Made It!

You will recall that I had a limited amount of time to access the videos from this year's Sketchbook Revival once all of them had been e-mailed (see my first efforts here). Nose to the grindstone, I did watch the remainder of the videos with one day to spare! And shortly thereafter, they announce they were extending access for an additional week. I'm glad I pushed myself so that I could catch up on some of the exercises this week rather than still watch videos and take notes. One thing I did was part two of Helen Wells' mark making exercise using tools from nature, in my case a twig, a pine cone and a branch with tuffs of small needles. Once getting the feel of the kind of marks those tools would make, we were encouraged to actually draw something specific using the teachers inspirational photo or one of our own. I went ahead and used hers as I found it interesting for the same reasons she did and came up with the set above. I'd combined my two inks (brown and green) into one cup and was fascinated to see how the colors separated on the page, possibly because one is a permanent ink and one is not. I kinda got into it, knowing that none of these had to be great and a final result. What I did not expect was the way the watered down ink would bleed on the thin copy paper, so many of my "dots" spread into larger circles. Because they were actually tiny flowerheads in the photo, these enlarged dots beckoned thoughts of embroidery, both straight stitched and french knots. That was very unexpected to suddenly see how these loose and free marks could become a textile piece. Stay tuned for step three.

Next I decided to work on exercises where I could utilize my growing collection of stamp pads. Sarah Matthews is known for her stamping and showed us what has become her signature technique of layering stamped images. She demoed cutting simple designs to make a set of one inch blocks. Yes, you read that right - one INCH blocks. Then using 3 different colors ranging light to dark, she showed how to cover a page in sequence with these blocks, then shifting one to the end, stamp over the previous stampings with the second color, shift one block to the end again and do the 3rd stamping. I didn't care for her results and had no desire to cut those small blocks. But I thought I'd give it a small try with three half inch Celtic blocks from a set of varying sizes. Yeah, not impressed with my results either. But before she was done, she showed some other examples of how she layers her stamping and lots of them were quite interesting and she does it all with such ease. You can watch her in action on her website if you scroll down the home page I have thoughts of how I could do something similar with stamps I've already made and could apply to fabric.

Este MacLeod's presentation on printing and stamping was of interest because her only supplies were watercolors and a cardboard tube. Now, I've saved some toilet paper tubes that were slightly squashed thinking I might be able to stamp ovals with them, and here was the same idea being presented. As I watched though, I was not that impressed with using watercolors for the stamping. I'd normally use acrylic paint, but since I didn't want to get ANY paint out for this and had the stamp pads, that is what I used. I was surprised that they printed so faintly but at least I got some marks on the page and experimented with some overlapping.

Since I didn't have any perfectly round tubes to work with, I used a bottle cap for the perfectly round circles. But I've held on to that black piece of plastic for almost as long as the tp tube with the idea of stamping with it. I can't remember what it came off of, it is like those plastic endcaps of shipping tubes but oval. It has potential I think. Este's second step was to start painting in the shapes and manipulating the tube more for different shapes to eventually create a mandala that might inspire a work of art. Like Sarah's results, I was not taken with Este's which looked more like an hot mess to me. To each her own! Don't know at this point if I will try adding color to any of these.

This is my most successful work with watercolor painting, but as I mentioned before, the multi-media paper in my sketchbook is doing me no favors in getting good results or learning how brushes work and watercolor moves on the page. But this one with Sarah Simon was instructive and fun to do, adding little leaves here, jumping to another spot on the circle to add more, finally adding some berries and all the while the mind was working out how to adapt this to fabric. A wreath like this is a super foil for a simple message in its center.

I very nearly did not do this one with Koosje Koena, partly because I've watched many of her videos on Sketchbook Skool (she is one of the founders) and find her a little irritating in that she often tells you something, then says, well, I don't know if that's right, that's just what I think. It's one thing if her instruction is free but another if you are paying for her class only to find out she's guessing about important information. Anyway, not a fan and was even more not a fan with she said we were going to use crayons. Oh for Pete's sake (major eye roll!) - yes I was thinking, how childish and like her. But I DO have a big set of crayons bought on a whim and seldom used and we were going to draw whatever was in front of us because "Everything is interesting when you draw it." Now THAT I agree with. The point of the crayons is that it keeps you from being able to be detailed, encourages you to use whatever color you happen to pick up and allows a playfulness (frankly, I'm starting to hate that word - lol) that helps you break out a bit and mess with perspective. I had to keep pulling things off my desk onto the table where my computer screen sits and worked right along with her as I watched the video. And I enjoyed this so much more than I thought I would. Plus the more I look at it the more it reminds me of some of Laura Wasilowski's work, leading me to a different understanding of it. 

I have at least one more tidbit to share with you about the sessions but since this is already long, I will save it for another post. Maybe I will also have step three of that markmaking session to share by then.