Ampersand Panels reach the UK - at long last!

Virtually the complete range of Ampersand panels are now available in the UK - from Jackson's Art Supplies.  

They are the business!  There are surfaces for every type of art medium (see below) and some work work well with more than one media.

These are the ones which are now going to be available in the UK:

• Aquabord - for watercolour. Check out 
• Painting in Watercolor: An Exercise using Aquabord™ with Karen Vernon
• Aquabord 2.0 Revisited
• Artist Panel - which comes in three different surfaces: Canvas, Basswood and Smooth
• Claybord - for ink and egg tempera (and a variety of other media). Check out 
• Graphic Media: Pen and Ink on Claybord™ and 
• Claybord used as Scratchboard
• Acrylic Painting on Claybord by Rock Newcomb
• Encausticbord - a new product for use with hot wax
• Gessobord - for those who like their boards with gesso already applied
• Pastelbord - for artists working in dry media who like a sanded surface eg pastel and coloured pencil artists. Check out 
• Innovative Pastel Methods on Pastelbord
• Scratchbord - for those who like to scratch at the surface to produce an image

I've imported Pastelbord in the past from the USA. It's a great surface to work on and I love the fact you can prder it in different sizes and colours. However what is so very impressive is the rigidity of the board and the fact it does not warp in any way and they can be framed without glass so long as the surface is robust (eg oil and acrylics) or sealed with a varnish (e.g. watercolour and coloured pencils).  Plus all the boards are eco-friendly and safe for artists to use.

For your further information on the Ampersand website there is

• a great FAQs page
• plus a Technical page gives you a summary of what art media works with which board. Just in case you miss it, this is their summary of how to choose the best board for the media you prefer to use
• plus the AmpersandArtsSupply Blog for features on what artists have produced using the different panels and lots of useful tips eg Resources for Framing Panels

Media	Product	Discussion
ACRYLICS	Claybord Gessobord Pastelbord	We highly recommend using thin washes of acrylics on Claybord. Or, try Gessobord for a less absorbent panel or Pastelbord for a surface with more texture and a toned ground.
AIRBRUSH	Claybord	Claybord is ideal for airbrush.
CALLIGRAPHY	Claybord	Ampersand recommends Claybord with this medium.
CASEIN	Claybord Gessobord	Claybord and Gessbord are both appropriate for use with casein.
EGG TEMPERA	Claybord	Use egg tempera on Claybord. Compare with panels you are preparing yourself.
ENCAUSTIC	Encausticbord	Encausticbord is made for the unique demands of encaustic painting.
GOUACHE	Aquabord	We recommend Aquabord for use with gouache.
GRAPHITE AND COLORED PENCILS	Claybord	Use graphite and colored pencils withClaybord.
INKS, INDIA INK, COLORED INKS	Claybord Scratchbord	We recommend Claybord with inks because they can be easily erased and manipulated.
MARKERS	Claybord	Use Claybord with markers and frame without glass.
OILS AND OIL STICKS	Claybord Gessobord	We recommend Gessobord for use with oils. Claybord may also be used but is very absorbent..
PASTELS	Pastelbord	We recommend Pastelbord for working with all types of pastels.
SCRATCHBOARD	Scratchbord	Use Scratchbord as a professional alternative to scratchboard paper.
WATERCOLORS	Aquabord	Use Aquabord, similar to cold press paper, for very wet watercolor washes.

 Summary of how different media work with Ampersand Products

Do also:

• read this blog post on the Jackson's Art Blog - Ampersand Painting Panels are Extraordinary Surfaces for Your Art - which explains all the different surfaces in detail.
• check out the new Ampersand page on the Jacksons website

Ampersand Panels are  hugely impressive - and I'm sure a lot of artists are going to want to try them for themselves.

NOTE: A more limited range of Ampersand Panels are also available from Ken Bromley Art Supplies.

Ecommerce software - analytical review of different options

If you are an artist and want to market and sell your art online then one of the things you'll end up doing sooner or later is investigate ecommerce software. The aim will be to try and evaluate whether any of them do what you want and which one might work best for you.

For those who have never had to deal with anything more threatening than a new version of Microsoft Office, this can be a major challenge!

The first thing you learn is that, with few exceptions, most of the software is generic and not targeted at artists.

I've just come across a website called G2Crowd which provides a way-in to:

• understanding what the options exist relating to ecommerce software
• typically in-depth customer reviews for different products
• an evaluation and rating of different business software according to market presence and customer satisfaction

Home Page - GCrowd website

The idea behind the site is that there is too much spin out there in relation to products available for sale in the marketplace - and not enough well informed reviews.  

• The idea is to eliminate "vendor spin and outdated analyst reports".  
• Products ranks are aggregated from peer reviews and social data. 
• The reviews are intended to be real, unbiased feedback or ....advice from people who had actually implemented and used the software and related services

This, for example, is its page relating to ecommerce software and below is the widget it uses for demonstrating how one site relates to another.

• The y axis is documenting presence in the marketplace with those in the top half being the bigger players
• the x axis looks at the satisfaction scoring attributed to different sites - with the more established sites tending to have more and higher scoring ratings.

