Follow my travels........

With any luck, when this publishes I'll be sat on a train going to Paris.

I'm not going interactive - but if any of you are interested in following my travels in France, you can do so in one of three ways:

1. right clicking on the link above and either subscribing to the feed on Travels with my Sketchbook in......
   
2. or checking out a link to the Travels with Sketchbook posts that I've written in advance about the places we're visiting. You can check these out - they's scheduled to post on a daily basis starting Sunday 27th September. (I learned a few things while putting them together!)
3. Alternatively, if you already follow me on Twitter, then you might be interested to know that I plan to tweet our progress around Paris, Normandy and the Loire. Everybody who is already a follower will be able to access those tweets.

France 2009: Route Map

I'm afraid I've protected my Tweets to avoid all the types who want to follow you as soon as you mention anywhere famous. That means that I'm afraid you can't join as a follower on Twitter until I can vet requests to follow - which is not likely to be any time soon as I have updates switched off on my phone.

Similarly I'd love to read your comments on blog posts but they won't come up on either blog until I can access a 'safe' computer and have enough time - which probably won't be until I get back home. If you think I'm being OTT about this you should see what happens when I switch off moderation!

However blog posts with sketches of what I got up to will follow on Travels with a Sketchbook just as soon as I can manage when I get back home again!

Links: Where to go on my French trip?

UKCPS Exhibition now online

You can now view the 8th UKCPS Annual Exhibition online on the UKCPS website.

Ecology Park Pond #1
now hangs in the exhibition.

If you go to the UKCPS News blog you can also see photos of some of the works on the walls of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists Gallery

Tomorrow the UKCPS News blog will have pictures of what's involved in getting an exhibition hung.

Society of Wildlife Artists - Annual Exhibition 2009

A selection of works from the Annual Exhibition of
the Society of Wildlife Artists
all artwork copyright the artists / all photos copyright Katherine Tyrrell

I went to see the 46th Annual Exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Artists yesterday - and it's very, very impressive. I highly recommend that all artists sketching, drawing, painting, printmaking or sculpting animals should make the utmost effort to go and see it.

One of the reasons why this exhibition is very impressive is the sheer range of styles of making art - it's a veritable visual feast. The mix in terms of sizes also makes for a very attractive exhibition. I always come away from it feeling hugely stimulated about making art.

The printmaking is absolutely stunning as usual and there is always far more sculpture in this art society exhibition than I ever see in any other. I loved the baby elephant!


For those who love birds or fishes or endangered species there is plenty to see - the birds in particular dominate the exhibition (as happens in most exhibitions of wildlife art). There's an awful lot of avid birders out there. Having got into drawing birds myself this year I was looking at all the artwork with fresh eyes!

Unfortunately, due to the need to continue with preparations for my trip to France, my detailed review of this exhibition will have to wait until I get back. You can however some of the works on display in a few of my photos take yesterday in the gallery and on the official SWLA website.

One special mention for a fellow artist blogger who will be well known to long time readers of this blog. In her first exhibition with the SWLA, fellow blogger and friend Tracy Hall (winner of the RMS Gold Memorial Bowl in 2008) has already sold one of her two miniature watercolour paintings of birds which are in the show. I still can't quite believe that earlier this week we were seriously discussing whether or not I could pick up her work at the end of the exhibition! ;) It's also worth noting that Tracy has a Miniatures Step by Step article in a UK art journal this month.

SWLA - small works wall

Do please also note that this is an art society which does more than just produce art.

The Society of Wildlife Artists is a registered charity that aims to generate an appreciation of and delight in the natural world through all forms of fine art, based on representing the world’s wildlife.

Though exhibitions and publications, the Society aims to further an awareness of the importance of conservation in order to maintain the variety of the world’s ecosystems and its wildlife. The Society also supports and promotes the arts-based objectives of other conservation and wildlife charities.

You can see the Annual SWLA Exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London. It closes on Sunday October 4th.

You can also read more about their exhibitions and see more art by various members in my reviews of previous exhibitions in the links below.

Links:

• 45th Annual Exhibition of the Society of Wildlife Artists (2008)
• Society of Wildlife Artists at the new Mall Galleries (2007)
  

BP Portrait Tour & Portrait of the Nation

The 2009 BP Portrait Award Exhibition has now closed at the National Portrait Gallery. The 56 portraits in the exhibition are now on tour and if you live in the south of England or Scotland I recommend that you try and catch the exhibition at:

• Southampton City Art Gallery, Civic Centre Commercial Road Southampton: 28 September – 29 November 2009. This is the Exhibition's first ever visit to this gallery.
  
