)

Art Business and Marketing

• This is the list of FREE Art Marketing Action Podcasts from Alyson B. Stanfield and ArtBizCoach.com - on iTunes

Art and the Economy / Art Collectors

• The Wall Street Journal has an excellent article about the nature of what went on between Leo Castelli and the artists he represented and the collectors - in Leo Castelli's Cache Of Art-History Gold.  Castelli's family donated the records of his gallery, which he founded in 1957 and ran until his death in 1999, to the Washington-based Archives of American Art in 2007 - and they are now organised!

Art Competitions and Art Societies

• The Pastel Journal blog highlights the Winners of the 12th Annual Pastel 100 Competition

Future Exhibitions

• The Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists opens at the Mall Galleries this week - I'm hoping I get to walk again this week and can visit this.  Lo and behold - we at last have an art society which has woken up to the fact it's possible to have a website which actually shows us the art being exhibited before the exhibition even opens!  I predict this will result in increased sales.

Sample of works on display on the website of the Royal Society of British Artists

• RHS London Orchid & Botanical Art Show 19th & 20th March at the RHS Horticultural Halls, Greycoat Street in Victoria.  This is where they award RHS Gold medals to botanical art!  Almost always guaranteed to include work by overseas artists as well as UK botanical artists.  There's a rigorous process to get this far and all the work is always good.

Art Exhibitions and art fairs

• Paul Gauguin -  the major exhibition “Gauguin: Maker of Myth,” has moved from Tate Modern to Washington and opens at the National Gallery of Art today.   This is the New York Times review The Self-Invented Artist

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques 

workshops

• The International University of Andalucia in southern Spain is hosting an urban sketching workshop May 3-6 in Málaga.
• The Portuguese capital of Lisbon will be the host city of the 2nd International Urban Sketching Symposium this summer. Mark your calendars for July 21-23, 2011.  This is the Symposium blog which provides more details.  The registration fee is 200 euros.

tips and techniques

• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) reveals What's in my bag on Boing Boing.  Soooooo organised!  I always manage to leave one vital bit of kit behind even though it never gets unpacked!
• Armand Cabrera (Art and Influence) discusses Shapes and the Importance of Edges 
• Katherine Kean (Katherine Kean Fine Art) discusses Webcams: A Tool for Artists?.  I can certainly endorse their use as a tool - particularly from the perspective of checking how the light behaves over the course of a day BEFORE you get there.  Which is the explanation for how I came to be in St mark's Square in Venice at 7am on a Sunday morning in May! :)

Art History

• National Gallery, London:
• An American Experiment: George Bellows and the Ashcan Painters - opens on Thursday 3 March and runs until 30 May 2011, Admission free

With 12 paintings never before seen in the UK, this exhibition introduces visitors to the American artist George Bellows and his artist friends, the Ashcan Painters: William Glackens, George Luks, John Sloan and their teacher Robert Henri. The Ashcan School was formed at the beginning of the 20th century. American painters, principally in New York City and Philadelphia, began to develop a uniquely American view on the beauty, violence and velocity of the modern world.

• Jan Gossaert's Renaissance  opened last week.  This is the review in the The Guardian

• Natural History Museum - new "Images of Nature" Gallery - the current exhibition focuses on artwork from the past of flora and fauna
• The Wall Street Journal tells how a Rothko room was created - An Interior of Spiritual and Artistic Subtlety

Art Studios

• Casey Klahn's Studio Dreams

Art Videos

• Lots of thumbs up for my post about how the Vatican's exceptional interactive film allows you to View Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel artwork online
• Those who watched the video of  Pouring a Painting became as mesmirised as me.  I loved the speculation as to how it works and what the nature of the paint is. 
• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) has been having a video week.  The highlight is Painting Rainbows. You can watch the video on YouTube and find out how it was done by reading Making of Painting Rainbows

Book reviews 

Painted Memories by Alison Horridge

• Alison Horridge (Scribbles Adagio) has produced a book of her childhood memories of St Andrews in Scotland in the 1960s.  Painted Memories is available on Blurb.  The picture on the right is of the page where Alison is told she's moving 'down under' to Australia.
• Neil Hollingsworth (Paintings in Oil) has also created a Blurb book about his own paintings .  Read all about the process in My First Book and Prints for Sale 
• Blurb allows you to preview books - make sure to use the full screen option - it's so much better!

