RWS Contemporary Watercolour Competition 2012

Since going full time as an artist at the beginning of 2012, one of my main aims was to get a painting accepted into the Royal Watercolour Society's annual open exhibition. The subject guidelines for the exhibition are completely open, with the only guidance being:

(The competition) aims to encourage innovation and experimentation in watercolour painting, spanning work on paper in watercolour, acrylic, gouache, pen & ink and watercolour mixed media.

With only a few weeks to prepare for the deadline I worked on several new paintings (see my earlier blog New year, New career, New paintings!). But, when I finally managed to make a decision on what to submit I selected 2 of the new paintings, and a portrait I painted over a year ago, an enduring favourite of mine, from the portraits I've painted for JKPP (see my earlier blog Julia Kay's Portrait Party). After some almost catastrophic hiccups with the online submission, my entries were in and I only had a few days to wait for the results...

I'm very excited to announce that my portrait has been accepted!
The exhibition will be held at Bankside Gallery between 24th February - 14th March 2012. If you haven't been to Bankside Gallery before, I thoroughly recommend it. The home of the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS) and The Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers (RE), it's a lovely little gallery, right beside Tate Modern, on the Southbank. It generally shows small - medium sized, affordable and beautiful art, and I'm a huge fan of many of the artists who show work there.

The accepted painting:

Portrait of a Man (titled 'Straw Herring' in a previous life)

For more information on the RWS exhibition and the other successful artists have a look at Katherine Tyrrell's great blogpost

 

If you like my work...

Check out my online Gallery & shop - www.francescawhetnall.etsy.com

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on Twitter - https://twitter.com/CeccaArt

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on CafePress - http://www.cafepress.com/whetnallart
And at my website - http://francescawhetnall.co.uk/

Postcard Portraits

I'm still loving JKPP and still trying out new styles. I just can't help doing something different everytime. I'm sure I could develop more if I stuck to one style for a bit longer but I just can't resist switching techniques and medium after almost every picture...

Until now! After trying a postcard sized watercolour portrait I have managed to stick to this style (for some of the time anyway). Here are some of my latest paintings, all watercolours painted on postcard sized watercolour paper.

Stella Tooth ~ Portrait Artist from London.

Postcard sized watercolour

Find out more about Stella and her art at her website here

Susanne Dutoit ~ Artist

Postcard sized watercolour

See Susanne's stunning art on her photostream here

Paulien Maria ~ Documentary Film maker

Postcard sized watercolour

Visit Paulien's Blog here

Arturo Espinosa ~ Artist

Postcard sized watercolour

See Arturo's beautiful artwork on his photostream here

You can see all of the portraits I've done for Julia Kay's Portrait Party here

And you can find out more about the Party at the JKPP Blog

Portraits 2010

Julia Kay's Portrait Party has been such a huge inspiration to me in 2010, I've explored lots of different styles and techniques and learnt loads from all of the amazing work everyone else has been producing. These are some of my favourites from the portraits I've done.
I just wish I had more time to spend painting and drawing everyone!

1. Sue Hodnett - Artist, (central picture) Watercolour
2. NC Mallory - Artist, Digital (Photoshop)
3. Valerie Beeby (Purple Owl), Watercolour
4. Shitao 师涛 - Tim Williams, Artist, Watercolour
5. Giorgio Bordin, Watercolour
6. Anna Black, Watercolour
7. Neil Davidson, Pen
8. Serious Erica ~ homage to John Bavaro, I-Phone
9. Straw Herring, Watersoluble pencils
10. Anne Watkins - Artist, Fineliners
11. Frank V2 - Homage to Sue Rama, Digital (Photoshop)
12. The Happy Painter, Mixed Media
13. Hans 3/Peter Vanayk Fineliners

Created with fd's Flickr Toys

You can see all of my JKPP portraits here
See my previous New Portraits and JKPP posts

New Portraits

I've created a new portraits section on my website and started updating it with some of my recent JKPP portraits. It's such a motivating group I've really been learning new ways to paint and draw and although I've drawn many pencil portraits in the past I used to lack the confidence to paint portraits. Now I can't wait to try out a new technique on a new face. Thanks again Julia!
I've also joined a new group with similar ideals, called Doodle Face. Even more faces to have a go at!

