12th 'World of Coloured Pencil Exhibition 2014' Closing date

12th 'World of Coloured Pencil Exhibition 2014'

Sponsored by Derwent

The Cumberland Pencil Museum, Keswick

27th Sptember to 8th November 2014

Closing date for entries 17th August 2014
If you are planning on entering the Keswick Exhibition this year please get your entries in this week as the closing date is midnight, Sunday 17th August - just one week away.

All entries are online so go to our webpage and send your entry now.

The exhibition is open to all members, one entry per member. 24 pictures are chosen by ballot so everyone has a chance to be selected.

UKCPS Spring Newsletter

The UK Coloured Pencil Society Newsletter No. 14 is now available in the members section at our website.

UKCPS Questionnaire

In the recent Talking Point, volume 13, you would have found a questionnaire asking for your thoughts on the UKCPS. A number of these have now been returned but we would love to hear from more of you. So, c'mon, get them filled in and returned - this is your chance to voice your opinions, thoughts and mutterings about the UKCPS. What would you like to see more of? Where do you think we could improve? What do we do well?

Don't miss your opportunity to get involved and have your say! It'll take you 5 minutes and the cost of a stamp but mean a lot more than that to the UKCPS.

2013 -- Early warning!!

The 2012 Exhibtion hasn't opened yet [SEE MY TWO PREVIOUS POSTS FOR NEWS], but members (and other potential exhibitiors!) need to be aware of the following:

The UKCP Open International Exhibition 2013 is being held at Patchings Art Centre, Nottingham, for a 5 week period from the 31st August to 6th October 2013. This is earlier than usual due to limited availability, so please bear in mind that we will be asking for your entry forms earlier too.

As a result we have also brought the members Keswick 'World of Colour Pencils' exhibition forward by a month to April. Hoping this gives you plenty of time to produce some more stunning work.

Assistant Exhibitions Co-ordinator


　
A VERY BIG P.S.
Also, if there is anyone living in the Nottingham area that would like to help with the Patchings exhibition we would be delighted to hear from you. You will not be expected to do this alone but would be be part of an exhibition team.

Nuneaton - Evening parking

Further to my earlier post regarding the AGM, etc. at the Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery.

The Ropewalk car park closes at 7pm, so is not suitable for those attending the  exhibition Preview Night from 6.30 onwards.

With regards to parking near to the  Art Gallery for the Preview Night, the closest two options are the car park outside the museum itself the address for which is, Riversley Park, Coton Road, Nuneaton, CV11 5TU. Please note there are limited spaces available at this parking site. (only 20 , I think!)

The alternative option is to park at the Riverside car park located just behind the Nuneaton Town Hall, Coton Road, Nuneaton, CV11 5AA. which [I think] is free as well in the evenings!

11th International Open Exhibition

Just a reminder to members and non-members alike that the deadline for entries to the UKCPS 11th International Open Exhibition closes on two weeks today -- Saturday,  7th July 2012.

Entry forms for the exhibition, which runs from 6th October to 25th November 2012 at Nuneaton Museum & Art Gallery, can be downloaded from the UKCPS website: www.ukcps.co.uk  .

Please allow at least two days for delivery if sending a postal entry via Royal Mail.

Online newsletters

Members of UKCPS (particularly those overseas), who have not been in reciept of the society newsletter this year can now obtain copies in .pdf format by going to the UKCPS website (www.ukcps.co.uk) and clicking on the 'Members Log-in' link. Log-in, or get your log-in password if you have never used the facility before.

Coloured Pencil Experience Days

UKCPS artist Pauline Longley has been in touch to report that her CPE (Coloured Pencil Experience) day on 12 March is now fully booked, but there are still places available for the Collerton St Mary event in Devon on 26 March, and for the Holt, Wimborne, event in Dorset on 16 April. All the CPE events run from 10.am til 4pm.

