More three tone master studies. I was advised to do them smaller, as I was doing one study per page… what a difference! I was doing these in around half the time it took me to do the full page studies, and I was concentrating more on my brush strokes and where to put the paint a little more as the work area is smaller. Even after this course, I’ll definitely be doing these for a long time…

Now for the colour studies, very nervous for these as I know nothing about colour! Also, I have to mix my own colours as well, scary.

The next six master studies, I forgot to upload them yesterday. They went much better than my first acrylic attempt! There’s a lot I could improve on, but for the exercise we’re doing I’m learning so much about composition and values that I never realised before when just looking at these paintings. Now to carry on with the rest!

Ok, I’m being brave, here are my first five master studies. At the moment we’re using three values (or as close as I can get to that) to block in the basic shapes and composition of each piece. I’ve written what painting I studied for each one. I have to do 50 of these as the first part of the art camp assignment, then 50 colour studies which will be even more difficult as I have no real knowledge of colour at all! I’m happiest with either the first Monet or Whistler study, I feel the others are a bit messy but are a good start.

My legs after painting the floor in the studio in preparation for the exhibition next Friday, I wasn’t as messy as I though I’d be. That floor paint is vile stuff, that’s why I wore these cheap tights! It sticks to your skin and even turps doesn’t wash it off completely. The prep is now finished so we don’t have to be in tomorrow, but I want to get a headstart on my exhibition piece, stretch the canvas onto the pallet and get started!

Can’t believe how much stuff I’ve accumulated from one year of university in my studio… most people only had a couple of bags. I have a trolley full of bags and blocks of clay, rolls of paper and work as well as canvases and other stuff. I won’t be hoarding so much stuff next year, I’ll take it home when I’m done with it!

My work from the group exhibition!

My idea for this work, and how I’ll work in the future was to face my own self doubts about my art, the inner critic that always tells me what I’m doing is wrong, or isn’t good enough. I tried to work with the self doubt, giving it a form in the real world to get it out of my head. It was hard to begin with, I felt like I wanted to cry several times because the doubt had taken over - “what I’m creating is rubbish! This isn’t art!”.

It’s interesting how I felt while creating these little sculptures, maybe next time I’ll write down the internal thoughts alongside it, it’s like a battle against myself sometimes. It was quite meditative as well, once I began to accept the doubt as part of creating these sculptures, and all of my art, I felt more at peace, and was just able to create. I don’t want to overcome the doubt, I want to accept it and work with it; it’d be impossible to overcome it and would probably end disastrously! Somebody described these sculptures as being “little gremlins”, I think that’s exactly what they are; those little niggling voices in your head.

Somebody might just look at these and see unskilled sculpture, lumps of clay and think it’s all outlandish; but for me it wasn’t about skillful sculpting or realism, it’s about showing hesitation and doubt.

Two quick drawings from memory in my sketchbook. These are actually of a few of the sculptures I created for my exhibition, which I will get photographs of soon on to here! Just waiting for them to be sent to me, although I did get a few on my digital camera but I know the images won’t be anywhere near as good a quality.

So could these be considered a preview?

A quick drawing from my sketchbook from one of Karl Blossfeldt’s photographs. Now that it’s on the screen I can see where I went wrong, but I’m trying to improve my cross hatching skills as well which isn’t so bad in this. The scanner has made the image a little grainy, even on the high PPI setting, sorry!

Another series of blind drawings, but with these I decided to use brown packaging paper. I really like the quality of the brown paper against the black pens. I also had a ‘happy accident’, as in the last drawing I used a gold marker to create a second drawing over the first, however I didn’t realise you couldn’t see the drawing until after I took the blindfold off. I moved away from it, the light hit it and it was revealed! I hope you can see it in the photograph? Sorry for the bad quality, phone camera…

A preview of my exhibition work. I need to make so many more sculptures for Thursday! I’ve used about 3/4 of a 12.5kg block of clay, and I aim to uee the rest of it hy Thursday. A lot of work ahead, as well as helping everyone else to set up the exhibition.

Karl Blossfeldt achieved recognition for his micro-photographs of plants, which were first seen by the public in his book Urformen der Kunst (The Originary Forms of Art), 1928.

Through these photographs he wanted to show that all forms of art have their beginnings within the forms of nature. This depiction of basic forms provoked a variety of responses among artists, from a Neo-Romantic longing for nature, to alienation from the surreal enlargement of subject-matter.

I bought the book Natural Art Forms, and it has 120 of his photographs presented on full pages, and is so lovely and inspirational just to look through, and I’m always amazed at all of the forms his photographs show! I’m thinking of using these as inspiration for some of my future work.