tall ships and n.e.w.a.

Some of the beautiful ships arriving in Kirkwall last night as part of the annual Tall Ships Race. Today they will be cruising around the islands with members of the public on board before heading north to Shetland. Unfortunately the weather is a bit dreich today, but hopefully it will still be a wonderful experience!

Below are my miniature paintings selected for the National Exhibition of Wildlife Art which opened this weekend in Wirral - I hope you can get a chance to visit if you are in the area.

UPDATE - I just found out that I received the Daler Rowney Award for Best Watercolour at the NEWA show! Especially pleased because they are both miniatures in an exhibition full of much larger works and its always nice to know they get noticed at all :)

'Keeping Watch' 1.75" x 4" © Tracy Hall 2011

'Bearded Dragon' 3.5" x 1.5" © Tracy Hall 2011

The winning paintings in the BBC Wildlife Artist of the Year competition have been unveiled - they had over 1000 entries from all over the world so I was very pleased to make it as far as the final shortlist of 100. Congratulations to the worthy winners and I think I'm right in saying they will be exhibited in London later in the year.

miniature painting of gannets diving

Diving Gannets © Tracy Hall 2011

1.75" x 3.75" watercolour on board

The miniature of gannets is finished and shown above with a 'ghost' penny for scale. You can almost have too much of a good thing and I had so much trouble deciding which photos to use for this painting that I will almost certainly be returning to gannets again at some point. Besides, they are wonderful birds to paint.

I was happy to find out this week that my work was juried into the National Exhibition of Wildlife Art. I sent two miniatures but I don't know yet if they both got in. It was good to see so many familiar names in the list and it is sure to be an outstanding show to visit. The exhibition is one of the largest wildlife art shows in the UK and takes place 15th - 31st July at Gordale Garden Centre in Wirral and includes an opening weekend of art demonstrations.

I'm also pleased to say that my miniature paintings will soon be available year round at two new galleries, one in the UK and one in the US. I'll give more details later. On the big easel I'm continuing with the final in the series of farm scenes for an American jigsaw company and will shortly be starting a Christmas scene - a first for me :)