5th October 2008 - Who's made a mark this week?

Flying Dunlin by Celia Smith ASWLA
Wire and Tunnock Cake Wrappers
copyright - work: Celia Smith / photo:Katherine Tyrrell

The feature this week is wild!

I was supposed to be sitting in the New Gallery of Royal West of England Academy in Bristol this morning at the AGM of the UK Coloured Pencil Society (UKCPS) - and then attending the Private View of the 7th UKCPS's 7th Annual International Open Exhibition in the same gallery in the afternoon - see the UKCPS News post.

That was before the severe weather warning. There's a band of absolutely torrential rain passing across southern England today. I've had to drive in these severe weather warnings on business before now. In fact I once crossed the Severn Bridge just before they closed it and drove to the west coast of Wales on a Sunday night in one. I then spent the next week finding ways round all the flooding. Once bitten, twice shy!

So instead I'm sat in London with Canary Wharf lost in the rain mist outside my window. (Now there's another series I ought to get going again!)

Instead, I'm going to be writing about the UKCPS Annual Exhibition tomorrow - after I've written the blog post announcing the winners on UKCPS News tomorrow morning! ;)

My feature artist this week is Celia Smith ASWLA who works in copper wire to produce the most stunning 3D work of birds. I was completely bowled over by her work at the 45th exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Art which I went to see at the Mall Galleries this week (my review of it will be posted on my blog later this next week). Every single piece of hers that I saw was absolutely 'knock-out'. They all made me stand and stare as I encountered them from the beginning of the exhibition to the end. The image at the top is one such.

One of the things I really liked about her work was that it actually gained from being placed close to a vertical surface and became even more 3D due to the impact of lighting and shadows. Another aspect I loved was that all her birds were acutely observed from the form to the line to the very behaviour of the bird she was portraying in wire.

She really demonstrates very clearly the huge value to be gained from working from life and making studies before you begin. Do check out her website where you can see more of her work.

Congratulations to....Richard Bell who is celebrating the 10th anniversary of Wild West Yorkshire - his online nature diary.

Richard has got a new book out Drawing on Reserves (nice pun!) which combines a practical guide to drawing wildlife with keeping a sketchbook nature diary.

Drawing on Reserves by Richard Bell
(Willow Island Editions) Paperback
ISBN: 987-1-902467-17-7 (May 2008)

Art Blogs

• First a reminder for all those in the UK that October is the month when we have The Campaign for Drawing's Big Draw 2008 - there's even more events this year for people of all ages and abilities - plus my blog post links to the download for instructions by Tim Hunkin on how to make a Camera Obscura or how to make a Camera Lucida
  
• I had a chance to check out some of the past posts on c-monster and rather liked these two
• Ten tips for making art that will last forever. Or at least a couple of years.
• The week in coma-inducing artspeak.
• Charley Parker (Lines and Colors ) has had the same idea as me and has already written a post about Karin Jurick's new venture Different Strokes from Different Folks (Karin Jurick)
• Tracy Hegelson (Works by Tracy Hegelson ) has got a new blog "Tracy Helgeson" and posted quite a few small works there - take a look!
• Ed Terpening (Life Plein Air ) has a post about the use of roads in compositional design with an interesting comment on testing where the eye lands and how it tracks when viewing.
  

Art and efficient working has received a focus of late by some artist bloggers - here's a couple:

• Lori Woodward Simons last month posted about Freedom VS Self-Discipline in relation to being an artist
• Lisa Call (Lisa Call - Contemporary Textile Art) - who readily admits to also being a geek - wrote about
  
• how she did using My Scrum Taskboard in September. The post includes links to previous posts which explain what scrum is.
• The Top Ten Reason Why I Might Want to Tweet Instead of Make Art

As an artist if I made art 24/7 and never marketed it I would eventually run out of room in my house for the art. I spend a full 50% of my time running my art business.

