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

I'm finding Who's made a mark this week? more and more difficult to do.  It's my own fault because these posts have just grown and grown - and they now take hours and hours to compile....and I'm afraid procrastination sets in.

They started out as a way of highlighting things I read on other people's blogs and items which were interesting but weren't going to make it into a blog post.  Thus they were assembled over the course of the week.  However I now find I do more reading when writing the piece which in part accounts for why it takes so long to do.

I'm thinking along the lines of:

• making them short and weekly OR longer and fortnightly
• cutting the topics (but what to cut?)

So tell me which bits you like the best and what you would miss most if it went or were to be revised / reduced.

Art Blogs and Artists

Artists

• This post is about Artists overcoming disabilities - it starts with a discussion of the challenges which many famous artists have overcome and concludes with an update on when and how I'm having surgery to get brand new eyes!  (In May!)
• Videos: Bankside and Roy Lichtenstein provides you with three videos - two of which give give you an insight into Roy Lichenstein and the third shows you what it's like outside Tate Modern on a Sunday afternoon - on the way to see the RWS open exhibition!

Drawing and Sketching

Lower Manhattan from the Empire State Building by Patrick Vale
You can see a larger image here.

• Do take a look at this video of Patrick Vale Empire State Of Pen - which is how the above drawing of lower Manhattan came into being and is described as follows

One week. Five pens. One pencil. A million cups of tea. One iPhone and one repetitive strain injury.
Patrick Vale gives you... lower Manhattan from the Empire State Building

and

His time lapse film“Empire State of Pen” captured five days of intensive drawing and brought critical acclaim across the design and architectural worlds, it clocked up 700,000 plays in a few weeks. 

• Tiny Pencil is a blog for graphite groupies.  It's a spin-off of a biannual anthology devoted to the art of the pencil and a new website of the same name which looks promising.  These are the artists who will feature in the first issue.  I did find it a bit odd that the first artist they interview actually describes herself as working mainly in gouache!

Celebrating all things graphite, Tiny Pencil is an anthology zine and forum devoted to the lead arts

• In relation to the Tiny Pencil graphite artists I was most impressed with the work of:
• Rachel M Bray - work in ink and pencil and pencil and graphite powder
• Vanessa Foley (Vanessa Foley)
• Liam Stevens
• James Gurney (Gurney Journey) has chosen to highlight what the brain scans of artists while drawing.  James also references his previous post Do Artists See Differently? 
• I used to have posters of drawings by Aubrey Beardsley on my wall in college. It;s thus with some interest I came upon Poul Webb's (Art and Artists) series of posts on Aubrey Beardsley - which have lots and lots of his heavily stylised monochrome images 
• Aubrey Beardsley – part 1
• Aubrey Beardsley – part 2
• Aubrey Beardsley – part 3
• Aubrey Beardsley – part 4

Figures and Portraiture

• Lawrence Roibal (Drawing on Observations) has created a stop motion video from his latest gross anatomy build based on the etchings from 18th century anatomist Bernhard Siegfried Albinus. Ii's made from over eleven hundred still photos after creating each muscle from clay and placing it onto the figure. His wife calls the model "Fred". Anatomy is his blog post about the process.  Lawrence is a working illustrator who has created over 500 book covers without ever missing a deadline!

Landscape

• I was interested to see Robin Purcell's (Robin Purcell, Watercolours in the Plein Air Tradition) post about how she progresses a watercolour painting of the landscape in California - See Progress on "Desert Hill". 
• Jeff McColl sent me a link to his account of a visit to Agawa Canyon - Winter style 2013 (take III) updated.  This is his account of visiting some of the parts of Canada painted by artist members of the Group of Seven and others eg George Reid and spending a winter week camping in the Agawa Canyon. Visits are made to the actual locations of paintings by A.Y. Jackson's painting of the Waterfall at Algoma.  He was intrigued by how the topography made for such a dramatic shadow in paintings by people such as Lawren Harris .  You can see all the photos together in this album

What I found really interesting is how the lighting conditions I encountered exposed the secret of Mr. Harris's dramatic shadow in the canyon.

Painting

• I really like a lot of the paintings I can see on the blog of Amanda Spencer's blog Amanda Spencer.  It reminds me of Shirley Trevena's work - but I'm not sure if I don't like Amanda's more.  She also does watercolour batik paintings and conducts workshops on this technique.  I've got my very own batik set which I bought after a workshop on batik in Bali in 1997.  I think I might just have to check out those workshops!
• Do take a look at Rob Pointon's Year of the Boat - it's very much a blog and a project with a difference.  It's not many artists who operate out of a narrow boat!  It certainly seems to have given him a new perspective on how to fit interiors into paintings.  Rob has some exhibitions coming up in the near future in Manchester and Birmingham

Pastels and Pencils

• Ester Roi (Ester Roi Fine Art) has a wonderfully detailed post which explains How to Mount Paper on Board

The "Who painted this?" Challenge

• After a spate of increasingly difficult challenges, I relented!  Lots of people guessed Who painted this? #18 however the The first person to get the correct answer this week was Roger Brown (Art Of The Wild by Roger Brown)
• Here's Who painted this? #19 which also has the answer to #18.  I think this week's image will appeal to cat lovers.........

