Student Kathryn Barstow’s work is absolutely beautiful and you can read about Kathryn below.
I have no formal training in Art. I studied Geology at Manchester University, then went into teaching Science at a secondary school. I left teaching after 14 years when I had my children, they are now grown up nearly 22 and 20! I started watercolour classes when they were both small to give me some ‘me’ time. Several years later I joined our local Art group after doing a short Botanical painting course at the local Garden centre. The Box Art Group introduced me to different media including Graphite and later Coloured Pencils. I loved pastels and did a couple of short courses with Carol Kibble (a local pastel artist) but when I discovered coloured pencils I found this less aggravating to my asthmatic cough. Since then I tend switch between Graphite and coloured pencils. I have done a short Graphite workshop with Mike Sibley and a couple of 2 day courses with Botanical coloured pencil artist Ann Swan (again another local artist).
I have recently been asked by my local Art Group in Box to take over as Tutor when our previous Tutor left as I have dabbled in several different mediums. I had forgotten quite how much I love teaching so have not ruled this out yet.
As to why I chose to do this course? I still enjoy learning myself and felt now that my painting time had been taken over by being the art group tutor, by doing this course it would give me the incentive that I need to do some art work for myself. Also it would encourage me to step out of my comfort zone and widen my experience with coloured pencil. I have really only done botanical work and a small number of drawings of my pet dogs, so landscapes and portraits are relatively new to me. I am looking forward to the challenge!
From viewing Kathryn’s work we are in no doubt she has excelled in the different subjects on our course and we are thrilled to be able to show her work here today. If you are interested in taking our coloured pencil, please do head over to our website and take a look at our coloured pencil course details. We hope that you have enjoyed our week of coloured pencil student artwork and we hope it has not only inspired you, but given you the ideas of what you can draw next!
