5 Reasons to Join an Online Art Class →

I’ve spent the past month working on all sorts of hand lettering in what is known as Bootcamp with Lilla Rogers at Make Art that Sells. It’s an annual 3 month art course with 3 main assignments, each preceded by smaller assignments to ease you in. If you’ve followed my blog for a while you’ll have read about previous Bootcamp’s which I’ve taken part in. Below is my completed piece for the first assignment; to design and hand letter the packaging for a chocolate bar wrapper.

Having just completed my first Bootcamp assignment, I thought that someone out there may benefit from reading about why it is that I choose to take so many online art courses.  If you’re interested in reading my 5 Reasons to Join an Online Art Class then you can find out more if you keep reading below:

1. COMMUNITY

   Working as a creative is so often a solitary affair and while I welcome the focus and sense of peace that being alone allows, it is also wonderful to connect with other’s through a shared experience.  While you always make new friends, you so often come across other familiar faces that you’ve previously taken courses with which is something I particularly enjoy. Your online community gradually grows and there is so much kindness and support offered even once a class has finished.

2. SKILL DEVELOPMENT

   The course you choose to take may not specifically involve some kind of skill development, but I always find that new courses have a tendency to push me out of my comfort zone, stretch my work and propel me forwards.  Sometimes it’s the format of the course and the teacher getting you to think differently and sometimes it’s the inspiration you undoubtedly get from other artists working alongside you.  Whatever it is though, you get out of a course what you put in and if you’re prepared to apply yourself, you cannot fail to come away from the experience richer for it.

3. NEW WORK

   Art classes are always packed with great new assignments, often on trend that really get your creative juices flowing.  Sometimes those assignments come complete with fantastic new colour palettes you probably wouldn’t have thought of yourself. Once you’ve completed the assignments you have the added bonus of new work to present on the portfolio page of your website and share on your socials.

4. CRITIQUES

   There are courses designed for giving feedback on your work. Although, in an online course it’s not always possible for the teacher to give individual feedback to everyone. However, feedback given to others can often be applied to your own work and is still incredibly useful.  Online course’s nearly always also have online community groups of some kind or another too.  Over the years, I’ve found that some courses definitely have a better community engagement than others, but once you find a course where everyone gets involved in an active community it’s like gold dust and artists will often keep coming back to that platform just because of the positive experience they’ve had.  A good community group is another way to get excellent and supportive feedback that can be transformational on your artistic journey.

5. GETTING YOUR WORK OUT THERE

   Sharing your work as an artist can sometimes be hard, especially if you’ve not done it much before.  So often creative people hide their artwork away for fear of it not being good enough.  The trouble is, if we don’t share our work with the world no one will ever see it and we’ll never get to know one way or another.  Besides, I firmly believe that the world needs our art, so think of it this way, by not sharing your work, you are actually doing the world a great disservice.  Creativity brings beauty, joy or a deeper understanding of the world around us.  Taking part in a course can encourage you to share your work, so it’s a win win all round!

   At this point incase anyone has concerns, I should probably mention that it is true that unfortunately some artists work get’s copied without their consent.  But worry not,  there are platforms to protect you against design theft.  If you’re based in the UK and have concerns around the theft of your intellectual property, ACID (Anti-Copying in Design) is a fantastic organisation to look into, you can find them here: https://www.acid.uk.com  

   (N.B. I am not promoting ACID as an affiliate or for any personal gain). 

With so many online art classes to choose from it should’t be hard to find something out there. I will be completing quite a few myself this year, so if you’re interested in reading more then feel free to share my journey as I post about it here.

New work, New Shop, New Year!

It certainly has been a while since I wrote any updates on my blog so I’d like to thank you for coming to take a look.

I’m committed to making 2024 all about a year of creativity and I’m very excited by the various plans I’m currently hatching up. I’m signed up to whole series of amazing courses over the year, which will definitely get my mojo back on, so watch this space for new work to come. If you’d like to follow along and see a bit more behind the scenes of what I’m doing and how, then don’t forget to come and find me over on Instagram I’d love to see you there.

In the meantime, I’ve been going through old work and giving it a new lease of life mostly in the form of surface pattern designs. And, I have a new Spoonflower shop in the pipeline for any makers, quilters or interior designers among you. I’ll make an announcement here when it’s up and running.

