Here are a few ideas to get you started. We hope you enjoy having a go at some of these suggestions. There are Zoom classes to look at and we have classes planned for the Studio, and outside, from July onwards. New classes are added all the time so sign up,. or contact us to be the first to hear about things
Monday Still Life
…not just for Mondays
Every week we have a new Still Life on-line for anyone who fancies having a go at it.
There are no rules.
Move stuff about, create a collage, re-create the still life with your own items, paint everything in a Hockney-esque style, place everything in a grid fashion, change the colours, change the size, imagine what it would look like from underneath.
Kickstart Art
This is where you will start to flex your creative muscles. This is not the place to show you how to draw a cup, or what materials are needed for oil painting. These five steps to the Kickstart Art programme are designed to get you ready to choose what to do next.
Time and Place
I spend a lot of time in my Kitchen.
It is a place of work, pause, coffee drinking, thinking, gathering, nurturing, feeding, eating, discussing, planning, watching the world go by – the list goes on. It is the central hub in our home, never more so than in this strange period of lockdown.
A Portrait in Five Objects
This exercise is about creating a portrait using objects that relate to a person. It may be that you are the only person that understands the references – I don’t think that matters.
Everyday Items on Repeat
Your own choice of objects in ‘Collections and Mini Museums’ start to form a portrait of who you are, and your interests. I cannot imagine anyone else forming a collection that is like mine.
Doing this exercise is a private pleasure – it is NOT about pleasing someone else with the collection. If you let yourself enjoy these strange collections things start to happen, compositions change, directions change.
The Walk as Art
My idea of a walk is either to get from ‘a’ to ‘b’, or to explore. These reasons for walking are about me, my pleasure, not about virtue, doing me good, or obligation. Pierre Gassendi, a down-to-earth philosopher declared Ambulo ergo sum, ‘I walk therefore I am’. A walk is about space, time, looking, memory, smells, sounds, place, imagination, cogitation, being alive. It seems rather a waste to think of it as just exercise.
There are a number of contemporary artists who have viewed taking a walk, or a journey, the passage of time, area and space covered, to be a work of art. It is for the artist to consider what, how, where and if to record the walk.