Colour

• Michael Chesley Johnson on the topic of Chalky Color and Secondart colors
• James Gurney has a Book Trailer Contest for Color and Light - similar to the one he ran for Imaginative Realism.  The deadline is 1st May 2011.

Opinion Poll

• This month's opinion poll has now closed and there will be a new one along on Tuesday.
  

Websites, webware and blogging

• Thanks to Alyson Stanfield for highlighting the issue about how Facebooks now interferes with who sees what - and this article on Disruptive Conversations about How Facebook Now Removes Friends and Pages From Your NewsFeed - And How To Fix It - I didn't know and I've now fixed mine! 
• Anybody thinking about starting an art magazine would do well to read Seth Godin's post about Apple's 30% tax on all subscriptions via Apple - 30%, the long tail and a future of serialized content
• Google changed its algorithm last week - but it seems to be targeted at driving out the low value content which has been clogging the internet 
• Google on the topic : Finding more high-quality sites in search
• Plus the New York Times' comment Seeking to Weed Out Drivel, Google Adjusts Search Engine
  
• A quick aside:  How often do I come across artists who have not used their art to create a background on Twitter?  All the time!  Failing to use the background to market your work is missing out on an opportunity to convey the type of artist you are.

and finally........

They do say that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Which would explain why Xavier Oakley (Xavier's Art Blog)- son of Julie Oakley (Julie Oakley Sketchblog) - has now got a Blue Peter badge after being shortlisted - out of 35,000 no less - to the top 100 of his age-group for his entry to the Blue Peter competition to design the logo for the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

More information (plus what you get if you actually win a Blue Peter Badge!) in an Award-winning designer.  I've met Xavier and am happy to predict this young man will go far! Old art bloggers will remember Xavier as one of the stars of One Mile from Home Julie's blogging/walking project in 2006-7.

Pouring a painting

This is mesmirising!

The painting is by Holton Rower.  If you want to see more about they are "hung" in a gallery see this "pour" page on his website

The Director, Cinematographer, and Editor of The "Tall Painting" video is David Kaufman

What I can't work out is whether there is a sequence to the paint colours or whether this is totally random/  It looked a bit random to me.  What do you think?

Also, how do you think they achieve the specific viscosity of the paint so it all flows at an even rate?  Is the paint thinned or not?

Natural History Museum - new "Images of Nature" Gallery

Here are some more images from the Images of Nature exhibition at the Natural History Museum.

It's not a large exhibition.  Rather the importance is in the fact that is a new permanent gallery for works which are images rather than specimens.

Group of Fishes - including the pinecone fish (1829-1831)

The gallery contains a mix of:

• historical images from the permanent collection
• images produced by contemporary artists
• modern images created by scientists, imaging specialists, photographers and micro-CT scanners.

In fact it made me think that those who produce wildlife art might want to get in touch to find out how to get their artwork acquired by the museum.  I guess you could always try a gift!

There are also interactive kiosks which allow you to access the Museum's permanent collection as well as to look in more detail at aspects

While sketching the Dodo, I listened to an explanation about how a modern copy was made of the original painting of the Dodo in the Museum's collection and what were the problems with the original painting - which was not made from life.

Dodo - attributed to Roelandt Savery (1576-1639)
oil on canvas c.1626

The above image is the most famous image of the Dodo and is attributed to the Flemish artits Roelandt Savery.  The first superintendant of the Natural History Museum used this painting and the few fossil bones which had been found to work out the skeleton of the dodo.

The Times would like to feature my blog!

Brunch - St Johns, Spitalfields

11.5" x 17", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils in Large Moleskine Sketchbook

copyright Katherine Tyrrell

The Times is a daily national newspaper published in the United Kingdom since 1785, when it was known as The Daily Universal Register.
Wikipedia - The Times

Today a journalist contacted me to ask whether I could supply images for a feature on my website.  Greatly intrigued I asked for more information.

It was a very nice surprise to find that The Times Newspaper has a feature page called the Daily Universal Register (after the newspaper's original title).

The page covers a miscellany of small interesting items. Each day it includes a focus on a particular website.  Tomorrow it looks as if it might well be the turn of Travels with a Sketchbook!

[UPDATE:  Here's a link to the feature]

I've supplied a couple of images so we'll have to see which one comes up.  One of them (see top) is one I did last year for this post St John Bread and Wine, Spitalfields.

I shall be rushing out in the morning to go and buy a proper copy of The Times to see if my blog is in "proper print"!

