Year 10 produced some stunning work alongside renowned artist Ian Murphy this week.  We were so impressed by their engagement, enthusiasm and the fast pace at which they worked.

Pupil accounts of the day:

Not long ago, we met with an artist- Ian Murphy. He specialises in first hand realistic drawings of nature and features of today’s world. His art consisted of fine liner art, oil paintings, pastel paintings and many more. The art style ranged from as small as A4 to sizes larger than I could express. As the workshop began, he informed us of his favourite drawing locations including the rivers of Venice and the cathedrals of Barcelona. However, his art was not architecture style- it zoomed into the key features which he felt was most predominant in those places. An example is, is in one of his artworks portraying a temple in Shanghai- he did not proceed to draw the entire temple, instead a lock which he particularly found interesting. This style of drawing really attracted me, as the interesting and intricate designs created a lot of detail along with realism.

Throughout the day, we created many pieces of artwork, the first being one completely produced in pen. We each created 5 different surfaces on which to work on using tissue paper and newspaper. The drawing we created was to do with our topic. Later in the day, we used the same surface, but created a piece using water soluble ink. This allowed us to create an artwork with a dripping effect, imitating the work of Ian Murphy.

Our last piece was an A2 drawing. We created a surface using tissue paper and used graphite and tissue to create our piece.

Overall, the experience with Ian Murphy was a treat! We learnt how to create different art styles, and experiment with different mediums we may have not used before. We had a closer look at his art and got an insight into the process of how his masterpieces were created!

-Emaan

Ian Murphy’s workshop invited us to explore a mixed media buildup of colour and texture that allowed us to intricately illustrate our observations onto interesting surfaces. It started off with an in depth analysis of Murphy’s own work, with details of certain techniques he frequents as well a thoughtful insight into his creative process. We were given copies of his sketchbooks to view, each heavily detailed and accompanied by a series of notes – communicating his initial ideas of the subject matter, the inspiration behind it, his goals for the piece, and materials used.

Upon seeing examples of his work, we got to learn about how long his process took and were given tips on how to search for inspiration around us. The experience was quite engaging as well as it was interactive and we got to ask personal questions about Murphy’s art. It really inspired me to attempt to implement some of the techniques we had learned into my own work to produce a unique outcome. The process of shredding different papers and sticking them together to create the base for my outlines was time-consuming and difficult at first, but once I had gotten the hang of it the result was satisfactory. Coating the paper with washes of ink and covering it with an alternation of pencil, biro, fine liner and graphite was the most complex part for me as I was not used to fashioning a piece out of such a diverse range of tools. However, I was delighted by how the final product came out and I have even started to implement that style of art into my own work at home. The overall experience allowed me to have a taste of a different style of art and gave me the confidence to find more ways to make my outcomes more intricate but still diverse with a variety of tools and materials, not to mention I received tips on how to find inspiration by going places and observing my surroundings.

-Sahara