• Dean Gallery of the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh: 12 December 2009 – 28 February 2010

Peter Monkman and his daughter Anna and
Changeling 2
winner of the BP Portrait Award 2009
photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

The exhibition ranges between intimate and personal images of friends and family to revealing portraits of celebrity sitters and presents a variety of styles and approaches that together illustrate the vitality of contemporary portraiture. I'd certainly recommend that anybody aspiring to enter the BP Portrait competition should try and visit the exhibition.

I've started to get a lot of visitors to this blog looking for details of the competition for the 2010 BP Portrait Award. These will be published on this blog just as soon as they are available. Last year online entry for the competition opened on 15 December 2009. This link also provides details of last year's competition.

If you want to enter the BP portrait Award in 2010 you can register on the BP Portrait Awards website and you'll get an email when the call for entries opens.

The Award is open to everyone aged 18 and over in recognition of the outstanding and innovative work currently being produced by artists of all ages working in portraiture.

In the meantime, if you want to learn more about the BP Portrait Award in recent years you might like to read past posts on this blog - about entry, exhibitions and trends - which you can find in BP Portrait Award - blog posts

If you do you might end up as an anecdote on this blog! The is a story from my blog post about the 2008 Awards Ceremony

One final anecdote.

I was introducing myself to Peiyuan Jiang and his partner and told him the name of this blog. At which point, he beamed at me and told me that he knew all about my blog and had read my previous blog posts about the BP Portrait Award after he failed to get his entry into the exhibition last year! At which point I beamed back at Peiyuan Jiang. :D

So there you go - read my blog posts on the BP Portrait Award (see below) and you too may end up learning something useful to your advantage!
Craig Wylie wins BP Portrait Award 2008 (a tale from the Awards Night)

Portrait of the Nation

If you live in Scotland it's also well worthwhile keeping an eye on Heads Up (nice title!) the new Portrait of the Nation blog created by the Scottish National Portrait Gallery to provide behind the scenes details of what's happening while the gallery is closed.

The gallery closed in April 2009 for a major refurbishment and is due to reopen in 2011.

You can also:

• read about the Portrait of a Nation project
• see photographs about Portrait of a Nation on Flickr
• see the National Galleries of Scotland Commons' photostream on Flickr
  
• sign up for the Portrait of the Month feed. It will focus on one portrait for each month during the gallery’s two and half year closure and offers the opportunity to explore the breadth and wealth of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery collection .

Kate Clarke wins Best in Show in UKCPS Annual Exhibition

Derwent Award for Best in Show (£400)
UKCPS Annual Open International Exhibition 2009
Old -Timers, One, Two, Free! by Kate Clarke
3x(39x26) cm, coloured pencils (£845)

Kate Clarke has won the Derwent Best in Show Award at the 8th Annual Open International Exhibition 2009 of the United Kingdom Coloured Pencil Society (UKCPS) which opened to the public at the RBSA Gallery in Birmingham today.

Images and details of all those winning prizes can now be found in UKCPS Annual exhibition 2009 - Award Winners on the UKCPS News blog. Those works which were highly commended will be posted tomorrow.

Kate Clarke has produced very different sorts of portraits in consecutive years. Her winning work is a triptych and a portrait of a lady with Alzheimers Disease. The drawing of the lady's head includes phrases associated with her life running through her hair - and the triptych very effectively illustrates the progression of this condition. Well done Kate!

The exhibition includes two of my works which you can also see here - Signature membership

The exhibition continues until 3rd October.

à bientôt!

France 2009: Route Map

I'm off to France in 10 days time.

Until then I'll be delivering artwork to an exhibition, sorting major blog posts for said exhibition for an art society, delivering cats to my mother, doing yet more letters for a planning application we've been fighting for months, meeting up with my sister and niece in London and generally getting on with preparations for being away in France - hence posting might be a tad haphazard prior to leaving!

Also while I'm away there might be the odd scheduled post - probably along the lines of announcements or posing questions. However publication of comments will be very haphazard and will depend on when and if I get near a computer to moderate them (and I can't lift the moderation - I know what happens when I do!)

This blog will start to get back to normal some time around the week commencing 12th October - however if you want to know where I am and what I'm up to try checking out Travels with my sketchbook in...... from time to time. I won't be posting sketches (far too complicated!) but I am going to try and schedule posts to publish while I'm away which say where I am and what I think I'm probably doing - eg sketching in the garden at Giverny!

This post - tells you more about the trip - plus poses a critical question Where to go on my French trip?

Sheila Wallis wins £25,000 Threadneedle Prize

The public have voted in their thousands. The votes have been counted and tonight came the announcement that Sheila Wallis, age 36, has been awarded the 2009 Threadneedle Prize (£25,000) for her self-portrait.