Art Business, Art Economy and Marketing

The meltdown continued apace this week - which prompted some of the following - plus others of relevance

• Taking action after the bubble has burst - my post on Tuesday
  
• and then Managing Business Risks as an Artist on Wednesday (plus I'm hoping to post more in the coming weeks)
  
• and Art and the Economy - Resources for Artists is the new home for all relevant info - including......
  
• .....Tina Mammoser's The economy - a different take and Marsha Robinett's (The Extraordinary Pencil) suggestions for Recession-Proof Marketing Strategies

I'm looking to add more suggestions from artists about how to cope with these challenging times - let me know if you write a relevant blog post suitable for adding into my new information site.

We certainly live in curious times:

• Speed past this one fast if you don't want to know the Guardian's summary of the UK economy's gloomy all-round picture in economic snapshots - it's very depressing
  
• Just in case you've had a close encounter with your credit worthiness/bank/savings recently you might want to take a look at Lifehacker's Batten Down Your Hatches for the Financiapocalypse
  
• Plus at a time when people's attention is diverted to other gave financial matters, it's best to not forget that there are still fraudsters out there. Internet fraud pushes card losses over £300m - The Guardian reports that Fraud against UK credit and debit card customers rose by 14% in the first six months of the year driven by a surge in online and overseas crime

online banking fraud jumped a massive 185% driven by an increase in phishing attacks, where fraudsters send a fake email to bank customers asking them to give their password and other personal details.

It'll also be interesting to see what recent events in the money world do to the traffic stats for online art marketing sites - see Empty Easel's chart of the different sites he's tracking.

I'm just wondering which of the sites have their figures distorted by forum traffic which appears to represent the site as having more buyers than it actually has. You know traffic is 'clean' when any forum has a completely separate domain name - as Squidoo has for its SquidU Forum.

Dan is doing an update of his site at EmptyEasel.com this week - I'll be interested to see what the redesign looks like. In the meantime, last week..........

• Denise Ivey Telep a writer for EmptyEasel.com wrote about The Financially Successful Artist: Commercial Sell Out or Role Model?

Each group, the “fine artists” and the “commercial artists,” both admit to wanting to sell their work, and to make a living from their creativity—yet there is a clear sense of elitism in the fine arts camp.

I've been looking around for updates on the Orphan Works Bill and copyright matters generally

• Alyson Stanfield has this The Shawn Bentley Orphan Works Act of 2008 on ArtBizBlog
• a controversial bill to enforce copyright enforecement has also had a hearing
• In Blunt Terms, Copyright Lawyers, Researchers, Librarians Blast Anti-NIH Bill

Advocacy group Public Knowledge’s Alex Curtis called the September 11th hearings blitz “a perfect storm of bad copyright legislation.”......

Then Kirsty and I explored funding for the arts - which led via a circuitous route to Barack Obama.

The Canadian author and well known knitter, Stephanie Pearl-McPhee has just written a searingly polite but vicious post about the recent obnoxious comments about the arts made by Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper

• so started Kirsty Hall as she commented on some comments made in Kirsty's post An average artist responds but she took exception to a comment made in response to Stephanie's blog post (on Yarn Harlot) and explained why [updated to revise a misunderstanding]
  
• ....and I then responded
  
• ....and then Kirsty responded to my comments in More on funding
• ....and I then got totally distracted because I started to read Yarn Harlot and found a link to Tracy in Illinois and her blog Stringativity. Tracy had a a post back in December last year where the blogger wrote about her Yarn Harlot - ness which involved asking Barack Obama to hold her knitting while she took a picture! OK - so I wander around bit while looking at art blogs and this has nothing to do with the art business - but it's a good story and a good blog post!
  

Art Collections and Collecting

• I loved Tracy Hegelson's injunction to Forget the Economy, Go Shopping! Tracy is a painter who is also a collector. But I loved her Painting the Walls (with a lot of buts) even better! It's just soooooooooooooo important to get the colour of the walls right to hang your collection on! ;)
  
• I did an analysis of the figures for the Final Survey Results for "Do you collect art?" and asked some questions........but not a lot of response so far. Do take a look and see if you can work it out.
  

