The challenge for this week is to paint some ripe red tomatoes. You can design them however you wish. Portray them on a chopping board whole or cut, arranged on a plate or bowl, you can even add some cheese in similar to one of the photos below. If you have access to draw or paint different varieties and colours of tomatoes we would love to see that too.

We want you to celebrate the tomato with its rich colour and shiny surface. Bring lots of light into the scene so that you can add highlights on the tomatoes along with rich shadows too. Draw from your own still life set up or from the photos below. Create rich dark backgrounds, watercolour washes or cut to white. The choice is yours.

Be experimental, why not look down on your composition or perhaps up at the tomatoes from an angle. Use any medium you would like from pastel, coloured pencil, acrylic, oil, watercolour, mixed media or perhaps you might like to use your tablets drawing program and create it digitally.

We are very much looking forward to seeing your results! Have fun!

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!

Welcome to this weeks collection of artwork from our weekend Challenge – Pointillism! We have received such a wonderful response from our students, especially exciting to hear from Pauline who watched the video we posted showing the use of cotton buds to create her hot air balloon Pointillism artwork. We are thrilled to hear the great ideas we have here can be used in other aspects of our students creative lives.

Pauline said –
“I loved this week’s  challenge  as I looked at the youtube clip on using cotton buds for painting and gave it a go, very enjoyable to try! I work at an after school club and think this could be a great activity to do there!
Thanks! Pauline”

Alex Schofield emailed us the beautiful and very cleverly achieved painting of a crow below. Alex said…
“The pointillism painting I have made is of a crow standing in front of a hedge. I used acrylic paint on A3 canvas board and the rigid shaft tips of two feathers. The background and foreground were made with a pigeon feather, and the bird itself with a crow feather. I pick feathers up now and then when I am outside, I am really fond of wild birds. The hard tips to paint with leave good marks too, it isn’t a simple way to apply paint but seems to have a great effect.”

Leonie Schottler completed this stunning digital art piece and said…
“I used the drawing software Gimp to create this image.  I was inspired by a recent trip to beautiful Seville and a visit to the Alcazar palace there. The Palace is part of the Unesco Heritage since 1987 and an enchanting place with lots of motives to draw or inspire later work.”

Below is our full gallery of paintings and drawings. Congratulations everyone on some absolutely superb pieces! We are very much looking forward to seeing students results for our next challenge coming up tomorrow! Happy Painting everyone!

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.

My name is Raquel Espinoza and I have just completed my course with the London Art College. It has been a very fulfilling journey. I studied Graphic Design in my country, Peru, and have a technical degree. However, I always had the feeling that I needed to go further deep into my artistic skills. I am a constant learner. I think it’s very important to let go of what you know, question it, and unlearn to obtain new knowledge from different perspectives. With that in mind, I basically googled, and was lucky to find London Art College. I have always been an admirer of art and music that come from the UK, so I was thrilled with the idea of enrolling. I strongly believe that this course has allowed me to level up my skills and I’m forever grateful to my teacher Vanessa Weaver for that.

The Chicha Cola assignment was very personal to be honest. We have a sweet beverage here called “chicha morada”. Its main ingredient is purple corn. I love it. The Coca Cola company attempted to make it a fizzy drink a few years ago using the Inca Kola brand but it horribly failed. I was disappointed when it was removed form the market, so I thought it would be nice to work on the package of a chicha fizzy drink. Chicha is also a music genre, it is like a mix of rock and huayno (I personally don’t like it, but it’s very popular in Peru and it’s part of who we are as a nation). This music genre consolidated in the 80’s, a time when we had constant blackouts due to terrorism. It was not a happy era but people partied anyway. So they developed a particular style to make typographic posters for chicha concerts using very bright colours. Chicha poster artists applied fluorescent paint so that they could advert the events no matter the light conditions. This style inspired me to make the logo. For the label I drew a purple corn, vectorized it and used it as background texture. After the design was ready, I placed it on Photoshop mockups to see how it would look like in real life.

I’m proud to include London Art College as part of my education in my website: www.agnuss.com

Raquel Espinoza
Graphic Design Diploma

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.

Peter Barnett first enrolled on our Painting and Drawing course and was awarded a Distinction. Peter has now enrolled on our Oil Painting course and this is one of the paintings from the first set of assignments. We are absolutely delighted with Peters oil painting of ‘Loftwen’ and you can read Peters description below….

