A slice of Mary's particularly delicious lemon cake. Alison arriving with a box of lemon drizzle cake and banana and toffee muffins. Rachael arrived with a box of Rice Krispie cakes and Mellisa brought in a box of dairy free chocolates. Session 5 of Experimental Textiles looks at Constructed Textiles. Knit, weave and felt. We also look at working in 3D. But first we look at the homework . . .  I am currently teaching two groups of Experimental Textiles. One on Thursday and Friday. The other on Saturday and Sunday. The course is taught over nine months, from June to March, one two day session per month. This post shows a mixture of images from both groups. This was just a small part of Kate's homework - she created several fabulous pieces. A ripped up painted still life, reassembled and decorated with hand stitch.  . . . Another from Jane . . .   . .  a detail . . . Marlilyn missed the 4th session but created her own still life and executed

It used to be an apple for the teacher . . . . So - we have had the fourth session of Experimental Textiles already - time is flying. I save the still life until the fourth session as by then as the groups are feeling more comfortable with each other and friendships are starting to form. The girls are all starting to support each other. Drawing and painting in front of other people is always uncomfortable. Few of us are naturally talented, but the exercise of looking and recording what you see is very valuable. I find that asking the groups to draw and paint a large scale still life is a bit less scary for them than a smaller scale one. The weekend group concentrating hard on their drawings. We spent the whole of the first day of the two day sessions making various drawings and paintings, using a range of media. Several of the drawings/paintings will be torn up the next day to create a collage. Telling the students that their work may well be torn up makes them place l

   As darkness falls over Lake Wanaka.  Apologies for being so woefully behind with this blog, I am still catching up. This is the final post about the The Wanaka Autumn Art School autumnartschool.net.nz    With the weather changing and getting colder almost every day there were some fabulous skies over Wanaka - this is a picture of the sky as we were leaving class during the week - just beautiful. It got quite cold while I was in Wanaka. I could have done with some gloves and had to buy a fleece. I hadn't realised it would be quite so chilly. The five days that I had with my group were just a joy - they worked so hard, but also had fun. They also shared a lot of materials which always helps. I have already shown you the main work from the course, but as is usual on longer workshops, there is a chance to develop ideas . . . .   Collages of painted Bondaweb, large leaves and the odd printing block mounted onto old book pages.