Welcome to Julia Kay's Portrait Party Blog!

In March 2010 Julia Kay started a portrait party on Flickr and Julia Kay's Portrait Party was born!

The rules of the party are simple, each artist posts a selection of photos of themselves from which all members of the group can draw and paint their portrait. All members of the group are therefore both subjects of portraits and creators of portraits.
The Party was an instant success, 60 artists joined in the first week, drawing more than 200 portraits of each other, including two dozen of Julia Kay. After 6 weeks, we had 150 members from around the world who had posted more than 1400 portraits of each other.

One year on and the party (affectionately known as JKPP) is still in full swing with over 450 members and over 10,000 portraits!

But it's impossible to express the impact of the party in just numbers.
I had always wanted to paint portraits, but it’s not always easy to find the sitters in the ‘real world’. So JKPP opened up a fantastic resource – not only photographic, but also for the inspiration of seeing everyone else's style and technique. It’s a huge motivation to have the encouragement and support of the thriving group of diverse artists that is JKPP!

Over the last year I’ve painted and drawn in totally new ways than I’m used to. And after I added my photos to the pool it was a whole new joy to see the amazing and creative versions of me. Anne Watkins summed it up beautifully - waking up to find new portraits of herself was like finding love notes in a bottle – treasures flung across the unknown – from people she could not hear or touch, only see and imagine.

This blog aims to give more of an insight into JKPP's art, artists, portraits and portrayed. We'll talk tips and techniques, exhibitions and reviews. With so many members, everyone's view of the portrait party will be different, I can't wait to read them all here!

I couldn't think of a better way to kick off the blog than with a selection of some of my favourite portraits of the party's fantastic founder and host, Julia Kay...

Julia Kay by Gloria Rendón

Julia Kay by Virginia Hein

Julia Kay by Mariah O'Neill

Julia Kay by Wally Torta

To see many more amazing portraits see Julia Kay's Portrait Party on Flickr.

For a great description of the birth of the Portrait Party and it's exciting growth, see Julia's article on the Women's Voices for Change site.

To see Julia Kay's own art have a look at her Flickr Photostream here.