Contest Drawing – Tiny Art

A co-worker told me recently about an interesting art show coming up; it’s called the 2nd Annual 5x5x5 Show Miniature Works at the River Oaks Square Arts Center in Alexandria, Louisiana. This guy makes custom fishing lures, and entered some in last year’s show. Even though I’ve never in my life entered anything into an art show, I suddenly had this wild idea to go for it. I’ve still got this itch to draw, so why not give it a shot?

More information on the River Oaks 5x5x5 Show, check out the Call for Entry:
https://www.callforentry.org/festivals_unique_info.php?ID=4449

River Oaks is inviting all visual artists to participate in the Annual Miniature Exhibition 2017 ~ The 5x5x5 Art Show. This signature, seasonally planned display allows patrons to purchase unique, original works of art for holiday gift giving or as additions to their expanding collections.

• Image size should be no larger than 5×5 or 25 square inches.
• Original works only
• Open to all media
• When matting the mat should be no more then 2” on top and sides and 3” on the bottom. Mat must be off-white or white in color.
• There is no color or material restrictions for framing. Framing should suite the piece and be ready to hang.

As with my last drawing, I decided to go with my little ones as subjects. The challenge here was, of course, the size. Once I started, I realized 5 inches by 5 inches is really small, and made it hard to add detail. And without detail on distinguishing features, it really takes away from drawings that are going for realism. First, the outline/starting point:

And, ultimately here is what I ended up with. It’s decent I suppose, but I’m honestly not sure that this is “art show” quality. I think it does look like my girls for the most part, but it just wasn’t big enough to get into finer shading and light lines.

Based on the statistics provided by WordPress, I know it’s not a huge amount of people who see each of my posts. I’ll probably get a surge of a few dozen views, then a long term small trickle. Because of that, posting surveys most likely has limited effectiveness. Regardless, I think I’ll throw a survey in here, to see if readers think I should go ahead with entering this one. I’ll probably do it anyway, because why not; but let’s see what random people from the Internet say!