It’s time for our annual competition which is a friendly affair and NOT compulsory.  If you don’t want to enter a painting, that’s okay, please use the suggested idea as inspiration for a drawing or painting.

The competition theme will be on both the Wednesday and Saturday sessions, but if you prefer you can come along and ‘do your own thing’ and not enter the competition.

Wednesday 11th – 7-9pm –    Start painting for the competition

The subject is –  PORTRAITS

This is a very broad subject but hopefully a popular one as many members like drawing and painting people. A portrait can be a literal, realistic representation or interpretive and symbolic.

The subject can be a self portrait, a family member, a friend or someone famous or infamous, living or dead. Any size, any ground, a single medium or mixed media. A simple black and white sketch in pencil or charcoal, or a colourful multi media picture.

Don’t just plonk someone in a landscape, make the picture of just their head, or head and shoulders or include their whole body or a relevant background if it adds to the portrait.

Info from the National Portrait Gallery in London for schools, but scroll down and there’s info from Curtis Holder, winner of Portrait Artist of the Year in 2020… www.npg.org.uk/schools-hub/art-explainer-what-is-a-portrait

Here are a few people with milestone birthdays in 2026…

Will be 100 years old – Sir David Attenborough, Mel Brooks.

Would have been 100 – HM Queen Elizabeth II, Marlyn Monroe, Eric Morecambe, Kenneth Williams, Bill Pertwee, Lionel Jeffries.

Will be 90 – Brian Blessed, Samia Halaby.

Would have been 90 – Glenda Jackson, Sir Bobby Charlton, Pope Francis.

Will be 80 – Dolly Parton, Liza Minnelli, Cher, Sylvester Stallone, Sir Barry Gibb.

Would have been 80 – Freddie Mercury, Alan Rickman.

Any person, past or present, at any age in their life, can be your subject.

There is no right or wrong way to create this subject…just your way.

Saturday 28th  –  10am-3pm   –    Competition continued

Continue with your portrait, or paint another. All pictures to be on the display tables by 2.30pm then we all cast one vote for our favourite painting. There will be small cash prizes for the winner and runner-up.

A maximum of TWO drawings/paintings per member.  

If you have a picture but can’t attend today, please arrange with someone to take and collect your artwork. Or if you come to the Wednesday session but know you can’t make the Saturday session, your picture can be put in our storage cupboard upstairs and brought down for the competition.

If you feel uncomfortable entering the competition, you don’t have to. Paint a portrait but leave it on your own table so it won’t be on the separate tables with the submitted pictures.

Good luck everyone!