Model-Making at Art College

I used to love sculpting little figures, and, in this case, I coloured and dressed the figure, and set it in a little set that I had made.
I think I did this when I was doing a Foundation course at Jordanstown in Northern Ireland, and it shows one of the diverse directions that my career might have gone in if things had panned out differently.

The Academic Atelier Tradition in the USA

Here is a very interesting blog for anyone who , like me, is passionate about drawing and painting from life.
It is the blog of the Grand Central Academy in New York, whose mission is to "offer a public place for the revival of the classical art tradition; to foster and support a community of artists in pursuit of aesthetic refinement, a high level of skill and beauty."

It all looks a wee bit too disciplined and dogmatic for my liking now, but I have to say I would have loved to have gone to a college like this when I was eighteen. Compared to the laid back approach that British Art Colleges had twenty years ago, there is clearly a very strong work ethic at the Grand Central Academy, and the students here are really learning skills of an extraordinarily high level.

As you can see from the image, they also have a very strong sculpture department.
This Lincoln sculpture is by one of their tutors, Jiwoong Cheh

Stress

An old friend from school sent me a picture of a terra cotta sculpture I did back then.
It was called "Stress", and in a fairly straight forward piece of Symbolism, it represents the pressures I was feeling with exams pending.

The Fallen Soldier

Here is the whole of that sculpture.

I would love to do more sculpture, but I find it really hard to find the time.
I'm actually working more on the oil painting right now. It seems that whatever discipline I'm working in I'm always aspiring to get into something different.
I think that's probably a healthy state of mind for an artist.