How to list and catalogue my art books really easily

I have been wanting to list and catalogue my art books forever! I've finally found a REALLY EASY easy way to do it and this post shares with you how I'm listing by genre and category.

This post looks at 

• why I need lists of my books
• the features of the BookBuddy Pro app - which makes creating lists of all my books early easily - apart from needing to get everyone of them off the shelves in order to scan the bar code!

Why too many art books can be a problem...

I've been a bibliophile for at nearly 50 years. I have a LOT of books. By which I mean many more than I can actually count.

A small section of my art book collection
(ignore the small pile of books on the back of the sofa on the extreme left
- they're waiting for a home!)

I watched a programme about Fran Libowitz on Netflix recently and identified very many traits we have in common - one of which is owning a lot of books

What surprised me is they were characterising a lot of books in Wikipedia as follows

She is also known for her massive book collection, 10,000 volumes in all

to which my immediate reaction was "only 10,000??!!!!".

I counted about 25 years ago and I was up to 10,000 then - and I've bought lots (and lots and lots) more since then.

My only concerns about my books are threefold

• how I am going to fit in more bookshelves?
• where's the best place to put bookshelves so they won't put too much stress on the floor joists?
• buying duplicate books (again!) - because I don't have any lists of my books!!

It's the latter which really annoys me. I've got a few too many duplicates. 

I'm perfectly able to include that a book is a good book and definitely deserves to be on my shelves more than once! Usually because the first copy is sat in a book pile waiting for the next set of bookshelves (or - perish the thought - a purge on my books!) and I haven't seen it recently. Plus I have splurges of book buying which means it's not uncommon for 5-6 to arrive at once - which means they're queuing to be read. 

How to list all my books easily

I've bought BookBuddy Pro from the Apple App Store. It cost me £4.99 and works on my Apple iPhone and iPad. I understand there are no plans to create an app for Android phones - but there are other book management apps suitable for Android.

You can read about the features on the BookBuddy pro app website 

• you can scan the bar code on a book to get all the relevant data about it - including an image of the book cover - uploaded automatically in seconds. 
• I've found if your book is a bit obscure / specialised that it can sometimes take a while - especially if it comes in more one edition. 
• I checked it out by trying to upload the first three editions of The Art of Botanical Illustration by Wilfrid Blunt and William T. Stearns - as each is different and was published by different people in different years.  It got the third edition right and then got confused with the second edition - uploaded an image from Google books - but gave it to the third edition! Resolved by uploading the correct image from my phone. Uploading the first edition is more difficult as there were no bar codes in the 1950s and this will be a manual upload

Features of BookBuddy Pro

• it identifies the genre automatically - but you can change it to something more meaningful to you (and then it remembers all your genres identified to date)
• you can create tags for books to find them fast. So for example when I get to my books about artists I'll create the artist's name as a tag. At present I'm splitting between instruction books and art history books for a specific genre  of art - and it works fine for that.
• it syncs across devices - so it's now on both my iPad Pro 12 and my iPhone 12 Pro Max. 
• it backs up to either the iCloud and/or my Dropbox account. I've got less than 20 books loaded so far and it happens fast right now. Once it's got the entire library on I think it might take a bit longer!
• it enables you to record loans of your book - and keep track of who's got them
• you can record the current status of a book - unread, being read or read
• you can identify lists of:
• favourites easily and you can also give them star ratings. I've not yet worked out whether you can list by a specific rating
• lists by tags eg. all my books about London
• lists by author - which helps with avoiding duplicates!
• Both BookBuddy (free) and Book Buddy pro (£4.99) have the same features. However BookBuddy is limited to just 50 books. So enough to test it out to see whether it suits you - but I recommend you buy the pro version if you think you'll get some use out of this

What my lists look like

This app only works with Apple devices and is specifically designed for iPhones and iPads. It's been around for some time and had been through several upgrades.

This is what a list of titles be genre looks like on my iPhone. These are some of my botanical illustration books. Note the alpha letter index on the right hand side.

Amazon Best Sellers for Landscape Painting Books should make Jeff Bezos ashamed!

Yesterday the ratings for Amazon Best Sellers for Landscape Painting Books were a COMPLETE AND UTTER JOKE.  

"Best Sellers" Book Categories are a complete joke at times and, when they are and I spot them, they will ALWAYS be called out by me!

