My name is Monika and I am a London Art College tutor. I have recently certified as a Dream builder coach following a live training in LA. It is an amazing program to help people live the life they deserve and love living. It follows 10 principles and it has a spiritual approach which empower people with amazing results.

I have experienced these results in my life and my career as an artist. I am also applying art to the program with various creative activities and affirmation exercises to guide and support my clients / students to achieve their goals and shift their perception about their life. Everyone can apply these principle using art through my guidance.

I mostly work with creative people and businesses. One of my students in the program is an artist and she has shifted her life completely. She has made massive changes moving forward to follow her dreams.

Another project I have been working on while in LA is a new wire sculpture idea. It uses a new wonderful material which all students can use to express their creativity and artistic abilities. Check the link to see some examples and info about this new material.

https://www.artrods.biz/featured-artist

Monica Cilmi

Another week has flown by and we are nearly at the weekend again. Are you read for your weekend challenge?!

I love natural coloured objects, whether it is wood, stoneware, earthenware, natural pinecones, linen fabrics, autumn leaves etc. All natural objects have a very similar colour pallet, which mainly comprises of earthy tones including browns, creams, ochres….

So I set up a still life for you and took a couple of photos of natural objects on our dresser. I have added a variation and given two photos as you can see.

Your challenge is to paint or draw either photo, including the warm colours of the background, but still allowing the objects to stand out from the background.

You can crop into the photo and make your own composition if you wish! The final photo shows just one idea you could use.

Don’t forget that you can let certain areas of the objects to softly blend with the background. If you squint your eyes at the photo to judge the tones, you will see the left hand side of the earthenware pot is very similar in tone to the background. If this area blends or slightly disappears into the background – this is fine! It all adds to the scene. Try to make the most of the lighter areas with the dark background behind, for instance the left had top edge of the candlestick holder, this is lovely and light and the background is a rich dark brown throwing the candlestick forward, but still retaining a soft edge.

I hope that you feel inspired by the images, don’t forget you can use any medium – watercolours, coloured pencil, digital, acrylic, oils or even collage and mixed media. Most of all have lots of fun with your earthy tones!

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

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!

What an amazing collection of hands! It was not an easy challenge and we are so proud of the students who completed the task and submitted work for us to post on our blog.

Sue McAulay’s study of a hand is very solid and three dimensional. The direction of shading is excellent. Sue has shaded within the contours of the hand and fingers to create the rounded feel to them. Also noting the light and shade helps to create the solidity and 3d feel. Well done Sue!

Pauline and Sheila have both taken up the challenge of drawing a hand and ‘painting’ on it to make it become something quite different! We love both pieces, absolutely wonderful and lots of imagination and creativity here!

Jane Burden has created three wonderful studies of hands in her sketchbook. Ultimately all students should keep a sketchbook and draw in it from life daily. This not only helps students to improve observational skills but also the handling of the pencil and refining line, shading, tonal ranges, light and shade etc. Superb drawings Jane, keep up the good work.

Another stunning drawing by Heidi Elizabeth. We not only have a hand drawing here, but Elizabeth is holding another very tricky subject to draw..an egg! The hand and egg have been drawn and shaded extremely well. The shadow on the wall behind along with the shading of the background helps to create a very three dimensional and solid drawing. Excellent light and shade too!

And finally one of our favourites is by Maria Win, her hands painted in watercolour. Utterly beautiful! Crisp, fresh washes, beautiful skin tones and a light filled painting. Well done Maria!

We hope that you have enjoyed viewing the paintings and drawings here. If you would like to take part in the next challenge, keep an eye out on our blog for our next post!

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 stunning painting is by student Jackie Davies who completed the painting for an assignment on the Landscape Diploma Course. We love the light that Jackie has painted in the sky and reflections in the water. The depth of tones in the trees giving them a semi silhouetted feel is excellent, especially in the way they softly blend into the sky. The whole painting is beautiful – we hope you agree!

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.

We displayed a portrait for inspiration yesterday by a very talented student. Today we thought we would display some still life artwork. The drawing is by Coloured Pencil course student Lorelie Dyer. Her drawing of a Coke can, glass and crisp packet is excellent and very colourful too. The amount of work and detail in the book the items are sitting on is incredible. We hope that you are all inspired and impressed!!

Stunning painting today by student Dimitra Klironomou who is studying on our Drawing and Painting Diploma. Isn’t it wonderful!!

Are you ready for another art challenge? This weekend we will be studying hands. You can draw or paint in any medium your own hands or someone else’s … as long as they give you permission of course!! Alternatively you can use the photos that we have added below or you can use your own photos too.

