Back in April, which now seems like years ago, I FINALLY got to take a class I’ve wanted to take for several years now:  Carol Soderlund‘s dyeing silk class.  Any time she has been teaching within driving distance of Maine, I’ve been booked to teach elsewhere.  So even though this class required me to get home from teaching in Arkansas on Friday then get back in the car and head South on Monday, I jumped at the chance!

Round 1, dyeing silk yellow

As always with Carol’s classes, it was fun, packed with learning, tiring, and did I say fun?

First round of overdyeing

Mooshing. That’s a technical term! In this case, mooshing in the blue dye….the third round!  And even WET the colors are heavenly

My dye partner stacking our colors

A classmate was experimenting with stamps and thickened dye

At Quilt Festival two years ago, Melanie Testa demonstrated using an old-fashioned ruling pen (like for drafting plans in art school) with thickened dye. I tried it, and you can see a sideways of my Queen Anne’s lace. I “inked” the outlines with dye, then will overdye and color later….maybe later this summer?

We also got to try some shibori, alas with black. I’m not wild about the color, but maybe I’ll overdye with some blue and get a nice water fabric out of this… I do like the texture, just not the color. Bleah.

We also got to try some deconstructed screen printing. A neighbor did this one… she definitely had the best colors and results… I’m not much for “surface design” stuff, but this was a great cloth!

Another really good desconstructed screen print. I lust after that huge screen!

Lunch at the back of the classroom. ProChem brings in lunch–it is included in the class fee. We all sit together and pop up and down as need be to tend our fabric!

And one more time I went by 266 Third Street, Fall River, Mass., where my dad and his family lived in 1918! So glad it is still there. I may try to find where they lived in 1910 via the census and go find that house, too… my Aunt Mary lived in that house (on the first floor apartment) until she died in the 1970s!

As always, I had a great time, ate too much, and wish I had more time at home to dye fabric!  Maybe this winter?

One of the last exercises in my Joggles class (which now feels like it was about a thousand years ago) was to work within a grid.  I chose to work with items in our living room from our life around the world.

The finished (I think it is finished) page….may add some color to the upper left corner, just a light wash of the ochre….

I chose things from my parents’ home, like the bedwarmer and the Tibetan horn:

The Peruvian copper bedwarmer (lift lid, fill with coals, close lid, pop in bed! from the pre-electric blanket era!). Behind it is a decorative Tibetan horn–think like on the Swiss Alps, except in Tibet. This one, since it is perforated with holes, clearly could not be used to signal a nearby mountaintop.

Things I sketched….observed by the dog! Left to right back row: one of Paul’s carved monkeys from Zaire (remember hear no evil, see no evil? This one is speak no evil–his buddies are still on the shelf), a Mate cup (tea, with a strainer on the bottom of the straw, used by the Gauchos aka cowboys) from Argentina, an M’Bigou soapstone carved head from Gabon, and a duck made from a pully. My half-brother TJ was very creative; he lived in LA near the docks, and made things from leftovers–our coffee table is actually one he made from a ship’s hatch cover. On the bottom it has a note from him to my dad, for whom he made the table. They are both gone, but the table lives on! In the front is a rebenque, the crop/whip used by the Argentine and Brazilian gauchos.  Not pictured is the bird on the left side of the page.  It also is M’Bigou soapstone.

Jane LaFazio was our teacher. She wanted us to draw a grid (3×4 squares or whatever filled your page) then fill the squares, sometimes merging a couple of squares if needed. This is at the inked-but-not-colored stage.  On the bottom I wrote the places I have lived.

With some of the items colored, but no background or border yet….

And now I’ll send you back to the top to see the finished page.  I rather like it!

Hi everyone! I’ve been seriously absent, mostly busy!  I taught in Arkansas, got home at suppertime (stopping at Eli’s track practice on the way home from the airport), off to Coastal Quilters the next morning, unpacked that day, repacked the car the next day, and the following morning off to Massachusetts for a dyeing workshop!  More on all of that, but for today I’m sharing what I’ve just finished… lesson 4 in Jane LaFazio’s Joggles class, Watercolor Sketchbook:  designs from life.

The finished sketch/lesson

This lesson was “from the mountains,” so my garden filled in!  I chose fiddlehead ferns, a sure sign of spring in Maine, and the tightly furled (and opening) leaf buds of the beech tree.  As I wrote to the class:

I just adore the beech leaves, how they cling so tenaciously to the branch throughout winter, only relinquishing their hold when new growth finally forces them off and to the ground.

I’m posting a photo of what I sketched, but alas I waited too long and things kinda wilted, so I picked a second branch so you can see the long, slender, tightly furled leaf bud.

What I sketched, slightly wilted (with a strong afternoon sidelight and long shadows from the window)

Beech sprig on my closed laptop

I really liked Jane’s page with the two rectangles of leaves and the background of larger leaves and paint coloring the page around the boxes (not shown…in the lesson). I tried to do a similar tint/wash on this, but think I might better have stopped before that step. I was tired of plain backgrounds, but think this painting-in-back would be more effective if I had multiple smaller boxes/windows for the composition rather than this view. I included one photo of how *I* flooded in color: dampen section, add dots of thinned color, blend with a flat brush.

wet into wet....

…..I ended up with stronger blots of color than I wanted, tried to lift, then got sorta yucky rubbed areas. I do think I may want to use a less wet approach on this paper and then make myself a “mixed” journal of both mixed media and watercolor papers, or just suck it up and pay for a large watercolor paper journal period.

