The theme for July’s Look and Learn kids art competition is “Music”, and the closing date is Thursday 7 August.

Here is a picture of a piano teacher from the Look and Learn archive, one of a series about People You See that appeared in the magazine Teddy Bear in the mid 1960s. Already, there are many more exciting pictures by children in the children’s art gallery.

The theme for June’s kids art competition is “New Superhero”, and the closing date is Monday 7 July. Please note the word “new”.

Not wishing to influence the imagination of children on this, here is a picture of a Greek hero. The artist is almost certainly Ralph Bruce.

The theme of May’s Look and Learn children’s art competition is “Fireworks”. The closing date is 9 June 2008.

Here, by way of inspiration, is a picture of Leo the Friendly Lion watching the fireworks with some of his friends. The picture originally appeared in Playhour in 1960, and the artist is Virginio Livraghi.

The theme of April’s Look and Learn children’s art competition is “Dragon”. The closing date is 7 May 2008.

Here, by way of inspiration, is a picture by Angus McBride of the Dragon of Birchwood, the serpent-like creature reportedly seen in 1668 near the village of Henham, Essex, England.

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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The theme of March’s children’s art competition is “Tree house”, and the closing date is 7 April 2008. £240 (approximately US$480) of cash prizes will be awarded to the best three competition entries in each age group (0-7, 8-11, and 12-18): 1st prize £35, 2nd prize £25, third prize £20. Winners will also receive a beautiful printed certificate in the post.

This is a picture of some puzzled-looking Leo the Friendly Lion which appeared in Playhour, probably in the 1960s.

Don’t forget to enter the current Look and Learn children’s art competition - theme “Wizard”. The closing date is 7 March 2008.

From time to time people ask us what is the best way of photographing art for the Look and Learn children’s art gallery and art competitions.

Our advice is as follows:

• Place the artwork vertically against a wall (a bit like the girl in this picture).
• Take the photograph in bright daylight, but not in direct sunlight (again, as in this picture). Do not use flash.
• Unless you have a tripod, place the camera on a table or chair to avoid camera shake
• Select “best quality” mode on your digital cameral (JPEG not RAW)
• When you have uploaded the images to your PC or Mac, save each image as a JPEG with a ‘quality’ level of 9 or 90%, or one level below maximum
• Make sure that the individual files end in .jpg and are no larger than 5MB

If you have any further tips that you think could be useful to people, please add them below.

The theme for February’s children’s art competition is Wizard. Wizards are well represented in the Look and Learn picture library, though few of them are a spooky as this one, who made his appearance in Teddy Bear magazine in 1965.

Anthropomorphism is, of course, one of the staples of nursery art. Here is a rather nice example which we have recently incorporated into the material regarding our children’s art gallery. Incidentally, the Look and Learn children’s art gallery is growing apace, with some 250 pictures added in the last week.