Learning about Art & the Art Business 2013 - Making A Mark Art Blog Award Nominations

The next section of the Making A Mark Awards relates to Learning about Art and the Art Business.

The awards focus on personal development - whether that's via:

• regular posts on a blog wholly focused on the development of artists
• a really good series of posts on a particular topic of major relevance to artists
• a new art instruction book
• a new book about the artist and the art business

Today I'm looking for nominations about those who have taught you well in 2013. 

• which art blogs promote learning about art or the art business?
• who has taught you lessons of value about art or the art business in 2013?
• who has helped you become a more successful artist in today's art business

This category has three awards:

• The FAQs and Answers Really Useful Medal
• The Make Me Think Gong
• The Best Book by an Art Blogger Blue Ribbon

Nominations for this category are NOT limited to artists but they must write about art or artists and they must have a blog. They can be

• artists with an art blog
• non-artists writing about art, artists and/or the art business - with a blog
• anybody who has not won the award in the last three years (ie you can nominate somebody for a different award in this category but not for the same award if won in the last 3 years)

Detailed instructions on how to nominate for these and other awards are set out at the end of this post.

To nominate, leave a comment on this post 

with your nomination of a person and blog for a specific award 

plus the reasons why.

LEARNING ABOUT ART AND THE ART BUSINESS

The FAQs and Answers Really Useful Medal

The FAQs and Answers Really Useful Medal for the blog which aims to share useful information for artists including what they have learned with/from others

From Belinda del Pesco's latest post Collagraph: Hold My Hand

• 2012 Belinda del Pesco (Belinda del Pesco Fine Art) awarded in 2012 to an artist who shares the processes she uses to create her artwork - in watercolours & printmaking plus highlights and recommends whatever has helped her - whether that's art supplies, art books or art videos. Plus she provides some ace quotes from other artists! Her emphasis is on her artwork rather than blogging - hence she only posts once or twice a week - however her posts are always high quality.

• 2011: Artists Helping Artists on Blog Talk Radio (Leslie Saeta and Dreama Tolle Perry). We all get to ask questions of and hear the answers from an awful lot of artists who are held in good regard online. Plus Leslie and Dreama have put together a series of podcasts and posts about other aspects with which they have personal experience and there is also a supporting Artists Helping Artists art blog.

• 2010 Stapleton Kearns (Stapleton Kearns)  This was awarded to the artist who most often tackles the spread of topics which most appeal to me.  He achieves a nice balance between art technique, and art business

• 2009  Roz Stendahl (Roz wound up) Roz is articulate and writes very well and at some length about the topics which interest her. Two of these topics are visual journaling and art materials. Her series on journaling superstitions is a masterpiece! She enjoys experimenting with art materials and paper and her very thorough testing of art materials sets a standard for artists writing reviews on the Internet.

• 2008 James Gurney (Gurney Journey) James very much deserved this award because of the vast number of posts he has provided during the course of this year (and last) which have been both extremely informative and highly educational.  James is a one-man course in how to draw and paint! People pay fees for workshops from tutors who know much less than James does!

• 2007  Charley Parker (Lines and Colours) for his series of very comprehensive posts on how NOT to display your art on the web

• 2006 Justin Clayton (Daily Paintings) who started doing daily paintings on January 1 2006 and provided an extremely informative set of answers to questions he found he was frequently being asked.

The Make Me Think Gong 

The Make Me Think Gong for the person who makes me (and others) think and offers insights that are transferable to the activity and business of being an artist.

This award leans more towards matters relating to career and business aspects of being an artist rather than artistic practice per se.  So less "how to paint" and more "how to avoid being a starving artist"

• 2012 Cory Huff and contributors to The Abundant Artist. This is a site which focuses on trying to figure out how to build a successful art business. There's not a lot of posts but by and large they're good quality and they feature people who are success stories - who tell you how they did it. The advice also seems to be very much of the "now" as opposed to adapted from the past.

• 2011 Luann Udell (Luann Udell). Luann shares what she's learned with other artists and craftspeople online - here's a link to posts categorised about businessand marketing. In addition to her own blog, she currently writes for the Fine Art Views Newsletter. She is particularly good at conveying important messages through telling stories. She is also not averse to sharing the less positive or more emotional aspects of an artist's life - and how she goes about addressing these.

• 2010  Joanne Mattera - Joanne Mattera Her series of posts - Marketing Mondays - is extremely wide-ranging in its coverage of very practical issues for artists.  The content is also very helpful and I invariably find myself highlighting them on Who's made a mark this week? 

• 2009  Edward Winkelman (edward_ winkleman) He's a very generous blogger who consistently provides some very useful advice for artists wanting to pursue a career as an artist and/or want to get into a gallery and/or keep being a gallery artist. He also attracts a diverse group of readers which makes his thought-provoking open discussion posts very interesting. 

• 2008  Seth Godin (Seth's Blog)  I rarely miss reading one of his posts and very often find that they trigger thoughts about ways in which his thoughts could be applicable to the practice of art and/or marketing within the art economy.

