David Hockney - Walker Art Gallery - Life Drawing

Today has been one of the most enjoyable for me since working in the academy primarily for the fact that I had the opportunity to be creative again, that rarely happens. A sixth form trip was booked by Emily to take a group of students to the Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool city centre and I managed to be one of the members of staff to go; AWESOME, because I oddly do love trips!

We were greeted by a young tour guide, sadly I can't remember her name but she was brilliant. Taking us all through the gallery and on to the David Hockney exhibition that is currently on display till March. I'm not the kind of person that can spend hours looking at art, and I'm also not the sort that has a huge database of artists in my head that I can reference (Art teachers in NLA make me jealous with their HUGE varied knowledge of artists). However the guide managed to keep everyone's attention with fun facts and a summary of Hockney's life. I had no idea that someone could be so obsessed with Cliff Richard... eurgh!

The piece of his work that I most prefer (below) is 'Peter getting out of Nick's pool', done in 1966 and won the John Moore's Painting Prize the following year. It's the simplicity of the artwork that I enjoy more than his other work as I think it fits well into a designers preferences over that of a fine artists. If you go make sure to check out the original photo that Hockney took inspiration from, Peter had quite the arse unlike the painting haha! 

After the tour we were handed over to another guide (I'm so awful with names), and then given a few different drawing tasks that involved us staring at some of the work on display and drawing from memory, continuous line drawings, wrong-handed and even carbon drawing; all college level stuff but still great to do. Afterwards we spent the remainder of the day drawing a life model, clothed I might add thankfully, not that Hockney would have approved since this model definitely wasn't attractive, but attraction isn't a key element when developing skill, is it. 

(Any images I took sadly can't be added to LTD Blog as it contains students, I will however include the embarrassingly bad drawings that I did from the session when I get back into work next week)

DAVID HOCKNEY - EARLY REFLECTIONS

Running till 16th March.

Here is the link to the section of the Walker website, it includes info on the exhibition as well as other free Hockney events that they are holding. I would highly recommend a tour as it brings his story to life.

http://www.liverpoolmuseums.org.uk/walker/exhibitions/hockney/