I first started attending art classes many years ago mainly as a break from family demands and the daily job. Over the years I have attended many and varying classes and tried different mediums. However now, due to old age, health issues and mobility problems, find it more comfortable to work from home and discovered the London Art College in an advert in Artists and Illustrators magazine.
Throughout this time I eventually realised that I don’t really like painting, paints never seem to do what you want, but I do love using pencils and find building up a picture just using graphite to be a very rewarding experience. On looking through the LAC syllabus I found they did a Coloured Pencil Drawing Course, one of my favourite mediums. I loved everything about the course especially being taken out of my comfort zone, and learnt a lot from Paul Weaver my tutor with his inspirational and encouraging feedbacks. His advice on use of light is indelibly printed on my brain!
On completion of this course as the next challenge I embarked on the Drawing with Pens course. I have always liked pen and ink drawings but know very little of the techniques. The course has been completely enlightening. I never knew that so many different types of pens existed. I am gradually building up a collection and constantly looking for more. I have found that good quality pens (Derwent and Faber Castell) are much smoother and lovely to use.
Again I have found the course to be quite demanding and again taking me out of my comfort zone in that it leads towards abstraction, stylisation and cartoon images. I really enjoyed the landscape assignments especially the non coloured one and building up light and texture just using the line of a pen was intriguing. However it left me inspired to try more landscapes by this method. I still have reservations and am struggling with the last assignment which is about abstraction but am prepared to have a go. Again my tutor Monika Cilmi has been very encouraging and full of good advice with her feedbacks.
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