• 2007  shared by: two artists who refer to the wider aspects of how we live our lives, difficulties we have to deal with and approaches which seem to produce good results. They speak about both everyday matters and bigger concepts in an everyday way. They often make me step back and think about what I'm doing and how I relate to what they are talking about. In other words they take my perspective out for a spin!
  
• Tracy Helgeson (Works by Tracy Helgeson)
• Jeanette Jobson (Illustrated Life) 

• 2006  shared by:
• Alyson Stanfield (ArtBiz Blog) Alyson is focused on the business end of being an artist and her e-mail letter arrives in my inbox every Monday and always gets read as does her blog.
• Robert Genn (The Painters Keys) Robert Genn's has been twice weekly letter and subsequent clickback for the artist community since 1999.  I've been subscribed to the Painters Keys and reading his letters for a very long time

The Best Book by an Art Blogger Blue Ribbon

The Best Book by an Art Blogger Blue Ribbon for the most helpful book written/produced by an art blogger

The criteria are that

• the author MUST be somebody who blogs about art - but they don't have to be an artist.
• the book MUST have been published in the previous two years ie after 1st January 2012 in the case of the award for 2013. This is to avoid any bias towards books published in the early part of this year as opposed to those which have not yet had time to build a following.

What I'm looking for is the book which does NOT follow the conventional recipe used of late for a lot of art books produced by traditional publishers. I'm fed up with art bookswhich are both lean on content and padded out with the perennial sections on art materials and colour wheels at the beginning.

A "blue ribbon book" will have a structure, content and design which speaks of the passion and priorities of the artist blogger who has written it (ie "identikit books" will NOT win this award!).

Given the ease with which artists authors can now pursue a self-publishing venture, the blue ribbon book may also have been produced and marketed by the artist blogger. However published, it emphatically MUST add value as opposed to being more of the 'same old, same old'. or just nice to look at.

• 2012 The Art of Urban Sketching: Drawing On Location Around The World by Gabriel Campanario and contributions from the Urban Sketchers. This book probably couldn't have been created without blogging. It's also an excellent book. It provides a comprehensive guide as to how to sketch in an urban environment - on locations around the world. Plus it displays a wide variety of freehand sketches done from observation - of different subjects by different people. However one of its main claims to fame - in terms of spreading the gospel of sketching from observation - is its stonking sales record.

• 2011 Color and Light by James Gurney (Gurney Journey). Put simply this book is a phenomenon. It became an art book standard in the space of a year. It's very likely to go on selling for years to come. It's also chock full of really high quality content and for me this makes it a major contrast to so many art books which are published these days with "padding". Most importantly, a lot of the content was shared for free online in Gurney Journey as James was writing the book. (UPDATE: In January 2012, I identified it as one of the five best selling/top rated art books on Amazon in 2011 and 85% of readers responding to a poll identified it as their favourite book of 2011 - see 85% of you love "Color and Light")

• 2010 Landscape Painting in Pastel by Deborah Secor (Landscape Painting in Pastel) This has been published in full on her blog of the same name. The difference here is that the book is not going to be published in print.  Deborah's book is very thorough and I'm guessing might possibly be a tad too long for most publishers these days.  She's also thought of more subject matter she'd like to cover so there's more to come!

• 2009  Imaginative Realism : How to Paint What Doesn't Exist by James Gurney (Gurney Journey) James' book is going to become a standard and do very well for a very long time. You can read my rave review of it here - Book Review - Imaginative Realism by James Gurney.  This is a book which is highly recommended by me.

Nominate an art blog for a Making A Mark Award

I've been keeping a list of art blogs which have had "made a mark" during the course of the year but I'd also very much love to hear which art blogs have had an impact on you.

What you need to do - it's very simple!

• WHICH AWARD: 
• Identify the title of the Making A Mark Award that you want your nominee to be considered for
• Leave a comment on the relevant post on this blog inviting nominations for that award - BEFORE 29th December 2013
• WHICH BLOG: Identify
• the name of the blog, its URL (eg "The Art Blog" http://theartblog.blogspot.com) and
• the name of the blogger (Note: prizewinners who have won in the last three years are not eligible - but only in relation to the specific award that they won)
• WHY: Say WHY you think this blog should be considered for a Making A Mark Award.

That's it! Simple!

I'll collate all your nominations and comments in relation to each award and consider alongside those blogs which I have in mind as being worthy of consideration.

The Making A Mark Awards will be announced on the 29th and 30th December.

See my Making A Mark website - and below - for the aims of each prize, a list of previous award winners and an outline of the reasons why they won.

Note: All nominees and nominators are linked to both from this blog and my main website page where all the past awards and nominees are listed

So over to you - who do you think merits being nominated for these three awards?  Answers as a comment on this post please.

Other Making A Mark Art Blog Awards

Please also NOMINATE for other MAKING A MARK AWARDS 

Links to the other posts seeking nominations can also now be found 

at the top of the right hand column

BEST PICTURE ON AN ART BLOG 2013

• Best Person/People 
• Best Place 
• Best Still Life 
• Best Natural World 

BEST ART BLOGS IN 2013

• Generating Art
• Getting Out of the Studio
• Learning about Art & the Art Business
• The Home Front

Links - The Making A Mark Art Blog Awards (static page at top of blog - references previous years)