These - I kid you not - were Amazon's Best Selling Books about LANDSCAPE PAINTING yesterday!!!!!

They include 

• Colouring Books about Ocean Life, Beach Life and Butterfly Gardens (i.e. nothing whatsoever to do with Painting) and 
• Bob Ross Bubblehead with Sound (I kid you not) and Bob Ross by the numbers. 

Talk about dumbing down!
 

Amazon.com Best Sellers Landscape Painting 7th August 2020

This from a business where Jeff Bezos, the owner of Amazon, is now reckoned to have a personal net worth of $192 BILLION.

Jeff Bezos should be so ashamed since his wealth is all achieved with COMPLETELY INADEQUATE QUALITY CONTROL over the categorisation systems on Amazon!

In my opinion, it's about time Amazon got round to 

• sorting out the fact people exploit Amazon's categorisation system because - from what I can make out (i.e. I've been finding "complete abortions" like this for years when reviewing books) 
• introducing better quality control - because there is absolutely NO QUALITY CONTROL over categorisation.

Unless they get called out - as I did yesterday on Facebook.

So this morning - less than 12 hours after I had a MAJOR RANT on Facebook about the lack of control of categories on Amazon - we now see this. Believe it or not the top 10 best sellers about landscape painting now includes books about landscape painting.

Examples include

• Learn Watercolour Landscapes Quickly by Hazel Soan
• Mixed Media Landscapes and Seascapes by Chris Forsey

However we still have:

• Adult Coloring Book : Stress Relieving Designs Animals, Mandalas, Flowers, Paisley Patterns And So Much More: Coloring Book For Adults ranked as the top Best Seller!!!

Amazon.com Best Sellers Landscape Painting 8th August 2020

All Amazon needs to do is have one category for Colouring Books for Adults which automatically categorises all colouring books into that category no matter how hard their authors or publishers try to place them in other categories. They can then have sub-categories within that.

I haven't even started on the Best Ratings....

Which currently has the Thomas Kinkade Special Collector's Edition 2019 Deluxe Wall Calendar rated as the best landscape painting book ever.

All because Jeff Bezos is FAR TOO MEAN TO INVEST IN IMPLEMENTING BETTER QUALITY CONTROLS OVER CATEGORIES.

They managed to get a better handle on the fake reviews on Amazon - although in my opinion, quality control is slipping again. It's now time to get to grips with categories and STOP the gaming of the system.

All this is by way of explaining that when I've got Tips for Artists published the page devoted to The Best Landscape Painting Books - will ONLY contain Landscape Painting Books - and will include Traditional Classics and well as Contemporary Classics!

P.S. Guess who has just found her complete pdf file about "The Best Books about Landscape Painting!! and is busy completing a new page on Tips for Artists!

10 Years of Making A Mark

First of all I'd like to take the opportunity to wish a Happy New Year from Making A Mark here in London.

May you and your art enjoy the best of times in 2016 wherever you live around the world.

Next I have a celebration.......

New Year fireworks in London 1st January 2016

Making A Mark was born on 13th December 2005 in terms of the first time I published a post. However I did then change both the design of the blog and its name before I went 'public'!

Making A Mark went 'public' at the beginning of 2006. That's a decade ago!

10 years and 3,027 published posts later this blog has had more than 3.4 million unique visitors. Since Blogger started counting it's had c.8.5 million pageviews.

BTW that's an average of just over 300 blog posts a year!

Where nearly 50,000 visitors to Making A Mark came from in December 2015

I have to confess I had no idea when I started quite how many people would read my blog or that they would live all over the world. I'm still taken aback when meeting artists at exhibitions to find that they know who I am!

I've always written the blog for me and it's changed as I have changed.

There again I've always been one who likes sharing information that I think others will also find interesting and/or useful - and consequently that accounts for the amount of digging around and finding things out that has happened on this blog in the last 10 years!

10 of the most popular posts in the last 10 years 

One of the reasons why my blog remains popular is that a lot of the blog posts I write remain relevant past their publication date - and my archives are very well visited!

Here's a selection of some of the most popular posts over the last 10 years with an emphasis on those which continue to have relevance to today.

10 Tips for How to Sketch People (2008) - the sketch at the top of this post will be appearing in Lynne Chapman's upcoming book on drawing people.

