Beach abstraction

I created this beach painting on my iPad showing the waves breaking on the shore at dawn.

In order to create it I selected one of my photos that had the same basic compositional shape that I had in mind and which was made of a similar colour palette to what I wanted to create. I then transformed it by smudging, overpainting and manipulating the colours until I had created this image. I really like the organic, free textures and shapes that suggest the frothy white tops of the waves.

David Hockney - using technology

Hockney himself said that " technology always has contributed to art. The brush itself is a piece of technology, isn't it?" (Gayford, 2012, p. 62). Hockney sees one aspect of art as being the result of artists "discerning how a novel piece of equipment might enable them to do things that were more difficult or even impossible before" (Gayford, 2012, p. 62) and that it opens up possibilities for creativity that can be exploited and developed in different ways, if desired.

The image above, with a quote by David Hockney, - "It is thought that new technology is taking away the hand (I'm not so sure). If you look around a lot is opening up" - really sums up my feeling on the subject. I love using the iPad to paint as I feel it has opened up a whole new world of creativity for me. I hadn't really done much of my own artwork over the years until I got the iPad in May 2010 and began the MEd course. All of a sudden I had to begin creating artwork for the course, I had to start experimenting. With the iPad all the barriers of time, materials, space and possible failure were taken away and I was enabled. I could paint anywhere and at any time - I didn't need a large area in which to work or have to spend a lot of money to set myself up and find my 'niche'. Neither did I have to set aside large blocks of time which, to be honest, I didn't have - I could paint on the bus, before I went to sleep, in my classroom whilst pupils were working or while waiting for a doctor's appointment.

I love the size and portability of the device, the immediacy of the medium, and the ways in which you can combine it with photography and video work. It is also very easy to try things out and experiment using the undo and redo facility and of course there are endless canvases and materials available. This has really helped to develop my confidence.

Painting on the canvas of the iPad with digital media is just another branch of art - it is neither more nor less important than traditional methods, it is just different. It requires the same creativity, imagination and level of skill to manipulate the media and develop work as does more traditional materials. It is a different media with different nuances, techniques, possibilities and limitations.

Gayford, M., 2012. David Hockney: The Technology of Art. In Royal Academy of Art, 2012. A Bigger Picture. London: RAA

[iPad quote image] 2010 [image online] Available at: < http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23832611-david-hockney-swaps-a-sketch-pad-for-ipad.do > [Accessed January 2012].

David Hockney exhibition

I visited David Hockney's exhibition, "A Bigger Picture", at the Royal Academy in London recently. The exhibition documents his work in landscape painting over his lifetime and I found it very inspiring, particularly in terms of his use of colour, the scale of his work, and the way he has embraced and experimented with new technologies.

As a keen digital artist, I found it very encouraging to see his use of the iPad and the iPhone as another art medium. I really enjoyed seeing how he had used this medium and how it had influenced and become intertwined with his traditional work.

This is an iPad painting from Hockney's "Arrival of Spring" series. He painted the same area 51 times using his iPad to track and document the changes in the scenery as spring arrived in Yorkshire. One of the advantages of the iPad was the immediacy and portability of the medium. The paintings form a beautiful visual journey:

The next two images are views of the "Arrival of Spring" iPad painting gallery to give an idea of scale:

This is a large oil painting (approx 10m by 4m) which was the culmination of his iPad "Arrival of Spring" work. The colour and scale were magnificent!

This iPad painting is of a view in Yosemite National Park. I loved the sense of depth and distance Hockney captured in this work. I was also impressed with the clarity and size of the scale up from an iPad screen.

San Francisco

I was pleased to have one of my digital paintings exhibited at Macworld | iWorld conference this year. The conference ran from 26th - 28th January in San Francisco and was attended by approximately 25,000 people.

My painting was one of approx 20 exhibits on display and was entitled "Box of Delights". I painted it using Brushes on the iPad for the year 1 VAP module of the MEd course.

