London Life Drawing Summer School

These past 3 days I attended a life drawing summer school, run by London Drawing. I'd never done any life drawing before going to their open classes and found that they were really useful so I decided to do their summer school.

I find it much easier to draw/paint from photos than drawing from real life and doing this summer school has helped me improve massively. I've noticed that I've got better at judging proportions when drawing from real life. We experimented with different mediums and different coloured paper, experimenting with ways to use colour. Also, it was my first time working with oil paints so it was good to try something new.

Here are a few photos of my work from the 3 days. each of the pieces below were quick drawings done in 10-20 mintues.

Pastels

Chalk and charcoal 

 Using white chalk to only draw the bits in the light

Pencil drawing

The National Open Art Competition

I recently entered the National Open Art Competition, a competition open to anyone over 15. I entered this piece above, which was my AS Art mock exam piece. I thought it was a good opportunity as there's barely any competitions that give equal chance to both professional and amateur artists. If your work is selected, it goes in the exhibition at Sommerset House. I was over the moon to find out my piece got shortlisted - it got to the last stage of judging, being in the top 500 out of 3000 works. Sadly it didn't get through to the exhibition but it will be shown online on their website so keep a lookout.

Do degrees matter in creative industries?

I saw this post 'Do degrees matter in creative industries?' on i-D's website and it really got me thinking.

I don't know whether I want to do a creative or academic degree yet, especially since my A level subjects are so different but it does make me question whether a creative degree at uni is what everyone makes it out to be. Especially when there's no guaranteed job at the end of it. Many art graduates find themselves having to get a job in retail or something for years just so they can fund their passion. This leaves them less time to work on their dream job. The same goes for dance, another passion of mine. Quite depressing really.

But at the same time, uni's about so much more - meeting new people, interacting with others and forming connections. Being in a creative environment helps with your own artistic process and getting inspiration. It's also about the whole uni experience.

I guess it depends on a lot of other factors apart from the money side of things, including what type of person you are.

The importance of colour in art

Realising how to use colour in your art and what colours to place next to each other can have a massive impact on your outcomes.

This perception video is really interesting if you have the time to watch.

The lighter check is surrounded by darker checks, giving the appearance that it is lighter than it is while the dark check is surrounded by lighter checks, making it look even darker.

This same idea can be applied to your artwork. An example similar to this is complementary colours. Artists have been experimenting with complementary colours for years. It was present around the movement of Pointillism (paintings made up of many small dots or strokes of paint). Pointillism came about in the late 19th century. It is based around colour theories; complementary colours in particular, and how colours are used next to each other to enhance the painting.

Complementary colours are those opposite each other on the colour wheel.

 If you look at the painting below by Georges Seurat, one of the French painters who inspired the pointillist movement, you will see that the dashes of orange are placed next to blue, red is placed next to green and so on. This makes the painting come much more alive.

AS Level Art Exam and Tips for Other A Level and GCSE Art Students

The title for my AS Art exam was 'Numbers' and you can probably see that my work below doesn't look like it directly relates to Numbers, but being me, I like to go off topic and *cue cliche quote* 'think outside the box'. (Tip: don't worry too much about the title, it's just a starting point).

My thought process:
I initially made a mind map, spreading across a double page in an A3 sketchbook. (Tip: don't just stop at the first branch, push yourself to think of ideas coming off that branch and keep going. And literally write anything that comes to mind). I then used Numbers as a link to the theme of time. I based my project around the idea of time passing, things changing with time and capturing movement or moments in time. My main inspirations throughout this project were artists Gerhard Richter and Jonathan Darby, and photographer Arnau Oriol.

I have posted pictures of some of the pages in my sketchbook below along with some of my mounts. As you can tell, portraiture is my favourite subject to paint/ draw.

 

left - acrylic, right - acrylic and biro

left - acrylic and biro, right - acrylic

 

left - biro and acrylic, right - acrylic

 

acrylic and biro on newspaper

left - graphite on newspaper, right - acrylic and newspaper

charcoal, newspaper, paper and corrugated paper

acrylic on newspaper

left - charcoal on newspaper, right - acrylic

left - acrylic on newspaper, right - acrylic

acrylic - based on Arnau Oriol's photography

Final Piece - acrylic on canvas

More tips:

• Start straight away. A lot of the time it's hard to know where to start or it's hard to come up with good ideas and so you find yourself not doing any work  and then rushing to fit everything in at the last minute.  This is one of the worst mistakes you can make because art coursework takes up sooo much time (even though a lot of non-artists think art is an 'easy' subject). Even if you don't know where your project is leading to, don't waste time doing nothing - try to get some initial sketches in your sketchbook and start with some artist research to spark ideas. 
• Once you've researched different artists, take elements from their work and incorporate them into your own pieces. For example, take inspiration from the colour scheme of one artist, the brush stroke style or technique from another and the imagery from another to create something original. 
• I am a perfectionist which can sometimes prevent me from finishing work within a time limit or make me spend unnecessary hours on the smaller, less important things. I also hate being rushed when doing art but it's something I need to improve on. If this also applies to you, it can be helpful to practice 5 minute drawing exercises to get you used to working at a quicker speed.