13th March 2011 - Who's made a mark this week?

It's difficult to start without reflecting on "what" has made a mark this week - the earthquake in the sea off Japan which generated a 10 metre high tsunami and resulted in Japan moving eight feet.

I was very pleased to hear that Russ Stutler (The Sketching Forum) and his family are shaken but OK in Tokyo 

Meanwhile Google has posted satellite images of the "before" and "after" photos of the areas affected on Picasa.  Click the slideshow and then do what I did and make a donation to one of the appeals. It really is one of those events when pictures are so much more articulate than words.  It is good to know that such technology will assist with the rescue and recovery effort.

Back to the art:

• on The Art of the Landscape  it seemed appropriate to tell The story of The Great Wave Off Kanagawa - which is the very famous woodcut image of a very large wave created by Katsushika Hokusai which was owned by Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh. The post explains why this is NOT a picture of a tsunami.
• on Urban Sketchers, this is an Unfinished sketch: This is what I was drawing when the earthquake hit Japan by

The BIG news of the week - before the earthquake happened - is that three months today I'm going to be drawing and sketching in Provence for three weeks.  I'll even be breaking out the pastels (I'm taking the car!).  I'm having a "paintout in Provence" with friends and you can read some of what's happening here My Postcard from Provence.

I'm certainly looking forward to seeing to ochre quarries again and to finally seeing the lavender at the right time of year!

The ochre quarries at Rousillon

Art Blogs


Drawing and sketching

• On Saturday afternoons between 12 March - 18 April, the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney is hosting a free Great Garden Sketchabout.  Many congratulations to Liz Steel, Wendy Shortland, Annie Mcm and Alissa Duke for helping to organise this and getting featured In today's Sydney Morning Herald... in an article titled Drawing attention to nature.  This publicity helped to make the first Garden Sketchabout in the Botanical Gardens in Sydney a huge success.  
• On the Saturday mornings, artist and teacher Wendy Shortland is also teaching a 6 week class at the Gardens about Sketching and Bookbinding . 
• There's also a Great Garden Sketchabout Competition! Participating sketchers can enter a sketch capturing a favourite sight or moment in the Royal Botanic Garden Sydney for the chance to win the $1000 Derivan Sketchabout Prize and People’s Choice Prize of $500 of Derivan art supplies. The winning entry will be printed on a Garden Shop item. 
• Short-listed and winning competition entries will also be exhibited in The Paginated Garden exhibition at the Gardens between 29 April and 1 May
• More details about future sketchabouts in the Autumn of Arts brochure.  
• Plus The Gardening Sketchabout journal will be featuring more about the sketchabout on Saturday in the coming days.
• All in all - well done to the Gardens and the artists for making this happen.  Now all we need to do is persuade Kew Gardens to do something similar!

Garden Sketchabout #1, Botanic Gardens. Sydney, Australia

Coloured Pencils and Pastels

• A stimulating post by Belinda del Pesco (Belinda del Pesco) about how to resuscitate a painting through the use of dry media - see Watercolor & Pastel: Spin (& Saving a Failed Painting with Other Media)
• Nicole Caulfield ( Nicole Caulfield Fine Art) highlights her coloured pencil drawing which is now being used on Derwent's new tin for Coloursoft Pencils - see Derwent Coloursoft Tin

• Richard McKinley (Pastel Pointers) has three posts about pastel palettes.
• Making Palettes More Palatable concerning the considerations employed when setting up a palette
• Making Pastel Palettes More Palatable | Part 2 aka the curse of the studio palette
• Making Pastel Palettes More Palatable | Part 3 which discusses the importance of the position of the pastel palette

With the multitude of pastel brands offered today, it is easy to accumulate thousands of individual sticks. Keeping them organized and readily available takes considerable effort.

Painters and Painting

• I'm really enjoying Phillip Koch's (Philip Koch Paintings) commentary on his approach to painting - 
• I certainly couldn't resist a post titled An Artist's Guide to Tea and Chocolate
• I've also started to look back through his past blog posts and spotted this one - Ten Secrets for the Painter (Short and To the Point)
• Check out the wonderful watercolour paintings of flowers on Jacqueline Gnott's blog Contemporary Realism .  I'd love to see one "up close".
  