These are the policies for grid rating objectives and grid rating methodology. 

Compare Best E-Commerce Software

This is how GCrowd describes the four quadrants of the four cell table

The best E-Commerce Software products are determined by customer satisfaction (based on user reviews) and scale (based on market share, vendor size, and social impact) and placed into four categories on the Grid:

• Leaders offer E-Commerce products that are rated highly by G2 Crowd users and have substantial scale, market share, and global support and service resources. Leaders include:Amazon Webstore, Paypal, PayPal Payments

• High Performers provide products that are highly rated by their users, but have not yet achieved the market share and scale of the vendors in the Leader category. High Performers include: Miva Merchant, ChargeBee, Shopify, Demandware, cleverbridge, BigCommerce

• Contenders have significant scale and resources, but their products have received below average user satisfaction ratings or have not yet received a sufficient number of reviews to validate their products. Contenders include: Magento, IBM WebSphere Commerce, Yahoo Merchant Solutions

• Niche vendors do not have the scale and market share of the Leaders. They may have been rated positively on customer satisfaction, but have not yet received enough reviews to validate their success. Niche include: Zuora, CloudCraze

It's worth taking a look and checking out what you currently use (I've just had some validation of my choice to use PayPal for payments by clients!) and investigating how well it stacks up relative to competitors.

To the extent that dedicated software for artists actually exists, you can assess whether (1) it's recognised and (2)  its performance in the market in general for that type of product.

The ecommerce categories for software are

• E-Commerce Platform
• Digital E-Commerce
• Shopping Cart
• Live Chat
• Order & Fulfillment Management
• Payment Gateway
• Product Reviews
• Subscription Management

Click any of these links above and you can find the software which comes into this category.

Use the column on the left to define attributes and further sub-categories which you want to focus on. You'll end up with a list of options for your particular needs eg for Digital E-Commerce Software

You can also use the platform to assess other business and marketing software - for example, find out which product is rated as the best email marketing tool

Review: Integrity Broken Link Checker - for websites and blogs

Websites and blogs for Artists: RECOMMENDED - A broken link checker which works.

For those artists with websites, you may or may not be aware that essential maintenance involves making sure that all the links on your website work.  Google's not fond of sites with broken links.

That's not a problem if you only have a few - but if you use a lot like I do then checking them can be just plain tedious unless you use a backlink checker. I've tried some in the past but today was the first time I felt moved to download a tool.

I've just downloaded The Integrity tool for Mac users which is an app produced by Peacock Media. I checked reviews of it online first and it's been around for ages and generally gets good reviews.

This is how it is described

Integrity is a link checker, no more, no less, no frills - and free (donationware). If you'd like:

• Advanced options such as nofollow, authentication, custom header fields
• XML sitemap generation and upload
• Page load speed test, SEO checks, HTML Validation
• Manage multiple sites and settings
• Full report exportable as html or pdf

It requires Mac OSX 10.6 or higher, Intel 64-bit - but they also have earlier versions of their tool available for earlier versions of the operaing system - which is a major plus. You don't often see that.

My experience of Integrity is that it's speedy, thorough and has turned up all sorts of links which were broken which I had no knowledge of.

• Some were really stupid ones - like including the Admin view URL when interlinking between pages of my website. 
• Others were ones which had just become out of date (my website goes back to 2005).

I recommend:

• using the Flat View option as that gives you the most detail in relation to locating the broken link  - and why it's broken.  This is what it looks like.  
• checking the bad link box ( on the top line menu) so you don't get ALL the links on the site listed.
• reviewing the worst problems using the 'by link' page

Integrity - Broken link checker: Example of a test check and the results for my portfolio website

On my portfolio website, it found and checked 1656 of 1656 links of which 41 were bad.
On this blog it found all sorts of problems which I had no idea about. It's actually a bit scary. Common culprits are blogs in the blogroll who've gone offline.

I have to say that I've not yet tried it out on Making A Mark - I think I might have to run that one overnight!

However I shall certainly be using this as a routine maintenance tool in future.

QoR - a new watercolour paint

Yesterday I updated my website The Best Watercolour Paint for Artists and included a new section about a new artists' watercolour paint which becomes available in the USA next month.

branding on the new dedicated QoR website

QoR WaterColor paint is produced by Golden who are well known for their acrylic paints.

The new section devoted to this paint includes links to:

• the new dedicated website
• other information about the new paint made available by Golden
• reviews and comments on the new paint by artists (eg Cathy Johnson) who have been provided with samples

Initial indications are that Golden's experience in acrylics is maybe also obvious in the formulation of this new paint. It'll be interesting to see what those painting traditional watercolours think of it.

RECOMMENDATION: I suggest people try one of the six colour trial pack of colours in the first instance to see whether they like how this new paint behaves.

Please report your experience of this new paint after you get your hands on it wherever is best for you. You can include a comment on this post if you like.

I expect that the website will undoubtedly expand and there will more information about availability in terms of distribution to art stories and online retailers in different countries in the near future.  My experience of such things is that roll-out might be somewhat slow with a focus on the USA only in the short-term. I'll update my website as and when new information becomes available. I won't be including sites which merely repeat a press release.

