Catching up..........

At our September 2012 meeting, Bev Allen presented a series of exercises from which we got some surprising results.  Bev, Pat W. and Wendy C. first encountered this work in a six week calligraphy course they took from Judith Dampier in the mid 80s.

Calligraphy on the Right Side of the Brain 

Even the brief glimpse which our meeting format allowed was sufficient to convey the effectiveness of approaching calligraphy "all wrong". First we wrote our usual signature, followed by our name in a script of our choosing. Then the fun started with writing our signature with our left hand! We tried writing a block of text with the letters backwards. Another exercise was to write our name and random phrases with our eyes closed, using different lettering styles. Other techniques included blind contour drawing of letters, drawing a line of text in an Arabic script, some Uncial Latin and highlighting negative spaces of drawn letters.
Thank you to Judi for letting us use her class notes for our meeting program.

Bev suggested some books for further study:

• Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain by Betty Edwards

• Drawing on the Artist Within by Betty Edwards

• Looking at Indian Art of the Northwest Coast by Hilary Stewart

Our program at the October 2012 meeting was an exciting treat for those who attended. Cheryl Tasaka demonstrated her technique for fabric painting on t-shirts, canvas bags or aprons. Cheryl had come with so many supplies that we need not have brought anything except a t-shirt to paint on!  Once you have decided what word to use, it is a good idea to try your layout on paper to make sure you get your letters or design centred. We used a piece of corrugated cardboard covered in wax paper between the layers of the shirt. We blocked off the area to be painted using masking tape and then formed the letters using pieces of tape - Neuland lends itself to this project - fewer curves.  Did you know that masking tape comes in a lot of different widths right down to ¼"? not all that easy to find though.

Once you have completed your painting, you can hasten the drying with a blow dryer or leave your shirt to dry overnight. Depending on what kind of fabric paint you use, you may have to heat set your painting by placing a sheet of paper over the painted area and ironing with a hot dry iron. The results of the day were wonderful!

Nan, Cheryl and Eileen

Shannon

Eileen, happy winner of the t-shirt painted by Cheryl

The  November 2012 program was in aid of building up the greeting card collection Nan sends out to members for their birthdays or those occasions when necessary.  We all had a merry time making a variety of cards. Under Bev's instruction we worked at several stations she had prepared using the following techniques:
Templates and Embossing  we used templates to create designs with embossing tools and a light table for a raised affect.
Alcohol Ink  dropping a variety of colours onto glossy card stock to watch fun designs form to be used on the front of cards.
Outline stickers  using pre-cut square silver outline stickers we coloured the inside spaces of letters.
Ribbons and Paper Clips  these were used to form a design on decorative paper.
Disks and Thread   we wound sparkly threads around a scalloped disk to create a small example of thread art.
Photographs on card  Using photographs or parts of them, some very innovative cards were created.

Nan using the embossing templates and stylus.

Rita with Jean hard at work.

Card by Violet