Art Competition and Exhibitions

There were lots of exhibitions were opening in the UK this week including

• The Shortlist for the Turner Prize was announced (yawn!). The Turner Prize 2008 exhibition takes place at Tate Britain, 30 September 2008 – 18 January 2009.
• British Museum - Statuephilia - works by Antony Gormley, Damien Hirst, Ron Mueck, Noble and Webster and Marc Quinn. As ever it's the bling which gets the attention - read Kate Moss gold statue unveiled at British Museum (which got filed in the Daily Tekepgraph under 'celebrity news') and Art Knowledge's The British Museum opens " Statuephilia ~ Contemporary Sculptors"
• The 87th Annual Open Exhibition of the Society of Graphic Fine Art at the Menier Gallery in Southwark was opened on Tuesday by Ken Howard and includes demonstrations which are also listed as part of the Big Draw's events.
• As indicated above the 7th Annual International Open Exhibition of the UK Coloured Pencil Society opened on Friday at the Royal West of England Academy in Bristol.
  
• The Wapping Group of Artists has an exhibition about London, its River and The Cutty Sark at the Guildhall Art Gallery, Guildhall Yard, London. The Exhibition is open from 2nd October to 26th October. Unfortunately I can't give you the proper link for the Guildhall Art Gallery as the City of London's website seems to have crashed in a fairly spectacular fashion! Another fallout from the credit crunch?

In the USA Charley Parker has done a very helpful post about Paths to Impressionism, French and American Landscape Paintings from the Worcester Art Museum

Art group

• How many pastel artists out there have come across the pastel artists group on Flickr? It's discussions are infrequent and I'm wondering if this is to do with lack of awareness.

Art Projects - Working in a Series

• Working in a series seems to have a lot of appeal for a lot of people. Certainly What are your reasons for working in a series? got a lot of responses - which helped inform my new Making A Mark Poll: What's the main reason why you work in a series? which you can now see in the side column
• here are some of the initial responses
  
• Andrea Pratt's post about making the rules (Colouring Outside The Lines ). Check out also her Celtic lunar tree calendar which is stunning!
• Tina Mammoser's Working in a series: a response (The Cycling Artist )
  
• Vivien Blackburn's working in series (Paintings, prints and Stuff )
  

Art Videos

• Further to my post about Ways of seeing art on television'm enormously grateful to Gladys who has found it on You Tube. It takes a bit of perseverance as all the episodes have been split into sections. You start here with WAYS OF SEEING (first episode) 1/4

Art Workshops

• Michael Chesley Johnson has been writing about a workshop with Lois Griffel. See
• Lois Griffel Workshop - Day 5
• Lois Griffel Workshop - Day 4
• Lois Griffel Workshop - Day 3
• Lois Griffel Workshop - Day 2
• Lois Griffel Workshop - Day 1

Although drawing wasn't the point of this week's workshop, Lois noted - and I whole-heartedly agree - that drawing is a fundamental skill for any painter, Impressionist or otherwise. You simply can't hide poor drawing.
Michel Chesney Johnson

Websites, Blogging and the Internet

• Have you noticed how the "Blogs I'm following" tab on Blogger dashboard now has images - much better!!! :)
• Plus on 1st October Google created a new homepage for Google Blog Search which now shows clusters for hot topics plus categories in the side column - although there isn't one for art!
  
• Empty Easel has an article about Don’t DO That! 12 Web-design Mistakes that Online Artists Should Never Make which has lots of jolly good tips. I disagree with just one recommendation (6. Don’t be stingy with the size of your large images.) which is that if you actually upload as large an image as possible (ie the one you get when you click an image to see the bigger version) you're actually creating quite a load for anybody trying to access your blog post plus contributing to how much of their download allowance you use up. Also the bigger the image the easier it is to copy. I always use 500 pixels longest length and less than 100KB as my basic rule of thumb for all images and only exceed that for a good reason.
  
