Christmas Wishes

A brief pause in the midst of all the Christmas preparations to wish all of you a Very Happy Christmas and a Joyful New Year.

The card this year brings happy memories of Autumn in France when families of partridges run like clockwork toys across the fields and often the roads!

Have a lovely break and I look forward to sharing the New Year with you.

Viv

Students work and strange paintbrushes

Hi everyone

I have had alovely time today looking at some very beautiful and inspiring work so I would love to share it with you all.

Heather has been working on the print chapter in module 1 and she has produced some really clever prints building up layers of colour.
First using a lemon to print with.

This second lemon print has the quality of lace and the colours really sing.

More prints were made using the printing tool we all first used in school....the humble potato. Which can be used to create exciting repeat and overlaid prints.



And finally a card print based on a pomegranate. Notice how the repeats combine to make interesting lines such as the diagonals in the right hand pattern.

Maureen has just completed Module 2 and has designed and made this book to reflect the haiku poem seen on the cover. It really reflects her chosen theme and celebrates the skills she has learned in a very beautiful and subtle way.

I couldn't choose a page as the whole thing was so beautiful so here are all the pages

And lastly a bit of fun. As you all know the first chapter of module 1 looks at mark making and you are encouraged to try out non traditional tools to make marks such as feathers and sticks. I came across a development on this activity when I found some experimental brushes made by artist Claire Leggett.

What a fantastic selection! Hope you have been inspired to have a go at making your own brushes now.

Look at Claires very lovely paintings on her web site http://paintdropskeepfalling.wordpress.com/

Happy painting

Viv



Funky Fairies

As Christmas approaches my daughter and I become obsessed with fairies. We make them to sell at the local gallery and craft fairs and we also teach a fairy making class. On Saturday we had a lovely day at Urchfont Manor in Wiltshire teaching a jolly crowd of ladies to make their own fairies. The results were fabulous as you can see.

Creative Sketchbook students have been busy too and here is some of the lovely work I have seen this week.

Heather is working on module 1 and she chose a really beautiful complex picture to use as a source for mixing and matching colours. Despite struggling with this awful grey weather she has mixed some superb rich colours and got the proportions just right.

Maureen is near the end of Module 2. She has spent weeks using her camera to collect these very creative alphabets. All the family helped to spot suitable shapes and no cheating by rearranging things was allowed. I think they are fabulous.

Have fun trying to guess where all the letters were photographed.

Lizzy and I are teaching another fairy class this Saturday so we are looking forward to another batch of fabulous fairies. We have 3 generations of the same family coming so it should be lots of fun.

making line move

The artist Bridget Riley became famous in the 1960s for her Op Art paintings. Large canvases, often in black and white with lines which appeared to move across the surface of the canvas. This effect became known as psychedelic art because of this apparent movemnt of the lines

Janet who is working on module 3 has created a lovely series of work based on her exploration of thart works. She began with a line drawing

Then experimented with adding colours

Notice how the lines in the centre of the curving shape seem to rise and fall and move horizontally. Well done Janet this is a lovely set of work.

There are lots more examples of the work of Op artists to be found on the web if you want to find out more about these exciting artists.

Sharing

Hi everyone. I have set up this blog so that I can share all things sketchbook with you. I hope to update it most weeks and to encourage me do please leave comments. The blog initially is only for Distant Stitch students and will only ever be open for invited readers.

As a tutor I am delighted to see lovely work on your blogs and I know that some of you are too shy to share your own personal blog with others so I thought I could pick out interesting examples of work and great ideas to share with the group. You are all so talented it is a shame not to share.

So here is the first instalment

Some super collages inspired by Klimt from Susie who has just completed module 2, and some beautiful letter patterns by Pam who is working on module 2.

This last exciting design by Pam is based on the work of American artist Rosalie Gascoyne (who created her designs using discarded car number plates)