8th May 2011 - Who's made a mark this week?

Richmond, North Yorkshire Heads by Sally Cutler

I smiled when I saw this linoprint by Sally Cutler at the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters this week.  First because it's a print not a painting and then because I loved the heads.  You can't see - but underneath they all have their occupation or distinguishing characteristic written out - everything from former Olympic bobsleigher to euphonium player.  It reminded me of the work Rose Frantzen did in portraying her home town.  Sally is a member of the Southbank Printmakers

_______________

I changed the look of Making A Mark this week.  Do you like it?  I'm trying to be a bit more "with it" in terms of the way design for websites seems to be going these days ie lots of white backgrounds, a fair bit of different shades of grey, not a lot of borders plus a more restrained use of colour.  I didn't quite manage it on the last one!  It struck me a while ago that everybody was trying to make their website look like Apple's.  Is there a checklist for "how to look like you design for Apple" anywhere?  Or a 2011 best practice for websites?  If so do let us all know by sharing it in a comment.

I had a few problems getting the new template to work in Internet Explorer.  For those who want to know a good web tool for checking out sites in other browsers (ie IE has never touched my iMac!) see the last section where I keep all the techie stuff!

I'm also celebrating the fact that Making A Mark also seems to have acquired site links beneath the blog when it appears in Google search results on google.com (for the search terms "making a mark").  This is is a fairly big deal, brings in extra traffic and not something you see very often where blogspot URLs are concerned.

Sitelinks are hyperlinks to website subpages that appear under certain Google listings in order to help users navigate the site. The site owner cannot add any sitelinks; Google adds them through its own secret automated algorithms. 

Art Blogs and Artists

Drawing and sketching

• A wonderful post - and sketches - can be found in Caroline Johnson's A Care Home Sketchbook on An English Artist in Brittany (and Urban Sketchers). Caroline draws extremely well and I just wish I saw her doing it more.
• In Olive Tree you can see a wonderful sequence of sketches of a big old olive tree on the island of Majorca as drawn by Albrecht Rissler (Drawing Landscape) over the years
• There's not many of us who gets views like this to sketch - check out A cool card from Charlene! on A Postcard from my Walk! - the postcard is from Charlene Brown (1,150 words)

The first of the Alaska-bound cruise ships arrive in Victoria by Charlene Brown

• Here are some of the blogs of people who are participating in the Every Day in May challenge
• Jana Bouc - Jana's Journal and Sketch Blog eg  Sweat, Salt and Scissors
• Casey Toussaint - rue Manuel bis eg May is for Sketching
• Robyn Sinclair -  Have Dogs, Will Travel eg EDiM - Something Sour - Lemon Tree
• I posted on my sketchbook blog about Kew Gardens in April

Painting

• Sonya Chasey's blog Artwork from Hendaye doesn't have a lot of paintings - but the ones it does have are really excellent.  There's something of Eric Gill about them which is probably due to her training in the graphic side of art.  Hendaye is a coastal town in the French Basque Country where Sonya has been living since 1992.
• Mitchell Albala (Essential Concepts of Landscape Painting) recently highlighted an excerpt of an article by Matt Smith on the Synergy Between Plein Air and Studio Painting
• The Guardian had an article on saturday about Tracey Emin: 'What you see is what I am'.  The notion of Tracy Emin as a poet is not one I have a problem with.  Her art is something else.

Printmaking

• I don't know how I can have missed Art and the Aesthete before now - but I have (and thanks to Robyn Sinclair's blogroll for highlighting it.  Clive Christy has a blog much like Charley parker but focusing on fine art printmakers and other aspects of his art collection.   I always enjoy the blogs of serious collectors as so many have really researched the artists they are buying.
• Charles Clarke has a similar blog called Modern Printmakers - however I have a hard time looking at it because of the very strong background which competes with the prints
• I really liked The Linosaurus which is described as "mainly concerning the lesser Gods of woodblock and linoleumcut printing. And all things beautiful and interesting worth sharing." 
• Apparently it was International Print Day yesterday and people are sharing their work on the Print Day in May blog - sharing in this case seems to be comments rather than images but you can click the links back to their websites and blogs.  How about a Flickr group or similar next time?

