21st April 2014 - Who's made a mark?

This is the first of my "Who's made a mark" posts in a while.  It's a round-up of my posts on this blog and on Facebook PLUS it's interspersed with other news I've noticed as I get back to more normal life.

During my time writing the book I've had a couple of major milestones

The Making A Mark Facebook Page yesterday - with 2,001 likes

• Making A Mark achieves 2.5 million visits came in March
• and yesterday Making A Mark achieved more than 2,000 likes for the Making A Mark Facebook Page

Many thanks to all those regular readers, visitors and followers of Making A Mark. 
I love hearing from you if the blog has made a difference to your lives......

After the hiatus I'll start by just briefly mentioning what's coming up on my blog in the next week:

• a call for entries for an important new art competition
• interviews with the six botanical artists who became RHS Gold Medallists last week
• a return for "Who Painted This?"
• and a big thank you to all the artists who contributed images to my new book

 PLUS a video of the biggest exhibition to open in London recently!

Art Genre

Botanical Art

• We're into my favourite phase of the year with the RHS Botanical Art Show closely preceded or followed (as happens this year) by the Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists. So far I've written three posts about the RHS Show:
• RHS Botanical Art Show 2014 - Medal winners - highlights what each artist selected for the exhibition was awarded. Basically the standard is now so high that everybody gets a medal
• More Top Tips for winning an RHS Gold Medal for Botanical Art - another in my series of posts identifying what's required to do well at the RHS show - based on tips from the Gold Medallists
• 15 Top Tips for presenting work at an RHS Botanical Art Exhibition - this year I've included observations about what makes for a better presentation of artwork in this show.
• Meanwhile Gaynor Dickeson wrote a fascinating account over several posts on her blog
  gaynorsflora about what it was like to prepare for the show and then be there. There are several posts starting on 6th April - as she gives an insiders' perspective on what's involved with exhibiting at this show. I recommend you start around about the beginning of April as she starts her count down to the exhibition and all the last minute things you need to think about and do. It's recommended reading for all those who aspire to do the same!

Drawing and Sketching

• I've been asked to speak at "Draw In" - a symposium about drawing in late August. Other speakers will include Paul Foxton, PJ Lynch, and Colleen Barry.
• I've been asking artists their top tip for drawing - and this is John Smolko's Top Tip for Drawing
• In mid March I asked whether 2014 - the year of very many books about Urban Sketching? We have the third Urban Sketchers London exhibition at Timberyard Old Street – 61-67 Old Street, London EC1V 9HW

Portraiture

• Simon Weston portrait unveiled at National Portrait Gallery - It was great meeting both Simon Weston and Nikki Pihiliips who painted his portrait at the NPG.  It was also a privilege to see somebody see their own portrait for the first time. His mum said "It's him to a t." His family are all very pleased with it. Simon was voted for by the British public as being the person they most wanted to see in the NPG.

The framer, Simon Weston, Nikki Phillips (the artist) and Fiona Bruce

Watercolour Painting

• This is a Video: Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours - Annual Exhibition. 

Art Books

• One of the best people I know in terms of drawing and drawing books is Sarah Simblet. This is Sarah Simblet and The New Sylva - a video about a new book she's been working on - it includes 200 drawings of trees in the UK

Art Business and Marketing

Art Fairs

• How to design a stand for an art fair is about a very helpful post by Lisa Call plus references to other posts about art fairs I've written in the past
• Jessica Shepherd (Inky Leaves) wrote about A pop-up shopping list - her "what to take" list re doing a PopUp Studio at the RHS Show

Business survival tactics

• An excellent article which focuses on a very salient piece of advice The Single Most Important Piece of Advice I Can Give You about Pursuing Your Art by Carolyn Henderson
• Apparently there's not much be gained from knowing about artists' daily routines - see The Myth of the Artist’s Creative Routine by Casey N. Cep

Communication for artists

• Do you want people to come to your next exhibition? Make sure you read this blog post by Alyson Stanfield - The Truth About Why Nobody Came to Your Art Show
• These are my posts about:

• Tips about how to write an artist statement. What's the best way to write an artist statement is a perennial topic of interest to artists.
• How to write an artist's CV

Copyright Infringement

• Copyright infringement - why Courts make people pay - relates to a recent case relating to Getty Images in which the latter were awarded maximum damages of £300,000.
• Google would like to know if your website or blog has been scraped - see Has your artwork been scraped?

