What was your challenge?
My challenge was to create a poster/painting in manga form for a story that I’m writing and hope to turn into a graphic novel.  

Why did you choose this challenge?
I am really inspired by the japanese art form called manga / anime, and so i wanted to create my own work inspired by it.

How did you plan to achieve this?
I planned to achieve it my attending workshops, watching tutorials and going to events at museums etc.

Did you achieve your challenge or not. (If you didn’t please tell us why and tell us what you actually achieved):
I created a final piece of work putting everything that I had learnt from the workshops and tutorials into a painting.

Tell us the complete story of your learning journey, from when you started up to the point when you created your final piece

I have always loves anime and manga, ever since I watched my first series of anime I was hooked and I couldn't get enough of it. I enrolled in this course because it gave me the chance to bring what I love into my art wok.

At first I wanted to produce a manga, and so I started designing characters to be in it. I already had the idea from a story I was writing I just needed to illustrate it.

However, It was taking too long to design and draw the characters I also found it really difficult to just draw something out of my head when I didn’t really have any technique. I also felt that I didn’t know the culture of manger well enough to make my own so I decided on a painting and used the characters I designed to be on it.

In addition, I decided to start learning about other people and manga artists, and the techniques artists use to draw. At first it was really hard to just draw my ideas straight from my head but eventually I got the hang of it. I really started to get into Hokusai’s art and so me and my mum found an art exhibition in London that was based purely on Hokusai’s work. We live far away from London but I’m so happy I was able to go, it truly was a once in a lifetime experience. I learnt so much about Hokusai and his daughter.

So I had learnt more about Hokusai and next I needed to learn more about painting technique, I new the basics of painting but I was mainly self taught. Which is why the landscape painting workshop was perfect it was really useful to me as I was able to paint how I like and I was given helpful advice on my painting. My painting turned out a lot better than how I thought it would there are parts not that I could have done differently shush as: the order I used to add the layers and maybe could have used a slightly less colour full colour scheme; possibly black and white.

After this I started getting the equipment I needed to paint my final piece. I had to go into town to but the write paint but i had ll of the other stuff already. I  had been given some canvases by a relative and I was ready, I had everything I needed. I did a small version of it on paper first and then changed and painted it to my liking.

Here are some of my photos and preliminary sketches:

Tell us the story of your final piece, what you did, how you did it, how it demonstrates your new skills etc etcAt first I drew in pencil the basics of what I needed and what I was going to paint on a page in my notebook. I found it hard. To make the correct skin colours that I wanted but I used what I had learnt in the painting workshop and was ale to mix the paint to get the colours I wanted. It was also hard to draw strait on the canvas with pencil as it kept smudging all over the place but it was handleable, I put a piece of paper under my hand, which I had learnt from a youtube tutorial a few years ago, which stops the greases from you had maling contact with the paper which stopped the pencil getting smudged.

I started with the background first and was more patient with my painting this time and stopped trying to rush my work. I changed a few parts from the first painting that I did in my sketchbook. Some of the skiing tones were slightly darker or lighter and I added a few more parts to make it look more interesting.

Here’s my final piece:

If you can, please add your comments below - I need them as part of my Silver Arts Award submission.