18th December 2011 - Who's made a mark this week?

Nativity (1654) - etching by Rembrandt

Just a week to go to Christmas Day! Here's wishing you and yours all the best in this festive season.

I continue to have "green" difficulties with sending out masses of Christmas cards to people and will be limiting them to close family members and close friends and making a donation to the Save the Children Fund instead.

The Making A Mark Art Blog Awards 2011

I've now got all the Calls for Nominations posted (see links below).  This year there are two new awards in 2011

• The Best Art Society Blog Prize
• The Art Innovation of the Year Award

In addition, there are a lot more group art blogs around in 2011 and it's worth mentioning that group blogs will in general be looked at under The Best Art Blog Project Virtual Challenge Cup

I've been making lots of notes about art blogs which I think are eligible for different awards.  However I've not had a lot of nominations as yet.  I will be adding in my nominations and I won't be only adding in one or two.  However you won't see mine until the shortlisting

Ester Roi demonstrated very effectively yesterday how to get your art blog nominated i.e. by making a simple announcement about the award on her blog and showing people what they have to do if they want to nominate her blog (and in this case her art innovation).

You can do this too!  What you cannot do is lobby for nominations (or votes) outside your own art blog as the intended audience for these awards is art bloggers only.

The Wisdom of the Crowd

One of the benefits of blogging is that we can all get a better result by sharing our experiences - through the wisdom of the crowd.

Please show your appreciation of your fellow bloggers and NOMINATE an art blogger you think should get a MAKING A MARK AWARD

These are the links to the invitations to nominate.

• Nominate the Best Art (Portrait/Figures) on an Art Blog in 2011
• Nominate the Best Art (Place/Landscape) on an Art Blog in 2011
• Nominate the Best Art (Still Life) on an Art Blog in 2011
• Nominate the Best Art (Natural World) on an Art Blog in 2011
• Generating Art - Making A Mark Art Blog Award Nominations 2011
• The Painting a Day Stickability Shield 
• The Best Art Blog Project Virtual Challenge Cup 
• NEW IN 2011 - The Best Art Society Blog 
• Getting Out of the Studio - MAM Art Blog Award Nominations 2011
• The Painting Plein Air Plus Prize 
• The Travels with a Sketchbook Trophy 
• The Going Greener Gong 
• Learning about Art & the Art Business - MAM Art Blog Award Nominations 2011 
• The FAQs and Answers Really Useful Medal 
• The Make Me Think Gong 
• The Best Book by an Art Blogger Blue Ribbon 
• The Home Front - MAM Art Blog Award Nominations 2011
• NEW IN 2011 The Art Innovation of the Year Award
• “The Moose” - the award for the best animal in an illustrated blog 
• The Most Gorgeous Mouthwatering (MGM) Studio of the Year 

If you've got any queries don't hesitate to contact me - details of how to do this are in the side column.

I'll be posting the nominations for the Best Picture award on the 24th and then inviting you to vote on the 26th.

Artists and Art Blogs

Drawing and Sketching

• Charley Parker (Lines and Colors) this week highlighted the Where They Draw blog - which (surprise, surprise) shares pictures of where people draw! Note the ubiquitous iMac.
• Dinner at Restaurant du Vieux Four, Crillon Le Brave is a record of one of when I dined on the terrace in Provence in June.  You should see more drawings of food this week.

Dinner six months ago - on the 16th June 2011

Botanical art

I'm very fond of botanical art.  Hence one of my Best Picture Awards relates to the Natural World and one of the Making A Mark Art Blog awards is about those artists who promote awareness of nature and the greener side of life.

If you like botanical art you might like to check out these Botanical Artists Blogs

• Mindy Lighthipe's Botanical Painting.  She's recently been involved with a botanical art project - the 30 day Botanical Leaf Challenge.
• Dianne Sutherland lives in Scotland and has not yet completed the challenge but there are some impeccable painted leaves on her blog Dianne Sutherland
• Renata Barilli is a botanical illustrator who lives in Italy and has a botanical art blog (in Italian) Aperta Mente Botanical Art,
• Claire lives in West wales and has been producing some beautitful botanical artwork of Autumn Treasures on her blog Drawn to Paint Nature. Also in Red Berries she highlights a lightfastness  problem with the watercolour Opera Pink
• Botanical Illustration is a great blog associated with the Denver Botanic Gardens' Botanical Art and Illustration Certificate Program

Did you know there is a Nature Blog Network?  These are the blogs which are about Art and Nature

The Wildlife Art Journal seems to have a blog however it doesn't have a URL which allows us to pick up the latest post independently of that post's URL (ie there is no home URL for the blog!)