The cottage. 
Loftwen is a derelict cottage in Llanwrtyd Wells in Wales.  It is my first work from drawings on location. Repeated work on the stonework to get the detail but to reflect also the ‘organised randomness’ of the stone shapes and how they fit together.  The right section of the front wall is collapsing and this proved very problematical.  I tried lots of combinations of shades and colour to get the effect of the side wall in the shadow and the front wall in the sunshine.  Overall a pleasing result.

The Tree. 
I have done conventional tree views with broad trunk, roots, branches and leaves.  I wanted to try a tree that was all foliage and to build up the layers.  Happy with this.  Lots of work on finding ways to get the sunlight to catch the outer leaves.

The Foreground Grass. 
The most challenging of all.  Some aspects are pleasing, the overall colour balance and tone for example.  However, despite many repeated attempts, I have not cracked thin lines in oils.  I am pleased with the thickening of the paint into the foreground.  Not so happy with this, even though the most time and research was put here.

The Red Kite. 
Surprising difficult to get the angles right for the wings and the shading correct.   Many of the issues connected with the small size of the bird – tiny error magnified.  Again difficulties with thin lines.

Amazing painting today by Drawing and Painting Diploma student Brenda O’Brine. We love it!

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 Emily Kent suggested we have a Pointillism art challenge! One of the artists that made Pointillism popular was the artist George Seurat. Two of his most famous paintings, which we are sure that you will all recognise, are the ‘Bathers at Asnières’ and ‘Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte’ below.

Don’t panic though, we aren’t expecting you to recreate a Seurat masterpiece….. scroll to read more!

For this weeks challenge we would like you to create a piece of artwork using a pointillism style. It can be any subject, any media and any size. The challenge is wide open so that you can use your own ideas and creativity.

We have added a few examples of some pointillism art below to inspire. Watercolour is a lovely medium to create larger dots and shapes as you can see below.

If you want to create a black and white study, a black ball point pen, felt pen or Copic pen is an excellent choice. Equally coloured felt pens and markers would be an excellent choice.

If you are feeling adventurous why not use cotton buds similar to the video below…!

There are so many options and we hope you enjoy researching it and creating your own pointillism masterpiece!

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

Welcome to the reveal of student artwork from this weeks Art Challenge – Sandwiches. To be able to improve on your drawing and painting skills it is important to try to draw anything and everything. Sandwiches are perhaps something that many of us eat on a daily basis and take for granted! Maybe next time you are sitting in front of your lunch, why not create a quick sketch of it! Sketch and study the mundane things in every day life, as they can hold challenges that you may not have encountered before.

For instance drawing and painting the texture of the bread can be very difficult, so the more you come across things like this that might trip you up, practice them in your spare time. It will really help you to paint or draw your chosen subject / final pieces / gallery work or commissioned art.

The students who have taken part in this weekend challenge – the idea by student Julie Smalley are of course Julie Smalley herself along with Alfred Reid, Audrey Quinton, Lei Mei, Pauline Burke, Shamina Chowdhury, Sharon Bennett, Sheila Brown and Tatiana Sukhareva. Well done everyone – superb work and good for you all in taking part and getting extra practice in as well as your course work. Kudos!

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.

Tutor Steven Hersey has just completed a final assessment for student, Ethne Dian on the Illustration Diploma Course. Steven said that Ethne’s work has been outstanding throughout the course and she has been awarded a Distinction. A few examples of Ethne’s final assignment are shown below.

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.

Two wonderful illustrations today by LondonArt College student Claire D’arcy who is studying with tutor Maggy Roberts on the Illustrating Children’s Diploma Course. We love the full colour illustration in particular and have added some close up details for students to view. I hope you find them inspiring! Well done Claire!

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.

Monika Cilmi, who tutors the Beginners Drawing Course, sent one of her students artwork for inclusion on the blog. We were thrilled to see Roseana Mayumi’s drawings which are so beautiful and delicate. Coincidentally Roseana had drawn a pot plant just at the time we were adding students pot plant artwork on the blog for the weekend challenge. We asked Roseana if she would like it included – yes! You can see it on the Pot Plant Weekend Challenge .

Roseana said…

“I really liked the course, it covers a lot and the lessons are simple
but challenging! I especially loved experimenting with different materials.
I’m glad that I could take my time practicing on my own schedule and
that Monica was very understanding as I had a bad RA flare on both
hands and couldn’t draw for a few months. Yes, please submit my plant drawing for the challenge if there’s still time, I would be happy to see it there. I’ll be checking the blog!”

Roseana Mayumi

We hope you enjoy viewing Roseana’s artwork and if you would like to see your work posted here, please do get in touch!

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.