A further event is planned for Saturday 4th September, to be held at the Mark Village Hall, Vale Road, Mark, Somerset, TA9 4NY. This event will also act as a collection point for UKCPS artists paintings which have been accepted into the UKCPS International Exhibition opening in Westminster Hall, London shortly after.

These one day events are good value for money (£10 UKCPS members, £15 non-members), especially if you've never tried coloured pencils as an art medium. All levels of experience are welcome, - just bring your own pencils, paper, and any reference photographs you wish to use.

NOTE FOR UKCPS MEMBERS: Contact Pauline if you would like assistance in running similar events in your area.

Application forms and further information can be obtained from Pauline Longley:

Telephone: 07813 332914 or Email: pauline@paulinelongley.co.uk

For information about Pauline herself - visit her Members Blog on this page, or view her Gallery on the Members Gallery page of the UKCPS website - http://www.ukcps.co.uk/

A Birthday and a Goodbye

Today is my last day as blogmaster and this is my last post on UKCPS News. 

I've been responsible for writing the blog posts for UKCPS News since September 2008 when I took over from Bob Ebdon, the Founder of the UKCPS.

I'd like to take this opportunity to recap where this blog came from and what it has achieved to date - and that's partly because it was my idea in the first place!

At the 2007 AGM, I suggested it was time for UKCPS to think about creating a blog with a view to (1) improving online communication with UKCPS members and (2) broadcasting news about UKCPS and coloured pencils to an audience beyond UKCPS members - all with a view to fulfilling all the main aims of the Society:

• to promote coloured pencils as a fine art medium
• to support artists who use coloured pencils
• to educate artists and the public in general about coloured pencils

At the time of the meeting, the Executive was a little reluctant to make a commitment, however Bob soon saw the point and created the blog a short while later in October 2007 - which of course means that this blog is now three years old!

UKCPS News Achievements

In the last three years, UKCPS News has achieved the following:

• 167 blog posts in three years
• 255 subscribers from all over the world - who get an email every time the blog is published or otherwise read the blog in their feedreader
• an awful lot of visitors.  Since it started three years ago there have been 38,892 unique visitors to UKCPS News.  My records for the last two years show there have been well over 26,000 visitors who have generated some 44,000 page loads.  As always the peaks have come in October round about the time of the Annual Exhibition when lots of visitors are keen to see the images of the prizewinners - and to find out who won what.

UKCPS News: Pageloads and Unique Visitors October 2008-October 2010

New Initiatives

New initiatives that have proved popular during my time as blogmaster have included:

• a suite of posts covering every aspect of the UKCPS Annual Exhibition - from prizewinners to the volunteers who help make it happen
• the publication of all the names of artists accepted into the Annual Exhibition.  This has become one of the most popular posts on the blog and always gets a big audience each year.
• more publicity for the activities of members at a local level - especially those running local groups and those demonstrating coloured pencils
• posts featuring individual members when they have achieved something particularly meritorious as a coloured pencil artist.  This has helped raise the awareness of just how many coloured pencil artists are now being selected for and winning awards in multi-media exhibitions.
  
• the development of the blogroll.  This now provides a link to every UKCPS member who has a blog about their coloured pencil art and news of their latest post
• the inclusion of the Link Within widget.  At the bottom of every post, this highlights past posts which are related in topic terms to an indvidual post.  This in turn helps people to explore the archive of relevant posts as well as reading the latest one.

So - all in all - it feels like UKCPS News has been a very worthwhile exercise to date in terms of the benefits it has brought to the promotion of coloured pencil.

I'm now stepping down from the role of blogmaster for a few reasons, two of which relate to a couple of major projects I've had in mind for a while.  One of which involves a lot of writing!  If you're interested, all will become clear in the next couple of months or so and you can find out more in due course in my usual home over at Making A Mark.

