24th February 2013 - Who's made a mark this week?

A little while ago, an artist called Aine Divine (Aine Divine Paintings) wrote to thank me....

Thank you for the great information you pass on, you always end up answering those annoying questions about open submission competitions and so on.

having been prompted to write by my post about the cost of getting artwork to open exhibitions and competitions.

Mathew by Aine Divine
Runner Up in the Royal Watercolour Society Open Competition 2013

She'd also written to tell me two of her works had been accepted for the Royal Watercolour Society Open Competition 2013 (and has now posted on her blog about this)

It now turns out that one of them has been selected as one of the three runners up for the main prize (see above).  See:

• RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition - Prizewinners 2013
• RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition 2013 Successful Entries

The exhibition for the RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition opened on Friday and runs until 3 March at the Bankside Gallery.

She's got links to three magazine articles on her website.

• Portraits of Character. The Artist Jun 2011
• Painterly Portraits. The Artist June 2009
• Dr Mo Mowlam: Art of England Jul/Aug 2005

Plus an exhibition next month - Greywalls – A Work of Art at which her portraits of golfers who have played at Muirfield will be on display. She also has a blog with precisely one blog post and she obviously needs to be encouraged to do more as her articles indicate she's articulate and writes well about process.

Artists and Art Blogs

This is a very video oriented post this week.

If you're wondering why no exhibition reviews it's because I've been stuck inside with the interminable cough which has been letting me know it doesn't like cold air or too much exertion.

Animal Art

See what happens when you comment on a blog post of mine? You can end up being featured on my blog!  (Laura left a helpful comment on my post about art stores in New York - see 'Art Supplies' below)

This is animal portrait painter Laura Ellis - as featured in this Odd Jobs: Animal Portrait Painter video report by the Wall Street Journal on the way she approaches commissions .  Plus this delightful article which explains how she came to move from Vermont to New York and became an artist who paints dogs for a living.  Listen to the video all the way through to check out the NYC commission prices she charges!



Drawing and Sketching

• This is Danny Gregory's post about A conversation with Liz Steel from “An Illustrated Journey”.  Here's Liz's post about it Chatting with Danny on her blog Liz and Borromini

Liz Steel: An Illustrated Journey from DannyGregory on Vimeo.

• Lori Field is a Post-Apocalyptic Romanticist artist with aesthetic-compulsive disorder who renders obsessive narratives with colored pencil, silverpoint and encaustic.  Thanks to Sophie Ploeg for highlighting her work on Facebook.  This is her website and this is where you can buy her work.  These are her
• silverpoint drawings
• coloured pencil and encaustic paintings

Drawing is a passion, and I intend for the work to be drawing-based, concentrating on the use of non-traditional media and arcane materials, always submitting to an obsession with obsessiveness. The mediums can vary: some are colored pencil drawings on vintage slate chalk boards, others are meditatively drawn silverpoint renderings on gessoed paper

• I'm incredibly impressed with Sketchwalk Chaophyra in Bangkok which involves Urban Sketchers from other Asian countries and Australia and a sketchwalk along the river which runs through Bangkok.  The Program and itinerary was looking very organised on Facebook at the beginning and the photo albums are looking even more organised now! 

Click to see a larger version
Photographers credit:- โฆสิต จิตต์ไพโรจน์ (kosit jitpiroj)
- The Royal Photographic Society of Thailand (RPST)
by Mr. Jirawat Phuengsomwong และคุณอ๊อด

• Andrea Joseph writes about drawing side by side during a sketchcrawl - Side by Side in Idle Talk
• This is an old interview I came across last week when searching for information about what equipment people use to draw in pen and ink - and it's an interview in The Paris Review with R. Crumb - The Art of Comics in which he talks about his personal preferences for nibs and paper.
• These are In Pictures: Andy Warhol - Early Drawings

Painting

• Barbara Benedetti Newton - winner of the Making A Mark Best Picture of 2012 on an Art Blog - now has an Etsy Store.  Some readers will remember Barbara as the co-author (with Janie Gildow) of one of the most popular books on coloured pencil art - Colored Pencil Solution Book. One of the works included in her new store was in that book (on page 97)!

Pastels and Pencils

• German pastel artist Astrid Volquardsen (Malerin des Lichts) has won the bronze medal in the 14th Pastel 100 competition for my painting "View to the sea".  You can read more about this in her blog post Pastel Journal Bronze Medal Award in which she highlights how she has produced a video of how she produces her pastel art - and had it translated into English.  You can see a link to it below.  I recommend viewing it in full screen on YouTube proper so you get the full benefit of her panoramic sketchbooks!  I want to know how she manages to keep he easel upright in the wind!

