ArtCastle Workshop!

On Monday and Tuesday this week I attended a creative workshop at the Newcastle Region Art Gallery, which was called ArtCastle. It was freaking amazing!
Visit the Art Castle blog: http://artcastle.wordpress.com/

Basically, we created artworks through experimenting with different mediums and adapted the styles of artists on show in the gallery with the help, advice, critique and praise of our three tutors: Luke, Lucas and Michael. Luke and Lucas are professional artists, and Michael is training to be an art teacher.

On Monday we did charcoal and ink drawings of dried up plantlife (on the verge of death) which drew from elements of Brett Whiteley's works, and then moved on to do a street-art inspired piece on primed calico material, mainly influenced by David Griggs - which I wasn't able to complete but will finish at home.

Me & one of my charcoal drawing of a decaying Birds of Paradise, in our "exhibition" :)

On Tuesday we created a canvas piece influenced by Amanda Davies, in which we painted a 12" x 16" canvas a certain colour or a mix of colours, then on a sheet PVC plastic drew a design and decorated the design. We had to draw our design on backwards, as the PVC had to have the design side (with all the "raw" materials) placed on the canvas side so as the design was sealed and couldn't be erased when the PVC was stretched over the canvas. Oh yes, I actually learnt how to stretch my own materials for art purposes :)

Me and my Amanda Davies inspired work. After two days I was pretty tired, as you can see with my droopy eyes.

At the end of the two day workshop they held a mini "exhibition" of our work, while they played a slideshow of pictures to one wall of our artmaking processes. My Mum and cousin Hollie came to see the exhibition. Myself and two other girls - Rebecca and Charmaine - made a speech about what we so enjoyed about the ArtCastle experience. This year was the event's first time in Newcastle, there had been one event of this type in Sydney last year. It felt really special to be involved in the first Newcastle event. The Smith Family - the charity organising the event - invited a representative from their major sponsor, Clemenger's Group (a transnational media/advertising/marketing company based in Australia) to view the works we created.

I had an amazing, wonderful, glorious, fantastic time at Art Castle. I met some amazing people, got to create some shmick artworks, learnt some cool new techniques and tricks, and of course I feel alot more confident in my abilities now and want to develop more and more and more. The art gallery even gave us a kit with decent drawing materials and a new art diary - to keep! Also! I exchanged details with a girl named Rebecca (the same Rebecca that I made the speech with) and we're going to keep in touch and even do some collaborative work :)

It was just great. This first taste of non-school art has me craving more!