Welcome!

Glad you could join me. I'm stitching a life together bit by bit.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Catching up with the Summer: Chicago

Well, it seems as if I didn't do much this summer, but I was too busy doing to get much blogging done.  So I will share with you my trip to the art retreat CREATE, in Chicago, sponsored by
Cloth, Paper, Scissors.

Leaving Portland, OR.  The mighty Columbia river.

Some where over America.

Chicago International Airport.
Chicago International Airport.

Day 1: Helen Shafer Garcia from CA teaches the Batik Tree of Life class.
Now does it look like we are having fun or what?  
Helen was the best - so easy going and a great teacher.

 My sketches for my tree of life, done on Japanese Rice paper glued on canvas board.

A progression of my work.  I've been interested in RED this year. 
That color seems to pop up a lot in art I like and art I do.
The Tree of Life theme is based on the Mexican clay trees that they make across the border.  
They attach leaves, fruit, flowers or creatures to it.  It was originally used to attach figures from the Bible to teach the stories of the Bible, but has branched out to include all sorts of themes.
My concept centered around love, life and happiness.  I tried for vivid colors.
I wanted to try that rich, red background, which I've never done before.
My water color set up.  I had a lot of the brown paint travel under the rice paper and come up all over, as you can see on the left.  It ended up giving things a batik look.

Not quite finished.  I need to add a black line around all of the elements without losing the white border that I purposely created.  Its not easy, hence why its still a work in progress.

The art work of other students in the class.



A friend from Aruba.  She teaches art in a school down there and was here to learn new techniques.