Today was our first experience with acrylic paints. Will did quite a long lesson in how to mix colours, which was very interesting.  Then the rest of the lesson was exercises in mixing palettes ourselves. First we had to do some natural progressions from one colour to another (kind of like a colour wheel).  Then […]

Oh dear.  It seems that these class go in cycles!  Once again I’m less happy with this week from a point of view of the art generated – although I’m pleased in terms of what I learned! This week was watercolours proper.  Most of the class was spent doing simple exercises – doing a basic […]

After my disappointment last week, I was back on form this week. The subject was pen-and-ink (for the first half of the lesson) and water colour wash (for the second half).  We were working from originals that were ink drawn, so we could copy hatching techniques to get the hang of how to shade using […]

Week 4 was pastels again.  This time Will got us to use hardboard as a canvas.  You use the rough (back) side of hardboard to give a texture that will accept the pastels.  But first you have to lightly sand the surface to get off any coating put on in the manufacture of the board.  […]

This week it was all about charcoal, chalk and pastels.  I was looking forward to this, as I’m not that keen on pencils, and I vaguely remember from school that pastels were way more fun, and quite forgiving with their smudginess (*) I don’t really remember what advice Will gave us this time, but I […]

Carrying on from last week we continued with pencil sketches.  We used marks on strips of scrap paper to measure proportions on the original image, and then transferred them to construction marks on our canvas. To force us to look properly and consider proportions Will suggested we turn the picture upside down before copying it.  […]

I have joined an art class :-) I always used to enjoy art at secondary school, and was intending to do art at O-level.  However I was enjoying my design classes more, and had to choose between them.  Design won. For a while I’ve wanted to do something more creative.  I do feel that software […]