Japanese Body Painting Artist

The portraits I've selected below are my "best of the rest". These are entries to the BP Portrait Award that didn't make it through to the final 53 of the BP portrait Award - and the exhibition (This is my my invitation to the "best of the rest" - of those not selected). However some made it past the digital stage and were one of the 439 that got in front of the judges. Of those some of the

53 artists out of 2,557 entries from 80 countries have had their portraits selected for the 2016 Annual Exhibition of the BP Portrait Award. 439 (17%) of the original entries made it through to the final judging session at Trinity Buoy Wharf.  The judges then reduced this number to 209 paintings (8%) and  the final step was the selection of the final 53 for the exhibition (representing 2% of

Three very impressive and very different paintings have been shortlisted for the £30,000 BP Portrait Award 2016. Each of them is guaranteed a prize.  They are: Girl in a Liberty Dress by Clara Drummond - a portrait of her friend and a fellow artist Hugo by Benjamin Sullivan - a portrait of the poet Hugo Williams;  Silence by Chinese artist Bo Wang - a portrait of his dying Grandmother. Both

The Call for Entries for The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2016 has been published.  This is the 29th year of the largest and most prestigious prize for contemporary watercolour painting in the UK.  This is the one that most watercolour painters want to be selected for as a mark of credibility on their CV. The Sunday Times Watercolour Competition aims to celebrate and reward excellence

Facebook has been messing around with the news feeds of Facebook Pages and totally disrupting workflow for those managing several Pages. I can only assume that they don't realise that people actually "like" the Facebook Pages of others so they can read them. What used to happen I used to log in to my Page from my account - and the profile pic would change from my account profile pic to the

Last year, the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists was a pleasure to review (see Royal Society of British Artists 2015 - Annual Exhibition). It had well and truly bounced back from its nadir in 2012 (see see RBA 2012: An exhibition of Middle England?) This year's exhibition has 445 artworks in the main exhibition and 35 works in the NADFA's RBA Scholars exhibition and 20

Are these the top 20 Universities for Art and Design in the World? That's what the latest 2016 QS World University Subject Rankings for Art and Design indicate. The 6th annual edition of these rankings of 1,376 institutions around the world were published today and you can see the complete listing by clicking the above link.  The methodology which produces the rankings is based on academic

The National Open Art Competition opened for entries at the beginning of March. The closing date for entries is 10th July 2016. The 2015 competition attracted nearly 4000 entries and awarded around £60,000 in prizes and mentoring opportunities to 35 winning artists. Th 2016 finalists will be exhibited in NOA’s Winter Exhibition at Mercers’ Hall in October where the prize winners will be

I visited the annual exhibition of the Contemporary Watercolour Competition run by the Royal Watercolour Society on Friday.  The exhibition continues until 16th March at the Bankside Gallery (right next to Tate Modern and the River Thames on the South Bank. You can see a virtual exhibition here on the RWS website.  This has hugely improved in terms of the page of works, and each work also

The £15,000 Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize for 2016 - and a Gold Medal - has been awarded to Henry Kondracki for his oil painting of The Cowgate - in the snow - by The Worshipful Company of Painter Stainers and the Lynn Foundation. This is a prestigious prize for original, two-dimensional works in any painting or drawing media. The prize has two aims: to encourage the very best creative

Do you know what questions to ask when considering what to do about your artist's website - and whether or not it needs improving? Working your way through the 30 questions in this post will give you a "to do" list for improvements you need to work on. I look at a lot of websites while writing this blog. Some of them are very good, some are shambolic and a lot could be improved in both major and

The 2016 Exhibition for the Lynn Painter-Stainers Prize - celebrating some of the best in representational painting - opens at the Mall Galleries tomorrow.  It's on from Monday 7th to Sunday 13th March (10am - 5pm) and admission is free.  For those unable to get to London to visit the exhibition you can also view the exhibition online Selected artists Below are the names of the artists whose

Once upon a time there was an initiative called Your Paintings. The aim was to digitise and provide a comprehensive online catalogue of all the oil paintings in public ownership in the UK. As yet it does not provide any record of the watercolours, sculpture, drawing and prints also held by public collections - more's the pity. For some reason the website for 'Your Paintings' was hosted by the

Below you'll find the names of the people who won medals at the RHS London Botanical Art Show today.  You can find out more about them and their exhibits in my previous post about RHS Botanical Art 2016 - Selected Artists Well done to the RHS Organisers for having the list of medal winners available as a pdf file on their website by the time I got home! Best Botanical Painting by Julie

This year's Annual Exhibition of The Pastel Society - NOW @ The Pastel Society - opened to the public at the Mall Galleries on Tuesday. It continues until 3pm on Saturday 5th March.  The Society very kindly invited me to their pre-PV Lunch and I spent a very long time at the exhibition on Monday afternoon! Featuring works created in pastel, pencil, chalk and charcoal, the Pastel Society exhibits

Arts Council England has commissioned a new national study into how visual artists in England live and work. This is a link to the Artists’ Livelihoods survey which forms part of the study. What makes this study - and survey - serious and different is that it is being conducted within the context of a a broad coalition of partners from across the visual arts which have shaped and support

The exhibition of artwork by the 50 artists shortlisted for the Artist of the Year 2015 Prize sponsored by Artists and Illustrators Magazine opened yesterday at the Mall Galleries and is on display until the end of Saturday 27th February. The "Artist of the Year 2015" gets £1,000 in cash and gallery representation at Panter & Hall. You can see the rest of the prizes on offer on the competition

Some of you will have heard that Parliament was proposing to do away with printing laws on vellum. This raised all sorts of very understandable concerns amongst artists using vellum about whether the loss of the Parliamentary contract would cause business problems for the UK's oldest vellum supplier William Cowley - and consequently cause problems for the supply of vellum to artists in the UK

Last night I discovered that I'd missed an excellent BBC programme called Apples, Pears and Paint: How To Make a Still Life Painting which was broadcast last month. It provides a history of what has historically been the least popular genre of painting - and the depiction of fruit, flowers and domestic objects - from the still life painting in Egypt and Pompeii to Cezanne and Picasso via

The artwork selected for the Columbia Threadneedle Prize exhibition at the Mall Galleries is different from previous years - and I like it a lot better. Threadneedle Prize Exhibition: A view of the Main Galleryprior to the Preview Compared to previous years, the changes I noticed are that the art - to my mind - is a lot more accessible. This is an exhibition which will be enjoyed by more