'If you make happiness your goal, then you're not going to get to it… The goal should be an interesting life."

Dorothy Rowe

Monday 25 February 2008

Creative Sketchbooks

A couple of people have asked about the ‘Creative Sketchbooks’ C&G course I took last year, and I promised I would blog about it – so here is Part 1. [I have divided it into sections because my posts seem to be getting longer and I don’t want to bore everyone silly!]

Which reminds me that I have been meaning to comment on the number of visits to my blog – nearly 1300 when I last looked. I never thought when I started this that there would be so many [or any, really!] Thank you all – you encourage me to keep going.

So – back to Creative Sketchbooks. This course was pioneered by the Kemshalls and you can see lots of other people’s work on their website:

http://www.lindakemshall.com/StudentExhibitionMenuBooks.htm

However I took the course at my local college, with Susan Chapman:

http://www.quilters.fsbusiness.co.uk/

In the first term we looked at the C&G design staples :




colour




form







shape




line









and texture

and made samples for a portfolio.

We also looked at lots of different techniques, including sloshing Koh-i-noor on blank pages, printing, air brushing, sloshing Koh-i-noor on blank pages, making rubbings, making stamps etc etc etc - oh, and did i mention sloshing Koh-i-noor on blank pages?

If you have read my blog before you will probably not be surprised that I didn’t just put these in a portfolio …

I made one of these little books as an experiment:









And discovered that it fitted neatly into this box:

So all my technique samples ended up in it. [The box had a bottle of wine in it originally and hung around my workroom for years because it was too good to throw away.]

I painted it with Brusho mixed with meths, as described in the leaflet that came with the Brusho. Not recommended - the colour ran - although it does show off the grain.


Part 2 will follow when I get a moment ...

1 comment:

artfulzebra said...

Love the box, Celia, I've never tried mixing Brusho with meths, something else to add to my things to try list! How did the course work out cost wise compared to the online version, if you don't mind me asking?

Maz