Is there such a category??? if so that's me....
I've been away at the Textile Study Group in-service weekend at Farncombe Estate as a new member to the group...yikes it was a bit nerve racking.
When we had all assembled on Friday evening we were separated into two groups to work one with Bobby and the other with Ruth. Then after a delicious supper battle commenced!…the evening set off at a rattling pace which never really slowed all weekend. My first session was with Ruth who quickly got us going mixing colour using a roller, we had to choose a colour mix that we would stick with all weekend.
my colours were lemon yellow and cyan blue, with some white...
Saturday morning we spent more time mixing colour but also making marks into it ( all on paper 10cm square)
Then ripping and laying colours over each other eventually cutting folding and manipulating to make little 2 and 3d pieces all still limited to 10cms. The emphasis was on horizontal and vertical line.
After tea Bobby and Ruth moved classes and Bobby got us going using soft pencils and graphite drawing our earlier pieces. I really got into a stew with this she asked us to draw the layers light for distance and darker nearer (I think) anyway everyone else understood the process I just couldn’t get my noggin round it though I really enjoyed using the graphite. Of course we got the gesso out (my favourite bit) and painted the 10 by 10’s again making marks into it and also we tried pin holes in paper as a drawing method, some students did some cracking pieces.
Sunday we worked more with drawing methods working on some of the coloured pieces too. Then Bobby asked us to lay our pieces out with careful consideration to link or tell a story in some way. Heading towards lunch Bobby then gave us our own time to work and study the processes further perhaps to make a resolved piece…. which I did.
I certainly have never worked at such a fast pace in a workshop and I might have lost my way a couple of times but I thought that the two workshops fitted really well together and I came away with a little bit of Ruth and Bobby absorbed into my work which will never leave.
Finished piece....called Spine