Creativity

• James Gurney has posted a 10 part series about the origins of Dinotopia on Gurney Journey

Painting

• 

  Little Pie

  Sara Winters (Painting from Life) comments on the painting process and relationship between the artist and the painting and how that impacts on the painting leaving the studio

Portraiture

• Sarah Wimperis (The Red Shoes) became a grandmother this week and has been sketching and painting wee Polly who spent a few days known as The Pie - as in The Pie Miniature - which is an example of Sarah's new paintings in miniature format.  The watercolour is hatched.

Plein air painting

• I was AMAZED to find that there is a video on YouTube of film of Claude Monet plein air painting - and promptly put it up a post on The Art of the Landscape - see Film of Claude Monet painting waterlilies at Giverny.  I love the size of his palette and the fact he's painting in a WHITE SUIT!!!  (Please excuse the Caps shouting - I'm a major league Monet fan!)
• Michael Chesley (A Plein Air Painter's Blog) has produced a Second Edition: Paint Sedona - A Plein Air Painter's Field Guide to Sedona, Arizona.  I'm always surprised that more of us don't provide guides like this.  I've been thinking of doing one for ages but just not got round to it!

printmaking 

• Shepard Fairey was asked to provide the cover for Time Magazine for their Person of the Year edition.  The winner was "The Protestor".  Thanks to ArtInfo for highlighting this.  TIME Picks Protester for Person of the Year, Tapping Shepard Fairey for the Cover | Artinfo.  Click the link in his name to get his views on the topic - and find out who the subject is.

I wanted the protester to come across as serious, but not scary. Most of the protesters I’ve met are normal, idealistic, young adults, so I thought the “person next door” feel was important. Ironically, I found out that the subject of the photo I illustrated from is an LA resident and employee of the Robert Berman gallery who I have worked with

Sculpture

• Banksy creates a new take on sculpture and as per usual gets to grips with the difficult issues - Banksy unveils church abuse work

wildlife art

• You can see an exhibition of some of the wildlife art on the Artists & Illustrators website

Art Business & Marketing

• For all those who need a bit of a prompt and a helping hand about their financial records - this is bookeeping 101 by bizladies 
• For those who think that everything will come right if you could just get to grips with the social media opportuntiies - this is a recommended read - Social Business: It’s NOT About the Next BIG Thing! by Pam The Marketing Nut
  
  As you enter 2012 it’s important to quit making up excuses. I don’t want to hear you have no budget, no resource or a plan. Get over it.

• Blutulip is a new type of website operating in the UK.  It's a business to business trading portal - which seems to be aiming at a way of getting stock moving through trades between businesses (rather than between business and customer).  The only reason I'm featuring it is because it appears to be a genuinely new business model.  I am inundated with website owners telling me about sites where the notion is that artists will display their art direct to the buying public - most of which have not done their homework and sink without a trace (hence why I never mention them).  This one seems different.  Blutulip launches in 28 days time and is open to pre-registration.

The only UK based website to offer gallery owners, artists and publishers the ability to discreetly trade with each other.

• Blutulip sent me a Fine Art Guild Survey of Galleries (July 2011) as the rationale behind their approach to their business and websiye.  This indicates that most galleries have a fair amount of slow moving stock which is tieing up their cash flow.  Thus they can't buy new art.  However most indicated that they would be willing to trade and/or discount stock to be able to freshen up their stock on offer.  There are some interesting comments

Entering the trade 8 years ago from industry & commerce was amazed at lack of contact/stock swapping between galleries and poor IT/stock systems at suppliers of images and raw materials.  

• the previously mentioned FASO post about new approaches to pricing continued to generate great tips and and good stories about pricing art last week 

Art Collectors and the Art economy

• The Guardian has an article about how the demand for high-end Chinese art is booming - see
  Asian art turns from plaything of Hong Kong's young rich into moneyspinner

Art Competitions

Calls for Entries - major national exhibitions in the UK (open to international artists)

• Last Sunday I published my annual post about the Call for Entries: BP Portrait Award 2012.  If you're interested do take a look at the linked sites as they provide you with a lot of insight into the type of portraits which are entered for this major international art competition.
• On Thursday I posted the Call for Entries: RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition 2012.  This exhibition by the Royal Watercolour Society is unlike the exhibitions of other national art societies where the images by candidates for membership are displayed.  This is an exhibition which is not an annual exhibition in the conventional sense - and is much more like a conventional exhibition.
• On Friday I posted about two calls for entries by the two Wildlife Artist of the Year 2012 competitions run by the David Shepherd Foundation and the BBC respectively.  You can find my summary of the differences and most of the details about who, what and how to enter in Wildlife Artist of the Year 2012 - Call for Entries (x2)

Winners

• Artists and Illustrators have announced the winners of their Artist of the Year 2011 competition.  I thought the portrait and still life winners were both good.  However I'd call the landscape winner a still life not a landscape!

