A flipped and mirrored design taken from 'The Journey'. I love teaching at Art Van Go, everyone is made so welcome and always so well l ooked after. Art Van G o offer a very comprehensive range of workshops throughout the year. Have a look see - www.artvango.co.uk/workshops/ Design, Inspiration and Interp reta tion is my rather formulaic way to help groups get jump stared when they need a bit help to get going with ideas. It can be difficult to pull designs ideas out of fresh air and even with bulging sketch books you somet imes need a refresher.  On this two day version we worked through two design exercises, took sections of the designs, flipped and mirr ored designs and then made printing blocks f rom on e of the designs.   The first design exercise was 'The Journey' If you have a c opy of Experimental Textiles or a re a regular reader of this blog you will be aware of this exercise. It is a great mark making exercise that ca...

 One of Lana's colourful papers which she then started to cut and collage.  Art Van Go have a great studio/workshop space at the back of their well equipped shop. They have everything a girl could desire. Having made the printing blocks the students started to print with them on A1 sheets of white cartridge, working out their patterns and repeats. We used acrylic paint to print with. Once the A1 sheets were printed up and dry we colour washed them with a dilution of procion dye powder and water. You can see how beautifully the different coloured dyes bleed and mix together on the page. Once dry the acrylic paint resists the dye.   Lana started to build up layers by cutting up one sheet to apply or collage onto another sheet.   One of Lana's layered pieces which she later went onto stitch.     Another one of Lana's printed sheets .   This is one of Kate's overprinted sheets, it looks quite 3D if you slightly offset your over ...

  One of the 'flipped out' exercises. It is unusual for me to teach two similar courses consecutively, but what a treat for me that it was my favourite workshop. I will concentrate on the end result of the workshop at Art Van Go. www.artvango.co.uk as you will already have seen some similar work in the previous few posts. My workshop Design, Inspiration and Interpretation is part of the design core that was part of my original four year course - Experimental Textiles. I am now teaching a shorter one year course of the same name at IDC/The Old Needle Works in Redditch. To have a look at what is involved in that course and for next years dates go to www.experimentaltextiles.com   Another 'flipped out' exercise. It can be difficult to generate designs on demand. Even those of you with bulging sketchbooks of ideas can sometimes feel a bit lost when looking for inspiration. The formulae that I use to get students thinking about spaces in between and pos...

This is just a quick post to say what a fabulous day we had today - I have the luxury of just 5 students in the group - we can spread out and work large!!! Wonderful! This is very quick becuase Kevin is just serving up our barbque . . . .  more tomorrow. www.artvango.co.uk X

 A section across ' The Journeys' hanging on the wall Sunday saw the second day of my new course Experimental Textiles  www.experimentaltextiles.com and the group of eight intrepid students were getting used to each other. I say intrepid because these students don't really know what the end of the course will bring - neither do I!  The whole point of the course is to work through various basic exercises that any one can do but never have/take the time to do, along with good support, some exciting and original work will be created for the end of year show. It takes quite a leap of faith for students to sign up for this kind of course. I am only taking eight students each year. Eight is enough for a group to 'bond' and small enough for me to have time to work with each student individually. This will be a great treat for me - I'm not sure about the students!!! I have chosen IDC at The Old Needle Works  IDC/The Old Needle Works as the place to run the c...