The price of paint

Jackson's Art Pricewatch Scheme is the sort of marketing effort by art supplies companies which impresses me. 

Jackson's Art website page for the Pricewatch Scheme

Pricewatch Scheme

Our dedicated team of price watchers will constantly check our online competitor’s prices for the most popular branded art materials so that we can guarantee that the lowest prices can always be found at Jacksonsart.com

I'm a committed buyer of goods from John Lewis and one of the reasons I do is because they promise to match the price of the same goods on sale somewhere else so that they always offer the lowest price on normal (ie not clearance) stock.

A commitment from art supplies companies to introduce a price watch comparison service has been long overdue.

The Jacksons scheme is not perfect.  They've picked popular products and very reasonably have matched it against "competitor websites chosen on the first search results for the term ‘art supplies’ on Google.co.uk"

Which means it doesn't cover every product and it doesn't cover every competitor - but it's a start.

It could also mean that art supplies companies start to look very carefully at the price they're charging and introduce a bit more competition into the marketplace.

However, one might be forgiven for not being aware that the system actually exists.  They don't exactly shout about it on the front page of their website!

In fact, it's new and if I hadn't read their 24th January blog post Price Watch scheme I wouldn't have known anything about it.

To my mind, the quality of this scheme will depend on reliable reporting and updating of prices across the board. I could imagine other art suppliers becoming very annoyed and even litigious if their prices are misrepresented in anyway - that's if the Trading Standards people don't get there first!

My conclusion is that it's good to see somebody trying this approach - let's see how it works in practice before arriving at any conclusions about the scheme as a whole.

Cost of shipping

My normal caution to individual artists when comparing prices for art materials is 'ALWAYS look at the cost of shipping' because of the scope for suppliers to balance losses on cutprice goods with premiums on shipping costs.  I've certainly spotted suppliers in the past who have operated according to this strategy.

In this instance I note Jackson's Shipping Information indicates all shipping - at UK standard postage rates - is free once you've topped £39.  The usual sort of premiums apply to the Islands and Ireland.

Arches Huile Oil Paper, Paper Rolls and Paper Pads - reviews and prices

Arches Oil Paper Pad (140 lb x 12 sheets)

Below you can find

• a video by Professor Steve Levin and Canson about the Arches® Oil paper: A new paper for oil painting
• links to reviews of the Oil Paper and Oil Paper Pads introduced by Arches.
• details of suppliers and the prices they've got for the different types of Arches oil paper on their websites as of today's post. It includes both UK (£sterling) and USA ($American) so be careful which one you're looking at

Noted characteristics of the paper are:

• 100% cotton paper - thus much lighter than all normal supports for plein air painting
• paper is deckle edged 
• NOT-type surface 
• range of alternative sizes - from pads to paper to rolls
• ready to use

Comments about performance include

• eliminates the need for preparation
• easy to cut to different sizes
• easily rolled for transport
• strong paper - does not degrade when scrubbed
• capable of taking oil paint without medium or thinners; paint and pigment stay on the surface of the paper and do not sink into the paper - hence no need to prime with gesso
• can take a lot of solvent - which doesn't leak through paper or under tape - plus paper does not buckle when wet
• absorbent - but views as to how absorbent it is very much depend on what people usually paint on; experience seems to be generally similar to painting on primed canvas
• paint takes the same time to dry as other surfaces
• possible to combine oil paint with other drawing media
• oil paper pads provide a backing which means no need for a board to paint on 'en plein air'
• great for oil sketches
• needs to be framed under glass (that's because framing relates to the nature of the support as much as the media used)

Jerry's Artarama provides an instruction sheet - which includes guidance on how to frame

Reviews of Arches Huile Oil Painting Pads

• This is a link to a review of the oil paper pads by Haidee-Jo Summers for The Artist
• This is a review by artist Ian Price who did a 2hr Oil sketch portrait on Arches Huile paper
• This is a forum discussion on Wet Canvas about the new oil painting paper
• Other reviews can be found on art supplier sites - links to which are contained in the table below

Suppliers

These are the art supplies people who have it in stock - and the prices they're charging

	PADS 9 inches x 12inches	PADS 12 inches x 16 inches	PAPER 22 inches x 30 inches 1.3 x 9.15 metres	PAPER 51 inches x 10 yards	No. of reviews on site
UK
Ken Bromley Art Supplies	£11.05	£17.45			4 reviews
Heaton Cooper	£13.50	£20.50
Jackson’s Art Supplies	£11.10	£17.50	£5.10	£111.00	4 reviews
USA
Dick Blick - Arches Oil Paper				$156.65	rated 4.7 (3 reviews)
Dick Blick - Arches Oil Paper Pads	$9.77	$17.19			rated 5.0 (3 reviews)
Jerry’s Artarama	$12.31	$21.58	(pack of 10 sheets) $74.06	$201.35
The Paint Spot	$19.16	$23.96

Remember to check out the cost of shipping goods to you. (Not included above as it depends where you live and how big your order is)