I’ve also finally got around to opening a print on demand shop at Society6 where I’ve listed a few of my current illustrations and designs for sale on products, from homewares and stationary to mobile phone cases. You can see a few of the designs I’ve listed below, if you click on the image you should find it takes you directly to my Society6 shop.

For now though, I hope you are having a wonderful New Year and are managing to achieve some of the goals that you’ve set yourself for the year ahead.

Woodland Birds surface pattern design by artist and illustrator Susie Batsford

Into the Wild surface pattern design by artist and illustrator Susie Batsford

Mermaids Beneath The Waves surface pattern design by artist and illustrator Susie Batsford

They Draw & Cook - Illustrated Food - Eat The Rainbow - Part 1

The fabulous folks over at ‘They Draw & Cook’ have just created a new design challenge called Hand Picked. They’ve teamed up with six professionals from a variety of creative backgrounds to be guest curators on their website with a theme of their choice.

The first theme is ‘Eat The Rainbow’ chosen by curator Sandra Salamony. Sandra is the Creative Director for Spirituality & Health Magazine.

The idea is to create a recipe around the theme then after the deadline, just 4 recipes will be selected and showcased from March 11th - 25th.

Since I’m really trying to develop and expand my portfolio, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to get involved in and as it turns out, I rather enjoy illustrating fruit and vegetables!

Fleur De Lys - Rococo Inspired Design

I realised that although I’ve shared the visualisation boards I created for my last BA submission, I haven’t actually shared many of the designs here. This one was inspired by a popular highly ornamental trend of the 18th and 19th centuries; Rococo. I adore all those swirls and elaborate embellishments and I imagine I’ll be creating more inspired by the same theme. You can view this one in the ‘Pattern’ gallery on my homepage.

I experimented with this design using various processes in the textile print room at college. I’ll share more of those in a future post.

MATS BOOTCAMP MAIN ASSIGNMENT - PT 2

Amazing, I actually uploaded my completed assignment with a whole week to spare before the deadline. I’m not sure whether that’s because I’m so much more confident using photoshop than I was even a year ago or whether I’m just more organised than normal. I’ve certainly learnt a tremendous amount over the last year.

So here’s the final mock up of my journals using hand-drawn templates. The gallery isn’t live yet, but I’ll post a link to it here just as soon as it is.

I’m looking forward to the next assignment although it does coincide with a huge house relocation as we’re moving, both home and business. Actually, we’re not moving far away but we have been living in the same place for 13 years and so we’ve accumulated a LOT of stuff. I think a few visits to charity shops will definitely be in order.

As I complete this assignment, my thoughts are also turning to how to get my art out there and maybe try to get some work from it. It’s quite a big scary business and I’m sure I’m not alone in battling with feelings of self doubt. Still, that’s a little way off, first I need to move house!

In the meantime, I’ve started another illustration project, more on that to follow!

MATS BOOTCAMP MAIN ASSIGNMENT - PART 1

Monday saw the arrival of our main assignment for Bootcamp in our inboxes and the brief is to design journals. This gave me the perfect opportunity to concentrate on completing another piece for my website homepage: flowers in vases for the journal cover. I wanted to design a vase for my flowers with a Springtime theme to complement the magnolias.

We’re lucky enough where I live in Devon to occasionally spot little yellowhammer birds darting around. They seem to be shy little birds and so often it’s just a glimpse of their yellow underbelly, but they’re quite unmistakable. I find them absolutely captivating and get really excited every time I glimpse one! Sadly though, they’re on the endangered ‘red’ list here in the UK as their numbers have been declining rapidly in recent years. So, I decided a yellowhammer it was to grace my vase which obviously had to have a vintage feel to it!

It’s actually got me thinking that I might quite like to get into the ceramics room and hand-paint some porcelain, because I’d rather like this vase to grace my own home! The Blue is a deep ultramarine, another colour I have tended to use little of in the past and have fallen quite in love with!

I also had a play in photoshop with my original magnolia design and spurred on by a dear friend, created a repeat pattern.

Next, I will be concentrating on putting this image onto a journal cover and creating some hand-lettering for it, so off to work I go… but I’m nearly there, you never know I might actually have this one ready to submit early, which will be an absolute FIRST for Mats Bootcamp!