Artwork accepted into "The World of Plants"

(Top) Triangulation (framed 14" x 18.5")
(Bottom) Tesselation (framed 13" x 17"
coloured pencils on Arches HP
Exhibition The World of Plants 8-17 April 2011
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I've had three drawings of plants juried into the Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists.

The World of Plants is being held at Westminster Central Hall between 8th April and 17th April 2011.

The title of the exhibition for 2011 is The World of Plants and visitors can observe how the various artists have used their talents to portray not only the many beautiful floral specimens but vegetables too. All work is for sale including prints and cards.

Only the scent will be missing!

Two of the accepted works can be seen on the right.  Guess who forgot to take a scan of the completed third work - Rosette!  (Now you know the reason why I wrote The Exhibition Checklist! Thanks again to Paula for the suggesting the title! - see In need of a title - again!)

Submitting work for this exhibition each year has allowed me to take a journey in terms of what I like to portray.  Increasingly, I'm finding I'm absolutely fascinated by the abstracted patterns to be found in macro views of different plants - hence the titles for the two works on the right - Triangulation and Tesselation.

View Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel artwork online

Most of will probably never see the Sistine Chapel in person. Even if you can get to Rome, you'll find the Chapel is always full of people. Then there's the fact that all the artwork is on the ceiling!

However, you can now view Michelangelo's artwork on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel online.  

Michelangelo's frescos on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, Rome

You can view - virtually - every part of this masterpiece.  If you have a large and/or high definition screen you're going to find the experience particularly stimulating

• Just click and drag your arrow in the direction of the part you wish to see.
• Down in the lower left corner are the controls to zoom in (click the plus + sign) and zoom out (click the - sign). 
• You can also scroll to move in closer

'How to do a Bail-In' connects video art and arts funding

You may have noticed that rather a lot of the most unlikely people have been demonstrating and protesting of late - with some fairly significant results.

Here in the UK, it's been a slightly quieter affair - but points are being made nonetheless.

In the age of video as art installation, I was wondering whether any of you fancy seeing a nice bit of video as art making a point - plus a nice civilised demo against the funding cuts for services likes the arts?

You've heard about why we got into the financial mess - bailing out the banks who had acted irresponsibly towards people who could not afford debt. 

Well below you can find "The Art of How to Do a Bail-in" - which effectively closed branches of Barclays Bank on Saturday.  That's the bank which made £11.6bn of profits but paid only £113m in UK corporation tax in 2009 .  Although it was able to afford to pay £1.5bn in bonuses.

Big Society Bailed-In to branches up and down the country, transforming them into libraries, comedy venues, children’s breakfast clubs, a crèche and even a bus route. 

20th February 2011 - Who's made a mark this week?

I was rather preoccupied last week with an exhibition and an AGM which is why I haven't as yet got to see what I hope will be one of the major exhibitions of the year - the Watercolour Exhibition at Tate Britain.  Not being able to wait, I've already bought my exhibition catalogue so I know what all the works are and who's in and who's not.

Rachel Pedder-Smith
Bean Painting: Specimens from the Leguminosae family 2004
Kew © Rachel Pedder-Smith

One of the images which jumped out at me and I'm really looking forward to seeing is Rachel Pedder Smith's fascinating painting of beans.  Who says botanical art is boring!  Do click the link in her name to see more of her work.

Those coming up to London in April to visit the Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists would do well to pay a visit to Watercolour as it has a strong botanical art section with works by the greats of botanical art (Ehret, Bauer, Sydney Parkinson, Margaret Mee)

Sheila Hancock also started a series on BBC1 tonight - all about watercolour.  This is the iPlayer link to an hour's worth of Sheila Hancock Brushes Up: The Art of Watercolours.  You can also see Sheila looking at Turner's Blue Rigi and his travelling paintbox in a video on the page about the exhibition.

Art Blogs


Botanical Art

• I've had a bit of a focus on Georg Ehret of late.  He's the German botanical artist who did a lot of work at Kew Gardens in the golden age of botanical art.  His main claim to fame is that he worked with Linnaeus and helped to develop the Linnaean style of botanical illustration.
• Georg Ehret's sketchbooks - botanical illustration highlights the botanical sketchbooks dating back to the eighteenth century which can be seen in the the Images of Nature exhibition at the Natural History Museum.
• plus I published a new information site which I've been working on for a little while - see Georg Dionysius Ehret - Resources for Botanical Art Lovers
• Thank you to everbody who suggested a title in response to In need of a title - again! Many thanks to Paula (Mindful Drawing) who came up the title which appealed most to me - Rosette.