• Last month, Tim Berners Lee announced that he has set up The World Wide Web Foundation. You can read the FAQs here.
  

The mission of the Foundation is:

• to advance One Web that is free and open,
• to expand the Web's capability and robustness,
• and to extend the Web's benefits to all people on the planet.

and finally.....

Two items - which are sort of connected.

Thanks to Edward Winkleman for his post Rather than Checking the Dow Every 3 Seconds which led me to........Crisis in the Credit System - by Melanie Gilligan, a Canadian-born conceptual artist based in London; she had shows at Tate Britain and the Serpentine Gallery last year. I love the fact that it's been filmed in the East End not far from me and I find out about it via a New York Gallery Owner blogger!

Blog Action Day is October 15th and this year the topic is Poverty. Here's the blog to keep up to date with what's happening. Visit the Resources pages for help on ideas. Why not create a draft post now for October 15th so you won't forget?

Blog Action Day is an annual nonprofit event that aims to unite the world’s bloggers, podcasters and videocasters, to post about the same issue on the same day. Our aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.

Making A Mark Poll: What's the main reason why you work in a series?

The Allium Series 2008
coloured pencil
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I'm getting a lot of truly fascinating answers to the question I posed on Monday What are your reasons for working in a series?

The thinking I did to write that post and come up with both categories and types of reasons - plus all the responses to date have helped me formulate the Making A Mark opinion poll survey for October.

Allium #4 (pencil)
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I'm so mean - I'm not allowing you the option of multiple answers! That's so we can try and tease out the driving motivation behind series and see how it comes out.

The question is: What's your MAIN reason for working in a series?

With the emphasis being on the word MAIN. Having recognised there's lots of reasons why we work in series I want to try and pin it down a bit more and see if you can work out which is usually the dominant reason for you.

There is no right or wrong answer. The options are:

• I have to feed my obsession
  
• I have to paint in series
  
• I need to explore my subject
  
• I want to explore an idea
• I like to explore a technique
• I want to tell a story in stages
  
• I'm creating an identity for my work
  
• I'm creating work for an exhibition
• I want my work to be more collectible

You'll note that I've also left out what 'paint what I like best' as I suspected that would have romped home the winner for all sorts of different reasons depending on how people interpreted it - differently!

You can find the poll in the side column just below the search facility and just above an example of one of my prints. You have four weeks to respond - the poll closes midday (GMT) on Friday 31st October 2008.

Please encourage other people to vote as well by forwarding this post or emailing it or copying this link to this post Making A Mark Poll: What's the main reason why you work in a series? - I think we'll all find this poll very interesting! :)

Note: This is the first time I've posted my Allium Series together and I'm quite chuffed! I saw some paintings yesterday which gave me food for thought about the benefits of adopting a standard size for the series and I think I now need to now decide what this should be for this series - and then get on and do some more...........

The Campaign for Drawing's Big Draw 2008

The Campaign for Drawing is again inviting people of all ages to participate in The Big Draw - and use drawing to engage with the past, present and future.

The ninth Big Draw runs from 1 to 31 October 2008, with a special focus on Saturday 11 October when a very large number of events will be running.

I'm a huge and vocal supporter of the Big Draw having participated myself for the last two years. It's absolutely amazing in terms of the way it has engaged with such a diverse range of partners to bring drawing activities to people of all ages. It's also truly admirable for the way that it opens up people's eyes to the immense scope of drawing practice, the range of people who use drawing in their daily lives and the vast number of materials that you can use to draw with in any number of different ways.

The Big Draw - Drawing Together
in the "Big Picture Frame"
with Zandra Rhodes and Andrew Logan
16" x 11", pen and ink and coloured pencils in sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Regular readers may remember my posts last year about:

• the launch day last year Drawn into The Big Draw 2007 and Sketching The Big Draw East
• A Drawing Weekend (Big Draw Weekend 2007) and Drawing Covent Garden Big Draw
• and, of course, there was my own The Big Drawing Book Review - plus the numerous subsequent reviews of books about drawing which you can now find in The Big Drawing Book Review - Resources for Artists.

