October 2017

At our October meeting, Bev shared some illuminating and gilding techniques. She brought along pages from an unfinished manuscript that she had received as a gift many years ago. It is done on vellum and shows the preparation required to gild and shows the illumination in various stages of completion. This was a revisit for some and brand new for others in attendance.

Whose work is this I wonder?

Workshop with Jack Turpin

For two days in the Fall of 2017, several members gathered to 

"JUMPSTART  OUR  JOURNALLING"

with Jack Turpin, a local and fabulous artist,

also my daughter's high school art teacher who encouraged her to become the artist she is today!

We spent two delightful, art filled days and lots of spare time in between the workshops with homework assignments. In fact, we had such a good time, we have asked Jack to come back for another day in April, 2018. 

There was a combination of lettering, although Jack doesn't give himself enough credit for the level of wonderful that is his italic lettering! and drawing and creating pages and writing.  It gave us a whole new meaning for journalling and may have changed the way some of us work in our journals in the future.

Some artists who have been influences on Jack's work include Nick Bantock, Brian and Wendy Froud, Anne Marie Harvey, Mike Svob, Robert Genn and Stephen Quiller. Google them!

So much fun! and we get to do it again in April!

September 2017

In September. Cyndi had us making folded pens. She and Bev had prepared kits over the summer which included enough brass sheeting to make 6 pens, some aluminum flashing and lithographic plate as well as dowels and tubing to make nib holders and various sand papers for smoothing out the cuts.

Some interesting pens were created and some amazing marks were made with the pens!

June 2017

At our June meeting, Violet led us through a revisit of the  PARALLEL PEN. We learned how to take the pen apart to clean it, and put it back together - with no extra parts left over! Violet included colour blending and a variety of decorative strokes similar to those made by a "Betty Locke brush". We were also given exemplars for a variety of letterforms suited to the pens, including Neuland, 'Thornton' from "Scrapbooker's Alphabets" and some monoline variations.