Drawing and sketching

• "A Postcard from my Walk" project:
• A Postcard from Casa Colina is the very first postcard I've received for our  - Desiree Habicht in southern California.  There are other great postcards on the blog - we're averaging one every other day!
• You can see the Postcard from my Walk which I posted to Desiree in California at the end of January on A Postcard from My Walk blog.  It’s not what people were expecting!
• I like sketching people working and their places of work - this is Setting up Pure Gold at the Mall Galleries. I was partway through when they started to erect a sign just to the left of where I was sitting........
• Sketching Constable in the V&A is my sketch of one of Constable’s paintings – plus a link to images of one of Constable’s sketchbooks and his plein air oil sketches. 

My sketch of Constable's "Boatbuilding near Flatford Mill"
11" x 16", pen and sepia ink and coloured pencils
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

 Coloured Pencils and Pastels

• CPSA Explore This! and juror's statement - now online is about the Annual Online Exhibition of the Colored Pencil Society of America which seeks to explore the scope of coloured pencil.  I'd like to see more about what people found out in the process of their exploration.  Do tell me if you come across any good blog posts about this which share process and conclusions.
• Richard McKinley (The Pastel Pointers Blog) has a couple of good posts about 
• pastel pencils Making a Point in Pastel
• Pastel Pointers | The Effects of Alcohol - in relation to the impact of mixing alcohol on pastel on different surfaces 
• Good news from Loriann Signori - for those who had been concerned - the sky, bacteria and pastels

Landscapes

• Nice to know who's reading your posts! I did a post about Paintmap on The Art of the Landscape 
• and Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) got interested and has also done a post about Paintmap.  However he's done a much more in-depth review than me! :)

Painters and Painting

• Susan Abbott (A Painter's Year) has been teaching a workshop and painting the Bahamas! 
• Less is more - people looking at art like solving puzzles according to Robert Genn - see The peekaboo principle
• I loved the story behind this post by Belinda del Pesco (it involves a cat!) - Watercolor: Flower Chewer (& close ups of Degas' drawings)
• Deborah Elmquist (Deborah Elmquist, Classical Realist, Fine Art) has been writing about "how to begin a painting" and the different approaches employed by Richard Schmid
• How to begin a painting
• Beginnings-A First Look
• Beginnings-No Toner and Beginnings-No Toner Results highlights how this might be more appropriate for high key paintings
• Beginnings-Richard Schmid includes a summary of "The Line and Mass Block in"
• Beginnings-More Richard Schmid covers the "Transparent (oil) Monochrome Block-In" and "The Transparent Monochrome As a Finished Painting"
• Beginnings-More of Richard Schmid covers more advanced methods - the "full colour block in" and "the selective start"

Printmaking

Two posts about printmaking techniques

• First Sherrie York (Brush and Baren) writes about her technique of Reduction printing: It's about what remains
• Then Shana James (Art - Ideas and Imagination) writes about non-toxic printmaking in Non Toxic Etching – Dragging myself into the 21st Century

Street Art

• Banksy doesn't have a blog so I have to keep up with him via articles in the papers 
• see Banksy goes to Hollywood? Works mark runup to Oscars.  it would appear he's in Hollywood for the Oscars.  Various "banksy" type images have started to appear and are being uploaded to Banksy's own official website.  To my mind, it looks as if some might have extra tweeks by fans.  Lascivious Mickey has since bitten the dust!
• Plus there's also Banksy's take on The Simpsons!  Now that should set the fur flying!
  

Art Business and Marketing

• This post - POLL: Which "Print on Demand" site do you like the best? (Update #1) - is the result of the poll on my information site 
• I love posts by Joanne Mattera (Joanne Mattera Art Blog)- she thinks the same way I do when it comes to business.  Here's a salutary tale from her - A Contract I Didn't Sign which points up the importance of taking a long hard look at the small print and the need to ask questions 
• Art and Greetings Cards has proved to be a very popular post.  
• Not surprising once you realise that it's a business worth $1.5 billion each year.   How many of us have thought we could produce better cards than the ones we see in the shops?
• Alyson Stanfield suggested on Friday that we should create a Greeting Card Service for Your Subscribers
• Empty Easel had two very useful articles last week 
• How to Protect Images of Your Artwork From Being Stolen Online by Dan
• Plus a really useful and well-illustrated article last week all about How to Safely and Securely Package Your Artwork for Shipping.  The article was by Susan Holland  
• Alyson Stanfield (ArtBiz Blog) had 16 Ideas for Repurposing Your Artist Statement

