Spring Board Project - Student Gallery

Spring for many is their favourite time of the year. Nature looks so colourful and stunning with bright green leaves on trees, light blue skies, and budding flowers. The warmer days, bouncing lambs, butterflies and bees, not forgetting Cherry Blossom Trees - What’s not to love?It’s a time for new life, new beginnings. What better time than today, the first day of Spring, to start a new arts challenge.The ‘Spring Board Project’, a project full of scope with unlimited potential to produce a visual feast of imagery for the Student Gallery.
Plenty to go at then, but where to start you might ask yourself?
March is a good month to begin again, to get back to basics. You could ‘blooming well’ make a start by drawing a springtime flower. Why not draw a daisy, a daffodil, or a primrose? Just practice drawing the outline shape of your chosen flower with a soft graphite pencil. Shading can come next, looking at tone. Don’t forget it’s lights against dark that create the illusion of form. Why not draw another flower, like an iris or a tulip using coloured pencils. Watercolour pencils are a fascinating medium, they provide both the control of a pencil and the freedom of watercolour and opportunities are endless. You might get your inspiration from a walk in the park, or a March down to the beach. Spring is all about sunshine, and April showers, which means rainbows are plentiful this time of year. You May want to draw and paint garden animals such as a rabbit, a squirrel or even a hedgehog. Birds and butterflies might be your thing, again the watercolour pencils could be useful here!
Don’t spend too long thinking about what subject to work on. Choose a favourite theme, it could be a simple landscape, a wildlife scene, farm animals or something that has already been mentioned.
Your source material could be from photographs, images from books, magazines, post cards or the internet. You may prefer to work directly from a chosen composition in your garden, or from a still life set up in the comfort of your home.
Make the most of the art materials you already have. It’s amazing what can be achieved with basic equipment like pens and pencils, a brush and a few colours. You don’t need expensive hand-made papers to work on. A pad of inexpensive drawing paper, or even heavy photocopying paper can be used.
Practice your drawing, practice colour mixing, explore mark making, experiment with paint, most of all have some FUN!
Artists you may like to look at for inspiration, who have all painted themes of springtime:
Vincent Van Gogh (Almond Blossom), Claude Monet (Springtime), Giuseppe Arcimboldo  (Spring), Rene Magritte (Spring), Tintoretto (Allegorical Figure of Spring)
Submitting your artwork into the Student Gallery is easier than you might think.
Scroll upwards below any picture in Student Gallery, put your details in, click on Choose File button, take photo of your artwork with the device you’re using, click on Submit your artwork - DONE!
“Do remember they can’t cancel the Spring.” Courtesy of David Hockney