Last Night In The Garden .....

Last night in the garden... I saw some magical creatures!

As art students, we like to draw inspiration from a variety of sources - including cultural celebrations from around the world such as Chinese New Year, Earth Day and Japanese Children's Day, Christmas and Easter!

While we appreciate the special meaning of Easter, we are also enjoying the fun of the Easter Bunny!

Even our older artists are enjoying the fun of this very cute rabbit picture... and some have even morphed theirs into other creatures. We have foxes, birds, chickens, a ferret and even a unicorn!

We started with a guided drawing, as always looking for basic shapes to help us.
Using a simple egg shape for the head and tear-drop for the body, our rabbits have come alive with the magic of blended oil pastel, metal tooling and collage!

Fabulous Foil Reliefs

We used paper twine and cardboard to create semi-abstract relief collages before covering them with foil and then painting them with black tempera.

When the paint is dry we gently sponge the surface until our raised relief shines silver again. Finally we mounted them on brightly painted and patterned paper, a beautiful contrast!

Georgia

Bobble-Heads

Our clay Bobble-Heads are finished!

Painted with bright acrylic, each one has it's own 'personality'!

Monday Bobble-Heads

Op Art

Op Art (or Optical Art) uses line, contrast and often very precise mathematical composition to 'trick' the eye so that the viewer perceives different visual effects such as movement, warping, swelling or even hidden images.

We've had some fun this week, creating a 3D optical illusion using nothing but a black pen and very carefully drawn lines. Each one is completely different... some have achieved a clearly defined 3D effect, while others intriguingly look as though they are emerging from flowing water. Even our 'happy accidents' look quite amazing! Our artists have done an great job with this challenging project, which required a lot of care and patience! 

Emma