11th November 2012 - Who's made a mark this week?

Today is Remembrance Sunday and the eleventh day of the eleventh month - when people all around the Commonwealth remember all those members of the Commonwealth armed forces who have died in the line of duty that others might live.  On Monday last week I watched members of the British Legion hammer small crosses with poppies on them into regimented boxes on the grass outside Westminster Abbey.  Each was for a different part of the armed forces - with the biggest section given over to the unknown soldiers.

However, many of the crosses had names on.

Sometimes the simplest images are the most powerful - although oddly I can find no artwork associated with Remembrance Sunday.

A number of the crosses have names on and messages from loved ones
photographed outside Westminster Abbey

In the USA:

• Vets preserve memories of war with their own art
• in Houson Texas, an exhibition of war photography WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath has opened at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH).  The FT has a slideshow of images of conflict from 1847 to today
• The National Post reports that Painting Belgium’s battlefields: Wartime scenes part therapy for 93-year-old Second World War veteran

and in Newfoundland, Jeanette Jobson (Illustrated Life) painted and posted a painting of a poppy for Remembrance

Artists and Art Blogs

Who Painted This?

•  My new series of posts is proving to be very popular and everybody seems to be being good and sticking to the rules - because this week nobody has worked it out as yet!  Who painted this? #3 has the answer to Who painted this? #2 at the end of the post and two supplementary clues in the comments

Drawing and Sketching 

• Sadie J Valeri (Sadie J Valeri) has written a short but very pertinent post for those want to learn how to draw - How to draw in 5 steps 
• Pete Scully (petescully) has been participating in nanodrawmo which is 50 drawings in a month - see nanodrawmo 2012 – part 1.  You've still got time to join.  Having a structure as per Pete seems to be the trick to getting 50 drawings done.

Loosely defined goals are for each participant to produce 50 individual works/drawings between Nov 1 and Nov 30. You can always do more than 50 if you've got it in you! That's just the minimum everyone should be shooting for.

Painting

• Stapleton Kearns Stapleton Kearns writes blog posts which, at times, are music to my ears - plus I clap and cheer!  Two such are
• Some thoughts on the challenges facing today's workshop participants
• More thoughts on the challenges facing todays workshops participants.  
• I think of him as the Simon Cowell of professional landscape painting.  You only have to look at the image for the second post to see what I mean!
• Harold Speed - On Painting a Head, and The Science and Practice of Oil Painting on Underpainting
• Sadie J Valeri has also been featured in Dezzy's Amazing Art Finds - see her post Sadie J. Valeri.  Very nice paintings - however a commentary appears to be missing.
• Women in the Act of Painting is described as
  

"an ever-growing collection of fine art images that depict women in the act of making visual art: painting, sculpture, drawing, printmaking etc."

and includes one of my favourite paintings of a woman painting - next to a Fountain -
by John Singer Sargent 

The Fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, Italy by John Singer Sargent

oil on canvas, 714 mm (28.11 in). Width: 565 mm (22.24 in).

Printmaking

• I liked the curated collection of fine art prints on Etsy called Printmaking - Not just another pretty Repro! by Monique from RedTailStudios

Sculpture

• Henry Moore Sculpture - a very poor precedent for public art This is my commentary on the decision by the Mayor of Tower Hamlets to sell Henry Moore's bronze sculpture "Draped Woman Seated".  The implications for public art are very worrying.

Art Business & Marketing

• 7 Social Media Marketing Tips for Artists and Galleries on Mashable

while fine art is big business, there is often a wide chasm between the creative process that makes a great artist or a sophisticated gallery owner, and the marketing process that drives branding and sales.

• How to Promote Art Events Using Social Media by the Light Space & Time Online Art Gallery
• These are the Listorious lists of:
• Art People and Top Art Lists
• Artists with thousands of followers on Twitter - which includes Lisa Call - Artist
• Artnet is now on Tumblr http://artnet.tumblr.com/ - but seems to have lost the plot by loading huge image files which take an age to load.  I find it impossible to navigate.
• I reported on a New structure for Arts Council & an Interactive Map
• Alyson Stanfield (artbizblog) reminded us of one of her old posts which is a good one 28 Questions for When Your Art Isn’t Selling
• Open Studios: I wish I saw more Open Studios producing a map as good as this one - the Keene Art Tour Map on the Keene Art Tour website (a wordpress site).  Here's the summary of how it all went - and they're already planning for next years!  Does your local art group do this?

It was a roaring success, by all accounts. We had tons of visitors. We had great sales. (It’s important for artists to sell so we can keep making art!) Our studios have never been cleaner, too.

Copyright for Artists (see my website Copyright for Artists for more information)

• The Tussle Around Fair Use: Is Pinterest On The Right Track? on the Berkely blog Information Law and Policy: Fall 2012 raises some interesting questions about vicarious infringement (see my website Pinterest, Copyright and Spam - for Visual Artists & Photographers for more information about concerns about Pinterest)

Art Societies and Art Competitions

Call for Entries

• The Royal Watercolour Society has announced its Call for Entries for its annual open competition for non members. See my post RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition 2013 - Call for Entries for more details
• Derwent announced a new art competition this week of particular interest to all those who work in pencils. This is my overview of the Prize - NEW! The Derwent Art Prize - for pencil art.  The competition is open to international artists over the age of 18.  The deadline for entries is next 1 July 2013 and the exhibition will be at the Mall Galleries in September 2013 prior to a UK Tour.

