Sea Air Art's Creative Blog

OK, Day 2 was Tuesday and it’s now Friday, but keeping up with all the great things I’m doing in my QSDS workshop, getting enough sleep (in spite of the best efforts of the Thunder Gods and the tornado sirens – no tornadoes, just the sirens) and Blogging too were more than I could be coherent for. But I can start doing catch-up now.

This is my design board at the end of Day 2 (click on the images for a closer look).
The same fabrics as yesterday; plus a few more, and some papers. All have been layered with more batik, more paint, and more dye. The results are much better! The pink is now mostly purples and teals (no surprises there) but I’m trying to make myself tone it down a bit from my usual bright and gregarious colors. I look at classes and workshops as a good place to work outside of my comfort zone and do a little exploring. Muted colors are a bit of a stretch for me. I’ve decided I like batik, even with the work of wax removal, for the great effects.
The metal bar is not part of my artwork, my board is tucked behind the railing on the steps. Just in case you wondered

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We also learned more ways to mono-print and some wonderful ways to “print” on fabric and paper with simple tools to get complex effects.

My favorite mark making tool? A spiral potato masher.

Truly.

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The third photo is of my two favorite pieces for the day; the top left is watercolor paper that I dyed and painted. The bottom left is silk organza, also dyed and painted.

A successful day and more fun on Wednesday!

Deb H

I’m spending this week in Columbus, Ohio at the Quilt/Surface Design Symposium (QSDS). I’m taking a five day workshop with two fabulous instructors; Els van Baarle and Cherilyn Martin, both from the Netherlands. Their specialties are surface design on fabric and paper.

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Our classroom is lucky enough to be in the atrium of the hotel, giving us lots of room and natural light.

Each of us gets a design board to hand our stuff on, the better to contemplate on it. In the second room photo, the boards to the far right belong to our instructors.

Here is my board at the end of Day 1. The first thing we did was to abstract an image and make two stamps. Then we did some stamping on white fabric and batik on more white fabric. The batik was a new experience for me. I really like the effects I could get. I’m not so excited about getting the wax out again

After that, we did a first layer of dye. I was trying to keep it pale as every layer you add darkens the piece up. I think I erred on the side of caution. Mine is so pale it’s a bit sickly. It’s also pink (gag), we all know my views on pink. You would think I’d know that this is what pale red looks like, duh! The yellow would have been fine with red but just looks blah here.

I used a lot of commercial stamps as well, my own designs were a bit simple and I was having trouble picturing them as a part of a whole instead of as a whole in themselves. It was a busy day with lots of good techniques, but my results could have been better. It’s a good thing that we have Day 2 still to come!

Another detail of my day’s work shows the techniques a bit better. I do really like the effects of the hot wax (disregarding color)!

Off to bed! Day 2 gets better, honest! I’ll show you that tomorrow.

Deb H