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.

MATS Children's Book Illustration - Ada Lovelace

Ada Lovelace MATS Childrens Book Illustration Emotions

Ada Lovelace Child MATS Childrens Book Illustration

Over the past few weeks, I've been completely absorbed in the latest https://makeartthatsells.com class: Illustrating Children's Books.

The course is utterly jam-packed with fantastic content to work through and each week there is a deadline for submitting your assignment.  It's taught by the magical Lilla Rogers and Children's Book Art Director, Zoe Tucker.  I must admit, I've found it very hard to keep up with the pace, partly due to my own time restrictions and the talent in the group is quite extraordinary.  It's wonderful having my news feed full of such utterly inspiring art everyday.

At the beginning, we had a choice of 3 texts and to start with, I have chosen Ada Lovelace, the daughter of Lord Byron and a most inspiration woman, attributed to developing the first ever computer in 1842.  I was excited to research Ada, partly because I simply love history and partly because I know I need to work on developing my people drawing skills.

The first few weeks have been all about character design and development, I have discovered a new-found respect for children's book illustrators, my goodness it's so hard!

Time for Tea

Thrush with Crown and Flowers Watercolour

Sweet Williams & Cosmic Serpent Letter S

English Garden Flowers Watercolour Painting Inspiration

Inspirational Packaging

It's hard to believe that the Summer holidays are almost over and school starts in just 2 weeks.   I must admit I was rather surprised when I noticed just how long it's been since my last blog post.  I have however, been rather busy quietly fitting in creative time over the last few weeks.  I entered the Global Talent Search with the wonderful Lilla Rogers and although I didn't get through to the shortlisted 50 for the second round, I did learn so much in the process.  The assignment was to produce a tea cup, saucer and napkin with hand lettering, here's the piece I submitted and a close up of the design on the tea cup.

In the lead up to receiving the first assignment we were given a series of 5 preparation exercises.  The first 3 of which were packaging research, colour palette inspiration and an illustration of the letter 'S'.  My letter 'S' is of sweet williams, sacred symbols and a cosmic serpent.

The 50 finalists produced some really amazing work, check out the gallery here: https://www.facebook.com/LillaRogersGlobalTalentSearch/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1078343725585673

The second assignments are due in this Monday 29th August at which point the judges have to pick just 5 finalists with a 6th being chosen by the voting public.  Very exciting, can't wait to see what they come up with.

Pequena Pezuna The Happy Vicuna

Watercolor Kids Book Character

Mats Bootcamp Cactii for Children's Story Book

With our Exhibition 'Metamorphosis' coming down today, it's time to move on to new projects.  The MATS Bootcamp Gallery for our June Assignment is now live http://makeartthatsells.com/galleries/mats-bootcamp-2016/june/page/4

This month we had to create a character sheet of South American Vicuna for a children's storybook.  My little fellow is a rather happy chap called 'Pequena Pezuna' which means 'Little Hoof'.  He's a rather curious fellow and trots around the Andes on his epic adventures of discovery.

'Metamorphosis': FdA Illustration 2nd Year Degree Show

Year Two FdA Degree Exhibition Devon

Year Two FdA Art Degree Exhibition

Year 2 FdA Degree Exhibition Devon

Since the Opening Night of the Exhibition, life has been extraordinarily busy.  I think I was expecting a 'calm after the storm', but I was surprisingly mistaken.  It was an excellent and very busy night, so most of the photographs I took were before it opened.  I am so grateful to everyone involved and hope this is the first of more exhibitions to come sometime in the future.