In October there are 1,000 venues holding big draw events including: galleries, museums, science centres, heritage and environmental sites, libraries, archives, community and shopping centres, colleges, schools and art clubs are hosting drawing activities for people of all abilities.

Activities are mainly free and widely accessible. Find an event in your area. This is my link for events in London.

Since I've got involved, I've noticed a huge increase in participation by various organisations including the various museums, art galleries and art societies. Is you art society taking part?

Last year we hosted the launch of The Big Draw – I have rarely seen so many people actively engaged in making art in our galleries. The institution was transformed.
David Anderson, Director of Learning and Interpretation, Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington

They are going to be exploring technical, scientific, architectural, archaeological or fine art drawing. Participants of all ages are invited to help expand the boundaries of drawing - experimenting with pencils, crayons, charcoal, sand, clay, digital imagery, choreographed movement, vapour trails and fire drawings.

We are immensely grateful to the Campaign for Drawing for all it has done. Drawing is now firmly on the agenda here, and we hope to continue for many years to come.
Kathy Adler, Director of Education, The National Gallery

Special events include:

• 10th - 18th October Transports of Delight at St Pancras International
• 11th October National Big Draw Day. At St Pancras visitors can learn about the station’s past and present engineering feats with ‘Walk & Draw’ tours (10 -11.30, 12.45 - 2.30, 3 - 5pm) headed by expert drawers from leading UK architectural and engineering practices.
  
• 27th October - The Big Picture Party at the National Library which is going to be celebrating the power of picture books in a family oriented event.
  

Plus extras!

• download instructions by Tim Hunkin on how to make a Camera Obscura or how to make a Camera Lucida
  
• online sketch tools to play with - your kids will love these
• a video by Stephen Appleby in which he talks about how he became an illustrator and explains some of the ideas behind his work. He also shares some of his top drawing tips.
  

The Campaign for Drawing has allowed people to draw, and to gather together to draw, in the same way that they gather together to sing. It has brought thousands of people into our galleries and museums. Many of these might not otherwise have come; and almost more importantly, the Campaign has, noticeably, altered the relationship of these visitors with the institutions. They arrive with a purpose, their interest has a focus. This is a triumph of the best kind of accessibility…establishing the importance of drawing not only as a mode of self-expression but a tool in learning and in science and design.
Quentin Blake, Campaign patron and illustrator

As well as trying to get to some of the events I'm probably going to be posting some some more drawing book reviews on this blog and adding them to The Big Drawing Book Review - Resources for Artists.

If you'd like to add any reviews of drawing books you've read please refer to the original post and then leave a link in the comments section below so that I can find your blog and relevant post.

Plus do let me know if you go to any of the events!

Final Survey Results for "Do you collect art?"

Making A Mark Survey: Do you Collect Art?
67 respondents in September 2008 (survey now closed)

67 people responded to the Making A Mark Survey in September which asked the question Do You Collect Art?

I didn't ask anything about background, but I know from my stats that most of the people who read this blog have some sort of arts-related connection.

The main conclusions arising from the survey are:

• 58% of the people responding have a collection or have started to collect
• 20% aspire to collecting with the great majority of these inhibited by finances at the moment rather than any practical issues to do with 'how do you go about building a collection'.
• only 21% were not interested in collecting art - they only wanted to produce it

What this means is very nearly four fifths of the readers who responded want to collect art and more than half, very nearly two thirds are actually collecting art.

If these sort of figures are being repeated on every other art blog it could be that the vast majority of the audience we share as artist bloggers are people who want to buy - even if some of them are a little short of the necessary cash right now.

On the other hand, it might mean that the survey tended to attract only those who are collecting or interested in collecting!