Developing paintings further

I have been working on some of the paintings I made on the room 13 seminar day - the view from the beach at Fort William and Glencoe on the journey up. I have used an app called percolate to create the circular, pointillist style texture and then painted the images further in ArtRage. I used a combination of pastel, airbrush, pallette knife and eraser to work on the paintings in ArtRage. Here are the two finished pieces:







Here are some of the development images I created whilst experimented:

More movement

I also experimented with painting inside the train as I was interested in the effects the actual motion of the train would have. This was my favourite piece, painted from a low down viewpoint in an empty carriage:

Capturing movement

On a recent trip to London, I spent some time trying to capture movement using 'Composite' on my iPad. I love the way it allows you to paint with a real time image and overlap them as many times as you want - it is like painting echoes of the past.

Here are a few in Euston train station - I love the colours of light in the floor in the first two:







Last minute boarders whilst the train waits at the platform:

Further reflection on the challenges facing education and the development of a Critical Pedagogy

Outwith schools, in society in general, I feel that some of the major challenges facing learners and educators are "materialism and conformity" (Greene, 2003, p. 111) and the fact that "no population has ever been so deliberately entertained, amused, and soothed into avoidance, denial, and neglect" (Greene, 2003, p. 110). The result of this is a consumer generation who simply receive, who are unquestioning and who lack the capacity to look at things as if they could be otherwise. There is a lack of understanding as to the relationship between power and knowledge and the fact that “knowledge is always an ideological construction linked to particular interests and social relations” (McLaren, 2003 p. 83).

Before anything can be done to redress this relationship, it must first be recognised and, as Greene (2003, p. 111) states we do this by undertaking a process whereby we “learn to name” these things. It is only in recognising the barriers that individuals can be empowered to see different possibilities and imagine alternative ways of being. Imagination, and hence creative arts practice, is vital in this process for it is “the key to critical reflection, as well as a way to conceptualise a future in light of realities henceforth unknown; it is a means through which we can assemble a coherent world [because imagination] is what, above all, makes empathy possible… [it is the one cognitive capacity] that permits us to give credence to alternative realities. It allows us to break with the taken for granted, to set aside familiar distinctions and definitions” (Weiner, xxxx, pp. 73-74).

This has significant implications for the school curriculum and methodologies used, as Greene (2000) explains: “if the cultivation of imagination is important to the making of a community that might be a democratic community, then the release of imagination ought now to be one of the primary commitments of the public school. One of the primary ways of activating the imaginative capacity is through encounters with the performing arts, the visual arts and the art of literature.” (p. 169).

Greene, M., 2000. Imagining Futures: The Public School and Possibility. In: Carr, W., ed., 2005. The RoutledgeFalmer Reader in Philosophy of Education. Abingdon: Routledge. Ch 12.

Greene, M., 2003. In Search of a Critical Pedagogy. In: Darder, A., Baltodano, M., Torres, R. D., eds., 2003. The Critical Pedagogy Reader. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Ch 4.

McLaren, P., Critical Pedagogy: A look at the Major Concepts. In: Darder, A., Baltodano, M., Torres, R. D., eds., 2003. The Critical Pedagogy Reader. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Ch 3.

Weiner, E., 2007. Critical Pedagogy and the Crisis of Imagination. In: Mclaren, P., and Kincheloe, J. eds., 2007. Critical Pedagogy: where are we now? New York: Peter Lang Publishing Inc. Ch 3.

Painting movement

I have been experimenting further with blurring the line between painting and photography. This is an image I painted using digital brushes and a real time camera in Central Station, Glasgow. I was fascinated by the way you could capture the movement and the ethereal effects it produced.

This is the piece I was most pleased with:

Here are 2 paintings made whilst exploring the method:

In Search of a Critical Pedagogy

I feel that one of the current challenges facing art education is the lack of active engagement on the part of the pupils in their learning. Education and learning are seen "in terms of techniques or cures or remedies” and thus, often, this renders pupils and the learning process as “objects to be acted upon, treated, controlled, or used” (Greene, 2003, p. 110). Education has become somewhat of a commodity provided for a consumer society (Giroux, 2003, p. 120). There is little sense of ownership for pupils or any connection to real life. Adopting a more critical pedagogy, where the teacher takes on the role of learner in a shared dialogue of learning that is meaningful and significant to pupils, would help facilitate a sense of agency and personal responsibility in learning. This in turn would develop ownership and commitment as pupils begin to see learning as “interrelated to to other problems within a total context, not as theoretical questions” (Friere, 2003, p. 64).