My website home page shows a random selection of images - sometimes I just can't stop refreshing the screen to see what combination comes up next!

Here are a few of my latest favourites:

The Happy Painter - Donna



I'm a huge fan of Donna's painting style, she is so free and expressive with her watercolours, I would love to learn that skill.  I started this portrait with the hope of emulating some of Donna's style  and capturing some of her energy and happy spirit. But my initial attempt was failing to capture any likeness.
So, I dampened the face area and started again with a more accurate drawing (in my initial attempt I'd begun with watercolour without any drawing lines). I then used Gouache to build up face. I've had some lovely comments on Flickr about the texture of the skin - but I wasn't really thinking about it's texture, I was just trying to get the right colours and tones in the right places - and it seemed to work quite well. Although this isn't a perfect likeness, it's quite close and I'm pretty happy with it as a painting.

What Donna said - "Oh yeah! The eyes, the eyes have it! And I am jealous of the way you do noses and skin!!! Yeehaw. I LOVE IT!"


Fairsquare - Sean Cronin



Sean's drawings are stunning, he's done many beautiful portraits for JKPP including a great one of me which I posted in my last blog - it's one of my favourites and really captures my frowning stare!
After my experiments with Gouache on Watercolour paper I thought I'd have a go with some Acrylic paper I've had for years but never use. I drew a quick pencil stetch to begin with and then used a combination or watercolour and acrylics to loosely sketch in the colours and tones. Although this isn't as 'finished' as it could be I really like the fresh and loose feel of the painting, so I decided to stop before loosing that.
As soon as I'd taken a photo of the portrait it was much easier to see where i'd gone wrong with the likeness, but nevermind! I think I captured Sean's sparkly eyes and slightly cheeky smile at least.


What Sean said - "Franny, you've got me! I'm dead chuffed! This is great. Thank you so much - love this."

Devon Lawrence



Devon is the only person so far who has chosen to tackle a portrait of me at an early age. His drawing is so beautiful and delicate, it's really lovely. Devon also has a fantastic set of photo references to choose from.

In attempt to learn from previous mistakes I tried to draw a more accurate pencil sketch before starting to paint this. Unfortunately my impatience kicked in and I didn't entirely perfect the likeness before diving in with the watercolour. In this painting I've tried to keep my washes large and fresh, and avoid having to rework them too much. I'm fairly happy with the results even though it did start to get a bit overworked in places. I also had to use a little bit of white watercolour in places to pick out the highlights - I would have preferred to have managed to keep the white paper showing for these, but I wasn't careful enough.

What Devon said - "Beautiful work Franny!"

Julia Kay's Portrait Party

A month ago today I stumbled across a new group on Flickr - Julia Kay's Portrait Party. The group's rules are simple, join the group and draw or paint portraits of other artists and invite other artists to draw you!

I’ve always wanted to paint portraits, but it’s not always easy to find the sitters in the ‘real world’. So this is a great pool of resource – not only photographic, but also for the inspiration of seeing everyone else's style and technique.

It’s such a motivation to have the encouragement and support of a thriving group of diverse artists like this!

In the last few weeks I’ve painted and drawn in totally new ways than I’m used to. And now that I’ve added my photos to the pool it’s a whole new joy to see the amazing and creative versions of me. Anne Watkins summed it up beautifully - waking up to find new portraits of herself was like finding love notes in a bottle – treasures flung across the unknown – from people she could not hear or touch, only see and imagine.

For a great description of the birth of the Portrait Party and it's exciting growth, see Julia's article on the Women's Voices for Change site.

Here are just a few of some of my favourite portraits, some of the portraits I've done, and some of the fab portraits of me!

1. Andrew Mirzoian by Mariah O'Neill
2. Gila Rayberg by Jennifer Lawson
3. Margaux B by R K Schlueter
4. Peter Vanayk by me
5. NC Mallory by me
6. Me by NC Mallory
7. Wally Torta by me
8. NC Mallory by Wally Torta
9. Me by Sean Cronin
10. Sean Cronin by Timothy Schorre

To see more of the portraits or join the party go here
To check out Julia's great photostream go here

It was so difficult to choose just a few favourites that I'll be posting more soon!