Roxburghe Art Competition

I very nearly entered an art competition recently. I know! I said I never would again, but this one was very tempting. It was a lovely brief: “Budding artists of all ages are being invited to illustrate a subject of their choosing from one of three categories: a representation of the Roxburghe Hotel; an iconic Scottish scene; or a UNESCO World Heritage Site.” It was also being judged by the super wonderful Jonathan Gibbs from the Illustration Department at Edinburgh College of Art and the talented ECA-alumnus Kevin Harman, amongst others. So, I made my illustration. It’s the one you can see here. It’s not an amazing illustration but I enjoyed making it. My chosen scene was Dunadd where the ancient kings of Dalriada (an early Scottish kingdom) were crowned by placing their foot in the carving of a footprint in the rock. It’s a magical place, very special. The BBC have a great clip about it HERE.

I started to get my entry ready to send off and gradually I was reminded why I don’t enter competitions. It went like this: email for Ts & Cs; Ts & Cs arrive but don’t give any information about how the art work should be submitted; email for information; email answered but obviously they don’t really know how they want the art work submitted; printing, ensuring safe arrival and return of artwork looking increasingly expensive (needing to cover all bases due to organiser’s lack of direction) (boo); email refers me to Facebook page for any further queries (not on Facebook, never going to be on Facebook).

So you see, I could spend ages sorting all this out for a competition that might raise my profile if I win OR I could use the same amount of time sending out promotional material to get illustration work OR (even better) I could use the same amount of time drawing. After all, the best bit about entering the competition was creating the illustration and that was already long past. And in the end I just don’t get why it’s so hard to have the Ts & Cs up on the website in the first place, and to have them say clearly whether they want original artwork or not, how work will be returned (even if it’s a copy of the original it’s still not cheap to produce and will need returning), and whether a fee is payable for safe return of work. Argh! Rant over.

So, apparently the competition deadline has been extended although you wouldn’t know that from the website so if you’d like to enter do follow this link and good luck to you!

And have you noticed how many Daddy-Long-Legs there are about at the moment? Just loads!