Art Business & marketing

• On the topic of Facebook pages:
• Alyson B Stanfield artbizblog has a very helpful post about Artist's business pages on Facebook - You ARE an Artist – Even on Facebook.  It deals with how to find the artist category.  Plus a useful note about How (and Why) to Tag People on Facebook
• The Hyperallergic website/blog ("Sensitive to Art and its discontents") highlights the fact that Facebook Deletes UK Arts Profile Pages - ie Facebook has recently deleted over 50 profiles belonging to UK organisations protesting about funding for the arts. They found the magnitude surprising despite the fact these these accounts were against Facebook's Terms of Service!  I'm only surprised they lasted as long as they did.
• Sales Tax - there's a lot of discussion going on at the present about the collection of sales tax in the USA - see Collecting Sales Tax Is Not Easy for Marketplace Sellers
• ArtsyShark posted a detailed Guide to Pricing Your Artwork this week

Art Economy and Collectors

• There have been major auction sales recently - but there seems to be a bit of a disagreement as to how they went.  I find it fascinating that two journalists writing for the same paper seem to have reached different conclusions as to the state of the market
• Money Pours Into Impressionist and Modern Art by Souren Melikian "Money graciously poured into Impressionist and Modern art this week."
• Vlaminck and Monet Tie for Top Sale at Christie’s by Carol Vogel "Blue-chip names including Monet, Matisse and Picasso brought solid prices — even if the works were far from their best — a day after auction season got off to a bumpy start at Sotheby’s."

Art Competitions

• The Turner Prize shortlist has been announced.  I have to say I am yet again deeply unimpressed with the selection - apart from the painter George Shaw who gives a delightful interview as he talks about his work and his Humbrol Enamel paint.  He's a breath of fresh air. 
• This is the expert view on the artists and their work
• The Turner prize: artists kiss goodbye to London is Charlotte Higgins article espousing the hope that with the latest shortlist contemporary art is maturing beyond "the few square miles around east London".  I'd venture to suggest that there was never an issue about contemporary art flourishing outside London.  However there has been a problem with people judging and writing about art not travelling too far outside London to see for themselves.  London-centric views affect art quite as much as they do every other aspect of the arts.
• Surprise surprise - The Turner Prize exhibition this year will be held at the Baltic. That must be what generated a shortlist of artists from outside London!

The Turner Prize 2011 exhibition will be held at the BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead.

Art Exhibitions

• American Masters at the Salmagundi Club in New York is an exhibition I'd love to see.  It continues until the 19th May.  Participating Artists include: Albert Handell, Richard Schmid, David A. Leffel and Rose Frantzen (see How do you share what you do as a painter?),  Reports please if anybody gets to see it.  (Thanks to Charley Parker for highlighting it)

 section of Girl by Tai-Shen Schierenberg

Art Societies

• The major exhibition opening this week was that of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.  Here are the two posts making up my review:
• Review: Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition 2011 (Part 1) - Tai-Shen Schierenberg, Hon RP was judged to have the most distinguished portrait in the  2011 Annual Exhibition and consequently won the Ondaatje Award.  I thought you might like to see just a small part of his brushwork.   His brushwork has something in common with that of Ben Quilty in the sense that very large brushes are moving large slabs of paint.
• Review: Royal Society of Portrait Painters Annual Exhibition 2011 (Part 2)



Ripples by Sherrie York

• I really liked Sherrie York's post on her blog Brush and Baren about Getting The Big Envelope, via email and how things some things never change while others are completely different compared to several years ago.  Sherrie has been successful in getting her work into Birds in Art exhibition at the Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum

The Big Envelope means your work has been accepted. The Big Envelope is full of instructions for shipping and catalog photography and loan agreements.

Art Education / Tips and Techniques

• Alyson B Stanfield asked are there downsides to teaching art - do you run the risk of creating copyists?  She got 49 replies - so it's obviously a topic which many of you have thought about

Art Forums

• Sites like this - The Paint Basket Art Community - make me cringe (sorry if that offends anybody - but it's the truth).  The reason why is they have a distinct tendency to dumb down art for those who want their art on a step-by-step basis rather than tuition in knowledge and skills which require a rather different approach.  Check out How to Compose a Still Life for an example of what I mean.  However credit to them for creating what I think will be the way a lot of art tuition is delivered in the future - a place to book online sessions with a tutor

Art Galleries and Museums

They also serve, who only stand and paint

• There's a new exhibition about Women War Artists at the Imperial War Museum.  This is The Guardian's slideshow of some of the images plus a review of the exhibition by The Independent 

Books and ebooks

• Yesterday I published - somewhat belatedly - my monthly update of my two top art books sites - The Best Art Books in April 2011.  The two sites are:
• Makingamark's Top 10 Fine Art Books (best-selling and top-rated)
• The Best NEW Art Books (mainly books featuring in Amazon's Art top 100)

ebooks

• Potential authors of art books need to be aware that digital publishing is growing at an impressive rate.  Apparently UK sales were way up in 2010 and that's before the increase in 2011.  I've forgotten where I found this data and have lost the link!  

