Art Class with Vanda

A few days ago, when I was really upset and frustrated by my lack of progress, Vanda, the tutor for the first year Contemporary Applied Art class, suggested I attend one of the classes she runs from home. 

On Thursday I went along. I met up with 4 other women, most of whom I had met at other craft classes over the last few years.  I had a truly refreshing, and inspirational day.  We started with paper collage from wallpapers.  We had to make a narrative from paper shapes torn from 5 different wallpapers.  My first one became quite 3D with pleating, cutaways and stand-up areas.  My second was, in my opinion, a thing of joy.  I had three papers with different completely different leaf styles within them, which I cut or tore out , I then cut out a banksia leaf (Australian plant) from another leafy paper, and tore another leaf (Aussie eucalyptus) from a textured paper.  I layered them in an appealing way, and joined them very simply with running and cross stitches.  A simple and delightful exercise.

Then we did another simple exercise, which set all the bells and whistles ringing in my head.  We had to draw an object using different qualities of line.  I started on my lemon squeezer.  Vanda got me using different media to do a continuous line drawing.  She enabled me to use differing levels of detail, and inclusion within the drawing, and unsurprisingly it became much more interesting.

Then we did the same exercise, looking at how to vary the tonal value in a drawing, using different media, and being selective about which parts of the drawing we chose to include.  I started by sticking some textured wallpaper on the page, then drew into it with charcoal, pencil and water soluble pencil.  Artistically they are not masterpieces, but they very much inspired me to continue with this theme, and try them out in digital print on fabric.

To conclude, Vanda recommended one of her books "Drawing Projects" by Maslen and Southern, and lent it to me until I can order one of my own.

Sometimes I just need an inspirational tutor to reinvigorate and re-enthuse me.  My cup runneth over. (I wonder what that would look like as a drawing!)