How to sign an art print (2011) - it's short but distils down the important rules

Change in Facebook Pages Rules will affect artists marketing their art (2014) - this is about the imminent major change on Facebook which would affect those using it to promote their art.

How Pinterest removed all my pinned images in minutes (#1) (2012) One of my major 'techie' blog posts. (Part 1) is about how to find out if your images have been pinned to Pinterest from your website or blog - and (part 2) how to get them removed.

Colour Schemes: Split Complementaries, Triads and Tetrads (2008) - this was part of my major project on Colour which I still need to resurrect in terms of the website I developed as a result.

Van Gogh: Drawing media and techniques (2007) - one from the days when I did projects about specific artists. I remember I loved writing this post - mainly because of the reading around and the looking at the drawings he did.

Which are the best books about oil painting? (2011) - this is a type of blog post I've loved to do in the past. It enables the "wisdom of crowds" to generate good content for people who read this blog. In this instance most of the value comes in the comments from those offering their recommendations as to the best book about oil painting - for artists of all abilities.

How to make labels for an art exhibition (2012) - sometimes posts are popular because nobody else has ever written about a topic!  This one was written after I did the labels for the first London Urban Sketchers exhibition - and I confess it was partly so I'd remember what I had to do the next time!

20 tips for entering art competitions (2010) - I've always liked sitting down and distilling down all the stuff I've learned over time into a number of tips!

5 guidelines for beginning to use soft pastels (2009) - This was a similar basic tips post but this time relating to soft pastels


Plus the Art Competitions Page is always very popular - this is Major UK Art Competitions 2016

_________________________

I may reflect on what has changed for me in the last 10 years in a future post.  Right now I have to go and cook our New Year Dinner!

I'll finish with the sketch I did ten years ago tonight - of my lovely Cosmo catnapping with his 'Dad'.

Cosmo catnapping #5 - 1 January 2006

Urban Sketchers: Gabi Campanario steps down

A major announcement by Gabi Campanario today - he's stepping down from the Board of Urban Sketchers.

Dear fellow urban sketchers,

Since setting up the Urban Sketchers nonprofit in 2009, I've been quite involved with most operational aspects of the organization, from filing government forms and dealing with bank accounts to setting up blogs, organizing events and recruiting volunteers.

As Urban Sketchers has grown and thrived, many others have contributed their time and efforts, and we've built a solid and sustainable nonprofit. That level of shared commitment and belief in our mission is why I feel comfortable that we've reached the point in our natural evolution for the founder to take the back seat. After my term expires in December, I'll no longer be part of the Executive Board.

But I'm not wandering off too far. I have offered to serve on the Advisory Board and plan to continue contributing as a blog editor and correspondent.

I'm very proud of the work we do as a nonprofit, organizing an exhilarating international Symposium every year, promoting workshops and publishing blogs.

It makes a difference in the way people see the world and connect with each other.

I hear it all the time: "Urban Sketchers has changed my life!" people tell me. And I reply the same way: "It has changed mine, too!"

Gratefully and respectfully yours,

gabi

Gabi Campanario has given so very much in terms of time and effort to Urban Sketchers that it seems remiss not to try and mark this change in some way.

Below I've got a timeline - and a few images and links - which those of you who came to Urban Sketchers late in the day may well find interesting, while the rest of us reflect on just how long it has been since Gabi had a very good idea!

Urban Sketchers Timeline - a Gabi perspective

• 2007: Gabi begins the Urban Sketchers story - and creates a Flickr group for those interested in urban sketching.  This is the original group.

In 2007, a global community of urban sketchers began to form when Seattle-based journalist and illustrator Gabriel Campanario created an online forum “for all sketchers out there who love to draw the cities where they live and visit, from the window of their homes, from a cafe, at a park, standing by a street corner... always on location, not from photos or memory.”  Our history

•  2008: The Urban Sketchers blog was set up by Gabi - who invited others to join. I feel very privileged to say I was one of the original 100 who joined Urban Sketchers in the very early days. Here's a link to Gabi's introduction as a correspondent - Meet the correspondents: SEATTLE > Gabi Campanario - dated 29th October 2008. (The following day I was introducing myself!)

Favourite art instruction books about subjects you draw and paint

Today I propose we all think about the best and/or most helpful art instruction books about the different kinds of subject matter that people draw and paint e.g.