 Jordi Ruiz Cirera - winner of the First Prize in
the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize being interviewed by CNN

Exhibitions

• This is my Review: Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2012 in which I highlight the prizewinners, interview the winner and review the themes I detected in the exhibition of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2012 at the National Portrait Gallery
• This is the British Journal of Photography's coverage of the competition Jordi Ruiz Cirera wins Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2012 - the comments are a hoot!

At the entrance to the exhibition is the winner of The John Kobal New Work Award The Nine Lives of Ai Weiwei
© Matthew Niederhauser 

• Here's The Judges' View: Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2012 and a photo of the judges
• I reviewed the 49th Annual Exhibition - Society of Wildlife Artists - and would have written more but lost an email address of an artist!
• This is the slideshow for the American Women Artists - 15th Annual Juried Competition Exhibition Finalists in Arizona. Over 325 artists from the USA and Canada entered the competition. 61 paintings and drawings and 14 sculptures by 75 artists chosen

Art Exhibitions

• I'd love to see Barbara Hepworth: The Hospital Drawings at The Hepworth Wakefield, West Yorkshire (named of course after this very famous British Sculptor).  This article explains how they came about. It's had some excellent reviews. The good news is I can! It's a travelling exhibition and dates are as follows:
• Hepworth Wakefield - 7 October 2012 –3 February 2013; 
• Pallant House, Chichester, 16 February –2 June
• Mascalls Gallery, Kent, 14 June – 24 August 2013
• This is the Barbara Hepworth website.
• For those in the UK who've always wanted to see photos by Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984) up close rather than in a book or on a website, the opportunity to do so is now available. A new exhibition of 100 original prints can be seen in Ansel Adams - Photography from the Mountains to the Sea is now on at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London (9 November 2012–28 April 2013). This is a slideshow of images in the exhibition created by the Guardian.  I'm thinking Untitled 1960 looks very much like the Lone Cypress on 17 Mile Drive at Pebble Beach - especially since he died in Monterey. Anybody else agree?
• You can see the 76 works online in the Salmagundi Club's 3rd Auction Online on November 11th starting at 2pm EST.  If you sign in you can see what artwork sold for.
• The Art of the Real World Tour has arrived in Edinburgh - at the Open Eye Gallery, 34 Abercromby Place, Edinburgh, EH3 6QE - from 12th-27thNovember 2012

Art Museums and Galleries

• Michael Glover in The Independent has an article about The Hermitage: Bold plans to change Russia's fine-art tradition The intention is that state museum is expanding to make it more contemporary. 
• It was fascinating to see the responses by the Art Museums between Boston and Washington to the imminent onset of SuperStorm Sandy.  Like me (see Albert Bierstadt - Approaching Thunderstorm on the Hudson River) a number found interesting images to go with the situation.  I think everyone's favourite was The Met's choice of Wind by Harold Anchel. 

Art Education

• Emeritus Professor Michael Craig-Martin RA recently bemoaned the fate of Art Schools in the UK - see Damien Hirst's former teacher attacks 'over-regulated' art colleges

Tips and Techniques

• Ampersand Art Supply has some tips for Sealing and Varnishing Art Work on Ampersand Panels
• Get Your Work as Vertical as Possible!" is the recommendation of Eileen Nistler (Eileen Nistler's Artspan Blog)

Art Studio

• Some people call them taborets whereas I call open storage on wheels a "trolley". This week I reviewed a potential Studio Product: IKEA Råskog Kitchen Trolley on Making a Mark reviews......
• Rose Welty (Rose Welty Art Studio) has some Studio: Before and After pictures - also tackling the vertical art / standing up issue

Opinion Poll

Watercolour paints - tubes and pans. 
Brands represented here include
Winsor & Newton, Rembrandt Van Gogh, Schmincke, Maimeri and LeFranc & Bourgeois

This month's Making A Mark Poll is considering POLL: Which are the best artist-quality watercolour paints? - however the Blogger Poll module started to malfunction and then started to lose votes.  So I had a bit of a think.  So.......

• In double quick time I produced Which is the best brand of watercolour paint for artists? which is the website I'd intended to produce this month.  (It contains a brand analysis) In it I incorporated a poll into that - which will run until the end of 2013.
• Blogger was stung into action ;) and cleared up the problems with the original poll - so I switched that back to its original position and removed the link to the new poll.
• So far there are two clear brand leaders on both polls.
• I then asked people to vote in The Big Watercolour Debate - Tubes versus Pans

Techies

• A very interesting post by Michael Chesley Johnson (A Plein Air Painter's Blog) - Monitoring Your Work - How Does It Look On-Screen? - who faces exactly the same problem as well all so

and finally......

Veronica Lawlor and other 1482 illustrators have created a Hurricane Sandy Fundraiser for to raise money for the displaced victims of the storm. Go the http://onedrawingaday.com/ website to see the prints which are available for a donation of $50 or more.  Here's

• Veronica's contribution - Studio 1482 Fundraiser
• drawings done by Veronica during the Hurricane Sandy Power Outage in NYC