Welcome week
Hello - it's great to have you here!
Please binge-watch all this week's content so that you can plan when to work on things and source anything you realise you need, in plenty of time for next week.
Here's a downloadable pdf. of this week at a glance:
There's a materials list to download in the third lesson this week but the only thing you need to ensure you have right now is a journal and a sketchbook OR plenty of good quality cartridge paper. I began by using paper from my A3 sketchbook for the colour exercises and then progressed on to my A1 thicker cartridge but cut down to A4 /A5 with masked off edges. Just in case I create some masterpieces while I'm experimenting!
I show you what I'm going to be using during the course as a whole in the third lesson.
I have a lot of wooden surfaces but please know I don't expect to create wonderful paintings on all my pieces of wood. I'll be thrilled if 50% of the surfaces I've bought end up as paintings that I love enough to display! I've also got a stack of paintings that I never completed or recently began leaning up against the studio wall, to grab if I feel inspired. These are all various sizes but that doesn't matter to me. Hopefully, you'll all have some canvases like this.
As I described when you were considering signing up for this course, I'm aiming at creating my own intuitive abstract collection/s this year, alongside my still life work. I'm very much a believer in following your heart and accepting that your desires for your art can shift and there is nothing wrong with that.
I know that galleries and commissioners of art seek a certain level of consistency of style, or genre particularly, which is perfectly understandable. However, to reach a way - or ways of working, that have this strength and clarity, we must allow ourselves to explore to reach a consistency of approach.
The richness and personal satisfaction of creating your process, one that results in paintings that are recognisably yours, will then become apparent.
For most of us, it's important to create A LOT, revealing to yourself what your ingredients for a wonderful body of paintings, are. I'll be demonstrating my own way into creating a collection while investigating different approaches to abstract and intuitive work through week 2. I want all of us to try these but if you know quickly what your preferred approach is please go with it. That being said stay open-minded because you might discover something unexpected.
I'm here to ask questions of, to be watched and to support you in your foray into intuitive or abstract painting. We'll be doing it together.
If you are here after January 2022 then you can still reach me and show me your work. You can message me via the speech bubble with any questions and you can also email me at gabs@gabriellabuckingham.com to send me images of anything if you'd like a second opinion. When the Facebook group is ready you can do this there.
The new Facebook group address for all Brave in Paint students will appear HERE when it is open to join on January 1st 2023. As a few of you may know, unfortunately my Facebook account was hacked in December 2022 and I no longer have access to any groups I set up and am starting again with one group for all my students.
Until you do the pre-work you won't be sure what your aims are; or perhaps you will!? That's what makes this whole thing exciting - ultimately, we're all so different. It's impossible to plan truly original expressive art - there's always beauty in chance and responding to each mark we make in the moment.
If you're fairly new to painting you might understandably feel the need to copy what I do at the start - you'll quickly reach a point where you will want to move away from that. We must trust ourselves to bring out what's inside in combination with responding to this. The flow that happens during the chain reaction of a painting is what I'd love us all to experience.
You'll be ignited into taking action with your painting - knowing that it's rarely perfect - it's a process of growth through repetition. Without the "doing" and as we will see - the "being" all you have are nebulous feelings and images that could have been. Imagine if you gave yourself the chance to paint daily - how much you could bring to life!
N.B> This course was recorded in 2022 - I've since changed my brand to From A Place of Wonder - if you'd like me to share your work now please tag me on instagram @fromaplaceofwonder and use #igniteyourart #fromaplaceofwonder - thanks! Ignore what I say about tags in this video!
You now have access to all the content in one go so that you can move through it as fast or as slowly as you wish to. You have lifetime access (for as long as the course exists).