15. William Blake Project, Sept - Dec 2012.

In September 2012 we began a long-term project, which will culminate in a multi-media presence at the annual Spring Ball, at Islington Town Hall, in 2013.

We started to draw influence from Blakes artwork, in particular his book illustrations, and the way he combined word and image. Early sessions focused on his poetry, which we illustrated with paint, ink, collage, and finally flip-books, to animate ideas of words in his poems that the members found inspiring. These will be scanned page by page to create moving images to be projected at the Spring Ball.

In the latter stages of the second term we started the process of working with printmaking techniques, using a simple 'string-printing' process to create images, again inspired by William Blakes poetry.

Examples of early experiments combining imagery and Blakes poetry:

The group worked together on a mural, inspired by and titled after the line, 'To see a world in a grain of sand'. Each member contributed a world in a grain of sand to the collective beach:

Collage techniques were used to further develop themes in Blakes poems, the members focusing on powerful, emotive lines, to produce equally stirring imagery:

String-printing, where a drawing is created using string glued to a printing base, was the members first exercise in working with the intricate aspects of print making, as they continued to explore the possibilities in working with Blakes words and images:

14. Architectural Drawing Project, July-Aug 2012.

A project exploring technical, architectural, and traditional drawing skills.

Key influences were the fantasy drawings of Piranesi and more recently, the drawings of Turner Prize nominee Paul Noble. Members learned drawing techniques such as pen and ink, stippling, hatching, and crosshatching. Washes were laid down with ink and brush and then details refined with varying thickness of drawing pen.

Provisional exercises included everyone drawing from memory the front door of their home, and drawing their childhood home. As well as memory, we wanted to focus on the meeting between architecture and fantasy, and our research into Piranesi and Noble lead to the main project..a huge drawing of a fantasy island made of imaginative buildings created by the members. Each were allocated a building or feature, and they were then all brought together and unified into a collective drawing.