Welcome to our Autumn leaves weekend art challenge. We thought that as it is getting very autumnal outside here in the UK, it might be great to have an autumnal challenge. The paintings below have been created by artist Eliot Hodgkin (1905 – 1987) and we hope that you find them inspirational. We absolutely love Eliot’s work and hope our students can research some of his other paintings too.

The paintings below concentrate primarily on studies of leaves however if you would prefer to widen this challenge out a little – if you are feeling brave – you could paint a tree or a trees in a landscape or garden with the leaves on the ground. They don’t have to be brown leaves either, all of the wonderful golden and red colours of the autumn leaves can be included if your scene show this.

Observations
If you are opting for the simple still life studies of leaves there are a few observations to look out for and decisions to make before starting or when working. The painting of the brown leaves below are viewed and drawn from the front. The larger leaf has been propped up so we can see the ground plane and then a background behind, even though the background is one single tone. We can see this due to the shadows of the leaves on the ground. So we could say the eye level is on the bottom thirds.

The paintings of the green and orange leaves below have been placed flat on a table and viewed from above and the shadows of the leaves on the table confirm this.

So you have some decisions to make as to what angle you draw your leaves at to make your composition interesting. As always use a strong light source to make it easy for yourself and the painting interesting. You will be able to create plenty of lovely lights and darks to help create the three dimensional form of the leaves. Finally if you are painting a background, take a look at the different colours and tones Elliot has used and ask yourself why he chose that particular colour to go with the leaves. I can guarantee a lot of thought, care and attention went into the background as much as the painting or the leaves!

We hope that helps and most of all – have fun and enjoy it!

Post your work on our Facebook Group or email it to us for inclusion on our blog later this week.

If you would like to receive a roundup of all of our blog posts once a week to keep you inspired in your inbox, why not sign up to our newsletter. You can access our sign up at the top of our page. If you are a London Art College student and you would like your artwork featured here, drop us a line at any time.

An absolutely stunning painting today by student Ann Hunt who painted this whilst on the Watercolour Diploma Course. Ann is a very proficient watercolourist and we had aded a close up detail of the windmill to show the beautifully delicate fresh lines of the windmill and the shadows against the tower. The wet in wet blue of the sky is simply gorgeous! Congratulations Ann on a beautiful painting.

If you would like to receive a roundup of all of our blog posts once a week to keep you inspired in your inbox, why not sign up to our newsletter. You can access our sign up at the top of our page. If you are a London Art College student and you would like your artwork featured here, drop us a line at any time.

Hana Teasar completed the Graphic Design Art Diploma Course with tutor Vanessa weaver. We are delighted to be able to add one of Hana’s projects here on our blog to inspire our students with. Hana was asked to design a box of tea using her own packaging design, her own text along with illustrating each side. We have added all of Hana’s photos of her submission below so that our students can see the illustrations in more detail and the construction of the piece. We hope you like it as much as we do!

If you would like to receive a roundup of all of our blog posts once a week to keep you inspired in your inbox, why not sign up to our newsletter. You can access our sign up at the top of our page. If you are a London Art College student and you would like your artwork featured here, drop us a line at any time.

Student David Maidment has been creating some wonderful artwork on the Drawing and Painting Diploma Course. The course allows students to practice different mediums along with studying different subjects. As you can see below, David has worked in pencil and oil for this set of work practicing his techniques for each medium beautifully. Congratulations to David on creating a wonderful array of artwork.

If you would like to receive a roundup of all of our blog posts once a week to keep you inspired in your inbox, why not sign up to our newsletter. You can access our sign up at the top of our page. If you are a London Art College student and you would like your artwork featured here, drop us a line at any time.

This weekends challenge is going to be difficult to not eat while you are drawing or painting it! We would love for you to draw or paint some scones with jam and cream. Your only dilemma is – are you going to put the jam or cream on top? The Devon method is to cover each half with clotted cream, and then add jam on top. With the Cornish method, the scone is spread with jam and then topped with clotted cream. Which ever way you do it, or if you just arrange the pots of jam, cream and scones ready on a plate, we want you to enjoy this challenge and have fun!

Observations
If you are using the photo below as your reference instead of using your own still life set up, try to look for the lightest and darkest areas first. The whitest brightest area of the photo is the cream. Once you have identified the lightest area, you can then look for the darkest area, which is the jam underneath. You can also add the areas of the shadow under the scones on the plate as equally dark areas.

These two tones are important as if you gauge these correctly, you can then make sure all of the other tones in your artwork are in between the two.