Art Competitions, Art Societies and Juried Exhibitions

• The exhibition checklist was the post I wrote on Tuesday after I'd done my latest submission to a juried open exhibition on Monday. Thanks for all the very positive comments.  I'm going to be producing some pdf files for download in the feature
• "Pure Gold": an exhibition celebrating 50 years of the FBA opened at the Mall Galleries - this is my review post

Sterling Fellows by Jeanette Jobson

charcoal and white pastel

19" x 25"

• Jeanette Jobson (Illustrated Life) has been having a very justifiable rant about criteria used for judging work entered for a juried exhibition - the art of judgement and judgement of art

Art Galleries/Museums & Art Exhibitions

• Watercolour opened at Tate Britain this week.  
• I've already got the catalogue and it demonstrates a huge diversity of work - but I'm getting a bit apprehensive about how it's hung based on Jackie Wellschlager's review in the Financial Times.  
• I must confess I could not understand their choice of works by Turner or their exclusion of some very fine contemporary painters in watercolour.  The inclusion of an acrylic in a show about watercolour is to my mind an abomination!
• This is the Tate Blog post about the exhibition - do read the comments - they make fascinating reading!  One cannot help being left with the impression that Tate Britain might possibly do better leaving contemporary art to Tate Modern!
• The Frick in New York has a new exhibition about Rembrandt.
• “Rembrandt and His School: Masterworks from the Frick and Lugt Collections” is on view through May 15 at the Frick Collection, 1 East 70th Street, Manhattan, (212) 288-0700, frick.org.
• The New York Times has a slideshow of images from the Frick exhibition.  I love the pen and wash sketch of Saskia in her bed and we wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised to see “Self-Portrait – Frowning” in a contemporary exhibition of portraiture.  This is the NYT's review of the exhibition Pride of Place, Better than Ever
• Picasso - Guitars 1912-1914 has opened at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York.  It runs until June 6th 2011.  The NY Yimes also has a slideshow of images from Picasso  exhibition

Art Supplies
Liz Dulley has done a Review: Inktense Blocks on Derwent’s LovePencils blog.  These are a new product and look a bit like hard pastels but are water-soluble.  Liz explains how this format makes them very flexible.

Colour

• A fair few people have been writing about a recent discovery about why the yellow in Van Gogh's paintings is turning brown.  I've always known that the work of any artist who had used Chrome Yellow was very unlikely to have preserved the true colour.  Indeed it has a reputation for turning black never mind brown!  I couldn't quite work out what all the fuss was about from initial reports.  However here's a couple of the articles which clearly explain the problem as it relates to Van Gogh - apparently the problem is the chemical reaction caused by adding white paint:
• The Guardian - Van Gogh doomed his sunflowers by adding white pigments to yellow paint
• Lines and Colors: Van Gogh's Yellows turning brown
• and Analytical Chemistry is the place where you can read the findings - Degradation Process of Lead Chromate in Paintings by Vincent van Gogh Studied by Means of Synchrotron X-ray Spectromicroscopy and Related Methods. 1. Artificially Aged Model Samples

•  Michael Chesley Johnson (Plein Air Painter's Blog) has written about Value and Temperature

The eye sees warm colors as brighter than they are and cool colors, darker than they are.  

Copyright

• Jeff Koons Turns the Table on Copyright Law By Kal Raustiala and Chris Sprigman highlights problems with copyright law and why Jeff Koons gets sued and can sue for breaches of copyright

Opinion Poll

• POLL: Which "Print on Demand" site do you like the best? (Update #1) - has as the title suggests been updated.  There's a very clear preference for one site - born out by the traffic it generates.

Websites, webware and blogging

• This post - Disable Copying Of Images In Your Blog?   on Build a Better Blog - tells you how you can disable copying of your images on a Blogger blog. [ UPDATE:  However (thanks to Nithya) I now know that it renders any blog with lots of links a totally frustrating experience!  I suggest this is only used where you only want people to look and never ever to click eg to that 'for sale' destination! ]

What this technique does is disable right click and "copy" or "save as" when a viewer puts the cursor on your image. When the viewer right clicks, a message pops up instead - I crafted mine to read "No Copying Please!"