In the meantime, there's now a vacancy for a blogmaster....so I hope it will only be a short gap before somebody is again writing about the next major UKCPS activity (which is Art Materials Live at the NEC - see the side column), what the local groups have been getting up to, who's won a prize in which exhibition, who's demonstrating where, who's written a relevant book etc etc.

There'll be a new email address in due course if you have any news.  In the meantime, if you want to highlight anything which is suitable for the blog please contact Liz Ridley - webmaster@ukcps.co.uk

Katherine Tyrrell UKCPS
UKCPS Blogmaster (now retired!)

Do you blog about your coloured pencil art?

Sixteen members of UKCPS now have their art blogs featured in the members' blogroll (see side column) of UKCPS News.

If you have a blog which features your coloured pencil artwork and you would like to see it in the UKCPS News blogroll - and gain a link back to your blog - this is what you need to do:

• contact the UKCPS Blogmaster - see Contact Me
• provide the name and URL of your blog and ask for it to be included in the blogroll

If you've just started blogging, it's a good idea to wait awhile before submitting your blog for inclusion so that you can see whether blogging is for you or not. Not everybody wants to continue after the first few posts.

What happens next

• A link to your blog will be included in the members' section of the UKCPS blogroll
• Your blog will also be 'followed' (using the 'follow' function on Blgger Dashboard) by UKCPS News.
  

You can also have a link to your blog included in your members gallery page. You need to contact the UKCPS websmaster to get your page changed - or you can indicate this in your email to me and I will forward your email to the UKCPS webmaster

Any queries - please don't hesitate to get in touch. I'll provide an update here of any frequently asked questions that I get.

UKCPS at Art Materials Live

The UKCPS information stand at the Art Materials Live

Earlier this month, UKCPS was at the Art Materials Live at the National Exhibition Centre, Birmingham. This post reports on what happened and provides photographs of the stand and three of the demonstrators

Peter Weatherill demonstrating

UKCPS activities at the NEC helped us to:

• promote coloured pencils as an art medium. The artwork on display and our demonstrators showed visitors the range of different ways that coloured pencils can be used to produce different types of artwork
  
• boost the profile of the Society amongst those visiting the exhibition
  
• increase UKCPS membership - a number of people visiting the stand enrolled for full membership
• identify that Coloured Step by Step Guides (prepared by UKCPS members) are hugely popular with both UKCPS members and other visitors to the stand. Indeed some sold out before the end of the exhibition! They have the potential to generate a lot of revenue and UKCPS is now planning to collect a basic range of these for use and sale by the society. Those still available for sale can now be found on the UKCPS website.
  
• generate a profit after expenses - although the aim of this event was to promote our medium rather than worry about maximizing profit.
• and last but not least, this event enables us to reinforce our relationship with the pencil manufacturers who so generously support and sponsor our exhibitions and events.

Peter Woof demonstrating

Rachel Stirling, the UKCPS Events Manager, comments on our activities this year.

UKCPS has had another successful year at the Art Materials Live show and we have again shown the art world the great variety in artwork which can be produced using coloured pencils.

A big vote of thanks to all who supported the UKCPS this year - demonstrators, workshoppers, sales people and all those members who just dropped by to say "Hi". A particular thank you to those demonstrators who were inexplicably left off the entry list of demonstrators by the ICHF organisers and yet still demonstrated.

We provided a formidable range of work in terms of art on display, demonstrations and activities. I for one am grateful for those demonstrators who put in the hours despite being in a large room full of cut price art supplies! Paper, canvas and prepared boards were all available as supports for work and generated a great deal of interest

We always listen to what people visiting the stand have to say and we received several very interesting ideas and suggestions from visiting Society members.

Members indicated that they would like to have better information at a much earlier stage about which day Demonstrators will be demonstrating so that they can better plan their visits according to their interests. As a result, we'll be working on how we can improve our communication in this respect for next year.

Finally, I'd like to offer my own personal thanks to everyone involved and to all the members who make the UKCPS what it is. Here's looking forward to next year.

Brian Casey demonstrating