The Japan Colored Pencil Society

Late last year, UKCPS received news from Takako Ikuta in Japan. Some of you may recall Bob Ebdon writing about her in his sign-off post back in September 2008.

....finally - back to our very first exhibition. This took place at Patchings Farm in 2001, and our very first AGM was held there on a Saturday. The following day I got a call from Patchings - a lady had turned up for the AGM, she had come a long way, and would I like to meet her. It turned out she had come a VERY long way - it was Takako Ikuta, from Japan. I was delighted to meet her, brought her home for tea, and have kept in touch ever since. I was very excited to get an e-mail from her just this week to announce that she has formed the Japan Colored Pencil Society. Now look what we done!

• In September 2008, Takako founded the Japan Colored Pencil Society. It has 22 members.
  
• The society now has a website - the address is http://j-cps.org.
• JCPS also held its first exhibition in 2008 and exhibited the works of all those who applied. You can see a gallery of the first exhibition on the website and you can see photographs of them hung here.
  
• JCPS are also planning to hold a second exhibition in November 2009.
  

It's very interesting to note that some of the artwork is using coloured pencil at the same time as adopting the subject matter and compositional style of traditional Japanese artwork of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

About Takako Ikuta

Takako Ikuta UKCPS CPSA is a coloured pencil artist and author who has exhibited with both UKCPS and CPSA, was awarded signature status with both societies in 2004 and 2005 respectively and has won prizes and commendations at the annual exhibitions of both societies.

Which I think I'm right in saying makes her unique in the world!