Licensing

• Tara Reed provides great advice - in a video - for artists attending a Licensing Show. It's well worth watching for anybody who's trying to connect with those licensing art - and it's NOT just relevant to the SURTEX or Licensing Expo trade shows.

Social media marketing and websites for artists

• 10 top tips for art blogs - I was prompted to write this post after giving some advice to a prominent art blog about something they were failing to do which makes a BIG difference!
• Why social media matters in 2014 - Ever wondered whether you ought to be doing more on social media - but didn't know where or how to apply your efforts?
• I've been asked to do a workshop talk about websites for artists as part of a Summer School programme of events at the Mall Galleries. I'm not sure about the date yet and I'll let you know as this when the events are formally announced.

Art Competitions

Call for Entries

• Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year 2014 - Call for Entries - you have until 1st May to submit an entry
• The John Ruskin Prize 2014 - call for entries - this is no use to those who want to apply this year - but worth noting if you want to apply next year.
• The RA has provided an incredibly useful document which I highlighted in How to photograph your artwork

Shortlisted and Selected

• BP Portrait Award 2014: last week we saw the Shortlist announced for BP Portrait Award 2014 plus a number of announcements as to artists who had been selected for the exhibition. 

Awardwinners

• Catherine Davison wins £15,000 Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize 2014
• Daniel Boyd, 31, who is listed as one of Australia's 50 most collectable artists won the 2014 $0,000 BulgariArt Award plus a $30,000 residency in Italy for his work Untitled 2014. The Guardian commented that Daniel Boyd's Untitled is a worthy award winner

Exhibition

• This is my providing a Review and video of the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize Exhibition 2014

Art Exhibitions

Art Critic

• I was trying to think where to put this and decided I had to put Brian Sewell in with his own milieu - the art exhibition.  This is an Observer interview with Brian Sewell: Tracey Emin's art is 'trivial' and Grayson Perry's is 'vulgar'

Paintings by RWS members
Spring Exhibition at the Bankside Gallery

London

Sad to say I've only just discovered the fact that The National Gallery has a series of monthly podcasts. Click the link to view the archive.

Current exhibitions:

• until 26th April: Royal Watercolour Society's Spring Exhibition "Marking Time" at the Bankside Gallery
• Until 15th June 2014 Veronese: Magnificence In Renaissance Venice is at the National Gallery. I was invited to a preview last week and went with Ilaria Rosselli del Turco. Veronese is regarded as a painter's painter and his treatment of materials and the composition of large groups is superb. I loved the idea that in quite a few of the group paintings, Jesus may have been the main character but most of the rest of the figures in the scene came from the patron who commissioned the work. It struck me that some practising artists today might want to try that approach to keeping their patrons happy!  Below is a video the curator of the exhibition introducing it

• Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs at Tate Modern. See the videos above and below.  Yesterday I downloaded the app created to accompany the new exhibition at Tate Modern "Henri Matisse - the Cut-Outs" and I'm very favourably impressed so far. It seems to prep you before visiting and then substitutes for the awful headsets in the exhibition - and probably costs less too! Reviews include:
• Henri Matisse: The Cut-Outs review – 'the lesson of a lifetime' by Laura Cumming in The Observer
• The Telegraph's 
• Richard Dorment declares Matisse's cut-outs, review: 'a winner' while in another part of the paper, 
• Philip Johnston opines that the inevitable pushing and shoving to attend Tate Modern's new Matisse show is hardly an inviting prospect - see Tired of the blockbuster shows? Join the queue
• the paper also has an interview with Henri Matisse's great-granddaughter - Tate Modern's latest blockbuster: how Henri Matisse turned paper cut-outs into masterpieces - who says new Tate Modern show brings his great works 'off the wall and into our lives' and proves age is just a number
• Plus How Henri Matisse made me cry is an edited extract of a new book by Alastair Sooke in which he explains why the artist's chapel in Vence reduced him to tears
• Botanical Art in the 21st Century is at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew until 10th August 2014
• A Dialogue with Nature: Romantic Landscapes from Britain and Germany is at the Courtauld Gallery until 27 April 2014
• BP Spotlight: The Craze for Pastel | Tate Until 5 October 2014 at Tate Britain 