Art Exhibitions

UK

• The Royal Academy of Arts are advising Friends of the RA - and other people - planning to visit David Hockney RA: A Bigger Picture to book a time slot now.  Advanced booking has been introduced in response to feedback about overcrowding and queues at the more popular exhibitions at the RA. 
• Travelling Light, opened at the Whitechapel Gallery last week. It's an exhibition of art held by the Government Art Collection which is not normally seen. The exhibition explores the British desire to travel and create a distinctly British view in depictions of people and places overseas.  The works have been selected by Simon Schama.
• The Haunch of Venison Gallery's exhibition Conversations between ten British Post-War painters focuses on a group of ten British painters who revived landscape painting and portraiture - Michael Andrews, Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon, Patrick Caulfield, William Coldstream, Lucian Freud, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Leon Kossoff and Euan Uglow - many of whom have gone on to become very influential in relation to the practice of contemporary painters.  The Guardian has a slideshow of some of the paintings on display.
• I'm very fed up that I missed the exhibition of botanical illustrations by Beatrix Potter at the Victoria & Albert Museum - however I discovered the the web page with examples of her work is still up on the website (However you have to know it's there as "past exhibitions" are not listed except as part of the site plan and when you get to them the exhibitions have no archive.  Shame on the V&A - this is very poor practice in the context of museums generally and is such a waste of a learning opportunity.  I wish they'd realise that people learn via the website and informative pages about past exhibitions are an excellent way of learning! )
• Monet waterlily paintings are going to be on exhibition at Tate Liverpool next year

USA

• New York State Museum of Natural History in Albany, NY is host to Focus on Nature, the biennial exhibit on natural history illustration until December 31, 2012.

Since its inception in 1990, the exhibit series Focus on Nature has reflected the standards, materials, and skills of contemporary natural history illustrators.

Art Education

• The University of the Arts in London now has a new home at Kings Cross 

Art History / Art Museums and Galleries

The Nativity by Piero della Francesca

• Read Jonathan Jones' appraisal of A note-perfect Nativity by Piero della Francesca
• The independent featured the still life painting Still Life with Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, c1602 (290 cm x 239 cm), by Sanchez Cotan as part of its Great Works series.  Wonderful painting!
• Over half the UK's paintings in public collections are now online - that's 104,000 out of the estimated 200,000.  The plan is to have them all online by the end of 2012.  You can see them at Your Paintings.  The only problem so far as I can see is that some of the images are less than wonderful.
• In case you missed the reference in the section on landscape painting, I posted a 

Art Societies

The Royal Academy of Arts has been having a major shake-up and changing "the bums on seats" - painters and women to the front please!

• Yay! Painter, printer and sculptor Christopher Le Brun PRA has become the 26th president of the Royal Academy of Arts, succeeding architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw PPRA. The President is Chairman of Council, which provides direction to the General Assembly, the governing body of the Academy which represents the Membership.  Here are a couple of comments on the appointment
• Guardian - Royal Academy picks first painter in 20 years to be its president And about time too!
• BBC - Christopher Le Brun becomes Royal Academy president
• Tracy Emin RA has been appointed Professor of Drawing at the RA.  
• Yay? Shock of the news: Tracey Emin becomes RA professor - classic comment from Diana Armfield RA provided in this article  (Diana has excellent classical drawing skills)

Diana Armfield RA, a figurative painter, said Emin had a “great talent for celebrity”. She told the Times she had seen what “I suppose are drawings” by Emin in the Summer Exhibition and “wouldn’t have thought that her talents were that way”.

• Yay! Meanwhile Jonathan Jones at the Guardian opines on Why Tracey Emin is top draw at the Royal Academy
• You can see more of Emin's drawings in this BBC article Tracey Emin to become Professor of Drawing at RA.  I find Tracy Emin interesting and articulate but I think her drawing is **** and personally I can't help feeling I'm leaning more towards Diana Armfield than Jonathan Jones!
• Fiona Rae RA has been appointed as Professor of Painting.  There' been a much more subdued response to this appointment.

Copyright

• Appropriation:  The Hyperallergic blog has a post titled Lawyers Weigh In on Appropriation Art and Fair Use which reviews a recent New York Bar association discussion prompted by the Cariou v Prince case.  Another recent post is also relevant - Law vs. Art Criticism: Judging Appropriation Art
• I came across this credit check (re copyright) poster this week - How to Credit - Check the Poster

Internet, webware and blogging

• David Pilgrim (David Pilgrim) has written a helpful post - Getting Mobile - about the tools he has been using to improve his website and display his art - with particular reference to access by mobile technology.  He highlights the testing capacity offered bythe Opera mobile emulator
• I love the way the image in the title area of the Light and Color blog changes with every refresh. I wonder how that works? 

and finally......

This BBC article has a video which explores the origins behind the colours of Christmas

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Click the link to NOMINATE Art Blogs for The 2011 Making A Mark Awards