art groups in plymouth

While browsing the internet i came across these few groups in plymouth :)

Chinese Brush Painting Society Information: Meet: 1st Saturday of the month 10am-12 noon. Venue: Swarthmore Centre, Mutley. Painting group discusses, paints and sometimes demonstrates all aspects of Chinese brush painting techniques. Contact: B Vallance Telephone:             01752 671168

How cool is that? chinese brush painting, i love this style and think it would amazing to try it out and learn how to do it at a group session :)


I also found there is drop in painting and drawing classes with Pam Grossman at the Plymouth Community Arts Council :
Come join the PCAC and delight your creative senses with drop-in art classes led by Pam Grossmann. Pam, a local artist and illustrator of the children’s book King Gemba: Legends of Leadership, offers drawing based classes that allow students to explore various media and techniques through the use of pencil, color pencil, pastel, pen and ink, or watercolor. For more information, contact Pam Grossmann at            734-464-3968      . Classes are Drop-in, so there is no registration necessary!

Drop-In Drawing & Painting for Adults
Monday: 1:30-3:00 pm
Wednesday: 7:00-8:30 pm 
Price: Member: $14 ▪ Non-Member: $17/class

Drawing & Painting Drop-In Studio for Youth (Ages 5-14)
Tuesdays: 4:15-5:15 pm
Wednesdays: 3:45-4:45 pm
                      5:00-6:00 pm
(Note: youth age 15+ may attend adult classes)
Price: Member: $11/class ▪ Non-Member $ 15/class 

Visiting Lecture

A while ago we had Matthew Robins as a visiting lecturer to our college. It was a great experience and i  really enjoyed meeting him and getting to see all his work :) Check out his website here : link!
You can also watch his short films on his page on Youtube - Link!

Merry Christmas!

We had to make cards for WBL, Heres mine :

We also had to find two places we could exhibit our cards, i thought of these :

Christmas Craft Market
Winter 2011
Armada Way Piazza
30 traders showcaser hand crafted goods, with the community Christmas tree as the centrepiece and a catering area for weary shoppers to take a break with some sustenance. 
For more information: www.plymouth.gov.uk

and

CHRISTMAS FAYRE

Mount Edgcumbe
Saturday 10 and Sunday 11 December 2011 from 10am to 5pm (4pm on Sunday)

Back for its eighth year, the Christmas Fayre will be better than ever!

• Inspirational cookery demonstrations from leading Westcountry chefs
• Local produce will be available for your culinary delight
• If you're looking for that special Christmas gift, there will be a wide variety of crafts and gifts
• Admission: Adults £3 each, children £1 each

Print Portrait

our last prints were self portraits, 2 colour screen prints. really pleased with how mine came out, just wish i could of tried more colours! never enough time on a thurday morning.

original drawing

2 colour screen print

close up of print

i went mad and gave myself blue hair. why not =]

Skeletons =]

BOO!

Here's my two final pieces for the boo project!

 The first image is my response to the 'song to the sirens' poem, i decided that the sailor had been captured by the sirens and became a slave to the sea, the waves are now his master and he is neither dead or alive just a lonely soul forever roaming the oceans.

 And the second image is my haunted house image, i wanted it to look really creepy and dark and i think the lighting made it really atmospheric, there's a shadow of a little girl infront of the window without anyone actually being there, i made up this story that the little ghost is stuck inside a big empty mansion all alone and all she ever wanted was to see the outside world so you can always see her shadow as she stares out the window.

 i really enjoyed doing these projects and am really happy with the work i produced! :)

Poster

A while ago we had to make posters for contexual studies - take an event from the 20th century and and use a style from a specific illustrator/artist to create it. I chose to do the invention of the juke box, which was first made in 1905 and has 25 songs, and i used Alphonse Mucha as my artist, thought it was fitting as he was around at the same time :)

Another Equisite Corpse!

this is darwin, he accidently broke teddy the robot's arm off  in a game of musical chairs, so he's apologising with flowers :)

Equisite Corpse!

love this game - i did a sad old rusty robot with a broken arm and broken heart :( <3

Ghost Portraits

I looove the ghostly theme running through the projects at the moment :) For the first part of the project we had to create ghostly portraits of people who had strange deaths, I chose Sirkka Sari, a finnish actress who fell down a chimney into a burning furnace. ouch. Here's a few pics of what i've been working on so far :

I've been experimenting with lots of techniques and using materials such as inks, charcoal, and manipulating the images on photoshop. To give the images a translucent ghostly look i printed onto tracing paper and acetate. Really pleased with the way its going so far, gonna be difficult to pick my final image!

I'm also really looking forward to the Haunted Houses part of the project, can't wait to start working on it :) I've been looking at the work of Daniel Danger, an amaaazing illustrator who does alot of spooky haunted looking illustrations. Check out his work > here < I absolutely love his style and how he creates atmospheres, each one of his illustrations tell a story, love his work! Here's an example:

^ image from http://tinymediaempire.com

Printing!

I've been really enjoying the printing classes, here's a few prints i did :) 

I've been looking at prints by Kate Mclelland and Fox, some really cool stuff there - gave me lots if new ideas for printing :)



check out the links!

Me, My Book and I

my statement for the altered book project!

My first ideas for the title of my altered book project was that it had to be something that represented me, something relevant and personal that summed me up. But then I couldn't really think of anything good to use so I decided to use the same name as I have for my blog - Katie in Wonderland! I like this name because it can mean alot of things - it can be about anything I see, hear, or think of. So in my book I can include anything that is part of my wonderland. It gives me a huge range of possibilities that will all be personal to me, and this continues on with the intial theme of me, myself and I.
As of now I see my outcome as being a collection of thoughts and imagery from my 'wonderland'. Within the book I want to create a minature world of the places I love, the people in my world, the things I do and love, like i have a strange obsession with clocks and big daddies and cute things, as well as all my monsters and creatures in my world, so these will all make up my wonderland book. I'm thinking of making my wonderland in a book by doing things like carving bits out and having pop ups, so it won't be like a book you can read anymore but more of a sculptural piece.
When doing the research for this project I found a lot of really amazing and inspiring images on google when i searched for altered books. I looked at the work of Brian Dettmer and other book altering artists. I also thought about what I had done in the other book altering project and how I could expand on ideas in that and aslo try new things other than working on the pages with ink and paint by doing something totally different. I'm looking forward to starting it =D

                                                            images from google

pdp - post number 1 !!

1. a favourite image by you:
it was really difficult to decide what image to use for this post, there was too many i wanted to choose from! decided to go with this one in the end though. i chose it coz its one of the newer things ive done and coz i just think its cool =P i drew it in fineliners then coloured it in photoshop.

2. what skills did you arrive with?
umm..well i guess im fairly ok at drawing, im not great at realistic stuff but i can draw good in my own way. i can paint acrylics/oils but i want to get good at using watercolours next. i can use photoshop and ive done a bit of illustrator but want to get better at it!

3. why did you choose illustration?
i chose to do illustration at pca coz i really liked the illustration course i did last year, so i decided to stay with it and go to higher education so i could learn more and get better at doing stuff i actually like doing.

4. what area of illustration are you most inspired by?
hmm..im inspired by a few different areas, i really like childrens book illustration, coz thats an area i would like to go into myself. but i also find digital art really inspiring, it makes me want to get better at it so i can do stuff like all the cool stuff i see! i quite like street art and sketchbook stuff aswell :)

my very first post!

must figure out how this blogging thing works :/








eeep! >.<