The theme of January’s kids art competition is “World of one colour”. The closing date for entries is 8 February 2010.

Here, by way of inspiration, is a picture by Angus McBride of the famous Blue Grotto in Capri.

The themes of November’s art competitions are “My Ambition” and “Farming” (sponsored by Father Tim Stories). The closing dates are 7 and 18 December respectively.

One of the pleasures of the constant stream of wonderful art that is being added to the Look and Learn children’s art gallery is being able to compare the work of young artists with that of the professional artists who worked for Look and Learn during the 1960s and 1970s. In many cases - particularly when it comes to figure painting - the Look and Learn artists clearly win out. But sometimes the children’s art in astonishing in a way the professional’s art cannot match. Take this picture of the sun by Thaanu Akilesha.

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Today we are announcing the winners of the December 2007 children’s art competition on the theme of “Lion”. While there are some magnificent lions in the Look and Learn picture library - for instance this picture by G W Backhouse - generally, we think, the children’s art compares surprisingly well. To see the winning children’s pictures, click here.

It is not clear who nowadays would want an illustration of yaks, but I doubt whether there are many finer illustrations extant of these wonderful beasts of burden. The artist is sadly unknown.

A tornado is like some raging black devil conjured from an evil genie’s magic bottle in order to wreak death and destruction across the land. Or so started an article in the 1982 World of Knowledge annual on the tornado which came on 14 April 1866 to the town of St Cloud on the west bank of the Mississippi. This astonishing picture by Graham Coton depicts the havoc caused by the tornado in the station yards of the Manitoba Railway.

In Europe, we call it the elk, in North America it is the moose, but either way it is the largest living member of the deer family. Sometimes growing to a height of seven feet, and maybe weighing more than 1,000 lb., the male, or bull, moose has a set of antlers which is second to none. The antlers are curious in that they branch out from the side of the head, and grow sideways rather than forwards. They do not reach full size until the moose is eight or nine years old; then they may be as much as five feet across from tip to tip. Each January the adult moose sheds its antlers, and the new pair are not fully grown until August.

Other points which make the moose easy to recognize are its long and thin-looking legs, a strange pouch of skin, called the “bell,” which hangs from the throat, and a drooping muzzle which gives the moose the appearance of having a very Roman nose. The female (cow) moose in winter has a lighter-coloured coat than the bull, whose long, coarse hair varies in shade from dark brown to a dirty grey. The coats of both the bull and the cow are finer during the summer months.

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When we are photographing or scanning magazine artwork it is generally not too difficult to identify the issue of the magazine from which the picture came. This is because the editors typically wrote the day and month (though, irritatingly, not generally the year) in the border of the painting. But sometimes the dates are wrong, and sometimes there is no date at all meaning that it can be difficult to identify even the subject matter of the picture. Quite a few pictures in our our picture library are in various ways as “unidentified”. Indeed, if you do a search for this word you will come up with just over 300 pictures. Who, for instance, call tell us what animal this is?

Here is the cover art to an issue of Teddy Bear magazine, the artist almost certainly being William (”Bill”) Francis Phillipps. Below is a logically preceding picture - finding the conkers.

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Kraken

For centuries, sailors have told of the kraken, a giant octopus capable of capsizing a ship. Scientists doubt its existence — yet still the fear persists.

The artist is Oliver Frey.