Artist Portrait 2013 - Astrid Volquardsen

• The Colored Pencil Society of America News blog has an interview A Moment With Two of Our Explore This! 9 Winners  - Eileen Sorg, CPSA, CPX (WA) and the second-place winner, Deborah Friedman, CPSA (MA)  (See my post earlier this month about the exhibition - Review: CPSA's 9th Explore This! Exhibition)
• CPSA is also listing on its website links to the specialist magazines for coloured pencil artists.
• Joseph Crone: Photorealism is an interview on the Prismacolor blog.   He works in black and white on frosted acetate. This is his website - Joseph Crone and his blog - Joseph Crone
• Those interested in the best coloured pencil should read the Art Supplies section below and two new polls to identify the best coloured pencil in 2013.

Plein Air Painting

• Simply Getting There provides a brilliant idea by my friend and plein air painter Louise Sackett (Plein Speaking) for getting from car to the site of the easel and the view for your plein air painting.

Printmaking

• Jeanette Jobson (Illustrated Life) has come up with a good idea for how to fund her new printmaking studio - see Fishy Bits - a year of original fish prints.  I'm thinking of having a small investment myself.......

Who painted this? 

• This is Who painted this? #17 which in turn provides the answer to the epic post Who painted these 10 Popes? !  I am amazed so many of you got it right.  However Jane Gardiner (Glasgow Painter) led the way. 
• This week's painting has everybody stumped!  I'll be posting a clue on Monday.  

Art Business & Marketing

• My post How can you tell when it's a vanity gallery? has prompted quite a discussion on the Art Business group on Linked In
• At one extreme we have indicators of a significant move in the way top artists sell their art - in this article Move over galleries: artists sign with agents in The Art Newspaper (makes sense to me!).......
• and at the other extreme we have Artsy Shark's 125 places to sell art
• Artsy Shark has two more articles of interest:
• Ask the Experts - Art Licensing
• Etsy Wholesale
• Meanwhile in December 2012, over 15,000 visual artists in the UK enjoyed a share of £4 million in Payback royalties through DAC.  That's an average of £266 each.
• To find out more about Payback visit www.dacs.org.uk/for-artists/payback or follow us on Twitter at @DACSforartists.
• Visual artists who wish to claim Payback for the first time this year should register with DACS at payback@dacs.org.uk.
• What it's like for an Artist's Trustee is for those who have ever wondered what it would be like should they have to administer an artist's estate - or anybody contemplating it for the future

Art Auctions, Collectors and the Art Economy

• This Financial Times article The Art Market: pay up, pay up and play the game By Georgina Adam highlights how Christies has raised the cost of buying art at auction which follows its closure of its Haunch of Venison Gallery.  Is this increase in cost of sale a good idea?  One collector commented to the reporter

“When you add in premium, VAT, artists’ resale right ... you can be looking at over 30 per cent on the hammer price, I don’t think it will make any difference, collectors will just have to pay more.”

• BBC News - Lucian Freud sketches sell for £16,300 at auction - artist Maggi Hambling has sold three ink on paper life studies by Lucian Freud thought to have been drawn in the 1940s, in Dedham, Essex.  Hambling was given the life drawings by Cedric Morris, who taught her and Freud at different times as part of the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing.
• Investors are now suing art galleries for not doing enough to sell their art!  Read this New York Times article Art Gallery Sued Again Over Sale of Paintings

Art Competitions

• The April issue of the Pastel Journal has the prizewinners in the 14th Pastel 100.  This post  14th Annual Pastel 100 Competition: Meet the Grand Prize Winners has the images and prizewinners

Art Education

• This is a long (1 hour 46 minutes) video lecture at the Art Students League of New York called Never A Day Without A Line: Drawing Panel Discussion 2013
• Michael Gove has been wallying around all over the place with respect to what should comprise future educational subjects and certificates within English secondary schools.  This article Turning Gove threat into golden opportunity  suggests there is much to be done when it comes to defining art education in schools.  It also queries whether subjects taught as part of the Foundation curriculum might be better taught in schools.

Art Exhibitions

UK Exhibitions - Major Galleries

• Lichtenstein: A Retrospective opened at Tate Modern last week and continues until 27 May.  Initial indications are that it is proving very popular.

