Tag: lisbon

Lisbon group collaboration project

I recently participated in a group collaboration project with 6 of my fellow students from the Lisbon trip. This was led by one of the students, Martine Elliott by one of the students. For this group project. We took a photo that was taken during a Lisbon trip of the Paula Rego Museum and divided this into six sections. We each picked a section with the idea that we each used whichever mediums we wanted to recreate the tile that we were given. Once we had all completed our sections. These were then handed back to the student leading the project, who then pieced them together to create one piece of work.

My Final Piece

I really enjoyed doing this collaborative project, partly due to not feeling any pressure for it to be good, as it was not going to be marked and was purely for fun. I therefore decided to take what I had learnt in Lisbon from my tutors and fellow students and apply that to this painting. One of the things I mentioned in Lisbon, is that I have not been very explorative in my artwork. I wanted to set myself the task of pushing my boundaries and pushing myself out of my comfort zone. Whilst in Lisbon, we experimented as a group with India ink and made a big old mess! This was really fun and made me realise that sometimes I need to experiment and to do artwork that I do not need to take so seriously.

My arrival back from Lisbon was timed perfectly with my mark making project for key steps, part two. Inspired by Lisbon, I completed my mark making project and then did this group collaboration. For this painting. I used ‘Viviva Colorsheets’ to paint with which are described as super vivid, transparent watercolours. They come in a paper pad rather than paint in pots which is very handy for carrying around when on location. I found these colours to be extremely bold and bright and was inspired by these to create the colour palette that I did.

Once I had finished my painting. I was not so sure about the building and wondered if I should have painted it all one shade, so that the sky and the tree stood out more. However, now that I look back at this painting. I do not feel so overwhelmed by the brightness of the building and I do see the other elements in the painting as competing. This was very enjoyable to make and these are definitely techniques, I would also like to try again, perhaps on other assignments. I particularly liked the technique for the sky and I really liked the tree which was my main focus, with my plan being to incorporate blues into the highlights, as opposed to using more realistic colours. This did not take me much time to complete, I think this is partly due to me not being so precious with it.

I choose this part of the grid as it was the most interesting to me, due to it having varied subjects i.e. buildings, tree, hedges.

My grid selection
The original photo of the Paula Rego Museum
The Finished Grid

Due to the success of the grid collaboration. We are now embarking on a second collaboration project led by one of the other students in the group. I am looking forward to participating in this next collaboration project.

Lisbon Study Trip

I recently attended the OCA Lisbon study visit. The trip was three days of Gallery visits lots of walking and sketching on location. Our tutors were Michelle Whiting and Diana Ali. This is the first study visit I have attended and the first time that I have met any OCA tutors and students. We arrived on the Monday and met with the other students at the hotel for dinner where we introduced ourselves before retiring to our rooms to prepare for the next day. We met in the morning and there we met our tutors and the rest of our fellow students. After our introduction we left for our first outing.

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Roof top restaurant – The House of Wonders 

These three days were packed with visits to various places. We visited the Museo Berardo where we had an interesting guided tour of a contemporary gallery, my knowledge of contemporary art is very limited, so it was very helpful to have the guide explain the pieces in the gallery. I left with a very different view of these types of artwork than when I went in. We also visited the Paula Rego exhibition at the Casa das Historias which showed a vast collection of her sketchbook work as well as some of her final pieces. I found this exhibition to be extremely inspirational and relative to my studies. I like that she used her art to get a message across, mostly political and quite controversial. It was great seeing her sketches the line style she used the mediums and her experimentation.

 

We got to see some beautiful sites including the botanical Gardens which hosted an array of cockerel’s and hens, Peacocks, ducks and terrapins, the castle on the sea which was like something out of a fairy-tale with its little beach cove, a harbour and PADA artist in residence in Barreiro, who gave us access to restricted industrial estate that had incredible views across the water of the whole city of Lisbon and a great many thing to draw.

My PADA sketch
My sketch at PADA

I really enjoyed meeting my fellow students and tutors. We ate amazing food, had a great time with plenty of laughs and I learned a lot from them all and from our visits as well as the guides from the museums. I got to push myself out of my comfort zone a little bit and try new things and it was very interesting seeing my fellow students work and the ways that they approached this. I came back very excited to get back in my studio and am looking forward to incorporating the things that I learnt on the study visit into my future work. I hope to stay in touch with the other students that I met and will hopefully see them again at other study visits. The tutors did an amazing job of organising the trip, giving us a great experience that I will treasure.  I had such a great time and am so glad that I went, I really hope that OCA runs more of these types of study trips.

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Photo at PADA – Property of Ashley Mclaughlin