Pages

Sunday 20 March 2011

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.

14 comments:

  1. Well done Cecca- looks great - fantastic!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Cool! I hope it's at least as successful as the Flickr group!!

    ReplyDelete
  3. a tribute!
    friendship!
    effort!
    beauty!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Bravo!
    for the blog, for the post, and for JKPP!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Fantastic, Cecca!
    Long live JKPP!!!

    ReplyDelete
  6. I have to agree when you say that JKPP is a 'huge motivation'. It's also amazing how a lot of other artists in the group can have such an influence on your own work and encourage you to try out different techniques and mediums. I would never have been fo fanatical about portraiture had it not been for this group.

    ReplyDelete
  7. JKPP has enlarged and enlivened my world. I give thanks every day for its existence.

    ReplyDelete
  8. wonderful! inspiring! encouraging!
    I love Julia Kay, her Portrait Party and being part of it!
    well done on starting the blog Cecca!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Wow, thanks for all of the positive comments everyone! I can't wait to see what everyone else has to say about the party! :-)
    Frank, Chartan, Maureen I couldn't agree more!
    Long live JKPP :-)

    ReplyDelete
  10. THIS LOOKS FUN.. YOU ARE FASTER THAN ME.. MY NEW BLOG IS STILL ON THE DRAWING BOARD!!!

    ReplyDelete
  11. Blogging is a new world to me. Thanks Cecca for your work on this!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Nice to meet with this portrait parties blogs.Nice photo I love them all.Thanks carry on............

    ReplyDelete