Julia L. Kay - Portrait revolution: inspiration from around the world for creating art in multiple mediums and styles

Julia Kays Portrait Party (JKPP) is an international collaborative project in which artists all over the world make portraits of each other. After seven years of exchanging portraits, tips, and techniques with each other, were now sharing our art, our words and our inspiration with everyone who is interested in or would like to get started with portraiture.

JKPP began in 2010 as a way to celebrate the successful completion of my three-year project to make a self-portrait every day. During that project I experimented with multiple media and conceptions of self-portrait. I drew while looking in the mirror, from photographs, from memory and from imagination. I painted in my studio and drew with my finger on my iPod Touch. In all this experimentation, the thing that emerged as the most important to me was my commitment to a daily art-making practice. I had never had that in my life before, and it was terrific. After three years, I was ready to stop putting myself in every picture, but I wasnt ready to stop drawing every day.

As a transition between staring at my own face for three years and opening up to other genres entirely, I thought it would be fun to throw a portrait party and look at some other faces. Id first heard of portrait parties from Rama Hughess blog, where he described a portrait party as a get-together where artists draw each other. Originally I thought I would have a traditional live portrait party.

From doodles to digital, from oils to inks, variety abounds at Julia Kays Portrait Party.

David A. F., USA by Ann Kirschner, USA

pen on paper, 3 3 inches (86 76 mm).

Norman, USA by Mia Robinson Mullen, USA

ArtRage app on a Modbook, no fixed dimensions.

Unfortunately, as the three years of my self-portraits were winding up, I found myself in the middle of a family emergency and in no position to throw a live party. Id begun posting my work and following other artists on flickr.com so I decided to try starting a group there. I sent invites to some of the other self-portrait and figurative artists Id been interacting with, crossed my fingers, and hoped a couple of people would post photos by the time I was ready to start, a week later.

Apparently I wasnt the only self-portrait artist in the world hungry for another face to stare at. In that first week, before I even began drawing anyone myself, 60 artists jumped on board and drew more than 200 portraits of each other. After six weeks, we had 150 members from around the world who had posted more than 1,300 portraits of each other. By the time of this books publication, we had more than 1,000 members from more than 55 countries, and the group had produced more than 50,000 portraits of each other.

Magi, Spain by Mariah ONeill, USA

water-mixable oil paint on canvas, 16 15 inches (406 381 mm).

Amy, USA by Maureen Nathan, UK

ink (drawn using a chopstick) and white chalk on paper, 11 8 inches (279 203 mm).

As the portrait count was growing, the group was also growing closer as a community. Group members were using the Flickr interface to comment extensively on each others work, have conversations about different art processes, tell jokes. There was an inadvertently funny moment early on, when one of the digital artists asked a watercolorist What app did you use for that? Usually the digital artists posted to digital groups and the watercolorists posted to watercolor groups, so they werent used to seeing each others work. But here artists in all media were mixing it up and being inspired by each other. A wide range of styles also emergedfrom realistic likenesses to wild semi-abstracts that are perhaps only conceptually portraits. Of course youll see this range of styles and media throughout the book, but to whet your appetite, here you can see two portraits in very different styles from the same photo of Lena, Norway.

In addition to a growing body of work and a growing community, the group has had growing recognition. Many individual artists exhibit, publish and sell their JKPP portraits. Weve been invited to participate in portrait-themed exhibits and portrait events. Several JKPP group exhibits have been held, in locations from the USA to the UK, including a month-long exhibit in San Francisco culminating in a three-day international meetup to celebrate our 5th Anniversary.