Making A Mark on Art - and the end of Squidoo

Over the last seven years I've created some 160 websites about art (Making A Mark on Art) and artists (About Artists) on Squidoo. Yesterday I had news that Squidoo is closing down. Seth Godin has arranged for my featured sites to be merged with HubPages and the current links to them will become redirects after October.




I don't know if I'm surprised or not - I've been predicting the demise of

Sophie Ploeg and The Lace Trail - BP Travel Award exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery

Sophie Ploeg's BP Travel Award exhibition 'The Lace Trail" can currently be seen at the National Portrait Gallery in London - until 21 September 2014.  It then tours to Sunderland and Edinburgh in 2014-15.



Sophie Ploeg with part of The Lace Trail
the exhibition for the BP Travel Award 2013
at the National Portrait Gallery - 26 June - 21 September 2014


The exhibition follows on from Sophie

In praise of the older artist - Mary Anderson Grierson

It would appear that one of the perks of working for the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew for a long time is you get a bench outside the Palm House on your retirement or death. I came across a bench for Mary Anderson Grierson on Tuesday and looked her up when I got back home.



Hylocereus Undatus, night blooming cereus, 1985

pencil, ink and color wash

56 x 34 cm. (22 x 13.4 in.)

by the late

The layouts are landing in my inbox!

I don't think anything much is going to happen this week.

I've just been sent and have started going through the layouts for the book which means some intense work reviewing the layouts and then work to do as a result of them

I'll be back posting when I can.

In the meantime here's one of my drawings related to 'how to hold a pencil'!

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?"

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

Sarah Simblet and The New Sylva - a video

Back in 2008 I did a drawing class with Sarah Simblet about Drawing Trees at the National Gallery. She talked about a major project she had embarked upon to draw trees.

Little did I realise at the time this would lead her to illustrating a new and revised version of a very old book about trees. The New Sylva - published this month - is an updated book about trees which takes as its starting

Complete the draft and then upload it.......

one of the images in the bookIt's a 2 minute contour drawing,
done in a life class

Today is upload day - via Dropbox.  My book about drawing and sketching has started its journey to the Editor.........

Not quite sure when that journey is going to end as.....

It's going very slowly.........


Complete draft of book about drawing and sketching (done)
Get all your images in from contributors (