Continuing the Venice project Cas Holmes style!

Yesterday I skimmed the surface of the Cas Holmes workshop.  On Saturday morning I started before the workshop officially began with this

I went through the previous afternoon's exercise which resulted in this.

Once the workshop had got going Cas suggested I traced over the image and cut myself a mask.  I glued the tracing to a piece of tracing paper that I had already used on the gelli plate and ended up with this.

I put it on some thin cotton fabric and printed with some lace and brushed some paint off the mask onto the fabric.

Cas had shown us how to print with found objects and had given us some lace to print with.  The pattern on the lace on the right reminded me of the brickwork pattern on the Doges Palace in Venice.

We printed on a variety of surfaces and in the afternoon Cas showed us how to collage these together with paste.  We needed to let these dry over night.

I also pasted a collage into my sketchbook.   I had taken with me some of my gelli prints.

We also collaged a piece by pinning the pieces so that we could stitch into them during the drying time of the other pieces. This is upside down while I was working into it.

On Sunday we continued working into our pieces.  This was a narrow piece drying.

I borrowed a machine to add covers to a book I decide to make.  I used a gelli print I had done on black paper to make the covers.

I continued to work into the other pieces during the day ending up with this collection of work.

I love this piece that looks like a remnant.

I'm excited to see where all this leads.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

A workshop with Cas Holmes

I spent the weekend at a Stitch Retreat organised by the amazing Nichola.  The workshop I was on was taught by the fabulous Cas Holmes and was called Edgelands:Layers, Stitch and Marks.

I usually go to workshops on my own and unless it's at Art from the Heart I don't know anyone at the workshop.  This leads to some anxiety on my part on the way there and a stern talking to myself about being friendly and talking to people.  The ladies on the course were all friendly and the three ladies at my table were really lovely and shared ideas.

The workshop started at 4pm on Friday afternoon.  And it started with what I hate most.  Drawing!  Yet another stern talking to myself inside my head about not bursting in to tears or walking out!  Cas took us through the drawing exercise and then we had to give our drawing to someone else.  At this point I was screaming inside - draw in someone else's book!  Have someone draw in my sketchbook!!!!  Arrggh!  Anyway after I had come down from these thoughts it turned out we were tracing over the person's drawing.  Phew!  And then we had our sketchbooks back and incorporated the other person's drawing into our own page.   My drawing is on the right.

I wanted to be able to work on my Venice theme rather than nature based topics.  Cas suggested that for my 'homework' I should use the same drawing exercise but use a piece of Venice source material.  I had this with me.

So later, after a large glass of wine!, I drew this.  The point of the exercise was to start drawing and not lift your pen off the paper until you had got to the end!

Tomorrow on my weekly Venice project blog post I'll show you what happened with this.

The whole weekend was great.  Once I calmed down from the drawing exercise and saw how Cas worked I had such a lovely time.  Doing the exercise was one way to get us to not be so 'precious' about what we produce and helped Cas to see how we worked and how to adjust her teaching plan to the makeup of the group.  Brilliant.

Over the rest of the weekend Cas shared her processes and demonstrated some techniques.  The rest of the time we worked on our own projects and Cas went round suggesting ideas or asking us questions.

Despite a full on weekend I came home really energised about my Venice project and how I can move forward with it.

My really bright light-bulb moment was sometime on Saturday when I realised that my artwork didn't have to be a true representation of my Venice photos but that it could be a reflection of those things that attract me in the architecture.

A page in my sktechbook

You can find out more about Cas' work and her processes in her books The Found Object and Stitch Stories.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

The first week of Advent

The Advent Study on His Kingdom Come is based on a worship song each day.  Each of the authors of the prompts has written their response to the song.  And from this I am making a half journal page as my creative response.  This is a much simpler response than the Advent calendar I made last year.

Rather than share these each day I am going to share a weekly round up of the song and my response.

Sunday 29th November - the first Sunday in Advent

Day 1

Monday 30th November

Day 2

Tuesday 1st December

Day 3

Wednesday 2nd December

Day 4

Thursday 3rd December

Day 5

Friday 4th December

Day 6

Here's what the six responses look like across the journal and the added page.

Next week will bring new songs and new responses.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice