20th May 2012 - Who's made a mark this week?

Yesterday we had the London launch of The Art of Sketching at Cass Art in Islington.  The founder members of Urban Sketchers London ran a whole afternoon of hour long sessions with each of taking the lead for an hour on specific topics to do with the way we sketch and answer questions about urban sketching.

Cass Art Islington - London Launch of The Art of Urban Sketching
Zhenia Vasiliev and Barry Jackson start the first session of the afternoon at 12.30
Zhenia is demonstrating the use of waterbrushes with ink.

It was very interesting to hear the topics which came up from those who attended - how to crop an urban scene, how to cope with perspective on buildings and what to do about shadows were ones which kept coming up.

I also found out yesterday that the second reprint has now sold out in the USA.  That'll mean it's now on its way to its third print since publication on 1st February!  That's got to make it one of the most popular sketching books ever - and just goes to show what can happen when a group of people get together and make things happen.

(This is going to be a very short Who's made a mark this week for various reasons)

Artists and Art Blogs

Drawing and Sketching

• Pete Scully (Peter Scully) went on a 'Garden Tour'. Apparently the notion is that you make art in the garden while it's open for people to vsiit. Sounds like a great idea to me. This link is to various blog posts by Pete about the Pence Garden tour 2012 - click on it and then start at the end and read forward

Fantastic art

• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) got what sounds like an amazing award - the Spectrum 2012 Grand Master at Spectrum Fantastic Art Live in Kansas City. James only blogged about his booth - Booth at Spectrum Live

Landscape Painting

• Michael Chesley Johnson talks about Managing Your Greens in the face of the challenge that faces landscape artists when all the trees have sprouted leaves 
• Stapleton Kearns (Stapleton Kearns) argues that Landscape painting is a lie, well told! and then provides a checklist of points

Psychological approach

• It's very odd.  I was only thinking this week what one would have to do to adapt well known theories around human behaviour to the behaviour of artists.  Then I read that Lori Signori gt there first!  Read maslow's triangle of need as it relates to plein air

Art Business and Marketing

• Could You Repeat That Please? is an excellent blog post from Cynthia Haase (What Are You Really Selling? - it's a recommended read
• Lots of 200 word business plans to read at Alyson Stanfield's (artbizblog) post which asks the question Is Over-Planning Killing Your Art Business?
• Adam Leipzig has written an attitude adjusyment piece on Cultural Weekly called Why Are Artists Embarrassed About Getting Money, But Jamie Dimon Isn’t?
• Joanne Mattera (Joanne Mattera Art Blog) is 'on the money' with last monday's Marketing Mondays: "Educating the Public"

Art Competitions

This is a reminder that

• the £30,000 Threadneedle Prize deadline is this Wednesday at noon.  See Call for Entries for £30,000 Threadneedle Prize 2012
• the John Ruskin Prize deadline is the 1 June - see my January blog post about this The John Ruskin Prize - A New Look at Nature: Call for Entries 

Art Exhibitions

Two unusual places for exhibitions associated with art this week - both are botanical gardens - one in London and one in New York

Art Exhibitions - UK major venues

• Kew Gardens is host to two new exhibitions:
• Exhibition - Portraits of leaves and fungi, paintings from the Shirley Sherwood Collection opened at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery on 5 May.  I'm hoping to get to see it this week.
• David Nash at Kew - A Natural Gallery is the major exhibition this summer at Kew Gardens.  He will will produce and exhibit his work across the Gardens from April 2012 through to April 2013.  The David Nash Sculptures have been arriving this week at Kew Gardens - see a slideshow on Flickr of the process of getting a sculpture exhibition into place in the gardens.  Read more about David Nash here.

In a career spanning 40 years, David Nash has created an extensive body of work. His sculptures are sometimes carved or partially burned to produce a charred surface. His main tools are a chainsaw and an axe to carve the wood, and fire to char it.

Crane lowers one part of Three Butts
Install Three Butts by David Nash near the Princess of Wales Conservatory.

Constructing Cork Dome
Sculptor David Nash is constructing Cork Dome at Kew Gardens

Art Exhibitions - USA major venues


Monet's Garden opened at the New York Botanical Garden on 19th May and runs until 21 October and might be called "installation art". The aim is to recreate part of Monet's Garden within the glasshouse - and the link includes access to three videos which shows how they are doing this.

• In May and June the inside of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, Garden’s landmark Victorian style glasshouse, will have vistas of irises, poppies, roses, delphiniums, and foxgloves. The exhibition focuses on a couple of set pieces depicting Monet’s Grand Allée in the Clos Norman and the iconic Japanese footbridge in the Water Garden.  I July the emphasis switches to the water lilies and nasturtiums.
• The Artist in the Garden at the Rondina Gallery at The New York Botanical Garden includes two rarely seen paintings by Monet plus his paint-encrusted wooden palette and a series of historical photographs that show the artist creating and enjoying his garden.
• For more about Monet's Garden at Giverny - including my videos of the real garden - see my website Giverny - a great garden

Exhibitions by Art Societies and Art Groups

• I'm going to the Private View of the 30th Annual International Art Exhibition of the Hilliard Society of Miniaturists at the Town Hall in Wells in Somerset on Friday.  I shall maybe try writing my review on my iPad during the return train journey - we shall see!   The Exhibition is open to the public at from 26 May to 3 June.
• Last week I visited the Private View for A New Leaf - an exhibition by Amicus Botanicus

Art History

• Laura Cuming (The Guardian) has come up with a list of
• The 10 best… sporting artworks.  How can he leave out Degas's paintings of racehorses?  Anybody else care to identify other sporting artwork which should have made the top 10?
• Plus The 10 best flower paintings – in pictures.  Again I can come up with a top ten which would have beaten this one.  What would you have in your top ten?

Techies

Spam

I've had my time wasted this week by a very stupid person called Paul S*mmons who has posted nearly 200 spam comments to my blog.  Despite being marked as spam - he appears to be still in operation, although Google finally acknowledged my report today.  Usual problem - content of the comments are unrelated to the content of the blog, are duplicated and every single comments all repeat the URL to one website.  You won't find a single one published - but that's not stopped him given that he obviously fails to check to see if any of his comments have been published!  The problem relates to the spam coming from one person - so you need to be able to report a blogger account rather than a blog or an external website - and you can't do that easily in Blogger!

So I started looking at how to improve spam control.  I'm not sure I'll do anything as this is the first problem I've had of any significance in 6+ years.  However some research did unearth the following

• OnGuardOnline.gov is the federal government’s website to help you be safe, secure and responsible online.  This is what it has to say about spam - how to reduce it and report it
• I looked at Disqus - and then read this post Why I uninstalled Disqus from Blogger which made me think twice

Other technical matters

• On Monday I wrote about How to create a 'search description' for your Blogger post
• Did all of you with Google accounts notice that Google has linked the gmail account to the Google + profile?  Read about it in Continuing to bring people front and center in Gmail

and finally......

I'm not quite sure whether people are trying to cash in on The Scream (see ) but I did come across these posts this week

• The Meow Is A Scream on The Society of Feline Artists blog - which features Alton artist Toni Goffe interpretation of Edvard Munch’s cat, aptly called The Meow.
• While the Singapore Office of Ogilvy and Mather created an advertisement for Faber Castell coloured pencils.  Two masterpieces - Vincent Van Gogh's "Terrace Cafe at Night" and Edvard Munch's "The Scream" - were recreated using thousands of color pencils as the actual medium.  See The Scream in Coloured Pencils

This is how they did it