On Wednesday 12th August 2015, I visited the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London. The National Gallery is a large art gallery, displaying a wide collection of paintings by various artists. Obviously the art form is art - painting. I have visited this gallery at least once before, and also other art and photographic exhibitions. I visited this gallery with my friend, who is also doing Silver Arts Award, and we focused on finding paintings involving water, because we both knew we wanted to try painting water.
I really enjoyed this visit because there is a really wide variety of things to look at, there is something for everyone and lots of different styles of painting as well. It was also good for me and my friend because there were lots of paintings involving water, and different angles on water, which gave us lots of inspiration and ideas and techniques on how to paint water effectively. There wasn't really anything that wasn't so good about my visit, apart form the fact that some of the paintings that we wanted to see were in rooms that were closed on that day. I understand that the rooms have to be cleaned at some point and the gallery can't help that, but it was just a little annoying, that's all!
I would definately recommend the National Gallery to anyone, because as I said before, there is something that everyone will like and be interested by and it is a very good day out. I learnt from this trip a few different ways to create the effect of water with paint, and I will try to apply these when doing my transcriptions of watery scenes. I also learnt about a few artists who I'd never heard of before - such as Akseli Gallen-Kallela and Paul Gaugin.
The National Portrait Gallery is an Arts Award Supporter. You can see their profile here.
Well done, nice review !!