Art Class- Week 5

The Self Portrait:

Week 5 and the paints have come out hooray! With the paints have come more bursts of laughter from everyone at our shabby excuses for self portraits- one woman has developed this strange snort thing, a bit like a horse whenever the teacher has a look at her work.

Despite warnings from Kay (our teacher) that water-colours would be the bane of our lives, I abandoned the matt acrylics and rebelled. Amazingly, this portrait looks almost identical to the one I painted for year 11 GCSE. Whilst a bit worrying that my skills have not progressed, and my face still has the same slighty gorm-less expression, it felt lovely to be painting again! And I didn't get told off for colouring it in! Everyone, despite being intitially intimidated at the new medium, realised that it was far less pressurising than scary drawing, where one line wrong and it's all over!

Perhaps a mixture of red and green would work in my hair...hmm!

The Art Class Week1-4

I am devastated that my first blog entry about the wonder that is my Wednesday evening art class concerns the week that I was the most horrendous! For three weeks we have engaged in various activities.

Week 1 we all met one another (it is now week four and it is the first time I’ve heard someone speak to someone else- do not enrol in an art class if your primary aim is to make friends!) There’s around fifteen of us, the attendance varies. Everyone was very nervous, protesting they haven’t painted or drawn anything since they were at school, and so as a nice easier ice breaker we drew patterns.... Without inspiration, just having to work from our memories to create patterns, which used to popular with fabrics but now, clearly it is far more fashionable for us to imagine bathroom tiles. Interesting. In the end mine turned out to be a FRIEZE not a pattern (what a fool I am) and the group left the session as a shaky-nervous wreck, with us all praying that next week we would be given at least pictures to help us gage some form of inspiration (the Argos catalogue wasn’t quite enough). Here’s an example of my masterpiece FRIEZE.

Week 2 we were offered physical subject manner. We came in to see the centre table full of animal statues of various sizes and materials (one was a cuddly toy boar). However, to have an object to draw from was much better, we all collected our cats, giraffes, elephants (I picked up a few fish) and drew nice detailed pencil drawings. I used coloured pencils, my style just doesn’t suit black, white and grey, I find it utterly uninspiring but I think it does annoy the teacher. Fellow artists said they didn’t realise they were allowed to colour them in. Our focus was to draw them to look just like the material, whether that be glaze cracking or wood grain. Next we had to draw the same animal...in the same posture as our unrealistic statues. Pretty tricky, unless you’d cleverly chosen a giraffe (there were a few nice photographs of those, but not drinking from a clay bowl). I don’t often see fishes balancing on a rock... My attempt is below!

(This is clearly the statue one by the way!)
(And that one is the real fish of my brain!)
Week 3 was really very lovely. With all its mad eccentricities and unusual subject matter, somehow I have gained a real affection for Wednesday evenings. It enables me to feel a rather wonderful creative release! My day-to-day constant encounter with words words words I find hugely tiresome when it is all the time. Finally my creative side can breathe free (how arty do I sound)! This week we were presented with either a tulip or a rose, and (wonderfully) coloured pencils were allowed (hooray!). I wouldn’t have thought coloured pencil on black paper would look so striking. (Please excuse the flash; I may have to take a course in photography next).

Week 4 has been my weak point, though a fantastic ice breaker! We all sat in a circle and had various time amounts to sketch one another (again I was told off for having coloured them in). The times ranged from fourteen to two minutes (each time the teacher saying "Is it getting harder?"). Afterwards one stood in the middle (I took a turn as I kept being told off for missing off people’s feet) and had ten minutes to sketch each other. The teacher, bless her, after each person was allowed to move again was like “Wasn’t ten minutes a long time!” Well yes, ten minutes standing still is a fair amount of time but it is still ten minutes! Ultimately, many of my class mates sketches were far stronger than mine. Detailed drawing has never been my strong point but here are a few!
14 mins...and then 2 mins... (it's not the same person!)

10 minutes each: (check out the octopus legs!)

Next week we begin painting (though we are advised not to use water colours as they are far too tricky a medium, I may have to rebel once again).