Speaking personally, I don't particularly push my work on this blog - but nor am I swamped with people asking me if they can buy my work. So, what this survey result does is make me think whether there are reasons why people might not buy even if they want to collect art. Plus what are all the different ways in which you as an artist can make it easier - or more difficult - for people to buy your work - or even my work! :)

I'm now wondering whether any of you have informative answers for the following questions:

• What, in your experience, inhibits people from buying art from a blog?
• What, in your experience, helps convert people who look into people who buy from a blog?
• What makes you want to buy art on the internet - and specifically from a blog?
• What makes you want to keep buying from the same person?
  

In other words, for any given work which a viewer might like - what would make a difference and create a sale and what makes people move on to the next post and the next blog.

I'd love to know what you think - please leave a comment below with your explanation

Managing Business Risks as an Artist

Do you know what is the biggest business risk you're exposed to?

Have you ever thought about how likely it is to happen? Or indeed what sort of impact it would have if it did?

Do you have any plans in place to address that risk? Or  any other major risks that you face?

This is the first in a short series of posts about how to manage risk better and make and market art in a challenging economic environment.

The Catnapping Series: Sleeping on the job
pen and ink
copyright Katherine Tyrrell - all rights reserved

Risk management

Risk management sounds very 'city analyst' but in fact it's just a simple and systematic approach to identifying, assessing and addressing the normal risks that you may face in the context you operate in.

EXAMPLE: The risk is that the studio burns down, destroying equipment, art supplies and all stock kept in the studio. If this happens the artist has nowhere to make art and has lost all stock for upcoming exhibitions which will impact on income. It’s not very likely to happen but catastrophic if it does.

The time required to deal with finding a replacement studio and replenishing supplies and equipment and dealing with an insurance claim is all time which cannot be used for generating or marketing artwork.

Actions to reduce risk – keep a fire extinguisher in the studio and practice safe habits in relation to any inflammable materials.

Actions to mitigate risk – have an insurance policy for the studio building, its contents and the impact on your business if it is destroyed or severely damaged
A Making A Mark Guide to the Art Economy: Managing Business Risks

If you manage your risks well you can:

• reduce the likelihood of very nasty surprises coming at you from out of left field
  
• limit the scope for business catastrophes and going out of business
  
• feel more confident about taking risks when developing your business - you know what they are and you know how to deal with them
  
• make more cost-effective decisions about future directions for making and marketing your art and, who knows, you might make more money too!
  

I've written a guide about Managing Business Risks which outlines an approach which can be used by artists to identify, assess and address business risks. Any artist who can read, think, make lists and count to 10 can employ the approach I've outlined.

It also contains a number of practical examples to illustrate different aspects of the approach - two of which you can read in this blog post.

• The guide is too long for a blog post and is avaialble for FREE (personal and educational use only) as a pdf file (224KB) and can be found on my Making A Mark website here.
• For more Making A Mark Guides see the Directory

EXAMPLE You are a fine artist who produces etchings. Your printing press is absolutely vital to your production. Risk of its failure is of critical importance to you and you rate the risk importance factor as a 10. However your printing press is very old and very simple in terms of moving parts. It’s never failed before and has a good record of performance. So you rate the likelihood of it failing as 2. Therefore the combined risk rating of your printing press failing is 20 which is not very high.

However, because the press is so critical to your work you decide to source an alternative printing press so you know what you would do should it ever fail. You make a reciprocal agreement with another fine art printer that you’ll help each other out if either of you should have problems with your press.
A Making A Mark Guide to the Art Economy: Managing Business Risks

This isn't something I've invented. The principles have been around for quite some time. There are a number of variations on a theme around and about but my outline is very similar to the standard business practice I've employed previously in relation to very large organisations. All I've really done is taken the basic principles and translated them into the context of an artist's business.

This guide is also included in my new information site see Art and the Economy - Resources for Artists.

I'm also including blog posts from both artists and people who write about the art business. If you have a blog post which is relevant please identify a link using the comments function.

Note: The Catnapping series is a series of sketches of cats asleep - which are always drawn from life. The website page explains the rationale behind the series. Latterly they've nearly always been of my Somali cat Cosmo who's very fond of a kip! You can find the catnapping drawings here and prints here - although I've got more drawings I need to convert to prints!