5 Reasons to Join an Online Art Class →

I’ve spent the past month working on all sorts of hand lettering in what is known as Bootcamp with Lilla Rogers at Make Art that Sells. It’s an annual 3 month art course with 3 main assignments, each preceded by smaller assignments to ease you in. If you’ve followed my blog for a while you’ll have read about previous Bootcamp’s which I’ve taken part in. Below is my completed piece for the first assignment; to design and hand letter the packaging for a chocolate bar wrapper.

Having just completed my first Bootcamp assignment, I thought that someone out there may benefit from reading about why it is that I choose to take so many online art courses.  If you’re interested in reading my 5 Reasons to Join an Online Art Class then you can find out more if you keep reading below:

1. COMMUNITY

   Working as a creative is so often a solitary affair and while I welcome the focus and sense of peace that being alone allows, it is also wonderful to connect with other’s through a shared experience.  While you always make new friends, you so often come across other familiar faces that you’ve previously taken courses with which is something I particularly enjoy. Your online community gradually grows and there is so much kindness and support offered even once a class has finished.

2. SKILL DEVELOPMENT

   The course you choose to take may not specifically involve some kind of skill development, but I always find that new courses have a tendency to push me out of my comfort zone, stretch my work and propel me forwards.  Sometimes it’s the format of the course and the teacher getting you to think differently and sometimes it’s the inspiration you undoubtedly get from other artists working alongside you.  Whatever it is though, you get out of a course what you put in and if you’re prepared to apply yourself, you cannot fail to come away from the experience richer for it.

3. NEW WORK

   Art classes are always packed with great new assignments, often on trend that really get your creative juices flowing.  Sometimes those assignments come complete with fantastic new colour palettes you probably wouldn’t have thought of yourself. Once you’ve completed the assignments you have the added bonus of new work to present on the portfolio page of your website and share on your socials.

4. CRITIQUES

   There are courses designed for giving feedback on your work. Although, in an online course it’s not always possible for the teacher to give individual feedback to everyone. However, feedback given to others can often be applied to your own work and is still incredibly useful.  Online course’s nearly always also have online community groups of some kind or another too.  Over the years, I’ve found that some courses definitely have a better community engagement than others, but once you find a course where everyone gets involved in an active community it’s like gold dust and artists will often keep coming back to that platform just because of the positive experience they’ve had.  A good community group is another way to get excellent and supportive feedback that can be transformational on your artistic journey.

5. GETTING YOUR WORK OUT THERE

   Sharing your work as an artist can sometimes be hard, especially if you’ve not done it much before.  So often creative people hide their artwork away for fear of it not being good enough.  The trouble is, if we don’t share our work with the world no one will ever see it and we’ll never get to know one way or another.  Besides, I firmly believe that the world needs our art, so think of it this way, by not sharing your work, you are actually doing the world a great disservice.  Creativity brings beauty, joy or a deeper understanding of the world around us.  Taking part in a course can encourage you to share your work, so it’s a win win all round!

   At this point incase anyone has concerns, I should probably mention that it is true that unfortunately some artists work get’s copied without their consent.  But worry not,  there are platforms to protect you against design theft.  If you’re based in the UK and have concerns around the theft of your intellectual property, ACID (Anti-Copying in Design) is a fantastic organisation to look into, you can find them here: https://www.acid.uk.com  

   (N.B. I am not promoting ACID as an affiliate or for any personal gain). 

With so many online art classes to choose from it should’t be hard to find something out there. I will be completing quite a few myself this year, so if you’re interested in reading more then feel free to share my journey as I post about it here.

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.

My Mats Prep for Bootcamp 2019

Hooray! It’s here again, the inevitable anticipation is over and our first ‘mini’ assignment has been released. Bootcamp with Lilla Rogers has to be one of the creative highlights of my year!

We get a week to work on a little warm up exercise before we’re given the main assignment. We then have 2 weeks until sharing our work in an online public gallery. Then a weeks rest before the cycle starts all over again and so it continues for four marvellous months of incredible inspiration with a group of kind, talented and wonderful artists, many of whom like me, come back year after year. There’s always a fabulous mixture of old and new faces alike and a buzz of excitement which is quite contagious.

Before the class begins, Lilla always posts a little preparation exercise or two. This time we had to collect a variety of objects from around our homes to create a colour palette from. That’s a photo of mine below. I’ll be sharing updates of my work from the assignments over the next few months so feel free to follow along.

The Pattern Curve!

At last, I have made the commitment to finish the final year of my degree, my youngest will be starting school in September and now seems like the right time!  After much thought and deliberation, I've chosen to pursue Textiles and Surface Pattern Design. While I'm incredibly excited at the prospect, I'm also slightly nervous and a little apprehensive.  Having already done the first two years with a young family in tow, I am under no illusions of how tough it's going to be, despite my wonderful and supportive family.  Plus, oh my goodness I have got so much to learn about pattern!  So in an attempt to start as I mean to carry on, I've been going slightly pattern crazy by starting with some of my existing work and getting to grips with creatine pattern repeats in photoshop.  Hopefully, with some practice my pattern designing will become a little more sophisticated.  I'm really intrigued at the thought of looking back in a years time and seeing how my work has evolved!

Lilla Rogers Global Talent Search 2018

This years first round of the GTS is finally upon us!  We received the brief two weeks ago and deadline was today.  A journal cover which included; Japanese Anemones, Stag-horn Ferns, Hand Lettering and an optional figure.  I've been hidden away, immersed in creative bliss and enjoying every minute of the process and am pleased to have a new piece of work for my portfolio.  Meanwhile, the results of the first round will be published on Friday, along with the gallery of entries which promise to be a feast for the eyes.  There are only 50 artists chosen to get through to the next round and the standard of work is just incredible, I have been genuinely blown away as my Instagram feed fills up with visual gorgeousness.  The judges are going to have a difficult task ahead of them, I certainly would find it very hard to whittle down.  This is the stuff hopes and dreams are made of and I wish all of my fellow artists, many of whom are friends, the best of luck as we all hold our breath and wait until Friday!