I’d like to share with everyone the work of one of my drawing 1 students – Joe Clark. He is a capable student and very motivated. We are having some interesting discussions because when he first came onto the course his work seemed to have an aesthetic which was born out of advertising or...
OCA Illustration student Kasia Lovick has been thoughtful and thorough in the way she has approached assignment three of her course. Take a look at what she has done, and the images she looked at. Its interesting to note that one of the first things she looked at ended up giving her the inspiration...
James Cowan tells us the best exhibition so far this year at the Royal Academy is by one of is founder members, Johan Zoffany (1733 – 1810). Do you agree? In a century of great artists such as Gainsborourgh, Reynolds and Hogarth, Zoffany is the least well known to the general public. Born in...
We have a must-see study visit coming up at the National Portrait Gallery in London on Tuesday 22 May to see the retrospective of Lucian Freud’s work. We have a talk in a lecture theatre booked for 11.30 so its imperative that you arrive on time. Please aim to be at the entrance by...
In her 2004 book The Photograph as Contemporary Art, Charlotte Cotton describes Roger Ballen’s work in the following terms: ‘…Ballen’s photographs are black and white in the tradition of humanist documentary photography, but without any obvious narrative content that depicts social or political change. There is perhaps a greater affinity between Ballen’s imagery and...
By popular request OCA is extending an invitation to a study visit in Edinburgh. This is an invite to the same Picasso and Modern British Art exhibition that is on in London at the moment. The Edinburgh study visit will take place on Thursday 6 September meeting at the entrance at just before 11am....
On entering the dimly-lit gallery my first impression was the sound of a voice reading out a list of meals. Straightforward food: steak, or chicken, or hamburger and trimmings and apple pie. After each meal the voice called out a name, and a date, and a place. The places were US prisons, and I...
One of the pleasing features of the expansion of the OCA student numbers over the last few years is we have been able to bring people into the team who can add to the student experience. Lee Gasgoyne, who graduated as a mature student from the Fine Art programme at the University of Huddersfield...
I have to let you into a little secret, I love making Moodboards and could work on them all day – although of course in the “real world” this is not possible. Still, in lieu of this I often see some fantastic ones produced by OCA students which really lift my day, so I’m...
After the publicity machine of Hockney begins to die down, along comes a quieter exhibition: Mondrian and Nicholson at the Courtauld Gallery. Here Jim Cowan previews the exhibition in preparation for our study visit. In 1938 the Dutch artist Piet Mondrian, whose work had appeared in the Nazi degenerate art exhibition ‘Entartete Kunst’, left...
The British Library’s exhibition, Royal Manuscripts – The Genius of Illumination – is a display of the art of the illustrated book from the 9th to the 16th Century. This is the medieval world revealed in manuscript form, before and just after Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press and movable type. Only the wealthiest...
Here is the blog of OCA Drawing student, Kim Appleton, aka Kappleto. I think looking at this blog may help other Drawing students understand how to put a blog together. It shows how useful it is to see the thinking and process that students go through. This blogger works in a nice transparent way,...
Recent Comments