I will be exhibiting at NEWA, the National Exhibition of Wildlife Art from the 15th - 31st July 2011.
'Intensity'
As with last year the organisers of the exhibition are to be congratulated for the professional way everything runs. Once again handing in day ran like clockwork, it only took minutes for my work to be checked in, labelled and carried away. This is not as easy as it sounds with high volume of submissions expected each day.
There is plenty of parking at Gordale and there are plenty of signs directing people to the exhibition.
The exhibition itself is a delight to wander round, and the on line gallery means that anyone unable to visit can still view and purchase work.
As well as simply enjoying looking at the diverse work on show, I wanted to use the opportunity as a learning experience.
After an initial look round I went back to study some of the work in depth.
My first impressions were:-
There were an awful lot of Lions and Tigers, all well done and different, but I might work on a more unusual animal or bird for next year.
Birds were popular, from simple graphic designs to paintings including detailed habitat.
To catch the eye from across the room a picture had to either have an excellent and different design, or be strong colour wise. There is so much art of a consistently high standard that to stand out is a real achievement.
On more careful study of images that particularly appealed to me, I found they all had one thing in common, a really strong design. Those artists had obviously put a lot of thought into how best to present their chosen subject.
Some of the ones I liked were close crops of animals, in each case the crop had obviously been chosen to reveal some part of the personality of that particular species.
Although I liked a lot of the work I had two favourites:-
'Achromatic' by Darryn Eggleton
and
If you get time have a look at the gallery even if you can't get to the exhibition in person.
Links
Last weekend I attended my second workshop held by Mike Sibley. This time we were studying mist, water and reflections, it was a great two days of which I will write more later.