• Carol Marine recently hosted The One Color per Stroke Challenge on the Daily Paintworks site - easier said than done!  The one I liked the best - on the top line - was by Sue Barrasi.

Squint at your subject – paint what you see when you squint. Ignore what you think you see. Step back a few feet after every single stroke – oh yeah, stand to paint! Remember that value is the most important thing to be accurate with. Your color can be completely off, but if the value is off your object(s) won’t look 3-dimensional. 

Art Business and Marketing

• Joanne Mattera reviews the process for what to do if you've been the victim of spam - in Marketing Mondays: You've Been Spammed
• Alyson Stanfield (artbizblog) had a productivity focus last week and tells us about
• 2 of My Favorite Productivity Tools 
• Storing Your Contact Lists 

Art Exhibitions and art fairs

I'm losing count of the number of exhibition previews and, indeed, whole exhibitions I'm missing while stuck at home with the foot that won't work.  It's now been a month with minimal improvement (see Walking is still a problem)

• This week the Watteau: The Drawings exhibition opened at the Royal Academy of Arts.  Here's the review in the Guardian
• The Sketchbook Project Exhibition Tour has now reached Austin Texas
• As somebody who regularly reviews exhibitions I was nodding vigorously as I read Joanne Mattera's Marketing Mondays: blog post about How Not to Get Reviewed.  Her list of tips start...... 

Here’s How Not to Get Reviewed
. Don’t allow photography in the galleries
. Don’t provide installation shots to the reviewer; in fact, don’t photograph the installation at all
. Don’t leave a press packet for the reviewer, as your PR person promised.

Art Education / workshops / Tips and techniques

• Jeanette Jobson has free tutorials on her new website www.jeanettejobson.com
• Michael Chesley Johnson (A Plein Air Painter's Blog) addresses The Color of Shadows

Art Galleries, Museums and Art History

• An interesting article about Caravaggio and his possible ue of a camera obscura - see Caravaggio exhibition gives fresh insight into painter's technique  
• Vermeer: Masterpiece a Month, Dulwich Picture Gallery is featured by the Telegraph.  The painting in question is The Music Lesson - click the video to see a commentary by Desmond Shaw-Taylor the Keeper of the Queen's Pictures
• Good news! Christchurch's art treasures survive quake.  I remember thinking about this when it happened as I'd an email correspondence with some of the people there when I was preparing Landscapes at Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand in May last year.

Art Studios and technology

• On Monday my iMac had its first birthday - see Happy Birthday to my iMac which reprises, for those who may not have read them before, the process which led to the purchase of my lovely iMac and me becoming an official Apple fan and proselytiser!

Art Supplies and computer kit

• Marion Boddy-Evans (About.com Painting) writes about Acrylic Mediums: Spot the Difference - great tip!

Art Videos

• Yesterday I posted a great video on YouTube which gives you 10 minutes of Picasso

Colour

• Many thanks to Lorraine Khachatourians (RedBerry Art)for telling me about Dick Nelson's website.  It is a repository of information he's used in his workshops and classes. 

While no portion of this website may be reproduced for commercial use without permission, we encourage you to print copies of the lessons for your own use, and practice, practice, practice.

• James Gurney highlights on his blog Gurney Journey that the latest issue of International Artist contains an article by him on Atmospheric Perspective 
• Two of my posts this week focused on Colour and generated some expert comment.  I've still got to follow up on these - but if you've got any more comments keep them coming!
• Color Interaction test your ability to recognise value in context
• Why your colours onscreen don't look the same when printed which had led me to review the calibration of my screen
• Both posts also have links to my FREE guides to colour which are available to download (links in the posts)

ebooks

• For those thinking of producing an ebook, here are some very relevant tips from Darren Rowse at Problogger - Chocolate to WordPress: 6 Lessons Learned Blogging for Dollars
  

Websites, webware and blogging

• Check the page rank of your blog here - the higher the number, the better the page rank eg Google = 10!

and finally........

A thought for you.

One of the things I enjoy about finding a good blog or discovering a new one is the blogroll.  I get to find a lot of new art blogs which will be good quality!  I find that one of the bellweather indicators of what a blog is like and whether it is any good is the list of artists in the blogroll.

Inevitably there are always friends - but who else is there?