Orange and Blue – January 26th 2008

Painted Book Covers Workshop on 26 January 2008 Run by Orange and Blue

An excellent day!

A large group of us gathered to generate a set of very individual and varied sketch book covers.

The morning tasks were to create a design, cut pieces of cardboard to represent the shapes needed to produce our designs, apply them to the front covers of our sketch books and apply the base colour in acrylic paint each one of us had selected.

The afternoon was spent applying additional layers to achieve a multitude of different effects, using a wide variety of media such as water thinned acrylic paint, metallic
paints, inks, Markal sticks, acrylic interference colours, all supplied by our tutors.

To complete the covers, all that was left to do after the workshop was the application of several layers of varnish. It was good to have so nearly completed the cover at the end of the day!

 

Dilys Thornton

 

Using Paint Shop Pro to Resize Images for the Web

When you take a photograph with a digital camara, the resulting file is usually upwards of 2 megabytes in size. This takes a long time to display on a web page. Before an image is put on the web it should be re-sized. Depending on the original photo, it may be appropriate to reduce the numbers of dots per inch. Additionally, files should be optimised as much as possible in order to reduce the size of the final image. There are instructions on how to do this in Paint Shop Pro here. Although the instructions are for PSP version 7, they can be applied to later versions as well.

October 2006 – Embroidery with the Sewing Machine with Louise Gardiner

In October 2006, Louise Gardiner presented a work shop about using the sewing machine for embroidery. You can find her website here.

We did a drawing exercise first of all. It was designed to relax us. Louise put some music on and we closed our eyes and doodled to it. We didn’t take the pen off the paper and we were encouraged to make different types of mark making. We did this a couple of times, to different types of music.

We then took a heavy piece of canvas and used our sewing machines with black thread to stitch a frame. We used different stitches based on the different marks we had made when doing our relaxing drawing.

Next, we all sat in a circle and drew the person opposite us. This was a bit stressful for the non-drawers in the group. Next, we drew the person again, but this time without taking the pen off the paper or looking at the paper. These images were much more interesting than the ones we had done whilst looking at the paper. We did this a second time.

We chose one of the last two drawings to use as a basis of our embroidery. The picture was placed on the back of the canvas fabric and we stitched one the lines we had drawn. When we were ready, we turned it over and embellished. We were also encouraged to add words to our creation.

September 2006 – Beads with Val Campbell Harding

In September 2006, Val Campbell Harding gave us an excellent workshop on bead making. We made paper beads, wrapped beads with wire, fibres and beads. Glue guns were used to wrap glue around beads. We also made wire coils.

Pictures are forthcoming.

July 2006 – Caskets with Sue Krekorian

In July 2006, Sue Krekorian gave a workshop about making caskets. You can find Sue’s blog here.

Here is an image of a work in progress.

This gives you an idea of the shape of a finished casket.

May 2008 Activities

Friday May 9th

Evening Speaker – Sian Martin

Saturday May 10th

Workshop with Sian Martin, “Remove and Replace”. Drawn thread work, a fresh look. Pull threads to rearrange the colour pattern to create interesting colour mixtures and a loopy surface.

April 2008 Activities

Friday April 18th

Evening speaker Janet Edmonds, “In Relief and in the Round”. Thinking about design considerations for working in 3D.

Saturday April 19th

Workshop with Janet Edmonds, “Tuck, Gather and Roll”.

March 2008 Activities

Friday March 14th

Sally Sparks and Viv Young. “The Unique Costumes and Textiles of SW China, and how the Mao people are adapting to change”.

February 2008 Activities

Febuary 15th

Evening Speaker Liz Clay “A Passion for an Honest Craft”. Liz’s personal journey as a felt maker.

February 22nd – 24th

Branch Exhibition

January 2008 Activities

Friday January 25th

Evening Speaker – Jane Barker

“From Idea to Reality”. Exploring the design process.

Saturday January 26th

Workshop with “Orange & Blue”. Painted Book Covers.