Summary: Barcelona, February 2015

The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (National museum of Art of Catalonia) is one of my favourite buildings that for me draws forth images of the zenith.of the Spanish Colonial Empire. Such a legacy was bolstered by imported trees and parakeets flying in flocks particularly here.

    I have returned from the five-day trip to Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. A beautiful city nestled along the coast of the Mediterranean and at the foot of the Spanish Alps. I fell in love with the city within the afternoon I had arrived due to the staggering abundance of large Italian-influenced neoclassical facades combined (for at least half od the city) with a well-planned Roman-like grid system. Tree-lined avenues (sadly leaves had not blossomed while I was there but I can almsot imagine what they look like in full bloom) crossed the city and were occasionally peppered with statues and gorgeous fountains. It is a shame that in my haste to leave for it I had left my camera behind because I do nto believe these sketches or my descriptions do the city full justice

     My days were very busy so I did not have much time for sketching. So I used much of friday to wander the city committing it to it to pencil in a new sketchbook. I got the chance to draw La Sagrada Familia and the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya. The top two images ot the left were from two things I had seen outside the Salvidor Dali Theatre and Museum in Figueres, a town an hour or so outside of Barcelona. Even with most of the city being these stone-faced mid-rise buildings the metropolis still felt huge with blocks rising between seven and ten stories in the metropolitan area and between four and six in the older, more tightly-packed and warren-like Gothic District, with four-to-five metre-tall ground floor levels on many of the metropolitan buildings.

Theere were many large ornmaneted buildings like
above.

    This is a city I would definitely love to return to. Despite it's age i'd say it combines it's ancient history and historic architecture with the modernity of an organised modern metropolis (such as New York) very well as much of the city is quite spacious thanks it it's wide avenues. I was able to visit many places by keepign a relatively straight path and it was only in the more maze-like Gothic district where I felt the risk of getting lost.

    As I said above, it is  shame I did not bring a camera because I felt there was a wealth of inspiration here from the broad avenues to the canyon-like Gothic district and Barcelona's central cathedrals. It is a city that despite the 2008 recession is still one of the great cultural and commercial hearts of Europe. The elegant buildings make the entire city ooze wealth and influence even in this modern age of economy and minimalism.

Christmas Activity Summary

    I wanted to keep myself occupied over the holidays so I took the oppertunity to do a couple of personal projects. I had a bag of clay, some modelling wire and a finer wire so I constructed these models by first building a wireframe and then moudling the clay with the modelling wire.

    Shame there are a number of cracks in certain places. This was the result of the air-drying polymer clay that I used, some of which I patched up with small amounts of clay but for the most partthese were skillbuilding exercises. The sitting dragon was largely inspired by a form of minor mentioned in the book I got for Secret Santa (great book, has really invigorated me for the upcoming term but I swear I won't flood it with dragons).

    Boxing day I was without a laptop or my PC as I was around a relative's house. I decided to keep myself occupied by doing some sketching, admittedly most of this was from memory and there are plenty of anomolies to the horse anatomy I drew up such as the ribcage, the shoulder/bicep and the snout. I refreshed my anatomical knowledge with a visit to Oxford's Natural History and Ashmolean Museum where skeletons can be found (I also saw plenty of dinosaur skeletons) in the former and various sculptures and paintings of horses in the latter. One particular horse was a centrepiece of a room that was a cast bronze sculpture of Constantine I looking up at the sky while on horseback; examaining it I discovered the detail of the horse (rather humreously) included it's... rear opening to put it politely. Which logically would not normally be seen from most angles as it was largely obscured by the tail and I regret not having my camera on me for proof.

    I spent one evening writing a review of the rather controversial Prometheus, although despite being inspired by other reviewers of it, I did not add any quotes or references which should have been in there given the context. http://mstamp176.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/review-prometheus.html

     Final project I spent three days on a demonstrative digital painting of my dragons. For months I wondered about making a splash picture in vein of the promotional art for the champions of League of Legends although the final outcome is probably closer in feel to the landscape paintings of the Italian Renaissance. This could be a good thing as the Draconis have always echoed this period in history though their fashion, ideals, art and possibly personality. I wanted to use  the digital painting skills I had learned this term and so different ot my previous works, this started off as a greyscale composition

     Here is a buildup composition. I'm looking forward to the coming term as we move on to creating compositions.

Disk Art

I was unable to get art for my disk printed onto its surface so I decided to upload what I would have put on it had the situation worked more in favour.  Another use of my art, I wasn't sure about adding my thumbnails to finaal art so I decided to use my final work instead.