A film of Henri Matisse drawing with colour and scissors and creating his cutouts

Upcoming exhibitions include:

• 24th – 27th April: the London Original Print Fair at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly.
• 26th April - 1st March 2015:Acccording to the Art Fund,an exhibition of a group of Alex Katz's flower paintings goes on display at Tate Modern next week. However I've looked nad looked on the Tate Modern siote and can't find it! I'm also always rather puzzled by extremely long exhibitions. Does the artist really have that any fans or does the gallery really not have enough funds to mount another exhibition?
• 30th April - 21st September 2014: for all those fans of architecture Building The Picture: Architecture In Italian Renaissance Painting opens on 30 April at the National Gallery 
• 8th May - 12th July 2014 David Hockney: The Arrival of Spring is at Annely Juda Fine Art, 23 Dering Street, London W1. This article Hockney draws again interviews David Hockney and he talks about his charcoal drawings of Woldgate
• 20 May – 10 August 2014: an exhibition about Kenneth Clark at Tate Britain. 

The exhibition examines Clark’s role as a patron and collector, art historian, public servant and broadcaster, and celebrates his contribution to bringing art in the twentieth century to a more popular audience.

• this is my blog post about an exhibition which opens at the National Portrait Gallery in late summer Virginia Woolf: Art, Life and Vision at the NPG (July-October 2014). It will include over 100 paintings, drawings and photographs and rare archival material

National Art Societies

Upcoming exhibitions include

• 8th - 23rd May: the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters at the Mall Galleries
• 9th May - 7th June: the Spring Exhibition of the UK's premier printmaking organisation - the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers at the Bankside Gallery
• 9th - 18 May: the Annual Exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists

Rest of UK

• Cézanne and the Modern is at the Ashmolean Museum until 22nd June 2014
• the Stanley Spencer Murals of WW1 can now be seen at Pallant House at Chichester where they have been reviewed by  Laura Thompson Stanley Spencer's war murals: 'The greatest'

Madrid

• until 12th May - Picasso in the studio (link is to an interesting microsite) is at the Fundacion Mapfre, Madrid, 
• See a virtual tour of the exhibition
• Picasso's palettes have gone on show - Why Picasso's palettes were a work of art in themselves

Art Education

Printmaking

• Hilary Daltry RE: Woodcut Prints Without a Press on Jackson's Art Blog. Hilary Daltry is Head of Printmaking at Heatherley's and an elected member of the Royal Society of Painter Printmakers. She will be exhibiting her work at the R.E. stand (No. 20) at the London Original Print Fair from the 24th – 27th April at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly.
• This is the RGBE video about their Distance Learning course

Art Supplies

• Drawing Pens and Papers Compared - if you like drawing in black ink on white paper, settle down for a good read of this thorough review by illustrator and penman H. Locke on Jackson's Art Blog
• Sarah Morrish (The Natural Year) has been examining fine art paper. How do you choose the right paper for botanical drawing and painting ? See the following posts in which she examines six different papers
• Choosing watercolour paper for botanical drawing and painting - part 1  
• Choosing watercolour paper for botanical drawing and painting - part 2
• QoR - a new watercolour paint will be avialable in the USA in May.

Art on television / art videos

• Grayson Perry on television in 2014 highlights two projects:
• a new 3 part Channel 4 series exploring identity and portraiture - which culminates in an exhibition at the National Gallery later this year
• a House for Essex project which is an amazing idea and concept (ie there's more to Essex than TOWIE) - and also the subject of a one-off television programme later in the year!

and finally......

I've got two!

• First - did you know that Artists 'have structurally different brains' Apparently a study has found that Artists' brains are structurally different to non-artists in areas relating to fine motor movements and visual imagery.

and then second

• This is Jonathan Jones take on The top 10 female nudes in art.  Call me picky but when somebody does a top ten I do like to see the pictures of the ones which aren't armed with copyright lawyers! The absence of Picasso I understand - but why no Botticelli?

So what do you think of the list? What's missing that you would have included?