Japanese Body Painting Artist

Two notable things have happened since my last blog post (Fabriano, R K Burt and St Cuthberts Mill - and fine art watercolour paper for precision painting) about innovation and change within the world of Fine Art Hot Press paper used by watercolour painters who paint plants and flowers to botanical standards. . Systematic tests of watercolour paper The first is that yesterday Dianne Sutherland

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

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 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

I'm busy finishing artwork and matting and framing drawings for hand-in submission to the annual exhibition of the Society of Botanical Artists tomorrow. I ended up doing something completely different to what I had planned. I've done two drawings of the sacred lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) neither of which are the conventional view of the lotus Nelumbo nucifera bud and bloom by Katherine

This is a VERY overdue review of the RHS Botanical Art Show held last February. Initially I misplaced my catalogue and notes and then subsequently I was distracted (much loved cats dying etc.) and just plain forgot to write it up - so I'm now remedying the error as the RHS Botanical Art Show 2016 is almost upon us! Below are the images and information about the artists that won an RHS Hold

I've spent a delightful few hours recently putting together a page About Rory McEwen on my Botanical Art and Artists website. I'm going to develop a series of pages about various famous botanical artists. I started with Maria Sibylla Merian so decided to do a contemporary botanical artist next - and, of course Rory McEwen was the obvious one to do!  For those who don't know him, he's probably

I was impressed by some Daniel Smith watercolours I saw last Friday. Today you can enjoy them too! As somebody who has studied geology in the past I'm intrigued by some of the minerals they're using. I love the names of the minerals. What's also impressive is the level of information you get about each individual colour on the Daniel Smith website. Each colour gets an individual page with: an

The 204th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours will be held at the Mall Galleries between 6-16 April 2016. If you're interested in submitting an entry read this post about the Call for Entries! The Private View of the 2015 Annual Exhibition (right click the image to see a larger version in a new tab) How to succeed as a watercolour painter If you want to

The BBC is currently telling The Story of Scottish Art on BBC Scotland - but is not broadcasting this south of the border. However I've only just found out that , very sensobly, all the programmes are now available to all of us who can access BBC iPlayer. I haven't watched them all as yet but the little I've seen suggest they are all going to be fascinating. I'm 'flying blind' when it comes to

We visited Saffron Walden recently and discovered the Fry Art Gallery which is open from April to the end of October each year.  The gallery provides a home to artwork by artists known as the Great Bardfield Artists who are also the subject of a recent publication - Bawden, Ravilious and the Artists of Great Bardfield.  The book of the exhibition | V&A Publications On display at the

This year's Annual Exhibition of the Royal Society of Miniature Artists, Sculptors and Gravers has more than 600 works of art - in miniature.  All the works are less than 6" x 4" in size. The exhibition can be found in the North Gallery of the Mall Galleries and continues until Sunday 25th October. The exhibition is open each day from 10am to 5pm. It closes at 1pm on the final day. Admission is

The Royal Watercolour Society published their Call for Entries for the RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition 2016 last week. Webpage for the RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition 2016 Call for Entries This is a link to the Application Pack which provides the details about who/what/where and when. Who can enter The Royal Watercolour

Yesterday I visited the first day of the 28th exhibition of Sunday Times Watercolour Competition at the Mall Galleries. If you want to see the exhibition you need to make a date this week as the exhibition is only on until Saturday 19th September. It's open every day (10am until 5pm) and admission is free. Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2015 - Prizewinners Left to right: Left - Winner of

This is my second review of the watercolour exhibitions currently on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge until Sunday 4th October. This one is devoted to Ruskin's Turners - and is a little later than planned. You can find out more about them below. However the important things to note is that there are very long intervals between exhibitions of these paintings. The last exhibition was

While I was in Cambridge recently I visited the Fitzwilliam Museum to see two exhibitions: Watercolour: Elements of nature (Mellon Room) - finishes 27 September Ruskin's Turners (Shiba Gallery) - finishes 4 October (after last being exhibited 15 years ago!) Below you will find a review of the first exhibition - and review of Ruskin's Turners follows tomorrow. I highly recommend both

The prizewinners in the 2015 Sunday Times Watercolour Competition were announced earlier today. Akash Bhatt RWS RBA has won the £10,000 First Prize for his latest painting of his mother - called Blue Room. Winner of the Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2015 £10,000 First Place Blue Room by Akash Bhatt Over the years the artist has drawn and painted both his parents and developed a suite

I don't often write about the exhibitions of individual artists - however Rosa Sepple very much deserves to be highlighted on the pages of this blog. Rosa can currently be found in the Mall Galleries with her one woman exhibition "Out of the Blue" - in association with her gallery (Adrian Hill Fine Art, Holt, Norfolk). She's an elected member of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colour (

There are a very few art blogs which I have followed consistently in the last 10 years. One of them is Charley Parker's fantastic 'Lines and Colors'. It's a really class act! The header for the Lines and Colors art blog - note the quotes! There are very few people on the Internet who write with enthusiasm and real knowledge about an enormous variety of artists and illustrators past and