Painting Methods, Life Drawing

Back to school!

Typewriter

I've always wanted a manual typewriter and this week I bought this one from eBay seller vildanden07 -- I went to his flat to pick it up and he was a very nice chap, helpful and informative, A1 seller +++++ and everything.

I think it's beautiful, the front reminds me of a vintage car.  It types well but it needs a new ribbon and a careful clean.  There isn't a model number, all I can tell about it is that it was made in Nagoya, Japan, I'm guessing in the early 1960s because there's something rather Mad Men about the style.

I used to bash away on my mum's typewriter when I was little but I'd forgotten how hard and slowly you have to type, and how nasty it is getting your finger stuck between the keys!  Maybe I should wear thin gloves.  Anyway, looking forward to getting it up and running.   It feels very satisfying to have such a physical interaction with a machine like this, technology is so sleek now, a swipe of the finger across the touchscreen, a fluttering of the fingers across the keyboard.  Here's to thumping away at real metal keys and getting inky fingers.

The exposed belly of the beast.

When I lifted the lid, I saw this scratched very faintly into the metal.  I wonder what it says?  I can't read Kanji but I thought it might say 'Made in Japan', or maybe it records the name of the factory-worker who built it or its first owner.  My friend passed the query on to various bilingual folk but they all say it's too faint to decipher.

Half Term Adventures

Okay, so the daily (lessonly) updates fell by the wayside because I got so frantically busy!  The taster courses demand a preposterous amount of work from the students, but then you get to choose one of the topics as a pathway, and the workload after that is (I'm told) less intense.  I decided to pick Fine Art because I want to be an illustrator, and Fine Art is all about conceptual thinking, as well as drawing, painting and printmaking -- and I can still work in Textiles or 3D form if I want.

I do still have photos of my work to upload, though, so I might back-post them in due course.

This week has been half term, a week off to give everyone a breather.  Here's what I've been up to.

Park & Read

Spotted at Cambridge's Park & Ride bus station.  Something for everyone...

'Meet the man behind the machete.' / 'Donkey Drama!'

Contextual Studies

We looked at the art of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome.

We were set the task of re-imagining our Aboriginal Australian journey in the style of an Egyptian tomb painting.  By trying to work in the style of these artists, it should help us to understand how they worked and the aesthetic and technical problems they had to solve.

Fishies in Bed

 

I love it when the goldfish tuck themselves in under the bridge, all in a little row.

Printmaking, Fine Art

Printmaking and Fine Art...

3D and Life Drawing

Lara's hand.

3D and Life Drawing...

A Mushy Kiss