Summary
Discover inspiring artwork by Martina alongside our ACL learners at the Harwich Arts and Heritage Centre (14 Jan–12 Feb). Join Martina for free acrylic stippling taster sessions on 31 January – just drop in (10–12 or 1–3pm), subject to capacity and leave inspired!
Discover inspiring artwork by Martina alongside our ACL learners at the Harwich Arts and Heritage Centre (14 Jan–12 Feb). Join Martina for free acrylic stippling taster sessions on 31 January – just drop in (10–12 or 1–3), subject to capacity and leave inspired!
Martina’s Creative path began long before she stepped into the world of teaching. As the daughter of professional illustrators, she absorbed the creative practices and traditions of illustration from an early age. Her own creative career progressed from Archaeological Illustration to embellishing Baroque musical instruments; roles which sharpened her precision and deepened her appreciation of historical craftsmanship. Her fascination for Old Master techniques is demonstrated in some of her work in this exhibition. Martina is both a qualified teacher of adults and has professional experience in her field. This highlights the level of talent of all our tutors and shows what you can expect when you enrol onto our courses.
A closer look into Martina’s Artwork
Each of these pieces has been created by Martina as a demonstration for our students on our Art Drawing and Painting course. Martina gains her inspiration for these pieces from a wide range of images, artists, and artwork. She then incorporates her own style, techniques, and creative challenges to guide and inspire her learners. Students are encouraged to explore these ideas in their own work, using Martina’s demonstrations, and adding their own unique flair and personal interpretation to really make it there own!
This first piece demos zooming in on a detail of any painting you like, in this instance an old Dutch Master painting, and then expanding it into a new composition, leaving out what you don’t like and adding in something new, such as the birds looking at each other in the corners of the composition.
This is a mixed‑media painting combining both oil and acrylic, allowing for rich textures and subtle tonal shifts.
This painting, which takes its inspiration from several seascapes seen online, looks at how to achieve an effect of distance. Martina also used a palette knife to create an energetic sense of movement in the crashing waves.
Inspired by the famous 20th century illustrator Edward Ardizzone, the challenge Martina set the class was to select an example of his work and add one new character or change what they’re doing with as much creative freedom as they liked, but also to get it to look plausible. In this picture, Martina’s addition is the lady balancing a glass on the tip of her nose.
This piece was created to teach our ACL learners how to create a convincing effect of light, where nothing else in the painting can be as bright as the sky—otherwise the realism is lost.
This painting is an oil portrait of a figure shown in profile, focusing on form, shadow, and subtle tonal transitions.
This painting uses John Constable’s technique and serves as an experiment in capturing movement and distance.
These pieces, copies of work by the Danish artist Wilhelm Hammershoi, were created to demonstrate mixing and working with a palette of greys. The experiment with the gloss varnish to add depth to the demo paintings needed more practice, says Martina.
This final painting is first created in black and white using the grisaille method, with colour later applied like tinting a photograph—using transparent oil glazes in the tradition of the old masters technique.
Come along and get involved!
All this spectacular artwork from Martina is available to view from the 14th of January to the12th of February at the Harwich Arts and Heritage Centre alongside our ACL students artwork so come and see for yourself how these wonderful teachings from Martina have inspired our learners to achieve creative excellence. We hope these pieces highlight the range of techniques and fun challenges you can learn from if you decide to join our Art Drawing and Painting course. Martina will also be hosting free art taster sessions on the 31st of January. This is welcoming community event where Martina will be teaching you how to stipple with acrylics. There is no need for you to book just come in for either the 10-12pm session or 1-3pm session at the Arts and Heritage centre.
This is an open‑invite workshop. Places are subject to venue capacity and health and safety requirements, and we will do our best to accommodate as many participants as possible.
We hope to see you there!