If you would like to get creative, why not draw your hands and then paint patterns on them. Just as if you were actually painting on someones hands, similar to the photo at the bottom of this post. Don’t forget to paint around the contours of the hands. As you can see in the photo below the pattern gets smaller as it goes away from us over the fingers and also curves as it goes around the wrist. Something for you to think about!

If you would like to add jewellery, lay your hand on a special object, or even hold an object, you can do this too. Note the light and shade and try to include this, as it will help you create the three dimensional form of the hands plus the object.

Whether you paint or draw from life or from photos, enjoy it and have fun. We look forward to seeing your creations next week!

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

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!

We set our students the task of creating a painting or drawing of Daffodils in our last weekends challenge. If you follow our blog you will have already seen the challenge along with the reference photo we posted that students could use if required. Or they could draw or paint their own Daffodils or their own interpretation of them.

We received some amazing pieces of artwork! Annie Hemsley used our photo as reference in the first painting below and our other students following used their own reference and ideas. Aren’t they all just wonderful! A very spring like collection of beautiful pieces of art.

We hope that our readers are inspired to have a go themselves! Keep checking back on our blog for our next challenge coming up soon!

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.

I’m currently doing the Pastel certificate course and have just completed my third set of exercises; one of these was to ‘create an imaginary landscape using frottage’. Put simply, in this case, frottage is the art of making rubbings of various textured surfaces using pastels. These rubbings can then be used to create images (by cutting) and pasted onto a surface to generate a picture. 

Having looked around my house there didn’t seem to be many textured surfaces so I made a few of my own by scattering coarse sea salt and breadcrumbs on chopping boards and then using photocopy paper for the rubbing surface. I also used the few textured surfaces I could find.

In the first instance I used small pieces of paper (about A5) and tried to paste these onto heavy cartridge paper to create the landscape. Not a success!! I found the images too small and the surface buckled quite badly with the glue! Plus the rubbings were smearing as I tried to make them stick flat!!

So – I had a think – and started again!! This time I used larger pieces of photocopy paper (A4) so I could use different cuttings from the same ‘pattern’; I used stretched 140lb NOT watercolour paper and ‘fixed’ the rubbings before using them. Also, after checking with my tutor, I created a background and foreground using pan pastels – dampened to create washes of colour. In an attempt to lay some texture into these washes I tried using scrunched up clingfilm (works well on watercolour!) but in this case it didn’t do much at all.

After looking at the rubbings I decided on a snowy, icy mountain landscape so I roughly sketched out the mountains and icebergs and then started cutting the rubbings into various shapes to create the landscape. I realised early on that it was best to lay the cuttings out to make the scene before pasting to make sure they worked together. Having decided on the layout I then pasted each cutting in.

However, the foreground was supposed to be covered with snow and icebergs and, at this stage was just a flat wash. So –in the spirit of experimentation, I used some texture paste to create the icebergs effectively lightly rubbing some pale lilac and pale blue soft pastel across to try and achieve an appropriate iceberg look. Sadly, when dried the textured area looked a horrible grey colour!

After a bit of playing about with the texture paste, white acrylic, gouache, a toothbrush and some acrylic brushes I decided that the best way to achieve the icebergs and snow was to use the white acrylic.  I simply painted over the texture paste and added touches of pale lilac and blue using the toothbrush dipped into the pan pastels.

For the snow I painted in ‘runs’ of white to create snow, generally using the lay of the rubbings to get a reasonable effect. I used a roughly chopped off acrylic brush along with the toothbrush to achieve the scattered effect. 

Then not being happy with the rather insipid sea I used purple and blue soft pastels to make it look rougher. Pleased with the finished picture and my tutor liked it as well!!

All in all interesting learning process!
Jane Tivey
Pastel Painting Course

We felt that we hadn’t showcased a Pet Portrait Diploma student for a while, so here is a stunning painting by student Emma Hollands. Emma created a painting of a white cat in acrylic on canvas for her course.

White animals are very difficult to portray. It is important to note all of the ‘colours and tones’ in the animals fur and not just paint the entire animal pure white. By adding the different tones in the dark and light areas this allow the artist to create a three dimensional look and feel to the cats face.

As you can see in the painting below, the right hand side of the cat is in shadow and Emma has correctly noted this and painted it a darker tone. If it was painted the same tone as the light on the left, the cats face would feel very flat.

Emma has created a truly excellent piece of work here – well done Emma!

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.