• portraiture and people
• animals and wildlife
• landscape - including urban and marine contexts
• still life and floral art
• genre art - everyday scenes

Interestingly when I first asked the question about "which is your favourite art book?" in 2009, most of the answers revolved around the craft and techniques of drawing and painting and how to make a picture rather than about the special issues and aspects of different types of subject matter.

So with this review I'm going to start at the end as it were with a view to filling the gap.

Which is the best and/or most helpful book about....

The questions are:

• Do you have a favourite art book? (What is it and why?)
• Is there one book which had a huge impact on you and your work?

Other questions which tend to make you realise which books are valued most are:

• Which book(s) do you perennially recommend to others?
• Which book(s) will you never ever lend out?

In addition, here are some more detailed questions about subject matter to activate the brain cells. (I sometimes find I can't generate answers to very generic questions until somebody asks me something more precise!). These focus on different aspects of the subject matter - because some books are very good at one particular aspect.

Some of my books about drawing people and painting portraits and self-portraits

People and portraiture

Which is the best and/or most helpful book for learning about:

• how the body works?
• the structure of the head and face?
• lighting a person/people for 
• how to group people in an artwork?
• how to paint a portrait?
• how to paint a self-portrait?
• how to handle a portrait commission

Animals and wildlife

Which is the best and/or most helpful book about for learning about:

• animal anatomy for artists?
• drawing and/or painting cats?
• drawing and/or painting dogs?
• drawing and/or painting birds
• how to handle a pet portrait commission
• how to approach wildlife paintings?
• how to draw and paint animals from life?
• how to use reference photographs in an intelligent way?

Landscapes

Which is the best and/or most helpful book for learning about:

• the basics of landscape painting?
• more advanced approaches to landscape painting?
• painting plein air?
• drawing and painting trees?
• drawing and/or painting skies, weather and atmosphere?
• drawing and/or painting water?
• drawing and/or painting in an urban context?

Some of my books about landscape painting and urban sketching
(with more in the sketching and painting sections!)

Still life and floral art

Which is the best and/or most helpful book for learning about:

• setting up and lighting a still life
• drawing/painting a still life
• floral art
• food art
• botanical art
• strict botanical illustration

Genre scenes (everyday life)

This term is usually used to relate to people engaged in everyday activity - although this is not a topic which seems to generate a lot of art books!

Which is the best and/or most helpful book for learning about:

• choosing and selecting everyday scenes when drawing/painting from life
• recreating everyday scenes
• using reference material for drawing/painting scenes from everyday life

My Best Books about.... websites

These are the websites I've created over the years which aim to pull together listings of the best books on an art topic.

• The Best Books about How to Draw People
• How to draw and paint animals and birds
• The Best Books about Landscape Art
• How to draw perspective
• Still Life - Resources for Artists
• Flowers in Art - Resources for Artists
• The Best Botanical Art Instruction Books

Making a mark - Artists' Favourite Art Books in 2014

It's time to update the list I keep of the favourite art books you like. 

There's no two ways about it - some art instruction books go on and on forever because they have a huge fan base. They get revised and reprinted on a regular basis and some of them sell millions of copies.

Others seem to have the status of a 'best kept secret' where you're only allowed to know about them once you've proved your value as an artist!

At the same time, there are new books coming out all the time which very soon 'make their mark' and join that list of favourite art books.  I know I've got books which have come out in the last five years which will be on many people's favourite art books list for many years to come.

Here is my current listing of Artists’ Favourite Art Books

Your favourite art books - five years on

It's now more than five years since that original review of favourite art books and I'm now aiming to do a major review - with posts every day this week. 

I first started reviewing what sort of art instruction books artists liked  in 2009 with Your favourite art books - what you like.  Last year I focused on what were the new books you liked in Your NEW Favourite Art Books.

The questions remain essentially the same

• Do you have a favourite art book?
• Is there one book which had a huge impact on you and your work?

Other questions which tend to make you realise which books are valued most are:

• Which book(s) do you recommend to others?
• Which book(s) will you never ever lend out?

What would be very helpful is if we can all share the reasons why we find different books to be very helpful.  What suits one person might not help others in the same way.

I'm going to tackle this day by day by looking at different types of art instruction book.

This week I'm going to focus on the different categories and the categories for the next four days are:

• Subject Matter (Monday)
• Drawing and Sketching (Tuesday)
• Painting - all media (Wednesday)
• Colour and Composition (Thursday)
• Being an artist / art business & marketing (Friday)

Please start having a think about what your favourite books are - the ones you recommend to others and won't lend out!

a small section of my book shelves holding art books!