Self portrait by Sheila Wallis
oil on canvas, 20cm x 20cm

Sheila Wallis comes from Derry, N.Ireland where she lived until she was 16. Born at the height of the Troubles, her work is partly inspired by themes of internal and external conflicts and the vulnerability and exposure of the existential human condition. She has chosen to express these themes by painting the body. In her early life, this was a form which she was prohibited from exploring by the moral strictures of a Catholic upbringing, yet her builder father's abilities with his hands and his talent for creation is her earliest inspiration.

Sheila wants her paintings to:

convey the vulnerability of exposure without being exploitative or cruel… [the subject] is aware of the scrutiny, but is not subjugated, objectified, nor dismissive of it. Essentially alone, all objects and paraphernalia other than the body and the surface it rests upon are removed, presenting a small, naked creature, not the classic ‘nude’.

Sheila does not seem to have a website but you can see more of Sheila's work in this You Tube film. During 2009/10, she's also the artist in residence at the Watts Gallery, in Compton near Suidford in Surrey and you can see more of Sheila's work on the gallery website.

Sheila's prize was announced by Lauren Laverne (host of BBC 2’s The Culture Show), following the public vote which was held both online and at the Mall Galleries.

Last year I voted for the winner (in the gallery) and this year I voted for the winner too (but this time online) after seeing the works at the preview. This is what I wrote about this piece.

This is my favourite painting in the shortlist because, in my view, it's the best painting.

The pose means that this is not a comfortable painting to look at - I'm not a fan of 'in your face' nudes (or self-portraits which can only have been painted from a photograph).

However there's something about the overall design and composition, the value pattern and the sensitivity of the colours used in this painting which makes you want to walk over to it and look...and linger, at which point you also admire the brushwork too!

Unfortunately, if it was in a competition to win prizes for presentation it would get marked down as its frame is really not doing it any favours at all and it would have been better presented simply as a board.

So lots of caveats - but still one of the pieces I liked the best and a candidate for my vote.

I waited a week before I voted - and then thought about which piece was still in my head. It was Sheila Wallis's painting and that's why it got my vote!

The awards were made at a dinner at the Mall Galleries this evening. You can still see the exhibition at the Mall Galleries until Saturday 19th September. Plus you can read more about the Threadneedle Prize in the posts listed below.

Links: Threadneedle Prize 2009

• Threadneedle Prize Registration Opens
• Threadneedle Prize - exhibition goes online today
• Exhibition review: The Threadneedle Prize - the shortlist
• Selection for Threadneedle Prize & my shortlist

Links: Threadneedle Prize 2008 - Links to posts on this blog about last year's exhibition

• the exhibition for the new Threadneedle Figurative Prize (part 1) (August).
  
• Threadneedle Figurative Prize (part 2) - Green, Mills, Murdoch and Schierenberg and
• Threadneedle Figurative Prize (part 3) - Brandford, Shaw, Williams and the DVD

Exhibition/Gallery details:

• The Threadneedle Prize for painting and sculpture,
  
• Address: Mall Galleries, 17 Carlton House Terrace,London, SW1Y 5BD
• Telephone: 020 7930 6844
• email: threadneedleprize@mallgalleries.com

Exhibition Review - Royal Watercolour Society / Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition

Front and back covers of the catalogue for exhibition of works in
the RWS / Sunday Times Watercolour Competition

The work which won the £12,000 First Prize in the RWS Sunday Times Watercolour Competition is Monte Carlo (see right) by Jonathan Pike (Jonathan Pike Paintings) . You can also see it on his blog here. If you click the images you can get a much better sense of the quality of work which won first prize.

Monte Carlo by Jonathan Pike
painting copyright the artist/
photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Jonathan Pike is a well regarded painters of architectural subjects. Born in 1949, he studied at the Central School of Art and Design and at Falmouth School of Art where he was taught by Francis Hewlett and Robert Organ. He now lives and works in South London and his interest in architectural subjects and the urban landscape began when he first moved to Deptford, London in 1972.

In recent years, apart from his regular visits to Italy, he has travelled to paint in Sri Lanka, USA, Portugal, Spain, France, Holland and Belgium and several times to Cuba which has been the source of much of his recent works.

The Shopkeeper is another of his works which is also in the exhibition (and on his blog - click the link).

Other prizewinners

The other prizewinners are:

• 2nd Prize £7,000 - Camper van and car, Falmouth bay (the middle picture on the right) by Danny Marky RWA (b.1965). This is very simple and has obviously been painted plein air. It made me think it might be a bit of a pun on "white van man" whose normal haunt is east of Falmouth.
  

For me painting and the choice of subject is impulsive. However I do avoid the picturesque and look at the unregarded yet common aspects of the world around me. In the end what matters is what you make of it in paint but I seem to need to find a place, a landscape to get me going and the little epiphenies that trigger ideas for my paintings can occur in the most ordinary settings.

• Young Artist £1,500 - Starting to miss Blighty by Edward Morgan. I can't find any information about Mr Morgan on the internet.
  

