Superb watercolour and pen illustration today by student Eden Cox. The background woodland has been painted very delicately, with enough detail to show we are looking into a dense woodland, but not too much to take away the eye from everything happening in the foreground treehouse. Congratulations Eden for a wonderful illustration!

 

If you enjoy viewing and creating botanical illustrations, you are in for a treat today! Student Moira Millar has created all of the amazing illustrations you see here for a number of different assignments on the Botanical Painting Diploma Course. Our online course with full tutor support takes you through each stage of the leaning process which includes everything you need, enabling you to develop your painting and drawing skills as a botanical artist. Our course is a wonderful foundation for any budding botanical artist and our tutor gives each student feedback and guidance at every stage. We hope that you find Moira’s work inspirational and it gives you the courage to sign up onto our course today!

 

Young Artist Talitha Young was asked to choose a toy object and draw it from 5 different angles, including one colour study. Hasn’t she done marvellously! Each study looks and feels very three dimensional. Talitha has included the highlights and shadows in each drawing – what wonderful observational skills she has at such a young age. Our Drawing for Children starts at aged 7 so if you have a budding artist in the family, visit our website to see how you can give them ahead start in their art!

 

The following has been written by tutor Vanessa Weaver…

I have a student on the Graphic Design Art Course who has produced some lovely typographic work. Her name is Rosie Marnan and her response to one of the first lettering based tasks on the Art in Graphics course is definitely worth sharing. The requirement of the brief is to choose a word or phrase (or even random letters that don’t spell a real word) and explore contrast through changing different elements, such as font style, weight, width and colour. Rosie has produced a very attractive solution that not only generates interest, but also creates a lot of movement too. It is well finished, with excellent hand rendering skills. I hope that everyone enjoys viewing it!

Rosie Marnan
Graphic Design in Art Course

This weeks Spooky Saturday Illustration is by student Donata Zawadzka.

 

Painting and drawing inspirational objects is the key to a good still life piece. Here student Pam Cherry  has certainly been thinking very creatively as her two mackerel on brown paper are the perfect still life subjects! She has been thinking outside of the box here and its worked out beautifully. Loving the limited pallet of greys, blues and browns. Pam also set about designing a still life study of a wooden trugg and plant pots from her garden. The photo below shows some of Pam’s sketches in both graphite and paint, along with the finished painting below them.

 

Our Pet Portrait Diploma Course doesn’t just teach you how to paint pets…you can pain any animal you wish whilst working through the course. Anneke Elizabeth van Dijk-Broerse did just that with this wonderful pastel painting of a grey squirrel. Her attention to detail and the time taken to describe the tail of the squirrel is beautiful. Our hearts also melt at the tiny kitten portrait too. We hope you enjoy viewing Anneke’s artwork and if you are interested in painting animals, head on over to our website and read more about Pet Portrait Diploma Course. It also gives you a brief refresher on drawing at the start, so anyone who lacks confidence in drawing however only wants to draw pets – this is the perfect course for you.

 

The following has been written by tutor Vanessa Weaver…

I have a student on the Graphic Design Art Course who has submitted a lovely piece of work that really demonstrates the maxim ‘less is more’. It is always so tempting to try to fill most of the available space within a design. However, white space (the unused part of a design with no text, images or graphics) can be extremely useful in allowing the content to ‘breathe’.

This principle has been demonstrated by Lan Qian. The work below shows a poster proposal for a Bauhaus exhibition, along with a wonderful visual explanation of how each element has been carefully positioned within it. The amount of white space allows the viewer to absorb the content with ease. Also, there is terrific consideration of the layout.

In the second image, this is shown in the form of a grid, which has been used to align the text and photograph. Using an invisible series of lines to position each aspect is most effective in graphics and creates cohesion within a design. In brochures and leaflets, the use of a grid ensures consistency throughout. Lan Qian’s work is a wonderful example of carefully crafted type and image. She has also shown how the poster would appear in context.

Lan Qian
Graphic Design in Art Diploma

My name is Roxana Calman and I completed the illustration course with Spencer Hill. I found Storyberries while searching the internet, looking for children illustrations and bedtime stories. After I looked over their website I saw that you can actually work with them, either as an author or an illustrator, so I sent them an email. The lady that replied to me, Jade Maitre, was very sweet and lovely, she answered all of my questions regarding what is like to work with them, and what is the illustrator’s job. Their business is non profit, so the stories and illustrations are made by artists that volunteered to help them. She asked me to send a few images with my art style, then I was all sorted.

She gave me after a few weeks my first story ”Baby Brother Surprise” written by Attia Stamp. I was so excited to start and really happy with this story. I have applied in this project everything I’ve learned from the Illustration Course and it really paid off. It took me two months to finish the story (did it in parallel with University work), there was no deadline, I wasn’t limited to a specific amount of time. After I finished, I sent all the images to Jade, then she carefully edited them and put them together for the website.

I had lots of fun but also this project made me take children illustration even more seriously, I think I did a good job but I feel like there is still a lot to learn, but now I know what I want to do as an Illustrator.

Website – www.roxanacalman.com

Editors Note: Here are a couple of quotes from Roxy and our tutor Spencer Hill from emails that we received…..

Roxy…

….I have to give a big THANK YOU to you and London Art College because the Illustration Course helped me so much! Thank you once again for the great feedback you gave me! It helped me a lot and because of that now I am where I am. Hopefully, one day I will have published real books^^….

Spencers reply…

….I am so proud to see such consistent character designs, and great compositions and rich illustrations. Wonderful. My favourite is the stinky baby illustration, although I do love the little old man character too….

 

 

This weeks Spooky Saturday Illustration is by student Linda Tordoff.