Fibre Arts Australia - Ballarat - April 2014, part the first.

Katie painting her Journey.

So - Here I am back at Ballarat with Fibre Arts Australia run by Glenys Mann. www.fibrearts.jigsy.com

I love teaching here and most especially catching up with great friends that I have taught with here two and four years ago - Mary Hettmanspurger and Kerr Grabowski from the USA and Marlene Kranz from Australia. 

My design workshops have been asked for most particularly in Australia and as they are a great favourite of mine, this is no hardship. 

You will have seen that I taught something similar in Canberra. As this is a five day workshop we will be developing the use of the print blocks and creating layered newspaper surfaces to print and stitch onto.

The Journeys were painted . . . .

 . . . and hung . . .

We also played with 'flipping out' . . . .

 

 . . .  and expanding . . .

 

 

The group then took two sections from each design exercise using 'L' shapes to isolate their designs.

The designs were then traced and transferred into sketch books . . . 

 

 . .  and then painted in two colour ways.

I brought carbon paper with me to make it easier to transfer the designs.

Then the students chose two of their designs to make into printing blocks . . .

From one design you get two blocks - one positive and one negative.

The printing blocks are made from self adhesive foam and foam core or mount baord. Some of the designs can be a bit fiddly to cut, but if you use a sharp scalpel, you can get there in the end. 

 

 . . . and here's the proof.

Once the blocks are made the students can then experiment printing onto different papers using acrylic paints.

All these designs have come from the three design exercises - they didn't exist before the class started.

The group are printing onto a variety of papers, old books, maps, sheet music, even old hand written diaries.

Once the papers are printed and dry - they are flooded with procion colour wash
Which I will show you in the next post . . . . . 

 These kind of residential courses are very full on, with lectures from three or four tutors nearly every night, along with special dinners and parties. There is no time to be bored!!!

But that is part of what makes these events so special. The organisation that goes on behind the scenes is mind boggling. There are sixteen tutors from all over the world and everything is running like clock work.

So - there is a lot more to tell - will try to keep up - but as I have explained, it may be a few days before the next post . . .

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