I had a wonderful weekend teaching in Toowoomba. The Book Arts group invited me to teach "Words and more Words" as well as "Black Beauty"
Words and more Words is about helping folk who aren't calligraphers, and who don't have access to letterpress studio for example, include text and words in their work. Often important for people making books.
So we started with a loosening up lettering using bamboo skewers and making letters connect to the previous one and to the 'line' above.
When Noreen finished her larger piece, she did a smaller piece and then dropped it on top of the larger piece - and we both loved the happy accident that the diagonal created.
We also did small tiny text tightly together - creating texture and and shapes by increasing the pen size or the line size; and by masking off areas and writing into shapes. All good fun and some great results!
I won't try and attribute all the work for fear of getting it wrong - but I think this is Jenny's.
And I am pretty sure this is Margaret's.
The show and tell table at the end of the day - piercing and stitching handwriting and the occasional stamp and shim as well.
Day 2 saw us tackling the beauty of black and the good sense of a sampler book.
I just liked the skewers I used to stir up my metallic inks!
Using metallic gel pens - I was fascinated by how solid the silver was; and how pale the black was! An excellent example of why you would do a smaller book - even within a set of pens individual ones behave quite differently.
A discovery for most was how good graphite pencil (lead pencils) work on black and the interestingly different effects you can achieve. The hard Hs leave such strong single lines; the softer Bs give a sheen and great coverage.
and Lorna loved this moment when she wrote straight from the tube of acrylic paint!
Margaret created beautiful examples as well as her swatches.
I loved these washes of the Caran d'Ache neocolors water soluble crayons...
We do a variation on the Japanese stab binding and I loved how Jean (top) varied my variation - I think I'll do that one too in the future!
Some of the sample books at the end of the day.
We worked hard and everybody was a bit tired at the end of two days - but we covered a lot of ground and folk have lots of ideas of what they can do next...
Words and more Words is about helping folk who aren't calligraphers, and who don't have access to letterpress studio for example, include text and words in their work. Often important for people making books.
So we started with a loosening up lettering using bamboo skewers and making letters connect to the previous one and to the 'line' above.
When Noreen finished her larger piece, she did a smaller piece and then dropped it on top of the larger piece - and we both loved the happy accident that the diagonal created.
We also did small tiny text tightly together - creating texture and and shapes by increasing the pen size or the line size; and by masking off areas and writing into shapes. All good fun and some great results!
I won't try and attribute all the work for fear of getting it wrong - but I think this is Jenny's.
And I am pretty sure this is Margaret's.
The show and tell table at the end of the day - piercing and stitching handwriting and the occasional stamp and shim as well.
Day 2 saw us tackling the beauty of black and the good sense of a sampler book.
I just liked the skewers I used to stir up my metallic inks!
A discovery for most was how good graphite pencil (lead pencils) work on black and the interestingly different effects you can achieve. The hard Hs leave such strong single lines; the softer Bs give a sheen and great coverage.
and Lorna loved this moment when she wrote straight from the tube of acrylic paint!
Margaret created beautiful examples as well as her swatches.
I loved these washes of the Caran d'Ache neocolors water soluble crayons...
We do a variation on the Japanese stab binding and I loved how Jean (top) varied my variation - I think I'll do that one too in the future!
Some of the sample books at the end of the day.
We worked hard and everybody was a bit tired at the end of two days - but we covered a lot of ground and folk have lots of ideas of what they can do next...
Thanks to everyone for such a great workshop - I always enjoy my time in Toowoomba!
PS if you'd like the chance to win a 'pockets are political' poster - pop on over here and leave a comment....
PS if you'd like the chance to win a 'pockets are political' poster - pop on over here and leave a comment....
Wow you covered a lot of ground in two days!
ReplyDeleteYou are so right Mo - a LOT of ground was covered in two days. It was great fun and our heads were buzzing by the end. I love it when folk start doing things you hadn't thought of - I am always like wow, just wow!
DeleteF- totally agree with MC - amazing amount covered and created and experimented with in two days. B
ReplyDeleteIt was a big two days B - thank you for the driving, and the safe return in the storm!
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