Flowers of the imagination...

I'm currently in the process of making these plasticine flowers for my exhibition with the Artist Teacher Scheme. I hope that I will be able to make at least 100 for the show and display them as a 'daisy chain'. The work is all about imagination and process. I am planning on asking member of the public to  add to the artwork with their ideas of imaginative flowers.

My painting style is currently going through a number of ideas, so here's some examples of what I have been working on. Enjoy!

                                                       'Give and Take' Acrylic 2012

The last two pictures are unfinished work currently developing  for the exhibition this summer

Fabulous fruit sculpture project

In Art club this half term we have been looking at the shape and form of fruits, some exotic. The children began by drawing the fruit one at a time with linear (line) drawings. To develop their hand and eye co-ordination and examine the shape. The following session we 'drew' the fruits with scissors (no pencils allowed) to cut out shapes of the fruit for a collage. Splitting the group into two they produced two tissue paper collages of a basket of fruit. (Picture to follow). However, we recently began forming the 3D form fruits from salt dough. These were then painted as shown above.

I realised cream of tartar and a bit of vegetable oil is brilliant in salt dough to stop it cracking and going dry. However, the fruit still took nine hours and counting  to dry out!!

Having fun with Art...

Well its been a while since I bogged about my arty projects thats because I have been really buisy with them and the Artist Teacher Scheme !!! My year 3 Art club has produced LOADS of work since March and explored new techniques and skills!! These pictures show what happens when you let loose Primary aged children with paint, cous cous, flour, washing up liquid and PVA, they have fun fun fun!! Art should be fun as its all about exploration and development of ideas. Here we looked at creating texture out of everyday items to paint a picture.

My inspiring GCSE art student....

                                                    ' Oil paint on card ' - direction of light from the left.

                                                  ' Collage - magazines and coloured tissue'


The above are two out of four final pieces of work by my GCSE Art student who I mentioned in my last blog. She wanted to learn how to use oil, acrylic and watercolour paint. I surgested the last be mixed media but it ended up a collage. Using her imagination and photos of people from magazine we came up with four portraits. These will go into her coursework folder.

My GCSE student inspired me to produce this painting in acrylic. Normally I don't like acrylic, but recently  I came across a new Daler Rowney student quality paint which seems better than system 3. However, I am about to purchase some acrylic glosser to make it look more like oil paint  ! I'm also going to try out transferring images which was all the rage at art school.

Anyways, my art practice is now talking on a new direction into the 'dead' flowers subject, but not sure exactly what yet!.

My super GCSE Art student...

 

                                                                            Acrylic (finished)


 I'm  helping a GCSE art student to complete coursework and a final piece. All paintings show here where made under my guidance and  supervision. We are examining tone and colour using four different techniques (Acrylic, Oil paint, watercolour and collage). These portraits are from memory which is fine, but observational skills are still really important at GCSE or at any level for that matter.

                                                                        Oil paint  (unfinished)

    

                                                              Watercolour (unfinished)

                                                                   
                                                               Collage (unfinished)

Although unfinished, in all work produced in a short amount of time, there has been a  considerable gain in the  understanding of tone, colour, media and technique.  Finished works to follow latter.

A lot of happenings in the art land....

Year 3 Art club at a local primary school. Half an hour once a week during lunch for 15 children. They are exploring techniques, media and ideas for The Children's University. When they have finished this six week block they will take their ideas into their normal lessons and hopefully use them on other things. The first lesson we attempted to make a 3D animal with a thick impasto of flour and PVA mix which was left to dry for over a week. Some turned out better than others as they didn't dry so well. In the second lesson the children painted their animals began to add texture. They used their imaginative skills of what the animals looked liked for this part, which I think is fine as younger children are better at this than older students (perhaps not for OFSTEAD - who once surgest I bring in 'real' butterfiles into the classroom).

Below is the examples done by myself of  what the end result should look like after just three sessions of half an hour- few!!! Examples by the children to follow later.

new art work in 2012

New artwork created on the Artist teacher scheme at the IKON galley 30 minute collage and drawing on the largest piece of paper they had and we got to rip up some really nice books! Mixed media on paper.

 

'Work in progress Conte pastel'

The above drawing  are in pastel Conte which is a favourite medium of mine and my beloved charcoal. These are studies of a dead tulip, lovely and dried. Currently into the exploring dead flowers for their ability to hold onto memories.I am a messy artist so my finger prints are among the drawings but I think this shows how Im exploring my subject and how I express my thoughts on the subject.