You'll be able to read what books people recommend as their comments get posted. You might want to bookmark a posts so you can come to come back to it easily and read the results

In addition, I will also publish a summary of the results of this request for recommendations in a later post and, where relevant on my websites "The Best Books about....".

I will also link to people's blogs where they have written a good quality review of a book.

The Best Books about Botanical Art and Artists

I've split my website about the Best Books about Botanical Art in three.  It used to cover both botanical art instruction and botanical artists.

[UPDATED 23 December 2016 - for subsequent movement of content about botanical art books to a new website which is all about Botanical Art and Artists]

The revised and new web pages are as follows

The Best Botanical Art Instruction Books
Learn about botanical art from the best botanical art books and botanical illustration books. Read reviews about which are the best botanical art instruction books - for those wanting to develop their skills in drawing and painting plants and flowers.

The Best Botany Books for Botanical Artists and Illustrators
Did you know that RHS Gold Medal winning artists often have a very strong botanical theme to their artwork? Strict botanical illustration standards requires a knowledge of botany. Would you like to know more about botany which is helpful to botanical artists?
The first site I split out - focusing on botany for botanical artists - has had a very good reception as it appears there was no site which brought all the resources together in one place.

The Best Books about ​Botanical Art History, Artists & IllustratorsIf you love botanical art and want to know more about some of the important the artists - in the past and present - who have created botanical art and illustration then this is the site for you. This site highlights key events in the story of botanical art and focuses on the best books about specific and outstanding Botanical Artists.

I've now got a third site a new website called Botanical Art and Artists which aims to tell the story of specific botanical artists in history and the major themes in the development of botanical art which provided a context for their work:

• early herbals and florilegia - Leonart Fuchs, Basilius Besler and
  Alexander Marshal
• exploration in the age of enlightenment - Maria Sibylla Merian and Sydney Parkinson
• the impact on the Linnaeus classification on botanical illustration - Georg Dionysius Ehret
• botanical artists and great gardens - Franz Bauer and Pierre Redoute

It starts with great botanical artists of the 20th century - Rory McEwen and Arthur Harry Church.

I've got a few more artists to add in - I'm just trying to decide who's in and who's out!

I'm also anticipating developing a further website about great flower painters - which will include artists from the likes of Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder through to Rennie McIntosh and impressive contemporary flower painters.

Which flower painters - past and present - have impressed you the most?

Makingamark's Top 10 Fine Art Books in November 2012

I've reviewed the listings and updated Makingamark's Top 10 Fine Art Books and have identified the best art books in November 2012.

This is always a very long exercise  and one which I was getting bored doing earlier this year as the books had started to 'stick' and there were very few changes in the listings.

However, after people worked out how to "fix" Amazon listings,  it would appear that Amazon has changed its approach and it now seems likely I'll be back to doing an update on at least at least a quarterly if not monthly basis.

However right now - this is the one to inform your response to any questions from relatives or friends along the lines of "Would you like an art book for Christmas?"!

Here's the table of contents (with embedded links to the website)

1. How this list is compiled each month

1. *** TOP DRAWING BOOKS ***

1. DRAWING - Top Rated Drawing Book in NOVEMBER 2012

1. DRAWING - Best Selling Drawing Book in NOVEMBER 2012

1. *** TOP PAINTING BOOKS ***

1. PAINTING - Top Rated Painting Book in NOVEMBER 2012

1. PAINTING - Best Selling Book in NOVEMBER 2012

1. The Best Books about Painting

1. ***TOP BOOKS ABOUT ARTISTS***

1. ARTISTS: Top Rated Book in NOVEMBER 2012

1. ARTISTS - Best Selling Book in NOVEMBER 2012

1. *** TOP BOOKS ABOUT ART HISTORY ***

1. ART HISTORY: Top Rated Book in NOVEMBER 2012

1. ART HISTORY - Best Selling Book in NOVEMBER 2012

1. *** TOP BUSINESS BOOKS FOR ARTISTS ***

1. THE ART BUSINESS: Top Rated Art Book in NOVEMBER 2012

1. THE ART BUSINESS - Best Selling Art Book in NOVEMBER 2012

Commentary November 2012

I've picked out a few of the book for comment below.