online class

in this exercise we were to take photos of shapes, colours we liked near home and then make drawings of them. click on the photos below to see larger versions of them

some paintings from Carla Sonheim's flower crazy 5 week class. I'm learning a few new techniques for watercolour, gesso, and mixing colours and textures to create "imaginary flowers".

layers of watercolour lines and pens/markers with some pencil shading

painted imaginary flowers in watercolour with gesso painted over the top

watercolour blobs in 3 colours, with gesso masking off interesting shapes to create flowers. scratched lines and textures in the gesso before it dried

plus one of the "2014 — year of the fairy tale" exercises — this is my "princess and the pea" mixed media painting. it's gouche, gesso and pens. the paints are applied using a credit card instead of a brush. it leads to a "free-er" line. I liked the gouche — they dried very quickly

I've started the "sketchbook now" class to practice more drawing techniques for my sketchbook, and in lesson one we need to do some tests of our materials. I've used some from previous class exercises, which I hadn't added to the blog, so adding them here as part of this class' notes. the watercolour washes tests were exercises from Fred Lisaius' class "Fall Watercolours". I'll add more tests here as I work on them

these are the watercolours I'm using most often — a mixture of Schmincke and Winsor & Newton pans:

testing different lines & pen textures:

watercolour bead washes:

watercolour wet in wet wash:

watercolour double wet / flood wash with salt added for texture. I used table salt and since the paper was thick, it didn't work too well

more watercolour washes, on thicker, handmade paper

watercolour pencils (texta zoom brand) and pens to see what they looked like with added water:

I've been making dragonscale (reverse smocking) using Michele Carragher's instructions (she is the game of thrones' embroiderer). I finally got it to work, after unpicking the first few attempts (& realising I've done it on wrong side of the fabric - right side for regular smocking). I'm using this as part of the fabric manipulation topic in assignment 3 work. I'll use this page to add more details and summarise it (with other samples) on the assignment page later.

notes for the pattern:

first attempt - I had only drawn the dots, not the triangles and became a bit lost, so these two didn't work out. I unpicked them and started again.

next time, I drew the triangles as a template onto the fabric also. this helped a lot, and I managed to make it correctly this time

the right side of the fabric - this shows the smocking pattern, but the "dragonscale" uses the other side, so I actually made the whole piece on the wrong side of the fabric. oh well. know for next time.

the wrong side of the fabric - showing the dragonscale. I need to iron/press it to flatten it, though I like the puffy pattern also.

some more progress

http://www.ooed.org/learn/understanding-contemporary-art-fall-2014 started this week. very interesting so far - speeding through modern art. use chrome if using ipad, safari is broken

i'm making notes in my workbook. might post photos here. I've read you take more in/remember more when handwriting notes than typing. but if i get time i'll try type them up too so i can search later.

week1:

testing some woven eyes for my bees. these have a matte black circular warp threaded into cut fabric (calico in the first test), and shiny black stranded thread for the circular weft, travelling across and around the eye. I used the shiny thread to simulate the shinyness of a bee's eyes, and woven circles to remind of the multiple cells / lenses of the bees' eyes.

I learnt this technique from jude hill on her wonderful "considering weave" class / project

the first one didn't work out as i'd threaded both ways instead of one way only.

but the next sample worked out as I had hoped (seen in my mind) so i was happy about this.

crazy birds is a tutorial from Carla Sonheim. I tried it tonight. it's a good exercise to help "free up" your drawing and lines. and can be done with kids, as well as adults (kids at heart?)

you start with two pieces of paper. draw circles on one, flower shape / petals on another. cut into quarters and arrange onto the page and draw in the bird shape. use a variety of materials

I think I could try this exercise using fabric also instead of paint

another exercise I learned from one of Carla Sonheim's classes, is to practice seeing shapes — animals and other things, in the cracks and lines and shadows on the footpath and other places. I think this might be a type of pataphysical drawing exercise too.

collating some of them here — most a "imaginary animals" or "blobimals" as it's fun to draw them, and they seem to be everywhere once you start looking! it's like finding animals in the clouds.

some I've done:

and some shapes I've collected and am yet to draw the "blobimals":
some are obvious, and others less so..

first attempt at weaving in cloth. there's quite a few 'mistakes' where I flip flopped (let's call it "flipped a bit" in engineering terms) but it adds to the charm and makes it unique (& if it were a gene, then now there's a new mutation?)

I like the looser weave when I first started too - I almost kept it like that but decided to finish it to see what it'd look like. I did manage to pull the fabric and create a hole in the corner though. I tried to get variable spaced warps but then this slowed the weaving down a lot as I made more mistakes and had to work out where I was more often. I used different thickness & colour threads to create some more variation.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/aliak_com/sets/72157645331553742 has more pics

I'm going to have to try more of these - it was great fun. this is inspired by jude hill's "considering weave" class

inspired by jude's opening post, I started a mind map to begin my "considering weave" class workbook.

I've been working on my fabric loom tonight - the invisible basting is done, next up loading the warp & weft. I looked up one of jude's videos from the hearts class to remind me how to do it - a great resource!

this weekend I've been trying to catch up on my printing for assignment 2 ACA. but was "distracted" by doing some online classes of Carla Sonheim's. one was a gelli plate printing class, so I'm waiting for my gelli plate to arrive. will try similar on other makeshift plates during the week (am home with my materials for a couple of weeks). the other one was a watercolour transfer class. these are some of the watercolour painted tshirt transfer papers so far. the work is still in progress...waiting for it to dry properly then add some other media, then do/test the prints onto paper & fabric. the watercolours react nicely to the coating on the paper. I hadn't tried this before. Carla does some amazing work - I've been really inspired and hope that one will turn out as nice as hers (one day). I've signed up for her 'imaginary creatures' class that's running this week also and have started reading her books (the kindle ones). the book speaks about footpath/cracks animals. I took some photos of water splotches on the footpath near home and I can really see some imaginary animals in them so hoping I can turn them into little prints for my niece & cousins kids. maybe a little zine of them. not sure yet. (I've taken pics like this in the path, often of the outline that a stray hair makes on the bathroom floor - my hair is long and straight but tends to make curvy shapes as it falls out).

some students are trying the "summer drawing project" from the distant stitch group on the OCA textile group page. I'll try some of it too to see how it goes — even though it's winter here for me :) (which usually means more fibre projects as it's nicer to knit in the colder months)

week1 — exploring "What type of mark do you make most naturally?"

repeating geometric shapes seems to be my most natural mark making. the first page was done using conte pencils and the remainder using a fine (0,3) ink pen. we had to fill the page with marks. so I tried repeating the shapes to see the effect. I could definitely turn these pages into stitches. though I think lace would be suited for the circles—I might have to learn how to make lace next ;)