What a Treat!!!

Wow! Doesn't time just fly by so fast???!!! This post is long overdue!

A while ago my friend Rachel mentioned to me that she was going to do an art workshop taught by artist Sue Brown. I was excited for her but a teensy bit jealous as I love her work, especially her printed spoons! Anyway! After showing such enthusiasm for Sue and the course, Rachel made enquiries to see if I could also go too!!! It transpired that it was possible; all I had to do was find a very kind friend to look after the little man for me for the day! After looking into different possibilities, (thanks, Jo T,) another friend very kindly said she would look after him for the day, and Hubby managed to sort out me having the car and I was sorted!!!

I was so excited!!! So on the day, off the little one went to my friend's with his Buzz Lightyear backpack and Wellies in toe, and I dashed the kids to school and off I went!!
There were only 7 of us at the workshop,which was great for one to one assistance if needed, and we started off looking at Sue's sketchbooks and she then showed us one of the techniques she uses a lot in her work: gum arabic printing. This involves taking a black and white photocoy image and using ink and gum arabic solution to transfer the image from its original state onto a surface as a print. The ink comes off the black part of the image and leaved residue on the white part. It was quite tricky at first as we had to make sure that the ink consistency was correct, and the image we chose wouldn't work if there was any grey in it, (it had to be black and white with nothing in between) but soon we were getting all sorts of images printed onto our paper and feeling very proud of ourselves!

Next on the agenda was Acrylic Transfer which involved transfering a photocopy of an image (coloured or black and white) onto a surface using white acrylic paint as the transferring material. This was a much simpler process but still took a bit of practise to get good results, but it was fun to practise and play!
Sue also taught us an easy way to make patterns by printing with wallpaper, and also, (my favourite technique), Quink ink and Milton bleach! So we spent the afternoon playing with all the different techniques we had learnt and then at the end of the session Sue showed us how we could transform our patterns into a simple booklet.

I had an absolutely fabby day and it was great just to play around with different materials and have fun!

I decided not to transform my experimenting into a booklet but intend to make what I produced into something eventually!!!

So here is what I made:

Whole piece

Detail

Have a great evening!
xxx