The Iron Cygnet
Welcome to The Iron Cygnet! The first, and hopefully, annual exhibition style painting competition for all miniature painting alike. Designed by West Oz Miniature Painting (WOMP) Facebook group admin team with collaboration from Meg Maples, the competition is designed to be inclusive and accepts entries from all mediums in the miniature and model hobby.
Differing from a more traditional style knockout competition format it follows an open style layout. This open system encourages less peer related competition and more self reflective competition. The standards of gold, silver, and bronze may be achieved for any entrants across three different skill categories allowing for highly skilled hobbyists and those just starting out to exhibit their art together.
The Iron Cygnet encourages participants to share their progress and to ask fellow painters for feedback. Because everyone has an opportunity to be placed, asking for help does not undermine the potential for a placement. Helping a fellow entrant succeed helps the painting community grow.
We have been fortunate enough to have support from Meg Maples who is the founder of the Crystal Dragon painting competition. The Crystal Dragon has been running since 2015 at the CanCon event in Canberra and has seen international recognition thanks to her hard work. Much of our competition has been based from this event and her vast experience thus far in the hobby.
This open style is not new and in fact has been used in many competitions globally ranging from miniature painting, historics, and scale models alike. For that reason we have decided to be fully inclusive on all aspects of building and painting models and have reached out to respective members of the community to help represent some of the different mediums.
The WOMP admin team have a united stance on the goals for The Iron Cygnet and expect outcomes to;
- Connect and unite the WA hobby scene.
- Have a dedicated event to celebrate the hobby aspect painting and modelling in WA.
- Showcase amazing talent both locally and nationwide. With potential to grow internationally
- Remove barriers that some may find when entering a painting competition
- Remove animosity towards judge decisions and unhealthy competitive behaviours found when using the traditional style format.
- Create a unique competition where any excess support received feeds back to the painting community in future events, workshops, and prizes.
Come along to enter the event, paint along with us, or just to see some of the art and have a chat with the amazing community.
For any further questions please reach out to the WOMP admin team, or drop into our discord server and say hi!