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.

Peony Love!

I seem to be updating everything at the moment while also quietly working away on my Global Talent Search entry, I'll share that here in the next few days.  In the meantime though, I've just created a new logo based around my current obsession with peonies!

Ode to Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf the great lover of words and considered a prominent author in  modernist writing during the 20th Century.  She's attributed to being one of the pioneers in the narrative mode of writing known as 'Stream of Consciousness', a style we're quite used to reading in today but utterly groundbreaking at the turn of the 20th Century.

There is a nod in the background of my portrait to Bloomsbury, a group of intellectuals and artists of which Virginia was a key member.  I am just embarking upon reading the beautiful Penguin Clothbound edition of 'Orlando', written in 1928 and one of her lighter novels intended as a portrait of her enigmatic lover Vita Sackville West.  

Sadly, Woolf suffered with mental illness throughout her life and committed suicide in 1941 at the age of just 59.  But she lives on inspiring others through her brilliant works which have been translated into over 50 languages.

MATS Bootcamp - Aretha Franklin & Her Bag of Bling

And the bag belongs to ... Aretha Franklin!  It's a bag full of opulence and glamour fit for the Queen of Soul herself!  I have to confess, this is an updated version, as I did repaint Aretha after I submitted my piece, because I was in such a rush to finish in time I really wasn't happy with the way she came out originally!

So, the first month of Bootcamp is a wrap and as usual I have learnt an absolute tonne.  There's something about having a deadline to meet and actually posting your work into a gallery that pushes you beyond all your expectations.  Not to mention everything you learn from the Facebook community where fellow Matsians generously share their tips and knowledge.  On Monday our next mini assignment will be revealed, which I wait for with great curiosity and anticipation.

In the meantime why not check out the marvellously inspiring Gallery of Bootcamp Art, I think there's over 600 pieces of work to view.  It always amazes me how different everyones interpretation of the assignment is!

Mats Bootcamp 2018 - Who's Bag Is This?

Throughout January I have been working away on the first Bootcamp Assignment of the year.  Having illustrated the contents of my own bag, we were then asked to imagine and illustrate what we thought might be in the bag of someone famous.  In hindsight, perhaps I should have added a few more things to make it a little more obvious, since my bag of contents definitely had a large dose of creative license.  But for now, can you guess whose bag I had to illustrate?