I absord the world around me. I draw patterns, buildings, animals and miniscule heaving crowds. Starting to miss Blighty originates in visual chaos.

• A new prize - Smith & Williamson Cityscape Prize £1,500 - generated a lot of interest. As a result, there are a lot cityscapes on display. The winner was Janet Kenyon's Northern Lights - a painting of Blackpool illuminations in the rain. How true! Any small child taken to see the illuminations will tell you that Blackpool illuminations are always seen at night and in the rain!

It’s a watercolour that actually looks like one. The light on the rainy tramway and the glare in the sky are especially well done.
Frank Whitford - Sunday Times

• Penguin Classics Prize for Cover Art £500 was won by Park by Jonathan Huxley. I'm afraid I give up on websites which don't work too well.
  

Works which were Highly Commended are:

• Bella Easton's Dream on dream home - and you can see a very similar painting on the online website for the Threadneedle Exhibition - where she is also exhibiting what appears to be an almost identical painting - but this time in oil.
• Malcolm Hopper works a relief sub-postmaster in the north of England and paints part-time. Urban landscapes absorb him and this is reflected in Urbania

Other work I liked

• As always I adore the work of Paul Banning RI, RSMA. The Bonfire, Queen's View, Ewshot showed a masterly employment of glazes in muted colours. I do recommend a visit to his website for all those who love watercolour which emplys glazes.
• I loved David Forster's You will fish long enough before you catch anything (Peebles) which looks like a very conventional watercolour from a distance and as you close in on the mark-making reveals a very painterly touch to the brushwork. You can see more of his work on his website - however the size of images available do not highlight the quality of his work well enough. He won 2nd prize in the 2005 Singer and Friedlander / Sunday Times Watercolour Competition in 2005.
• Peter Kelly NEAC RBA has two works in the exhibition - I really liked University Square, Istanbul which demonstrates a great appreciation of evening light and the ability to paint it. You can see more of his work here.
  
• Sue Read's very plain and simple Knitting pattern bowl was a winner for me - it gave an apparent sense of 'less is more' and yet looking at it one knows there's a bit more to it than that! You can see more of her work here
• Robert Bates Kites over Clun Allotments was delightful.
  
• Warren Baldwin's lady who won him the Jerwood Drawing Prize, got his work into the Lynn Painter Stainers last year and the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy this year (I think - need to check that one!) this time turns up in watercolour form as Study for a Portrait (in the middle of the group of paintings below). I'm at a loss to know why he isn't already a member of the Royal Society of Portrait Painters - I can only assume a bias towards oil!

Portraits in the RWS / Sunday times Watercolour Exhibition

The Royal Watercolour Society / Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition

Overall I thought there was a very high standard of work in the exhibition and I enjoyed the work selected by the panel as much for its variety as its quality. There was a nice balance between the very contemporary and the more traditional approches to watercolour.

It seems to me as if the RWS/Sunday Times competition hasn't embraced acrylic in quite the same way as the RWS. There are many more conventional watercolours - in terms of media rather than style - than I am now used to seeing in an RWS show. This sort of show is much more the sort I prefer - simply because I enjoy lookingf at paintings produced by people who know what they're doing when using a very challenging medium.

The Royal Watercolour Society / Sunday Times Watercolour Exhibition continues at the Bankside Gallery until Sunday 20th September 2009.

What could be improved for next year

Regrettably, none of the works can be viewed online. The catalogue - which cost me £4 - neither provides basic information about size, media or support nor supplies an image of each work in the exhibition. It achieves a rating from me of "needs to try a LOT harder".

I do wish exhibition organisers would get to grips with the digital paperless world that we now live in! This is a major prize of interest to watercolour artists all over the country - however only some will be able to travel to London to see it. Over at the Mall galleries is the Theadneedle Prize exhibition - which managed to get all its entries published in an online exhibition BEFORE the gallery exhibition even opened. Maybe the sponsors and the organisers would like to consider how many more visitors they might get, how many works they might sell and how many more entrants they might get next year if they commissioned a microsite of images of the works in the exhibition each year.

I'm very sure all the artists would appreciate it since this benefits all the artists whose work is in the show - not just the prizewinners!

The works which won prizes are hung together - and this photo shows the sort of size of the winning works - except for the one which came second which is obscured by the person's head. Safe to say it was small. I'd be guessing but I'd say 10" x 8" max.

Exhibition visitor looking at the wall of prizewinning paintings
photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Links:

• Royal Watercolour Society
• Call for entries - 2009 RWS/Sunday Times Watercolour Competition
• RWS / Sunday Times Watercolour Competition 2008 - exhibition review
• Sunday Times - Winners of The Royal Watercolour Society/Sunday Times Watercolour competition announced