Sunday, March 22, 2009

EXPOSÉ 7 Madness & Award Nomination

"Each year when Ballistic publishing announces their call for EXPOSÉ, a lot of madness is going on with artists striving to get into this publication. There is a lot of last minute rushing, shed tears and jealousy going on, when people learn that they are not in. Or when they learn that artists who they find less skilled got in. "Overpainters! Cheaters! Everyone of them!!" ;) so it's not always a good idea to join the circus.
For issue 5, for instance, I was fairly new with Ballistic's publications and verifying processes, but I let myself put under the stress of finishing something extremely good for the book, which wasn't so cool for my birthday on which their deadline usually ends.

I got 3 paintings shortlisted back then:









I sadly was quite unlucky with this issue since I made the mistake to reply not to every shortlist email as I was supposed to. I learned that later with Exotique. You must reply back to every email seperatly as it gets in. Which I now know because of the massive amounts of their submissions.
However, I can live with this eventhough it was a pain in the ass, but I decided to not submit for issue 6 eventhough I got an invitation this time and have a nice birthday instead.
This year I got another invitation and joined the submission madness again. Meanwhile experienced enough to help some friends of mine who were new to the submission process, and calming them down when they grew into panic.
Dudes, it's just a book!

However, would be cool to get into the lucky 7, so the shortlist knocked me over, since it was so big this time.
Here you can have a look:


















I am curious to see which cover this book will have. When you'll get it, keep your eyes open for my entries! :3
It seems that one of my portraits even was nominated for Portrait Excellence Award. Of course I didn't win it, instead someone who is far more popular than me got it, but it is still well deserved and much more than I expected anyways! :)
Not every of these paintings made it in by the way, but I am still proud. Getting this book for free is definatly a cool thing and I am quite curiours since I never got a look into an EXPOSÉ before. ^_^"

- Azu

3 comments:

  1. "Of course I didn't win it, instead someone who is far more popular than me got it, ..."

    - hm, so popularity is the main criterion..? allow me to state naively: popularity winning over quality and originality is very sad and shameful. and the fact that it's a tradition in many areas (not only creative ones) is even more shameful. well, that's the way it goes...

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  2. "I sadly was quite unlucky with this issue since I made the mistake to reply not to every shortlist email as I was supposed to. I learned that later with Exotique. You must reply back to every email seperatly as it gets in. Which I now know because of the massive amounts of their submissions."

    What did you mean with replying to their emails? Even if they reject you?

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  3. @ Alice:

    No it just means that you have to reply back to every mail as it comes in and tell them about copyright and information for printing and such. You have to do this for every mage even if you get 6 mails or more, seperatly or else they'll lose track of you among those thousands of submissions.

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