MATS BOOTCAMP MAIN ASSIGNMENT - PART 1

Monday saw the arrival of our main assignment for Bootcamp in our inboxes and the brief is to design journals. This gave me the perfect opportunity to concentrate on completing another piece for my website homepage: flowers in vases for the journal cover. I wanted to design a vase for my flowers with a Springtime theme to complement the magnolias.

We’re lucky enough where I live in Devon to occasionally spot little yellowhammer birds darting around. They seem to be shy little birds and so often it’s just a glimpse of their yellow underbelly, but they’re quite unmistakable. I find them absolutely captivating and get really excited every time I glimpse one! Sadly though, they’re on the endangered ‘red’ list here in the UK as their numbers have been declining rapidly in recent years. So, I decided a yellowhammer it was to grace my vase which obviously had to have a vintage feel to it!

It’s actually got me thinking that I might quite like to get into the ceramics room and hand-paint some porcelain, because I’d rather like this vase to grace my own home! The Blue is a deep ultramarine, another colour I have tended to use little of in the past and have fallen quite in love with!

I also had a play in photoshop with my original magnolia design and spurred on by a dear friend, created a repeat pattern.

Next, I will be concentrating on putting this image onto a journal cover and creating some hand-lettering for it, so off to work I go… but I’m nearly there, you never know I might actually have this one ready to submit early, which will be an absolute FIRST for Mats Bootcamp!

Mats Bootcamp February Mini - Magnolia's

I have always adored Chinoiserie, so much so that I would love to create my own. Imagine how utterly elated I was then, when I discovered that for this months mini exercise in Bootcamp my mission was to paint magnolia’s.

I decided for that reason that I’d like to keep my flowers for this assignment relatively representational and I thoroughly enjoyed getting back into my watercolour paints, after several months of learning new processes in the textile print room at college. I also decided to try two new colours that have been sitting in my palette all this time and yet I never use them!

Admittedly, I probably don’t have time to develop this into a Chinese style wallpaper design just yet, but most certainly have visions of coming back to it in future months.

Flowers for Mothers Day

It's week 3 of Folio Focus and our brief is all about Mothers Day! I've been desperately wanting to illustrate some vases of flowers for ages but haven't found the time. I'm thinking that I might make this one into a print when I open my Etsy shop later in the year.

Mats Bootcamp 2018 - Inside My Bag!

It's come back around to that time of year again and Mats Bootcamp is here at last, along with a familiar buzz, as friends old and new come together to create art from all corners of the globe.  Artists on the whole tend to be a kindly bunch and the Mats community is full of inspiration and support.  It attracts the real pro's, the beginners and everything in between and I always come away feeling utterly enriched and often with a new friend or two.  The days leading up to the first assignment are filled with the kind of excitement you feel as a little kid waiting for Christmas!  So it is with great joy that I can share with you what I've been getting up to during this first week of the mini assignment: 'What's in My Bag'.  This has been a fascinating exercise, I suppose we don't often analyse exactly what we carry around with us everyday, but the process of doing just that has strangely taught me a great deal about myself and my own personal style.

Enjoying the Little Things: Patterns

My adventure in simple patterns with CreativeBug has been continuing in the background of other work.  It's so therapeutic and is a great way to try some different colour combinations and become acquainted with my beautiful set of Turner Acryl Gouache.  At some point I'd like to come back to the paisley and paint it in several colour ways.  But for now the month ahead is very full with various other arty projects.