The London Art College Competition Winner & Runner-up

Welcome to the winners of this years 2023 London Art College Art Competition! The winner is student Philip Hatter and the runner up is Van Khanh Nguyen. Congratulations to both students, a very well deserved win! We have added both pieces of artwork below along with some text written by Philip Hatter. We are thrilled and delighted for both students and wish them the best of luck with their future artwork.

Winner – Philip Hatter

The finished painting is 24” square, after finding the images of the koi that I liked I drew them on A4 paper to the correct size, using a Lightbox I was able to move them around until I got the composition I liked and that worked. The grass/reeds were then traced on to the painting. After masking off the fish and the grass the negative space was painted with a pouring method of raw Sienna and quinacridone gold and let dry and then again with the blues.

Then I removed the masking fluid and painted the fish and grass wet in wet because it’s acrylic the watercolour paint becomes acrylic too so I was able to re-wet the painting. The shapes of the fish work really well to suggest movement and the curvy lines counter the angular shapes of the grass/reeds that is pleasing to the eye, the placing of the fish took a while to get right and I felt it was important that they be overlapping in places.

Runner Up – Van Khanh Nguyen

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