Success at the Penrith District Show

This year, after years of encouraging school students to enter arts and crafts into the local Penrith District Show, I finally submitted five pieces of my own work. A few weeks ago, I had six pieces of my past 52-Week Illustration Challenge art professionally framed, and another ten secured into custom-cut mounts, with the idea that I might exhibit them somewhere. Well, suddenly the Penrith District Show was imminent - but the competition categories offered for adult artists were a little disappointing for what I had to hand. Most of my framed pieces were the more fragile (often slightly-3D) collages, to protect them - and, alas, there was no adult "Collage" class in the 2015 rules! Drat! So I had to scrounge some extra frames, and steal mounts from other artworks, to get my five "legal" entries (the rules were also strictly limiting entries to five per person, and there was no guarantee that all entries would be displayed). Luckily, "Portraiture" was open as to choice of media, so I hoped that two collages with faces in them might work?

Above is: "Week 17: Fluffy" (2015, entered in "Watercolour" class), "Week 14: Whimsy" (2015, entered in "Portraiture, any medium" class), "Week 31: Shakespeare" (2015, entered in "Drawing, charcoal" class), "Week 19: Eat II" (2015, entered in "Portraiture, any medium" class) and "Week 7: Watercolour" (2014, entered in "Australian landscape" class).

"Whimsy" was successful! An Encouragement Award yellow ribbon and a cheque for $100.