29th May 2011 - Who's made a mark this week?

"Self-Portrait - taking in the sun"
by Ohla Pryymak
selected for BP Portrait 2011
© Olha Pryymak

Many congratulations to Olha Pryymak (Olha Pryymak) who has had her self-portrait selected for the 2011 Exhibition of the BP Portrait Award - see BP Portrait award competition 2011 – shortlisted! on her blog.

That means that Olha is among the 55
selected artists to show out of 2,732 record applicants this year.  That's 0.02% of the entry.

This painting has also been chosen as one of the ones used to advertise the exhibition - and is currently being displayed on the Visit page of the NPG website.  It's also the feature portrait on the front cover of the NPG booklet about exhibitions and events at the National Portrait Gallery over the summer.

I was particularly pleased to hear this news as I've been encouraging Olha in her endeavours for some time.

Last Autumn we translated that into a formal mentoring relationship.  I took a look at her marketing activities and provided her with a report providing specific advice and action points relating to what I thought she needed to do next. Looks like it's working! :)

Maybe I need to think about doing a bit more of this?

That'll be something to mull over while I'm away - and you need to read the message at the end to find out why this is the last "who's made a mark this week" for a few weeks

In the meantime I'm still waiting to hear about the rest of the selected artists and I'm hoping to post the list before I leave for France next week.

Art Blogs

Coloured Pencils and Pastels

• Happy 30th Birthday to The Pencil Museum in Keswick which has been celebrating its 30th birthday this weekend.  Tweets indicate everybody has had a great time!  You can follow the Pencil Museum on Twitter  @pencilmuseum
• Casey Klahn (Pastel) writes about My Palette.  Some really good suggestions for different ways to collect pastel.  (It's a requirement - if you want to be a pastel artist - you have to have this deep-seated urge to collect colour aka pastels!)
• Contemporary Abstract Pastels
• I am so jealous of Vivien Blackburn.  She opened her door to the postman this week to find she had won a complete set of Lyra Rembrandt coloured Pencils! Read Second Prize - Lyra Polycolor set to find out why.
• Which is the most popular brand of Color Pencils?  This is your chance to have your say.  I created the site on Wizzley which is a new information webware site.  

Landscape

• Martin Stankewitz (How to draw a tree) 
• has published The new edition of “How to draw a tree”  I've got the first edition and it comes highly recommended by me.  
• You can also see in this post how he tackles Apple tree foliage – outdoor sketch in gouache colors
• Thanks to Deborah Paris for altering me to the post by Christopher Volpe (Christopher Volpe) on Corot's palette revealed! & notes on the ethereal colors of spring
• I wrote about A view of Box Hill, Surrey and English landscape painting on my landscape blog - and then posted the sketch I did of it at Tate Britain on my sketchbook blog Sketching the First Landscape

After George Lambert - A View of Box Hill, Surrey (1733) by George Lambert (1700 – 30 Nov. 1765)
pencil and coloured pencils in large Folio Sketchbook

 Painting

• Ruo Li is a Chinese artist whose painting “California Autumn” won the Gold Medal Award for Master Signature Members at the 19th National Juried Exhibition of Oil Painters of America.  Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) has reviewed his work - in Ruo Li.  I took at his website and it seems to me he's a master of perspective and tone.  Some paintings very much reminded me of Singer Sargent.
• Nancy Reyner (Nancy Reyner) author of Acrylic Innovation Styles & Techniques Featuring 64 Visionary Artists wrote a post last year about Transparent Layers - Glazing vs. Washes
• Keith Bond (Keith Bond Fine Art) - also writing last year - comments on the process he adopts for Creating a Studio Work From a Plein Air Study 

Plein Air Painting

I've had a major focus on plein air painting this week.  Naturally that has resulted in a few link being dropped into this post.

• Adebanji Alade has written about the Highlights of Peter Browns Solo Exhibition, "Bath Between the Snows"
• David Pilgrim (David Pilgrim Paintings and Drawings) is a p/t landscape artist based in Stony Stratford, Buckinghamshire and Valerie Pirlot (Valerie Pirlot - oil painter), a Belgian artist who lives in Bath and works in oil and pastels, have recently been part of a painting party which visited Cornwall.  Here are their respective posts: 
• Plein air adventures from Cornwall
• Cornwall Trip Part 1
• After lots of questions from me re oil paints, Vivien Blackburn (Painting Prints and Stuff) wrote yesterday about what materials and kit she packs for a plein air painting trip .  She also has a few tips - particularly for those of like Vivien and me who mobility difficulties.  Which is why I said she should share her excellent advice



Sketching Artists - P in Spain by Katherine Tyrrell

• Plein Air Painter - the relaunched plein air painting magazine - has a number of articles about intrepid plein air painters
• Artist profile: Joyce Lee which includes commentary on a plein air expendition to Yellowstone in winter
• Going to Extremes is an invitation for artists to send in photos of themselves in extreme plein air painting situations
• Paint the painter is an invitation from Steve Doherty to send in images of paintings done of plein air painters.  I've done a few drawings in my time (see ) but never a painting.  Maybe now is the time to start?

Next time you are participating in a plein air event, include one of the other plein air artists in your painting and send a photograph of the completed work to PleinAir™ Magazine.