Although the cream looks like a cream colour, there is actually a lot of shadowing on it with the undulations of how its catching the light. Also, the way to make the jam look ‘jam like’ in your artwork is to add the very small, but strong light highlights with sharpish edges, in almost geometric shapes.

You can also note that in the photo the scones at the front are in focus and the scone behind is slightly blurry. To convey this in your artwork, you can avoid sharp edges, making everything very soft along with adding less detail and duller highlights in the jam.

Hopefully this will help you when you are either drawing or painting the photo below or with similarities in your own scone, jam and cream setup!

Post your work on our Facebook Group or email it to us for inclusion on our blog later this week.

All of the photos we post on our London Art College Weekend Challenges are copyright free. Feel free to use the artwork you produce however you wish. If you would like your artwork posted here on our blog, email it to Melanie at techsupport@londonartcollege.co.uk. If you have any Weekend Challenge requests let us know too! Best of luck and happy drawing and painting!

Welcome to this weeks art challenge depicting of oranges and orange peel. This is a fantastic exercise as it combines not only colour but also the varied textures on the orange and peel to contend with.

If you think about an orange segment you might think on the face of it, it is just simply orange in colour. However on closer inspection you will see a transparent and white pith over each segment. This needs to be portrayed with the actual orange colour underneath with the transparent pith looking and feeling like it is on top. Not easy!

Our students, however have done a wonderful job with their artwork on this task. They have done really well to create the transparent white feel to each segment. We are particularly impressed by Vera’s watercolour painting below. Excellent job!

Congratulations to all of our students who took up this weeks challenge. We hope that everyone is looking forward to our next challenge coming up tomorrow!

If you would like to receive a roundup of all of our blog posts once a week to keep you inspired in your inbox, why not sign up to our newsletter. You can access our sign up at the top of our page. If you are a London Art College student and you would like your artwork featured here, drop us a line at any time.

A wonderful collection of work from students on the Digital illustration course. Each one so diverse and interesting. We hope that you find them inspiring and if you would like to have a go at digital illustration, why not join our course. Head on over to our website and check out the details – Digital Illustration Course

If you would like to receive a roundup of all of our blog posts once a week to keep you inspired in your inbox, why not sign up to our newsletter. You can access our sign up at the top of our page. If you are a London Art College student and you would like your artwork featured here, drop us a line at any time.

A Collection of Litter – I decided to complete this as a vignette rather than try to fill the whole page.  Again using a mixture of Polychomos and Coloursoft, but on a smoother support of 200 gsm cartridge paper. The pencils used for my course are mainly Faber-Castell Polychomos, with some additional colour from Derwent Coloursoft.  The texture of the paper meant that I had to use many layers in order to be able to blend  the pigments into the surface, and perhaps this too has added to the vibrancy of the colours. 

Tree in the landscape  – The setting for this picture is the lake in Birkenhead Park, and is from a photograph taken during the snows of last winter.  On this picture I mainly used the Coloursoft, but with some Polychomos dark green and indigo to form the shadows in the branches of the Cedar.  The paper is 200 gsm cartridge.

Alan McMahon
Coloured Pencil Course

If you would like to receive a roundup of all of our blog posts once a week to keep you inspired in your inbox, why not sign up to our newsletter. You can access our sign up at the top of our page. If you are a London Art College student and you would like your artwork featured here, drop us a line at any time.

The Elmer trail in Ipswich has now come to a close. Once it was all complete there was the auction for the charity involved on October 3rd.

I am so excited to announce that my Elmer ‘Life in it’s Diversity’ has been incredibly popular and it has been sold to Axa for £8000!

Axa is also my sponsor for the project and I am so happy my Elmer stays with them. I feel deeply proud and full of joy. I had an amazing experience and I look forward to creating more work like this in the future!

This is from Ipswich start newspaper and I have enclosed photos of my Elmer below. 
https://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/elmers-big-parade-suffolk-elmer-sale-prices-1-6307047

If you would like to receive a roundup of all of our blog posts once a week to keep you inspired in your inbox, why not sign up to our newsletter. You can access our sign up at the top of our page. If you are a London Art College student and you would like your artwork featured here, drop us a line at any time.

Three superb drawings today by student Babs Williams who is studying on our Beginners Drawing Course. These are excellent studies of objects that can easily be found around the home and great ones to practice with.

If you would like to receive a roundup of all of our blog posts once a week to keep you inspired in your inbox, why not sign up to our newsletter. You can access our sign up at the top of our page. If you are a London Art College student and you would like your artwork featured here, drop us a line at any time.