Back in April, Royal Mail announced a competition to design a set of special stamps entitled Heroes of the Pandemic, and in September I provided a link to the 120 artworks in the long-list and showed the ones that I particularly liked. I then added three at the end which I thought were particularly good concepts but which I didn't think would make the short-list.
The short-list of 24 has now been published and I am pleased to say that these from my shortlist have been included. I didn't filter designs by area and age group but the short-list includes two from each of Royal Mail's 12 regions, which must have exluded a lot of good designs in favour of those by younger artists.
The final selection of eight designs will be made by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales and should be announced at the end of February. Of course with 24 to choose from, it is possible that none of these will be chosen, but I think these are some of the better designs.
Well he got a knighthood which isn’t quite as good as appearing on a stamp but perhaps, when you could do such things, he used his photo on a Smiler stamp and after all did feature indeed on a stamp (sort of!).
ReplyDeletei can't help but think the first one you chose looks too similar to a photo image you can Google, even down to the creases in the uniform - is this really an original drawing? : https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/workforce/nhs-poll-highlights-huge-toll-covid-19-continues-to-take-on-staff-08-10-2021/
ReplyDeleteThe photo you cite is available on Shutterstock, Alamy, depositphotos, bigstockphoto and adobe.
Delete(http://tiny.cc/9zcnuz)
I think many young people would seek inspiration from tv, newspapers, websites etc, for this competition - you wouldn't, for example, draw Chris Whitty or Colonel Tom from memory for fear of making a serious error. I don't see anything wrong; I think it is excellent artwork copying a photo of somebody who couldn't possibly have sat for a portrait drawing!