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Last week some of our students were in Oban on a drawing trip. Each year we take our second years, fourth years and masters students up to the west coast of Scotland. They are given a drawing task to complete and they are free to explore Oban and the islands.
We have a 360 video of one of our evening meetings from the trip here!
Take a look at some sketchbook work from our students below. We all had a great week drawing and exploring and we’re looking forward to see what the students will create inspired by their time away!
At the beginning of ‘Unspoken’ each first year Illustration student was randomly assigned a painting from the Impressionist room at the National Gallery of Scotland. During a visit they were asked study it carefully and later do more research into the story behind their painting and how it relates to the artist who created it.
Based on this research, students developed a wordless sequential narrative in 4 panels, to be submitted as a high-quality digital prints at the end of the project. It was important to be imaginative with the storytelling and interpretation of any research material and to create many recognisable links to the original painting, for example through brushstrokes and colour choice.
The project also served as a first introduction to Photoshop and explored the merging of traditional mark-making and digital applications. The results are wonderfully painterly and deceiving in that they don’t look that digitally-generated at all!
Our final crit took place in public, right in front of the original artwork, and with an unknown audience of gallery visitors. This would be a good reason to be nervous, even for the most experienced of artists, but our first years managed just fine.
So can you guess which paintings our students were looking at?
Last week our Fourth Year students put on an exhibition to celebrate hitting the mid way point for their final year at ECA.
The exhibition was held in the Engine Room of the Fire Station and the students exhibited work in progress which included posters, books, zines and paintings.
There was also a shop within the exhibition where the fourth years sold their work providing them with some practice for their degree show in June!
BOOKMARKS is back! Exploring how artists books are used, promoted and explored in educational settings. Applications open for 2019 through CuratorSpace (link in the bio).
Applications welcome current students and alumni from ECA, students from other institutions and from presses and organisations who support students as part of their remit.
CLICK HERE to read the Centre for Research Collections blog post about the project.
In Semester one, second year illustration were set a project to produce counterfeit money, inspired by the German emergency currency Notgeld.
Examples of Notgeld notesExamples of Notgeld notes
Their notes were to be inspired by a location, known to them or imaginary. They had to create three different notes each. Students were encouraged to use printmaking techniques to produce their money and to try to make them as difficult to forge as possible.
Last month our second year group had were given a brief and asked to answ the question ‘What makes you angry?’
They were divided into groups and were asked to talk, get angry and illustrate their response. The only specifications were that it had to be a maximum of two colours and A3 in size.
Each year our students illustrate posters for the French Film Festival. This year they have illustrated short one minute films from the mobile film festival (you can watch the films here) and their wonderful creations are currently being exhibited in the Filmhouse Café on Lothian Road.
A winner will be chosen at the closing ceremony later this month and the public is invited to cast a vote for their favourite poster. If you head down to the Café there are voting slips there.
Here is a sneak peak of some of the posters, head down to the Filmhouse to see the rest!
Astrid’s Natural History Illustration elective visited the Royal Botanical Gardens in Edinburgh this week. They had a tour of the Herbarium and viewed some of the collection of plants.
It was from this collection that they produced some observational drawings which will go on to influence the visual setting of the world they create for their story.
Inspired by their trip to the National Museum of Scotland, first year students made repeated patterns in the studio from quick drawings they made.
After this first attempt they went away and developed their drawings and created an illustration that would work as a repeat pattern.
This project aimed to introduce the students to printmaking so they carved their images into lino and printed their blocks to create these wonderful repeated patterns.
Kristina Kapeljuh one of our current fourth year students, spent some of her third year on exchange in Switzerland. We asked her a few questions about her experience which you can read below.
Where and what did you study on your exchange? I studied Non-Fiction Illustration at Hoch Schule Luzern, Design und Kunst ( Luzern University of Applied Arts).
How long were you away for?
The term ran from February to July.
Why did you decide to go on exchange?
The reason is pretty simple, I wanted to learn German and see Switzerland (in winter time!) Also it is obvious that anyone who went on exchange benefits in academic and cultural terms, but personally I keep trying to get out of my comfort zone; once I had a feeling Edinburgh is a pretty comfy place for me, I decided to go to a new country.
How was your work was influenced by your exchange?
I started to draw much faster and better mainly because I had to do a lot life drawing (once per week we went for a drawing trip in sculpture hall in Basel (north-north Switzerland, very close to border) and to Zurich Zoo to draw animals which was very fun but useful too. Second part of semester I had chosen a very free course that allowed me to experiment with silk screen printing so I learnt some textile technical skills. But nothing can be compared to gaining confidence about my work and presenting it to people (which was always a problem).
What was the most important thing you learnt?
So confidence about own style was very important but also meeting multicultural people was more than valuable. The community of exchange art students was as educational as actual lectures.
What was the worst thing about your exchange?
The worst thing was language barrier because I knew very little German, while people in Switzerland have their own Swiss-German and Hoch-Deutsch didn’t really work anyway. But people were very lovely and willing to help me so it all got sorted.
Did you try any fun food?
Fun food! there was a lot! but I remember the very first one was Mac and Cheese with fried unions and apple jam! It was sooo unexpectedly good.
Did you manage to travel whilst you were away?
I even didn’t see my desk. We were traveling a lot for education with tutor, plus I took any opportunity to travel that I could, like snowshoeing in mountains, trips to French and Italian parts of Switzerland (they are almost like countries on its own) and also had a chance to go to Italy.
Would you recommend others go on exchange? Definitely! If someone considers to, yes, please go for it! I know application is a bit of a long boring process but every second there is worth of it.