• Charley Parker highlighted the blog, titled Judsons Plein Air Journal, inclides short profiles of the featured artists, along with sample images and links to their websites.

Printmaking

• Another new print blog this month - and thanks to Belinda who highlighted it to me.  This one is called Adventures in the Print Trade.  I was sold as soon as a I spotted the post Eric Ravilious: High Street variants

Art Business & Marketing

• Stapleton Kearns (Stapleton Kearns The demand surge and buy switch phenomenon - this is a Highly RECOMMENDED post.  As I commented, it just goes to show there's more to being an artist than painting and there's more to getting people to buy than painting a good painting. 

Art Competitions

• This week I posted the
• 2011 International Print Awards - Entries Deadline 6th June
• ING Discerning Eye 2011 - Call for Entries
• The Plein Air Journal also announced an art competition

Art Education

Tips & Techniques

• A post by Robert Dance about Painting Atmospheric Effects
• Deborah Secor wrote up pointers from the Seascapes class results

Workshops

• It's Workshop Week at the Mall Galleries.  Some have already sold out but move fast and you can still find a place.
  
• Sally Strand, whose workshops I highly recommend has a series coming later this year 
• August 18-21 Richeson School of Art  Kimberly, WI 
• October 17-21 Southern Vermont Arts Center Manchester, VT
• November 9-12  Pastel Society of Southern CA Redondo Beach, CA

Art Exhibitions

Major galleries

• MOCA's 'Art in the Streets' gets the big picture wrong The stylish exhibition mainly showcases the commercial legacy of graffiti, ignoring much of the form's cultural influence and L.A.'s role.
• Rooms with a View: The Open Window in the 19th Century, on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York until July 4, 2011.
• an enthusiastic review of it on his site

Art Societies

• Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers Annual Exhibition 29 April 2011 - 4 June 2011
• Master Circle Exhibition June 1-5, 2011Hispanic Arts Gallery Albuquerque, NM
  

Art Bloggers

• Johnny Morant (Johnny Morant) has consistently exhibited with the New English Art Club and the Royal Institute of Oil Painters.  His second solo exhibition with the Tryon Gallery in St James, London can be seen between 7-17th of June.  He also ahas an interview in Art Of England Magazine.  Johnny is a London based figurative artist concerned with how light and space can be represented in oil.  You can see his work on his website. 

Pizza Chef by Johnny Morant - Tryon Gallery ( 7-17th of June)

Art History

• Many of you like me were fascinated by the Drawings Of Georgia in 1736

Art Supplies

• Stapleton Kearns has a couple of posts about supports for oil painting, what not to do and what he recommends
• an untitled post with a bunch of bullet points and specific recommendations
• priming and sizingwhich talks about priming canvas and boards
• I came across some posts from the past by Nancy Reyner writing about 
• Making Your Artwork Last  and  
• Archival Practices: Keeping Art Looking Great Longer
• Continuing my theme of research around what to take with me to Provence I've written three  posts
• Are Alkyd paints like real oil paints?
• Places to buy Pochade Boxes in the UK  
• My Art Materials - or why it's a good idea to take a car!
• I came across the fact that Gamblin Colors have a table which locates colours in colour space when checking out their alkyd colours
• Just spotted the Paint on AlterEasel - as described by Karin Jurick in Painting New York, NY & Easels.  Looks interesting 
• Patchings Art, Craft and Design Festival is on between 9th and 12th Junr (daily 10am to 5pm; Sunday until 4.30pm).  This has lots of art suppliers there, although I didn't notice a particularly marked discount on prices when I was there last year.
  

Art Books

• I'm going to be doing a post about oil painting books tomorrow.  Get your recommendations lined up please!

Art Videos

I posted a couple of videos from 2008 to The Art of the Landscape blog this morning - see Wolf Kahn - on painting and being a landscape painter

Webware, websites and blogging

• I don't study Google Analytics much, but there are some recent posts about the new beta version of Google Analytics.  You can follow them via the New Google Analytics label  
• The New Google Analytics Available to Everyone
• Custom Reports in the new Google Analytics
• Measure Page Load Time with Site Speed Analytics Report 
• New Google Analytics - Overview Reports Overview.  
• What’s new about Analytics Intelligence?
• Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, reported on  iPad Usability: Year One
• Wordtracker identified 25 reasons why another site will link to yours
• A useful slideshow presentation by Phil Hollows, Founder and CEO of FeedBlitz on list building for bloggers

and finally......

This will be my last "who's made a mark this week?" until July. 

I'm off to France on the 9th June and not returning until the 4th July.  Next weekend involves taking my cats to their holiday destination (my mother's house and garden) so I have half a chance of actually being able to get packed up and ready to go.

However - for those of you interested in such things - you can follow what our painters' house party gets up to in France in Four Go Painting in Provence as we will be blogging while we're there.

• This was the post introducing it on this blog - Four Go Painting in Provence
• Plus here's my challenge for the time away - Learning how to paint with oils in Provence

You can already check out my deliberations about what to take with me as we all start to get seriously geared up (as in lots of art materials) for some very focused creativity!  Sarah tells me she's planning five paintings a day!

I certainly know from past painting holidays that there is nothing quite like a concentrated period without domestic interruptions to make some progress both in terms of creating art and developing skill and style.