The Publishers Association found the total value of digital sales from data supplied by members for its annual yearbook was £120m last year, 38% higher than in 2009.

Copyright

• The Illustrators' Partnership Orphan Works Blog reported on a recent lawsuit between the Graphic Artists Guild and the Illustrators Partnership of America over what seems to be a tussle over who gets to collect $1.5 million of royalties.  It appears very large sums of money have been collected - but not distributed to artist/illustrators.
• This is the Cartoonist's take on the matter - Judge dismisses case against Illustrators Partnership of America - read also the comments
• The one thing which struck me while looking at their respective websites is that the IPA website badly needs an overhaul - it's stuck in 2008!
• However this is not where it ends - an appeal has been filed - see Guild Files Notice of Appeal in Dismissal of Defamation Lawsuit.  
• There appears to be a fair degree of confusion as to whether this is about orphan works or two organisations fighting over who has the right to collect fees on behalf of artists - which of itself is very big business.  
• What would be helpful to know is why the artists aren't seeing any of the fees collected

Last week the New York State Supreme Court, New York County, dismissed all claims in a million dollar lawsuit brought by the Graphic Artists Guild (GAG) against the Illustrators' Partnership of America (IPA) and five named individuals.

• ReadWriteWeb has been getting very agitated recently about Facebook's approach to copyright and their response to DCMA statements.  While concerns have been raised in respect of tech sites which have been scammed, it's as well artists appreciate this weakness in the system for dealing with complaints at Facebook.
• Anyone Can Take Down Facebook Pages with a Fake Email Address
• Facebook Responds to Abused DMCA Loophole Issue, Doesn't Fix System

Facebook doesn't verify the identity of those filing the claim, and more importantly, it doesn't verify the claim is from a legitimate email address.

Appropriation art

•  Law vs. Art Criticism: Judging Appropriation Art is a very long and very detailed post about another recent legal case.  The issue seems to be the vague and unclear concept of what is "transformative".

The recent Cariou v Prince District Court decision has brought to the fore, once and for all, the elephant in the art world and courtroom, Fair Use, which had, until now, managed to avoid close scrutiny in the popular press

Opinion Poll

• Tuesday saw the new Making A Mark poll for May - which this time is addressing how we tell potential customers about the price of an artwork. POLL: Do you price your art on your website / blog?  You can find it just above the module about Bloggers who follow this blog.

Websites, webware and blogging


Apps

• The Graphic Artists Guild has developed an app for the iPad called The Illustration iPortfolioTM 
• On May 5, 2011, SketchBook Pro 2.0 for iPad was made available on the App Store. Click the link to check out the new spec.

Website development

• If you've ever wanted to check out what your new website design looks like on different browswers try out GEOTEK's Net Renderer.  It helps me this tweak the new template so that the tabs line wasn't a mess in IE.  IE appears to be incapable of moving text to a new line when it doesn't fit - instead it makes the row as big as possible to get all the text in.

Google

• Google has two developments worth noting
• The Plus 1 button works on google.com only at the moment. It's a quick way to create recommendations - a but like liking something on Facebook - however think about privacy issues before you sign up.  You might want to like something but not share that fact with everybody!

Click +1 to publicly give something your stamp of approval. Your +1's can help friends, contacts, and others on the web find the best stuff when they search.

• More guidance and advice from the Google Webmaster blog about the Panda/Farmer update - which i'll be commenting on more next week. 

and finally......

This is absolutely nothing to do with art and everything to do with the age of quite a few of the people who read this blog.  I came across a couple of photojournalism pieces on Life Magazine which I just had to share! 

So here are:

• Rock stars and their parents
• Woodstock rockers them and now - let's hear it for Joan Baez!