• Has the internet lost the plot? Some market commentators are beginning to be concerned that there's a second dot.com bubble in the offing. It arises from notions that Twitter is said to be worth $10 billion (despite the fact it's yet to turn a profit which makes such a valuation wholly notional in my book) and Facebook is worth more than Ford! 
• Feedburner has highlighted that their Recent change to the email service resulting in more deliveries ending up in spam or bulk folders

and finally........

Prince William and Kate Middleton has upped their street cred!  They now both appear as punks in a graffiti mural on an official street art wall in Southwark.

Although I can't help feeling that being an official wall makes it a little less edgy!

CPSA Explore This! and juror's statement - now online

The Colored Pencil Societry of America's Explore This! exhibition is now online and continues until 31st January 2012.

This is the CPSA exhibition in which mixed media is allowed and that includes unusual surfaces and 3D images.  It's for the coloured pencil artists with imagination as well as technique!

The key features of the exhibiton are:

The exhibition checklist

While it's fresh in my mind I'm going to write out my exhibition checklist and my tips to myself.  You can vary it for your own artwork - the principles stay the same.

The following tips come from open exhibition activities past and present.  Some have been learned the hard way!

You may think some of them are itty bitty / insignificant.  Believe me some of those make the difference to getting a picture matted, framed and submitted to the right place on time!

In need of a title - again!

In need of a title
8" x 10", mixed media
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Today is "getting ready" day for my submission to the Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists at Central Hall Westminster tomorrow.

So today's post is very short and tomorrow's post will be the "who's made a mark this week" post.

However I'm in need of a title.  Not doing strictly Linnaeus type botanical drawings I don't title my pieces with strictly correct botanical names.  It always seems to me those belong to strictly accurate botanical drawings of the type I admire but don't do.

Fortunately the SBA allows submission by people like me who produce plant portraiture of a different sort.

I've continued with my theme of cacti and succulents and have this new piece which is a variety of  sempervivum.  However it lacks a title at present and I have a form to complete.   However I'm notoriously bad at titles unless I "get" them streight off.

Any suggestions?

Georg Ehret's sketchbooks - botanical illustration

Aloe Americana (now identified as Bromelia pinguin) by George Dionysius Ehret
Facsimile of pen, pencil and watercolour sketch 1748

These are a couple of images of sketchbooks by Georg Dioysius Ehret (1708 - 1770). who was regarded by many as the best botanical artist of his day - which was during the golden age of botanical art.  He was responsible for recording many of the newly discovered and exotic plants and flowers brought back to the UK from expeditions overseas.

I came across these sketchbooks in the Images of Nature exhibition at the Natural History Museum.   The exhibition opened on the 21st January and continues until 31st July 2012 - so lots of time to get to see it.

"Pure Gold": an exhibition celebrating 50 years of the FBA

Today is the first day of the Pure Gold Exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London. The exhibition is to celebrate the 50th birthday of the Federation of British Artists.

The Federation of British Artists (FBA) is comprised of eight of the UK’s leading art societies, all of whom hold their Annual Exhibition at the Mall Galleries. A unique national resource, the FBA is comprised of over 500 artist members and serves as a national focal point for contemporary figurative art by living artists working in the UK. With the aim of promoting and encouraging contemporary works in different media and subject themes, FBA exhibitions attract both well-established artists as well as emerging talent.

The Exhibition - Pure Gold

The Federation was founded in February 1961.  However many of the societies which comprise the Federation actually date back to the nineteenth century with the earliest dating back to 1823.  These are the Eight Societies that comprise the FBA. All the exhibiting societies are represented in the exhibition.

The exhibition comprises eight works by past artists who have exhibited with the Societies - some of whom are very famous artists - and eight of the contemporary members.

Art and Greetings Cards

Examples of cards from the Tigerprint site
topic: Mother's Day Classic

Did you know that people in the UK spend more on greeting cards each year than they do on tea or coffee?

It's a business worth £1.5 billion - and that's a 'b' not an 'm'.

When I first became interested in the art business, one of the things which intrigued me was how people got their fine art accepted for the more obvious commercial uses - such as fine art prints and posters promoted by the major companies and greetings cards.

This post is about gaining an insight into the Greeting Cards business - including how to enter your art in a competition to design greetings cards for Marks and Spencer - the fourth biggest seller of greetings cards in the UK.  It covers:

• the Greeting Cards Association
• the Spring Fair - at the NEC in Birmingam.  This is the place where new greetings cards get launched
• Tigerprint - competitions to design cards for M&S

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!