Art & Design Foundation Stage 1

Panic over!  My interviews at Cardiff Met went well and I have been offered an unconditional place on the Artist, Designer Maker course and a conditional place on the Fine Art course. I still have my interviews at Hereford on 10th Jan, and I still have no idea which one I will choose if I get offers for all 4, but the pressure is off - I will definitely be going to university in September! Woo-hoo! In an attempt to try to relax the day before my interviews, I joined a college trip to the V&A. I thought it might take my mind off things and it worked - I got a solid 8 hours sleep the night before which was desperately needed! I love the V&A - such a variety of exhibits. I have a strange obsession with the iron & steel area - I could spend a whole day in there admiring the wrought iron and steel paterns and the shadows they cast on the walls!  Maybe I should look into blacksmith courses...😄 Wrought Mild Steel Grille - Klaus Walz - 1980 "Buddug's Apron Nu

Wow - it's been a really long time since I last wrote a blog post - exactly a month!  I guess my blogposts are like buses - nothing for ages and then 3 come along at once... I have my excuses - one week was half term and since then I have mainly been finishing off things that I have started, annotating my sketchbook in preparation for university interviews. This has caused me a lot of sleepless nights just lying in bed wondering where I am going, what I really want out of my further and higher education and how to talk about art. As I currently have some spare time whilst sat on a piece of lino, warming it ready for cutting, I thought I'd write it all down & see if it will help my insomnia if I set my thoughts free and send them out into the ether for anyone to read...this post is going to be a bit of a personal mental exposure - an insight into what is going on in my mind rather than pretty pictures, so if you're easily bored feel free to leave now! The first thing

For my Swimming Pool piece for Newport Museum, I will be painting an image from underwater photographs I have taken. My intention is to layer the image over 4 sheets of glass. As such, I need to do some research into painting on glass. The intention is to paint on the reverse of the glass, so the paint is protected. This means that the image will need to be reversed and painted from foreground to background, rather than the usual background to foreground. I found this demonstration by glass artist Richard Rowan: Richard Rowan There is much to take from this video - how he applies the paint and how he makes adjustments by putting the glass on a stand so that he can see the image from the 'right side'. The use of palette knife and fingers to apply the paint and the layering of colours, sometimes left to dry for crisp edges, sometimes when wet so that you can blend them. He paints thickly using oils on one single sheet of glass, however as I am thinking of doing 4 laye

Today in digital art we have been manipulating images to reflect the art movements we researched a couple of weeks ago. My first image is intended to reflect the Art Deco movement. It is symmetrical, geometrical shapes forming a mosaic or stained glass. My second image is representative of pop art - a simplified, comic-style image in a reduced colour palette. My third image has elements of impressionism - the focus of this one is on the light reflecting on the surface of the water and the effect of the light reflections on the skin.

Today I learned how to create the image below using Illustrator:  I learned how to group and separate images, add shadows and outlines and select colours.  link to tutorial

I started writing this post while I was on holiday, but I only had my phone with me & typing a blog post from my phone turned out to be a nightmare! So a little later than planned, here goes: Cambridge Our first stop was Cambridge, where I had hoped to visit Kettles Yard Gallery, but it was closed for refurbishment.  We did have a lovely day admiring the architecture of all the colleges though and we visited the Fitzwilliam Museum. It was good to see a couple of Monet's works that I hadn't seen before, one of which was a seascape - very apt for our topic of World of Water. Not my favourite I have to say - I find the composition very odd with the top of the cliff being level with the horizon - if I had painted it I would have moved so that the line was staggered from my point of perspective, but hey - I'm not Monet & who am I to judge him?! Rocks at Port-Coton, the Lion Rock, Belle-Ile, 1886 - Claude Monet It was fascinating to see it close up t