Lichtenstein: A Retrospective is the first full-scale retrospective of this important artist in over twenty years. Co-organised by The Art Institute of Chicago and Tate Modern, this momentous show brings together 125 of his most definitive paintings and sculptures and will reassess his enduring legacy.

• Tate Britain is reorganising and refurbishing its galleries at present - and is also revising the way we look at art. See this article in the Guardian Tate Britain launches new direction which comments on Painting, video and photography greats paired together as art across 300 years combines for Looking at the View exhibition at Tate Britain "The Home of British Art". You can View some of the artworks in this display
• Rare Andy Warhol polaroids go on show in London at Privatus until 1 March. Viewing by appointment only.
• My review of 'Constable, Gainsborough, Turner and the Making of Landscape' at the RA

USA Exhibitions

• Last Sunday my blog post commemorated a very famous exhibition - The 100th anniversary of the 1913 Armory Show when modern art from Europe came to the USA for the first time
• Thanks to James Gurney for the alert about a new exhibition in Boston, Massachusetts, called: Anders Zorn: A European Artist Seduces America. 
• Degas, Miss La La, and the Cirque Fernando is at the Morgan Library & Museum, 225 Madison Avenue, at 36th Street until 12th May.  There's a wonderful article about it in the New York Times A Painterly Eye Capturing a High-Flying Muse

Art Bloggers

• Art bloggers Vandy Massey (Vandy Massey) and Mark Judson (MarkJudsonArt) are exhibiting her paintings and his ceramics at The Whittlesford Gallery in High Street, Whittlesford (near Cambridge) early March.  This is Vandy's blog post about the exhibition Exhibition Time and this is Mark's

Art Societies

I've started a series of posts about Art Blogs for Art Societies.  Knowing a  little of the issues involved in getting an art blog for an Art Society up and running, I started right back at the very beginning - and am missing nothing out!.  Here are the first two

• Art Society Blogs #1 - Why blog? - discusses the potential benefits of blogging when compared to a website
• Art Society Blog #2 - Getting started - looks at three essentials which need thinking about at the beginning: the difference between a website and a blog; the name the blog and its URL

Art Studio

• This is a New York Times slideshow of Winslow Homer's Maine which includes views inside his studio
• Happy Camper Art Gallery is another in the mobile art studio/galleries which are sprouting in New Hampshire. This one belongs to Kristina Wentzell (Kristina Wentzell Fine Art)

Art Supplies

• The results of the polls to identify the best coloured pencils in 2012 were identified in:
• The Favourite Coloured Pencil Awards! (2012 Brand Poll Results)
• The Favourite Watercolour Pencils Awards! (2012 Brand Poll Results)
• This chart shows how big a change occurred in artist-grade pencils in 2012 - Prismacolor would appear to have serious problems.  Right click the image and open in a new tab to see a much larger chart.

Changes in coloured pencil brand preferences 2008 - 2012

• Coloured Pencil artists were then asked to vote for the best coloured pencil in 2013 in two NEW polls on my website Coloured Pencils - Resources for Artists  - which has also had a major update in the brands section.
• 2013 POLL: Which is the best brand of artist grade coloured pencil?
• 2013 POLL: What's your favourite watercolour pencil?
• I've developed a new section within my website USA: Art Supply Stores & Online Art Supplies called The Best Art Supplies Stores in New York.  However, although I could identify a number of the stores, I ran into a problem.   Despite years of reading reviews of Pearl Paint and other art stores etc on blogs all of a sudden they are nowhere to be found.  It's as if Google has buried the ordinary art blogger in favour of larger review sites!  
• Hence my Making A Mark Reviews blog post - also called The Best Art Supplies Stores in New York -  which so far has generated two very useful contributions.  Many thanks to Jane Gardiner (Glasgow Painter - Art Supplies New York City) and Laura Ellis which have now been incorporated into the new section.  
• I'd love to hear from more people about their views about which are the best art supplies stores.
• If you're ever write a review of an art supplies store or online website please do not hesitate to get in touch and let me know what the link is.
• There were some interesting responses to Ash Wednesday, Lent and Art Supplies when I asked What item of art supplies would YOU find the MOST difficult to give up for Lent?  

Opinion Poll

The Making A Mark Opinion Poll for February - What's your best time of Painting? - finishes just after midnight in London on Thursday.  If you've not answered yet, you'll find it in the right hand column.  There's no right answer but the responses so far are interesting.

and finally......

After The King in the Car Park we now have King Richard III's life and death told through graphic-novel style art - and displayed as a slideshow on the BBC website

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