3rd Annual Animal Portraiture Open, International Call for Art

Prospectus

Submit your animal portraits! Any sort of animal is eligible. We are looking for portraits of animals, wildlife, pets, farm animals, and the like. 

Deadline for Entries: December 20, 2024

  • All animals and insects are welcome
  • 2D and 3D artwork, sculpture, original digital art, and photography
  • Any style and genre as long there is an animal in it
  • All entries must be the original artwork of the submitting artist
  • We love it when an animal portrait visually communicates the animal's personality

We embrace realism as fully as abstraction. We love loose brush strokes as much as highly detailed photographs. We live for finely crafted ceramics as much as mixed media experiments. We. Love. Art.

We are looking for 2D and 3D artwork, sculpture, and photography that falls into a variety of art style and genre categories: Abstraction, Portraiture, Surrealism, Realism, Pop Art, Expressionism, Assemblage, and more! Our mission is to promote wildlife and animal art in both non-traditional and traditional forms. We exist to honor, promote, and uplift it.

As always, art may include more than just animals and insects. Feel free to incorporate humans, objects, landscapes, shapes, space, or anything else. The work just needs to fit the theme, and the focus needs to be on the animal(s).

Be as literal or as creative with the theme as you like. Originality is one of the components we use to score entries.

Awards

Best in Show ($350 cash award)

Overall Runner Up ($100 cash award)

Artivism Award ($50)

Overall Honorable Mentions

Finalists

For more information about our awards, please see the Awards page.

Categories

Be as accurate as you can with the category.* Category selection helps the judges quickly identify what they are looking at and assess a work appropriately.

  • Drawing and Pastels
  • Mixed Media
  • Painting
  • Photography
  • Printmaking
  • Sculpture
  • Other Media

*If you aren't sure what the best category is, use Other Media.
*If you are submitting pieces in different categories as one entry, use Other Media.
It's okay if something is put into the wrong category on accident. It happens. It will not negatively impact your entry.

Important Dates

Deadline for Entries: December 20, 2024
Notification of Jury Results: January 3, 2025
Virtual Show Dates: January 2025

Artist Entry Requirements

  • Artwork must be the original art of the submitting artist
  • Artwork MUST NOT HAVE BEEN INCLUDED in Wild Heart Gallery's shows previously
  • Artwork entered in this call for art is not required to be for sale 
    Any inquiries about a piece will be directed to the artist. We do not take any commission for this call for art/exhibition
  • Please submit a quality image of the work for jurying. We can't review blurry, crooked, or unfinished art
  • Competitions are open to all artists age 18 or older
  • Entries must follow each individual competition theme
  • Each piece must be an original
  • This call for art is international
  • Files must be in JPG, GIF, or PNG format
  • Files may not exceed 5MB
  • Artwork images must be represented in a professional manner: cropped, no glare, no frames, no watermarks. (Feel free to sign your artwork. In fact, we love it when artists sign their art. It's an excellent marketing tactic.)
  • Not mandatory, but it is preferred that artwork be completed within the last 2 years
  • Entry fee based on the competition
  • Entry fees are non-refundable. No exceptions

Policy: No nudity (private parts must be covered), no profanity, no animal cruelty, no gore, and no political artwork will be accepted for jury. Topics of animal conservation and environmental protection are not considered political for the purposes of Wild Heart Gallery.

Image Requirements

You may submit up to 2 images.

*For sculpture entries only, you may submit up to 2 additional views per piece. *For photographs, please note the make and model of the camera used and whether is film or digital.

  • Accepted File Types: JPG, PNG, GIF
  • Maximum File Size: 5 MB
  • Minumum File Size: 500 KB
  • Minimum Image Width or Height: 1000 px

This is an art competition. Only the award recipients will be in the online group exhibition.

Artwork for the exhibition will be selected by industry professionals, referred to as jurors. The jurors will vote based on the number of entries, criteria for this event (theme), originality, technique, skill, and quality of work.

Entry Fees (non-refundable)

$15 for 1-2 images

Jury Process

Jury Selection begins within 7 days after final entry date and ends within 15 days after final entry date.

Award recipients are the entered into an online group award exhibition that is published at a date sometime after final entry date.

The Juror(s) of the art competition are art industry professionals.

There are several criteria for selection for the award exhibition. These include relevance to the theme, originality, quality of work, technique, and technical skill. The goal is to have a cohesive, high quality virtual art exhibition that embraces various genres of animal and wildlife art. To make the experience enjoyable and worthwhile to artists, visitors, and more, we strive to select and display the artwork that best represents animal and wildlife art today. Please remember that this is a competition; only the best art will be selected for exhibition. Not all art that was entered will be included.

Copyright

The artist retains all copyrights to their artwork without exception.

Non-exclusive Permissions

By entering this art competition, you are granting Wild Heart Gallery a non-exclusive perpetual license to reproduce images of your artwork on wildheartgallery.com, and to publish the winners and accepted entries on Facebook and Instagram as well as other media outlets. Wild Heart Gallery also has permission to crop or re-size images to fit the needs of wildheartgallery.com and other media outlets. All winning entries will be displayed on wildheartgallery.com. Each image becomes part of the public archival online exhibition catalog for up to one year and possibly longer.

Limit of Liability

You will not hold Wild Heart Gallery or any of its affiliates, jurors, or members liable for anything.
All entry fees are non-refundable without exception.

Other

All dollar amounts listed are in USD.

If you have a moment, please

Artist Tutorial: How to Enter the Call for Art

Wild Heart Gallery is now using artcall.org for art call submissions and jurying. If you have questions about how this works or get stuck during the submission process, watch this video.