Fabulously messy studio, plus the show that caused it

I have one of our favourite treats here .. messy studio pictures .. so get a cuppa and settle down to gloat and relish ..

SO here we are .. just inside the door and looking right.. to the 'wet' area

 .. can I even get in?

 

 

 

I've managed to get about 2 ft .. and the view is not improving ...

 

 

another couple of feet .. and still deteriorating ..

 

 

am ashamed ..

 

 

poor Thelma .. abused as ever .. no wonder she sometimes smokes on the job ..

 

 

storage system breakdown .... (and yummy driftwood)

 

 

got to the table .. it is under there and turned round .. oh ...

  

 

 

 this is my washing up system .. I put them in to 'soak' and then to 'drain' .... several days ago - fortunately we have a dishwasher in the main house .. fear I am a slut

 

 

 

 right .. back out of wet area and turning right into collage and stitch area ..

  

 

not much of either is going to get done on here ..( a plus side here is I have been looking for that green spray bottle for AGES .. obviously it is only visible on photos)

 

 

or on my Janome .. hiding under here ...

 

 

or indeed on my HQ16 .. buried under here ..

 

 

and round to the right .. into the 'office area .. honest .. that is what it is .. there are 3 printers under there somewhere

 

 

useful sitting area with pathetic attempt at organising list .. I suspect I lost it after item 3 ...

 

 

desk .. and facebook on in the background .. I do tend to forget and leave it on like this .. so if I appear to be there but ignoring you .. this will be what is going on. What a bad desk .. must have majorly untidy mind then ..

 

 

Hope that was enjoyable. It isn't for poor Stephen, who is a very tidy man (weird) - I know it makes him physically traumatised having to even look .. poor soul. But it just always happens when I am manically busy running up to a show, exhibition etc. So lets have a few pictures of the exhibition. This was at the British Quilt and Stitch Village at Uttoxeter, where Traplet very kindly gave me a HUGE space to show a gallery of work .. these are first thing, before the punters arrived

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and here is Stephen .. happier and keeping the shop area organised and tidy. Shows are a real eye opener for him .. he is always surprised how much people know about him (he doesn't do Facebook and so has no idea!) He does a great job and I couldn't manage without him ..  

 

 

 and here are a few images of the latest pieces I have completed .. some very last minute!!

 

A Feminine Touch .. 1 to 4

 

 

Beauty Matters 4 to 7 

 

 

Shape of Nature 1 & 2 

 

 

 

Beauty Matters 8 to 11: Willow 1 - 4

 

 

 Jugs 9: The Artists Jug

 

 

 

As you can see - it was a great opportunity to get some good photos whilst they were all hung up on white backgrounds .. thank you Angela. So I now have some good images for the website, where I will be updating all the galleries very soon with new work and pieces for sale.

 

I have been so busy this year and seriously have not had a day off since Christmas .. so after the show, I had a lovely day at Harlow Carr gardens, with a good friend. It was bliss to just potter in the sunshine, chat, eat buns and not work .. although of course I took a lot of photos, which will no doubt make their way into future work. I will post lots of those .. but for now .. here is a favourite .. some beautiful anemones. Thank you for visiting .. talk soon - Hilary x

 

 

Gelliping at Art van Go

Lets start with a definition:  'gelliping' - a verb, meaning to play with, paint on, obsess over and generally have a jolly good time with a gelli plate.

 

And that was the essence of the workshop I taught at gorgeous Art van Go last week. We were working with canvas and started by putting molding paste through stencils on to paper and then subsequently cutting or tearing these papers up and re-arranging (you can see my patchwork roots here!). These bits were arranged and then stuck down with gel matte medium (aka 'sticky under' )  onto a blank stretched canvas. Areas were also worked with appliglue to write and draw dimensional lines. We were blessed with sunshine and so were able to put these outside to dry .. hence the rather gorgeous shadows on some of these ...

 

 

this shadow is so beautiful that I suspect this image will get repurposed somewhere along the line

 

While these were drying, we got down to some gelliping, using a variety of green stuff snitched from the AVG garden, together with stencils, stamps and textured rollers. As is my favoured method, we printed using opaque fabric paints and then washed over those prints using dye. We also used markal blender and  neocolour 1 to add some resist in the 'negative' prints. If all that sounds like gobbledygook .. scroll back through the blog posts for more information.

 

Then - whilst gelli prints drying, the girls painted their now textured canvas, using a mixture of acrylics, fabric paint and metallic powders .. I didn't manage to catch many before they got prints added .. but here are a few .. yum

 

 

you can see we worked in several layers .. adding glazes and metallic highlights as we went .. brilliant fun

 

 

 

 

many of the canvas could stand as pieces in and of themselves at this point and in fact one student (my wild child Christine) did just that .. just adding huge dimensional glops of appliglue and many many layers of glazes rubbed back to produce these two beautiful pieces ..

 

 

 

 

We also looked in between times (when I thought they looked as though they might think they were going to relax) on getting rid of blank sketchbooks and using those gorgeous beasts to actually serve their purpose .. we dyed, glued, pasted and scribbled in out sketchbooks .. realising that we can do exactly as we like .. they are ours ..

 

 

 

 

 

 

and also started mounting our treasured gelli prints on to the canvases

 

 

 

what I find so exciting is that the pieces evolving are all so very different and nothing like mine .. I can see the artist in each of the students finding a safe place to have a voice and that makes me a very happy girl

 

we looked at using neocolour 1 crayons, appliglue and glazes again to add definition, contrast and detail to the pieces .. it can make an amazing difference  .

Obviously the girls didn't finish completely in two days - especially as they were all working on at least two separate canvas and their sketchbooks .. but they got an amazingly large amount done

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

I think you have to agree these are quite stunning .. and I am certain all the girls will finish them by adding stitch .. and then send images to me!! - please .. I would hang any of these on my wall, with immense pride. All the class worked incredibly hard and were no doubt exhausted  .. but what brilliant results and what a lovely group .. thank you all.

I promised I would go through how I alter images on the computer to get further leverage from my prints .. and that will be the next post. For now though .. thank you for joining me ...  Hilary xx