Sunday, April 19, 2009

19th April 2009 - Who's made a mark this week?


Exhibition by Jenny Wheatley at Llewellyn Alexander Gallery
Two pages from the Exhibition Catalogue


At the beginning of the year, I said I wanted to feature the work of more female artists on this blog. Although this aim is only getting off to a slow start, it's gradually becoming more of a reality.

Yesterday I visited the Llewellyn Alexander Gallery in London to drop off a CDrom of my cat drawings which are about to audition for the catalogue of the Society of Feline Artists exhibition in September. While there, I had a chance to see the current exhibition of work by Jenny Wheatley RWS NEAC. Jenny is very much a colourist - akin to the Fauvists - and she works in a very painterly style in oils, acrylics and watercolour. I've long admired her watercolours in particular. The exhibition contains 50 new works and is well worth a visit before it finishes on 2nd May. You can also view her paintings in the exhibition online. She's an artist who really knows how to make great use of pink! There are some great views out of windows in Cornwall (where she lives) and Collioure - which I always think of as Fauve Central!

Art Blogs

This week I launched my new blog - Making a Mark reviews...... with this post An introduction to "Making a Mark reviews......".

Many thanks to all the people who signed up to be subscribers or became a 'follower' in the first week - plus thanks to Teoh Yi Chie of Parka Blogs who did a review of the new blog in Making a Mark Reviews and Sherrie York (Brush and Baren) who also highlighted it!

Drawing and sketching
  • Cathy Johnson has set up a new group blog Sketching in Nature - which I've added into the 'Nature Corner' section of my blogroll. At the moment the group is invitation only.
Interviews with artists

Two interviews for fans of artwork in coloured pencil plus two book reviews (see below)
Painting
Print-making
Join the MPC Fine Art Print Club for a Print Day in May! Just make the commitment to print somewhere, somehow, on Saturday May 2. Send us a note letting us know where and when you’ll be printing. A phone # if possible. We will let everyone know who is participating. We can call each other, blog about it or just revel in the fact that we are all taking some time to do what we love to do.
Art Business & Marketing
* Selling out is harder than it looks. Diluting your product to make it more commercial will just make people like it less.
* If your plan depends on you suddenly being “discovered” by some big shot, your plan will probably fail. Nobody suddenly discovers anything. Things are made slowly and in pain.
* Don’t try to stand out from the crowd; avoid crowds altogether. There’s no point trying to do the same thing as 250,000 other young hopefuls, waiting for a miracle. All existing business models are wrong. Find a new one.
* The idea doesn’t have to be big. It just has to be yours. The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will.
gapingvoid
Andy Burnham, the culture secretary, will announce a £3m plan to make thousands of small grants of up to £1,000 to people who find creative reuse for vacant shops.
Art magazines operate in a sphere of journalism that knows none of the rules of logic, grammar, coherence or entertainment value that generally prevail in the world of the published. To get published in an art magazine you need to follow criteria that are almost the total opposite of what you need to write for general publications. Anything that might interest or enlighten the general reader - or any reader - is to be ruthlessly avoided.
Why must art magazines be so glamour obsessed?
Art Economy
"That whole Chinese collector cartel, it was kind of like a big Ponzi scheme," says Philip Tinari, an art critic and curator in Beijing. People kept recruiting new buyers to pour more money into the market, driving up prices. "It was quite clear what it was."
Art History
Art Studios
Art Supplies
Book Reviews

All my future book reviews will appear on my new blog Making A Mark Reviews. I'm happy to say that early comments are suggesting that I'm hitting the spot in terms of my analyis of a book!
Tomorrow I'll be posting a review of Ann Kullberg's new book due to be published next month.

Copyright
Exhibitions
Tips and techniques
Websites, blogging and twittering
You will have two options on the ballot, as shown below: 1) the new Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities (SRR), which incorporate feedback from users and experts received during the 30-day comment period, or 2) the current Terms of Use, which were developed by Facebook and did not go through an outside comment period.
  • Feedlitz News stepped up to the plate to explain On RSS Subscriber Counts and FeedBurner Metrics. I read to the end and I'm not sure I'm any the wiser other than that Google/Feedburner is messing up big time and, as the post suggests, it's hardly as if they don't have enough money to fix it if that's what it takes!
  • For those who like webware it's worth taking a look at the pages of the finalists in webware 100. I find there's always something new I haven't spotted before which is worth investigating
  • Is anybody else bored of reading twitterings in blogs? I've got no problem with those who take a twitter and expand on it and add value to it on their blogs but I'm afraid I just don't see the point of reproducing twitters on blogs. In the week that Oprah finally made it on to Twitter (but not without comment and yet more comment) I read a couple of articles which suggest another perspective on Twitter - Chris Cooper on CNET news wrote I'm officially dropping out of the Twitter gab fest and Cosmo Landesman has an entertaining article about Middle-aged ‘me’ mob reinvent Great British bore in today's Sunday Times.
and finally.......

I counted up my dead desktops and laptops recently and discovered I had five! I really must get their hard drives sorted so I can dispose of them!

Every time a computer dies, I am so glad that I use webmail. When your computer dies your webmail doesn't. You get the new computer, boot up, login and there it all is - with lots of missives from people symapthising with your problems (for which many thanks). Plus I'm always really grateful to be still able to access copies of documents that I've sent to people which didn't get included in the latest back-up.

I've been using webmail since the early 90s and I think that means I might officially qualify as a dinosaur! For those of you who have worked your way through different web options for email you'll be amused by an article about What Your Webmail Choice Reveals About You. According to this I am deceased (having been one of the very, very early Compuserve users) but have revived and morphed into a Thirtysomething who is trying to feel as cool as twentysomething and who also hates Microsoft!

For the record I'm still clinging onto life and won't be seeing 50 again!

5 comments:

  1. I very much enjoyed The Colored Pencil Painting Bible but I'm so disappointed with myself for wanting to go right out and buy it when it's the first cp book you've reviewed on the new blog!

    Agree re Twitter. It's so teenage and girlie, I can't believe it's taken off (other than with teenage girls!). I can't understand the appeal to write or to read it!

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  2. Just scrolling through this whole post made my sleepy eyes pop out, thanks once again for a wonderful, educative, informative and insightful post!

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  3. Thanks for a post that will keep me online longer this week - lots of great resources and artists to check out. And that's for including my article in your list!

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  4. Thanks for the mention. I got a bit side tracked finishing the studio earlier this month but starting today the posts will get more focused.

    The lighting post (the one most asked about) should be ready by end of the week. My lighting totally rocks :)

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  5. Thanks for the mention! Inkteraction is turning out to be an interesting place to connect with other printmakers. And thank you, as always, for way more material than I can possibly find my way through!

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