I DO like my “photo corners” tho! And it is curious that I, who adore vibrant color, am having fun with more subtle colors… AND (drum roll! ) I managed to remember to take photocopies of just the inked drawing for possible “other use.” What a concept…my brain was engaged!  Here’s the inked page (draw in pencil, draw in with ink, erase pencil) and the page with the greens and browns added, but no background wash.  I think maybe I should have stopped here, but so it goes.  Turn the page, try again!

The inked outlines

At least with my current skill level, I think maybe I should have stopped here and not added the wash of color in the background

Anyway, here ’tis. Now for lesson 5 and back to lesson 3….. Constructive criticism is most welcome and appreciated!

The same applies for all of you…. should I have stopped

OK…so I was actually (who me?) spontaneous this summer and signed up for a www.Joggles.com class with Jane LaFazio, Sketchbooks and Watercolor on Location.  The idea is/was that you go OUT to sketch and sketch from the real thing, not a photo.  I am SO GLAD I did…I’m having a ball, so much so that (as I’ve mentioned before) I signed up for a second class.  This post is about the first class, and one of the early lessons.

So I dropped the son off to run at the high school (this was late summer), and treated myself to tea and sweet at a nearby spot.

Told the child I wanted /needed about an hour.  After dithering about what treat to get, I finally sat down at this table with LUSCIOUS basil.

I briefly considered including the basil in the sketch. I then realized I'd be there 'til midnight if I tried, and decided (who me?) to go simple. OK, to go not as complicated.

Then I finally began to sketch.

A close-up of the cup and tea bag. Don't you just LOVE the cup sleeve, from the Carrabassett Coffee company?

Here is the sketch, done first in pencil, then inked in with a Pitt pen.  Of course, 20 minutes after I arrived I get a call:  “Mom, it’s too hot to run!”  Me:  “remember I said I needed about an hour?”  Then, “you’ll have to wait for me for another half hour…find a shady spot to sit.”  Sigh.

Inked in....cup is too short and not tapered enough, but still OK.

SO…. I packed up my cup and supplies and the rest of the chocolate cake (slurp), and retrieved the child and headed home.  It actually was pretty warm.  Then I set things up at home.  The shadows/light were different, but close enough….

Adding color at home, on the dining table, lacking the usual clutter around my spot.

And the final sketch:

Not too bad for a beginner....the curve of the cup isn't quite off, and the tea bag looks like it is levitating a bit, but not too bad....

Considering I’m just starting with watercolor, I’m pretty happy.  I have discovered that having REAL watercolor paper makes a world of difference, and having little water in the brush makes it much easier to stay within the shapes and not bleed and make yucky stuff! FUN!

Hi all… I am beginning to resurface and return to being me…what a concept!   After the tumult and demands of the past four years,  it appears I was up for a change of pace.  I NEVER do stuff spontaneously…just too much to do, too many obligations.  Then I saw Jane LaFazio‘s Facebook post about her new Joggles class, Sketchbook and Watercolor:  On Location, two days before it was to begin.  So I signed up, that day! Fortunately, I had most of the supplies on hand.   In something that hasn’t happened in about two (or more) decades, I am actually doing a class, doing the homework/assignment the week it is assigned!

Our first “location” was an easy one:  home!   We were to sketch keys, journal style…. I missed that part.  The Journal, not a whole shebang thing.  I was so excited I took plenty of time and really worked at it, and am thrilled.  My ability to draw is still tentative, but I worked at it enough to get it!

In utter decadence, I sat on the front porch, taking my art supplies with me in a basket. I used a journal sketchbook as a plain background to better see the keys.

Next, I sketched, taking my time:

Here, I have sketched the exercise in pencil, inked over it, and begun erasing the pencil marks. My 5x7 "block" of watercolor paper hadn't arrived yet so I used some student-grade watercolor paper I had in a pad in the studio.

Then it was time…GULP… to start with the watercolors.  I have two travel sets…one larger, one smaller.  I used the larger one since I was at home:

This set is "Yarka St Petersburg" which I must have ordered from Dick Blick. They seem to have a high pigment load...must have been a good price. And the blue thing is a Niji waterbrush...LOVE them!

So I started coloring in…what a different using watercolor paper makes!  It doesn’t bleed!  You get edges you can control!!!!!!

Not bad... this might have been a good place to stop as a "journal" exercise.....

But I kept going.   Learning how the colors would look on the paper was, well, a learning exercise!  I used the bottom of the page to test color:

Mucking about with the colors to see what combinations would make the color I wanted. I need to do more of this.

Not quite done…. colors need tweaking in this next photo:

I thought originally that I wanted to use my favorite Caribbean bright and clear colors. Wasn't working for me. So I went over the backround to blend in the shadows, and over the pink wihich was too little-girl bright. If you look at the key on the right, you can see the original pink next to the key and the washed-over / toned-down on the outside.

Finally, done, and I’m happy:

Done!

So far I am loving the class.  Lots of good participation by the students which makes the class even better.  Also, I really like Jane’s replies.  She comments on each and every effort posted.  And she doesn’t shy away (as some teachers do) from making suggestions or commenting when things are off.  Her replies are always kind and courteous, but you learn so much MORE when the teacher will point out what is amiss and how to fix it.  She also shared this blogpage where she lists *her* favorite supplies.  Most helpful!  Anyway, I’m having a BALL!  What an utter job to be able to relax, learn, muddle around with art, and take some time for myself.  I am sincerely hoping that the stress and tumult of the past four years are over, and I can return to something resembling normalcy.   I said in a post to the class that I feel like I’ve been in a years-long drought and have just found a spring of water and nourishment.