Here is a look at some of my earlier work, produced while studying on a Art Foundation Course at Coleg Menai in 2007/08.
This was my very first drawing produced at Coleg Menai. I remember first being told we were doing life drawing, I couldn't honestly think of anything worse, the thought of drawing people seemed too much to me! But somehow it shortly became my most memorable part of the course. It was a life drawing, using only pencil, and took 3solid days to complete. It was by far one of the most taxing drawings I've ever done, but also the most rewarding. I felt mentally exhausted after each day, the pressure and intensity within the lessons was amazing, but I began to enjoy this way of working. I found I was looking forward to being under pressure to create ambitious paintings. The end result was something that I could never repeat, and something that I am still proud of to this day. It showed me that there was definately more to this course than I had originaly thought.
This was one of my first major drawing on the Foundation Course, and was set as a homework piece over a period of 3 weeks. The brief was to create a drawing from life, of a room within your house including at least 2 people, the size - 6 A1 sheets. At first I was quite scared by this brief and doubted my ability, but I was not going to give up. It was a black and white based brief, using mixed media; anything from pens and charcoal to acrylic. I learnt so much from this piece, and enjoyed the pressure of working outside my comfort zone. By the end, I had a painting that had grown to a massive 12 A1 sheets. It is something that I am still proud of now, and one of those things you seem to look back on and think 'did I really manage to do that?!' The three pictures above so the true scale of the painting, and the way in which it developed over the course of the project.
This is by far my favourite painting from the course. The colours are amazing. It was just a normal day at college, and one that we could spend life drawing. Any scale, any media. I was in the mood for something big, so I taped about 6 A1 sheets of paper together and started painting. The room was almost completly dark, only lit by a couple of lamps, so I was pracitcaly guessing with the colours. The outcome was something that even I was looking foward to, because I was sat on the floor working on this piece, it would of course look completly different held up on a wall in a well lit room. Thinking about this at the time, made me more anxious to produce something completly different, and after a hard days work the outcome was worth it!
This was my end of year painting at Coleg Menai. We, as a course put together a final exhibition which was open to the public. Each panel was constructed by hand, out of plywood and frames built from strips of 2x2, their size; 6ft x 3ft (each panel).
Originaly I only intended working on 3 panels, creating a triptych, but after about a week of working on it I decided it was no longer a challenge, I wanted something bigger. Something that made it exciting! So I persuaded my tutors that it was a good idea, and continued to construct 3 extra panels.
I spent about 4/5weeks on this piece, working on each panel individually and as a whole on the floor. The theme originated form an earlier brief; 'to describe the environment in and around yourself' and evolved from there. I used mainly acrylics and emulisons along with spray paints to create the diffferent effects.
These graphic images where produced in my first few weeks at Coleg Menai. We were each given the same poem and told to produce a series of graphic images, through drawing and the use of Photoshop. I found this quite interesting, and enjoyed the task presented. I've always had a keen interest in graphics, and spending hours on Photoshop seemed a regular thing to me!
