Artfest, part 2

How about these sweeties?  These are the inches from the swap.  They were safely tucked away inside the Inchie Eater!  So cute! Our hostess went to a lot of trouble to make these little guys.  Our request from the ATC swap hostess was not much dimensional embellishment unfortunately I made my inches at the same time and with the same mindset. Boring.

See the cute little felted bird on one?  The one on the right is a mini book! Lucky me again!

Forgot to include this closeup of a trade that I LOVED. Being in a shrinky dink frame of mind, making this tiny shrinky in a bottle could be addicting.

On to classes, my first class was Lush Layer Canvases with Roxanne Padgett.  I think that she had the teaching style that worked best for me.  She was informative, encouraging, prepared with handouts, (which for a visual person like me is a real plus)

very generous with her supplies and knowledge.  She had us working on 4 different fabrics and I think being challenged to work on three things helped me accomplish quite a bit in her class. I would definitely take another class with her. I wished I'd taken her faces class the following day instead of what I took.

She began with a brief intro to color wheel and choosing colors without making a muddy brown.

She would demonstrate a few techniques and put us to work creating on our canvases with them while she walked around the room observing, offering comments, answering questions, asking questions and then she would demonstrate another technique or two and we'd incorporate those in the next layer.

She showed us how to make our own stencils, make stamps,do rubbings. It was loads of fun and I'll continue to work on my layering techniques an I go.  I am a timid artist. I like a completed project as opposed to just doing techniques.  I must work on that.

These are the three fabrics I came away with. I never got started good on my 4th which was to be a self-portrait, which I'll eventually pull out and do.

We also used any left paint to add to a community canvas which was cut into pieces for each participant.

This started out as black and white print cotton

A bottom weight fabric

artist canvas

Community canvas 

My Friday class was the Big Time Book with LK Ludwig. This was the first class I firmed my selections for Artfest around.  I like to make books and I wanted to try doing some sort of carefree technique on pages that I could later journal in.  This was my biggest disappointment. On several levels. I bought my paper in Port Townsend and it was oh, so convenient. Ordered by email, paypaled the total and it was delivered. Sweet. And evidently the cost was very reasonable compared to what others paid for paper.
I had to tear my pages at the beginning of class. Some had done that for easy travel. Those who were already done with that went up front for a demo of some paint techniques with the rest of us to be in group two.  There were 28 in the class. I went up about 1/2 through the first demo.  The basic technique was to apply acrylic paint to the page with a credit card, apply a 2nd layer and use a stencil on top of that and baby wipe off the top layer of paint using the stencil.  The class list asked for 5-7 tubes of acrylic paint and recommended two papers, Stonehenge or Lenox 100 (which I chose). We worked on newspaper.  I never did get the hang of this and even doing it at home today, I would not use the technique regularly.  I am going to buy two more different types of acrylic paint.  I didn't get the results that she did. I found the newspaper to stick far to much for my taste while working. I got a lot of paint under the paper. I also found that the stencils stuck to the painted paper and would lift all the paint layers when I removed it.  All in all there was nothing about the technique that I found easy or pleasing. On top of that our instructor spent her time once we got started working with her demo papers making a book for her daughter. She walked around the room once before she started to show us the binding technique at 3:15 PM.  It was a beautiful day and I should have packed up my stuff and gone outside and enjoyed the day and pursued some other creative endeavor. But, I am a stick to it kinda gal. And hour for lunch inspired me to continue with not much better results.  She found my paints difficult as well, which made me feel a little better. (This was on her one time through the class when I told her I was not doing well with the technique). I finished about 35 percent of my pages. None of my binding. I watched the demo (which was done on the little book she was making for her daughter in class) and worked a bit more on my paper.  I didn't want to bind unpainted pages. There were no handouts on technique of painting or on the binding. There was one on how to tear the papers to fit the book size. Note to teacher- if you know a particular paint works best, please note this in the class supply list. I wished I had worked with exactly what she did- paper and paint-wise.
Yuck.  I was not happy.  I had such a great experience Thursday. But, not today.... I will not take another class with this instructor.  I was not the only one who was frustrated and disappointed. Note to self, always have waxed paper and a fingernail brush. I'll include photos when I'm done. I finished painting pages today.

My Saturday class was a good one. I was so glad.  Lisa Bebi and the Oversaturated Polaroid Look. She was a good teacher and most generous. She was encouraging of us to do this technique and sell it.  She told us how to price it, said we could teach it, just really super- this is a teacher who understands that no matter what she teaches, each artists' work will look different and they did. I liked the results, too.  It is a technique I will use repeatedly in the future. I just need to get "free-er" with it. I tend to over work stuff. We began with a black and white inkjet print of a photo. She told us things to look for and avoid in selecting photos for this treatment.  We did one with an 8x10 that she brought for each of us. She talked us through the background, how to do skin, clothing, deal with shadows etc. You basically flatten out the background with two colors. The clothes are colors with acrylic paint with the most concentration on the "white" part. Rinse brush and pull color into the shadow areas that way the black ink shows through and creates the shadows.  You can't go wrong making the picture look like the person because you are already working with a photograph.  I'll include the photo and my finished painting.  One I liked a lot, the other just so so.  I tried to include the houses and hated everything I did to them so I just mounted it on a small canvas to get rid of most of the house part.

yes, me again

More artfest fun to come......