Art Competitions

• In my last "who's made a mark this week" I feature Aine Divine and her watercolour painting of Mathew which won one of the prizes in the Royal Watercolour Society's contemporary art competition.  This week I reviewed the exhibition for the benefit of those who were unable to visit and those who might want to submit their work next year - see RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition 2013 - exhibition review
• This is my review of the Lynn Painter Stainer Exhibition 2013: Review
• These are the RHS Botanical Art Show 2013 - Selected Artists.  Botanical artists will wish to note the dates of the exhibition and the fact that it's being held in April at the same time as the Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists.  No excuse for botanical art fans not to try and visit BOTH exhibitions.

Art Education

• The Pratt Institute in New York had a major fire in February in its main building which took nearly 170 firefighters to extinguish.  It destroyed the studios of the Fine Art Seniors and their artwork for their senior projects which many will have spent months on.  You can see pictures of the blaze on their Facebook page.  Lots of people have rallied to the support of the students who lost their art supplies as well as their artwork.

Art supplies including brushes, canvases and other tools have been donated by a range of art supply stores, including Utrecht and Daler-Rowney, Pratt spokeswoman Jolene Travis said. More than 3,000 brushes have come in. The selection also includes personal contributions from faculty, Travis said, including some “used, very well-cared for and loved brushes tied in ribbons.”

• Mitchell Albala (Essential Concepts of Landscape Painting) - has written a techinical post about Picture Varnishing: Get the Streaks Out!

Art Exhibitions

National Galleries

• The American Indian Portraits of George Catlin can now be seen at the National Portrait Gallery.  

Artists

• I don't often go to the exhibitions of individual artists.  However I think I might well go to one coming up in April by Patrick Vale.  Indeed I recommend all Urban Sketchers take a look at his artwork - and you can review a video of him drawing above.  You can also see a preview of City Lines - his drawings in pen and ink - at the Coningsby Gallery 4 - 12 April 2013.

Art Bloggers

• Art for the Animals is highlighted on Belinda del Pesco's blog.  It's a fundraising exhibit at Gale's Restaurant - to benefit the Pasadena Humane Society.

Art Societies

• The Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists opened at the Mall Galleries last week and continues until 23rd March.  Click the link to see the members' work in the exhibition on the website.  You can also view the Exhibition Catalogue online. The remaining demonstrations are:
• Tues 12th Mar, 12.00 - 15.00 Drypoint demonstration, Mick Davies and Melvyn Petterson
• Wed 13th Mar, 12.00 - 15.00 Acrylic demonstration, Alfred Daniels and Nick Tidnam
• Thurs 14th Mar, 12.00 - 15.00 Landscape and architecture demonstration, David Sawyer

I also note they've got a much improved new website.

Two sets I created in Rijksstudio (by makingamark)

Art Galleries and Museums

• Pinterest meets the Rijksmuseum is my take on the redevelopment of the accessibility to the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam.  They have a new website and a new way of allowing people to access the artwork and reinterpret it using downloads and print on demand websites.  It's quite something and unlike anything I've seen elsewhere when roaming the internet looking at museum websites (which is something I do a lot!).  You can see what I did at makingamark
• The Telegraph has published an article Brilliant, beautiful and British: the art you aren't allowed to see.  I think the curators of publicly funded art museums and galleries who think curation is about the development of the body of knowledge about art history and their own career development should be made responsible for being accountable to the public for just how much art in public ownership is never ever seen. 

What is so wrong with the idea of museums and galleries celebrating the diversity of British painting?

• The New York Times has an article on Cautious Approval for a Plan to Merge a City’s Museums (re. Los Angeles). 

Art Supplies

• Ed Terpening (Life Plein Air) has been testing Testing Solvent-Free Oil Paint

Art on Film and TV

• Your Paintings: A Culture Show Special - a Culture Show Special on the BBC demonstrated that the Your Paintings project has uncovered the artist behind some of the artwork which has previously been inaccessible.  
• Going Underground: A Culture Show Special is another Cuture Show Special which looks at the artwork which Mark Wallinger has created for the 150th anniversary of the London Underground. The artwork comprises 270 enamel plaques (one for every station!) of labyrinth designs.
• The Pre-Raphaelites on BBC4 is also available on iPlayer. There's 3 days left to watch it.
• Finally there's Treasures of the Louvre - also available on iPlayer and available until Sat, 16 Mar 2013

The interesting thing is that none of these are listed under the Factual / Arts Culture and the Media part of iPlayer which seems to have become as bad as Amazon at categorisation!

Opinion Polls

• The results of the February Making A Mark Poll reveal four distinct tendencies as to when people prefer to paint - see Painters prefer painting in the early morning (Poll result)
• The March Making A Mark Poll will be published this week.

Techies

Computers

• I've now had my Apple iMac for three years - and I gather a few of you have had iMacs for nearly that long! ;)  This is post asking Which is the best computer for artists? and it's had some excellent and long comments

Blogging

• The next instalment in the series of posts about blogging for Art Societies is Art Society Blog #3 - Recruit a Blog Editor.  This highlights that a Blog Editor is much more like a Newsletter Editor rather than a webmaster.  In other words it's about communication and  marketing rather than techie stuff!

and finally

This is the view you can get of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence on the Google Art project - so even if you can't get to Italy you can have a virtual tour of the Uffizi.

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