World Building, Wizards and Waterford Paper

Week 3 of Gardens and Greenhouses led me into the Japanese Gardens at Regents Park for a second attempt at the space. Last year when I was here, I ended up doing small gouache studies in my tiny Moleskine sketchbook that were rather abstract and monet-like. This time around was different, but we did start off small this week for our morning task:

Small Morning Exercise, Gouache on Paper

For the latter part of the morning and into the afternoon, I worked on a larger, imaginative gouache painting that combined different elements I could see around me. I went with a slightly higher view; using one of my classmates sitting in the distance as inspiration for the primary figure:

Gouache on Paper

Image-Making on Fire

This week we were back with Richard Ikhide for World Imagery and were looking at the interesting compositions of Emma Amos. Richard also presented us with work from Gauguin, and one painting in particular caught my attention so I ended up doing a study in my sketchbook. That study then went on to influence a gouache painting I did next of the model sitting:

The World Begins, Gouache in Sketchbook

Hands down these are the strongest two pages in my sketchbook right now, I'm really enjoying bringing imaginative elements into my work from previous studies and I've actually started pulling random stuff out of my head (credit to the manga I read and Richard Ikhide for helping me push my interests more).

The momentum I gained in the morning continued into the afternoon; I created fantasy worlds shaping my compositions with large, cloaked, wizard-like figures:

When I make classwork I'm happy with, I always end up in Atlantis Art buying nicer paper to push the drawings into something more realised. I've secured some big sheets of Saunders Waterford 300gsm watercolor paper, so do sign up if you're interested to see some larger gouache pieces soon!

And with that all the best and see you next week!
Tomas