The more flexible and open curriculum offered by CfE has the potential to develop practice that is much more in keeping with critical pedagogy. However, we must take care to understand that "a mere removal of constraints or a mere relaxation of controls will not ensure the emergence of free and creative human beings […] the freedom we cherish is not an endowment, it must be achieved through dialectical engagements with the social and economic obstacles we find standing in our way, those we have to learn to name" (Greene, 2003, p. 111). Critical pedagogy is vital in this naming process and thus, as a result, in the awakening to new alternatives and the possibility of a different status quo. In particular a critical art pedagogy is significant as both imagination and creativity are the currency of this type of engagement, multiple interpretations are all valid and dialogue is important. As Monchinski (2008) states “transformation involves imagination and possibility” (p. 4).

Friere, P., 2003. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. In: Darder, A., Baltodano, M., Torres, R. D., eds., 2003. The Critical Pedagogy Reader. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Ch 2.

Giroux, H. A., 2003. Education Incorporated? In: Darder, A., Baltodano, M., Torres, R. D., eds., 2003. The Critical Pedagogy Reader. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Ch 5.

Greene, M., 2003. In Search of a Critical Pedagogy. In: Darder, A., Baltodano, M., Torres, R. D., eds., 2003. The Critical Pedagogy Reader. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Ch 4.

Monchinski, T., 2008. Critical pedagogy and the Everyday Classroom. New York: Springer Science + Business media B.V.

This was the view from the beach in Fort Willam on the evening of the Room 13 seminar, just before I travelled home:




I experimented with a new live painting application called 'Composite' to paint this scene:




I really like the soft, impressionistic feel to this painting.

I was interested in the changing effects of the light and was able to paint a number of quick paintings as the light faded:

Room 13 seminar

Room 13 has very organic roots - it started with Caol camera club and involved an artist and some pupils. The club was commercial, taking and selling school photos in order to raise funds to buy a camera (Rob Fairley was original artist). Room 13 developed from this in a fairly organic way. It went global as a result of interest generated by a Room 13 artist's exhibit based on 9/11 that was exhibited in the Tate Modern in 2003. The young artists then produced a documentary about the work of Room 13 called "What age can you start being an artist?" The concept of Room 13 was then introduced and replicated in other countries and schools - it went global. This has resulted in many links between Room 13 in Scotland and Room 13's in the wider world. Latterly, Room 13 has developed into the community and there is a community studio in Caol. This is funded differently.

The philosophy behind Room 13 is based on the philosophical premise of the Plato and the Scottish enlightenment. There are 4 cornerstones of the project:

1. Ownership - the studio is run by an elected management team of pupils, there is no (or very little) outside funding.
2. Philosophical enquiry - activities are lead by curiosity, there are no limitations, it is free and open. Pupils engage in intellectual and material questions and exploration.
3. Reciprocal learning - everyone is there on an equal basis. No one is paid to teach, all learn from each other. Children work alongside artists and there is a professional ethos.
4. Creative freedom - but you need the other things first in order for it to be successful.


The artists explained a number of benfits to the Room 13 approach such as:

1. Learning how to think like an artist and to be creative and thus to take this to any area of life. Learning to learn and to be self directed and self motivated.

2. Room 13 gives you a thirst for education and knowledge. You can explore deeper things outwith formal curriculum when you want to.

3. Art allows you to access all other subjects through a visual, representative way. All areas can be integrated. It allows you to make links in your understanding.


I found it a very interesting and valuable day at Room 13. As well as a better understanding of the root, philosophy, pedagogy, and practical running of the studio, I have come away with a great deal of food for thought in terms of the impact this could have on my own teaching but also of the constraints within secondary education.

In addition, on a simpler level, I have come away with a number of practical ideas I can integrate into my own teaching such as developing a 'wall of ideas' and the postcard activity as a way in to discussing and engaging with artwork.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

On the way to Room 13

The scenery on the journey to Fort William for the Critical Pedagogy 2 seminar was absolutely beautiful. I painted this impressionistic view from the bus window using a starter photo (not related to the view) and photo editing apps to get the initial colours. I then painted the scene using the palette knife and fill tools in ArtRage on my iPad.




This was the initial image I used:




I edited it in a number of ways:




This shows the painting half way through completion: