monoprinting

Last Thursday I started a printing course, one evening a week, at Leeds College of Art. Our first week was spent monoprinting: for anyone who doesn't know, this involves inking up a sheet and then making designs by painting on inks, masking off shapes or areas or scratching in lines, wiping out areas and so on. The advantage is it doesn't involve lots of dangerous equipment and is very easy to do - especially for beginners (apart from some roller printing and lino printing I've not really printed before); the disadvantage is you can't print multiple images - hence the "mono".

Our first exercise was to ink up a piece of plastic, then place cut-out shape or shapes on top and print the result:

- not the most sophisticated shapes in the world, but this was designed to be a play session: I can be more seriously creative when I've learned the basics.

You can then re-ink the plastic and turn the shapes over to get a print of one shape on top of the other: you have to work at speed for this, before the ink dries on your mask - I was slower than I should have been, which resulted in a misty-looking print:


In the next one I used the end of a paintbrush to scribble lines in the ink, as well as blotting with scrim (there are also some fingerprints where I forgot and held it):


One of the things I really got into was layering the ink on the plastic in different ways - curved lines, varying the pressure, using the edge of the roller to get narrow lines and so on - the following print is from the basic inked up plate:

You'd never guess I'm into a woodland theme at the moment, would you?

The last two involve masking off, this time with torn rather than cut paper; this gives a softer, subtler effect:

-though the effect is subtler than I intended - forgot again to add more ink before inking up the roller, but it does give some very subtle colours, which become even more subtle when the strips are turned over on the re-inked plastic:

This week it's drypoint which means we have to take a line-drawing to use, so off to practice my drawing skills. I also have some other prints which are waiting in the drying-rack.

Belatedly - Festival of Quilts

Back in the land of the living after returning from the Festival of Quilts nearly four weeks ago.
Apologies for the delay in reporting back: I returned with a cold which became a nasty bout of bronchitis followed by a further bout of general fatigue followed by a period of utter laziness!

I actually treated myself to the whole week in Birmingham, which seemed like a good idea at the time. The first three days I spent in a masterclass with Susan Brandeis about developing creative potential and designing meaningful quilts. If you ever get the chance of a class with Susan, seize it with both hands. It came at absolutely the right time for me and was exactly what I needed since - as my entries for FOQ below will reveal - my work suffers at times from lack of thought: I've tended to go with the flow rather than really thinking about and developing ideas and designs. I'll post later about how this workshop has helped me develop.

One really good thing about the workshop was the group of people I was with: really supportive people producing excellent work - though at times I did feel myself running to catch up! Here we are (minus a couple of people who had to leave early:


By the end of the masterclass I was completely exhausted and, having seen all the amazing quilts (standards have been raised colossally since I last went to a large quilt show), I felt more than a bit apologetic about mine. Still I did promise to put them on my blog and here they
are:



First of all Snakes and Ladders, finished at last. Even though there are things wrong with this I still love it: apart from anything else it's the first quilt I'd started since 2000 when my husband died so it's great to have it finished.

The second is based on pebbles and rockpools, made of silk, satin, silk organza and cotton jersey plus silk fibres, hand embroidery and machine quilting:

It did suffer through having to be finished in a hurry - serve me right for over-estimating what I could do in the time.

The third quilt is the one I was really embarrassed by - if I could have taken it down and stuffed it away and hidden it from view I would have done so. I hadn't intended to attempt anything naturalistic but it kept drifting that way - not only that but it wasn't very well designed to start with (shouldn't have skimped on that bit) so that compositionally it is dreadful. On the plus side some of the detail works really well (two of the three judges commented on the painterly use of fabric, and one liked the light in the trees so there's something to build on there).

Must remember next year to only enter things finished before the entry deadline so that I know I'm only presenting my best work to the public!

The remainder of the week was highly enjoyable. Lots of amazing quilts and exhibitions to see (afraid I don't have pictures as I had camera problems), friends old and new to meet and catch up with and went home with lighter pockets but weighed down with supplies.

Oh, and the cats really did seem to miss me - wouldn't let me out of their sight once for three weeks after coming back from the cattery but insisted on following me everywhere - even Bixy made his way up two flights of stairs to find a curling-up spot in the studio.

More catching up soon!

More from Liz Berg's class

Am catching up fast with this class, discovering design concepts I didn't know existed, and producing lots of small pieces (mainly paper but the most recent ones have een fabric). I'm also gaining confidence and learning to work more playfully. Here are a few more pieces:

I like this one a lot - not my usual colours but the brief was pale with low-key contrast and I surprised myself. (The papers I used are oil-marbled, done ages ago)

This is a more familiar colour-combination for me (paper painted with brusho on plain sugar=paper), as is the next piece:

The next set of pieces are about contrasts. Firstly a contrast in scale, which is not something I've considered a lot in the past

More marbled paper - hmm, maybe I need to marble some more fabrics to play with too. On to colour contrast (the greens are from magazine pages):

And then to texture: luckily I had some textured paper left over from my City & Guilds days; now I need to create some more (I intend to go over the exercises a number of times as some ideas still do not come naturally to me): marbled paper, gel medium and silver paint, plus angelina for the moon:

And the last in this group is a contrast of shapes (I chose straight and wiggly - a bit obvious but it sort of works, even if it does look a bit like snakes crawling over logs:

And finally a stitched piece - the brief was to produce a small stitched piece using contrast: in this case I used a colour contrast:

I have some reservations about this one - I need to live with it for a little while before I quilt and finish it, and I may need to modify it. I'm hoping by the end of this class I will be able to see more easily how I can change things to improve the design of a piece. Liz is expert at this, but I'd also welcome comments from blog readers.

Liz Berg: Elements & Principles of Design

Sorry I haven't blogged for such a long time - January brought successive illnesses - none major but unpleasant and one after the other which left me feeling flattened. I'd also signed up for various challenges and two classes which I'm now having to catch up on. Most of my spare time in the last few weeks has been spent on Liz Berg's class, Elements and Principles of Design.

This class has been very demanding and also very worthwhile. Though I found the first two lessons relatively straightforward, having done some design work as part of a City & Guilds class some time ago, lessons 3 and 4 (there are 6 in all) stretched me to the limit.

The earlier design work is done postcard-sized on paper, a useful way of working which produces fairly quick results without risking loads in materials. I chose for the most part to work in cut paper (I've loved cutting paper freehand ever since I did a C&G pproject on Matisse). Here are a couple of the more successful pieces, from a section on size (including relative size of different features of the design). The first is simple two-colour design:


At first I really disliked this design but it has gradually grown on me (it's also one of the ones Liz liked, which helped). The second is a similar exercise but using smaller high-contrast shapes against a dark background. I like this one because I think the contrast works well. The dark paper is painted with brusho; the light paper is the result of playing around in PaintShop with a photograph I took of mosses.


The third is from an exercise I found really difficult at first but eventually managed to get a grip of: the intention was to produce a design which moved the eye round the composition. Used the same paper as the second plus some cheap dayglo stuff from the kids section of my local supermarket.

Once the class is over I shall rework these and some of the other designs as fabric postcards - plus other ideas are already churning around in my head - enough to keep me going for some time! I've also gained a great deal of confidence (much-needed I assure you) doing this course.

You can find more details of Liz's class (also called Better Art by Design) on her website at www.lizbergartquilts.com/classes-schedule.asp

I'd really recommend this - it's really good value for money: though it may look expensive to start off with it's packed with so much that is valuable it's worth every penny.

Catching up

I've recently started a creativity counselling course, Women-Art-Life tutored by Myrna Giesbrecht who teaches the Self Expressions class on Quilt University. It explores ways of organising yourself and your life to develop your own creativity and I highly recommend it - see details on http://www.womenartlife.com/ . The class contains a lot of soul-searching and written and practical assignments with a great deal of input from Myrna herself. The piece above is my first piece (you produce one a week), fused applique using two pieces of hand-dyed fabric, cotton background and silk applique, with the applique outlined in couched glittery braid. Based (rather loosely) on my handprint. Fun and very fast to do except for the silk binding: I did the whole thing in an evening, which is very speedy for me!

On a more personal note, two friends, Harvey and John, went through a civil partnership ceremony recently at Leeds Town Hall, one of the best wedding celebrations I've been to. Huge numbers of guests, lots of people I haven't seen for years. I used to teach Harvey (on the right) so I could claim to have known him longer than anyone else there except his family. John isn't bald - he normally has thick curly hair but had it cut off for the occasion. Both have been through so much themselves and helped so many other people they deserve a great future together. They've already been together thirteen years so their relationship is already long-lasting.

Next month they are moving to Harris in the Outer Hebrides in Scotland: they've bought a place there on a sea-loch with amazing wildlife and fishing-rights and plan to develop it as an alternative holiday-centre, with green energy and a choice of holiday-cottages or yurts. In the pictures (I haven't got permission to show them yet) it looks idyllic, the ideal place to go for peace and quiet (I'm thinking quilters'/artists' retreat though we'd have to find somewhere to set up the sewing-machines): should be up and running by next summer so I'll keep you posted. It's sad to see them go but it looks like a great place for an away-from-it-all holiday.

THE JOURNAL QUILT

It's finally finished - and though I'm not sure about the end result I've certainly learnt a lot doing it; it's included making my own fabrics by bonding sheers, layering, machine reverse applique, threadpainting, couched braid, beads, sequins, angelina, using new and different fabrics (I'm not going to be tempted to use lame again in a hurry) and so on. Given I've done very little in the way of embellishment, except in a few postcards, this was a steep learning curve. I just hope the lame holds together long enough to outlast the Houston show.

Given that I changed my mind about what to send until the last minute when I decided I simply had to do something relating to Carnival (and even then I had a few false starts and over-ambitious ideas - think 3D prancing horse coming out of the quilt(!) and attempts to be somebody I'm not) I really had to push myself to get it finished in time so ended up having to make speedy decisions (You have to understand it normally takes me three days to decide what to get in my weekly shop - I'm not a speedy decision-maker) and act on them quickly. I think this was good for me but it hurt.

Finally there was the challenge of actually getting it to Houston. All went well in the beginning - I even found a box the right size to send it flat in and a courier service that would get it there in two days. However by Thursday night I was in a real state of panic - after 32 hours it had still only got as far as East Midlands airport, only a hundred miles away. By the time I got to bed it had only just boarded the plane. BUT by next morning it had reached Wilmington Ohio and by 11.30 Houston time it had arrived. Yippee!

Can't show photos yet until after the Houston show opens. Maybe I'll like it again by then.

NIBS UPDATE

And finally - the beta-blockers are working - Nibs's blood-pressure is down to normal; he can slo see but still demands I take him for walks!