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

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

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

I visited the annual exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists yesterday. This is open every day (10am - 5pm) at the Mall Galleries until the 2nd April. View of the Main Gallery in the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of British Artists 2016 The Royal Society of British Artists (RBA) is dedicated to promoting the highest standards of skill, concept and draughtsmanship in

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

This is the first of my blog posts about my interviews with 12 of the 13 botanical artists who won a Gold Medal at the 2016 RHS London Botanical Art Show at the end of last month (27-28 February 2016). Best Exhibit in RHS London Botanical Art Show (February 2016) Tillandsia by Mariko Aikawa The painting second from the left was bought by the RHS for the RHS Lindley Library. I've decided to

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

The third article in my series of "Cost effective ideas for artists" - about How to afford to exhibit your art - is now published in the April edition of The Artist. This summarises where you can exhibit and ways to reduce costs plus how to avoid some nasty surprises when exhibiting with galleries or your own account. A sample of the latest article in the April edition The article covers:

This is the fourth in a series of posts about tips from RHS Gold Medal winners. The three previous posts are: Ten Top Tips for winning an RHS Gold Medal for Botanical Art (April 2013) More Top Tips for winning an RHS Gold Medal for Botanical Art (April 2014) 15 Top Tips for presenting work at an RHS Botanical Art (April 2014) You can also find a summary of the Tips and Techniques - including

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

Van Gogh's Bedrooms is a very unusual exhibition opens in the Regenstein Hall of The Art Institute of Chicago today. It closes 10th May 2016. While most of us won't be able to see it in person, there are quite a few resources online which allow us to appreciate some of the effort which has gone into this exhibition. At the end of this post I've also listed my very extensive list of posts on this

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

The Threadneedle Prize has a £10,000 Visitors' Choice Award which is voted for by people visiting the exhibition. Every time the Threadneedle exhibition is held I always do a post devoted to the pictures I would have chosen as my shortlist for "The Columbia Threadneedle Prize: Figurative Art Today" a.k.a. (at least by me) as 'the Threadneedle Prize".  In effect they contain the picture I'm

The winner of The Columbia Threadneedle Prize 2016 of £20,000 is Lewis Hazelwood-Horner. The competition is the leading open competition for figurative and representational art and the exhibitions are held annually at the Mall Galleries. The prizewinning work is called "Salt in Tea". Lewis has also won a solo exhibition for a wider body of his work at Mall Galleries later this year.  Lewis has

Thirty five botanical artists have been selected by the RHS Picture Committee to exhibit at the dedicated RHS Botanical Art Show 2016 in the Lindley Hall in the City of Westminster on 26-27 February 2016. This is the largest number of botanical artists in one RHS Botanical Art show during the time I've been visiting. Below you can find A list of the artists exhibiting in 2016 organised by the

These are some notes I made when visiting the exhibition of artwork by Jean Etienne Liotard at the Royal Academy of Arts - after I saw the new exhibition 'Painting the Modern Garden' on Wednesday. I'd been meaning to visit this exhibition for quite some time as it includes a lot of pastel portraits and I wanted to take a close look at them from a technical perspective. If you like pastels or

This is the last week of the Nature's Bounty exhibition at the Shirley Sherwood Gallery at Kew Gardens. It closes on Sunday 31st January (10am to 3.45pm). The exhibition is about the paintings of fruit, vegetables, seeds and nuts in the collection of Dr. Shirley Sherwood.  The flowers which are included are those which include the method used for propagation associated with the flower - which is