Arts Club at the Library

For a terribly cold, though sunny day we were pleased that many of the regular Arts Clubs participants braved the cold to join us at the Central Library for our fibre / mixed media project and the final Arts Club session for 2013.

Each session the Calgary Public Library picks a theme for their programming and the fall 2013 theme was Sight and Sound. We decided on a reusable cotton bag with a music theme, focussing on historic composers and modern day musicians who write their own music.

Participants were introduced to a number of techniques including spray dyes, dye based stamp pads (we should have taken photos of our hands!), embroidery stitches, the making of fabric yo-yos and the printing of photos onto cotton fabrics and organza.  After that they their own creative juices began to flow and new techniques were tried.

A couple of the participants utilized paper towels to create their own masks for spraying and several used their yo-yo circles flat as backgrounds to their photos. If you look closely at Bach he’s looking a little glassy eyed with sequins and Beethoven’s bag is creatively aged with ink for a vintage look.

The one and a half hours went by very quickly. While the projects were not 100% completed I think that it’s safe to say that everyone had a great time and will finish their projects at home.

Jan and I will be back at the Central Library Arts Club on April 5, 2014 so stay tuned for that session.

Arts Club at the Library

Back in June and July, (pre and post-flood Calgary) Jan and I did several workshops at library branches using readily available and cost conscious items to make creative mixed media brooches.

Needled Felted and Embroidered Brooches

The first project that we did was a combination of a machine needle felted backing with hand embroidery stitches and embellishments. Each participant was given a square of the needle felted background and cut the shape they wanted for their brooch. Then they used embroidery floss to stitch, add beads or sequins and then blanket stitch around the edge to finish.

Mixed Media Brooches

The second project was a mixed media piece with each participant given a rubber stamped impression of a lady's face in craft foam that they coloured with metallic markers. In their kit they were also given a variety of fibre pieces including a heat distressed piece of felt, organza, heat distressed and painted Tyvek. Several of the gals found them so fun that they made 2 of them.

Zipper Brooches

The final project that we did at several branch libraries was a brooch made with one side of a metal zipper, some heat distressed felt leaves, crystal brads and beads.  We had several mom and daughter duos at one branch and even the little gals found this a relatively easy project to complete, with mom's help of course! They all went home with them proudly pinned to their backpacks.

Fog Tuesday

Design Element – Line

Warm Up Collages - Design Element LINE

“ A mark, long in its proportion to its breadth, made on a surface with a pen, pencil, tool, etc.”

•  Lines can be thick or thin, open or closed, curved, angular, broken or solid.
• Lines can be parallel, directional, frenetic, controlled or textural.
• Line is most often used to define shape in a two dimensional artwork.
• Line is often referred to as “the most basic element of design” yet this simple element functions in complex ways. Used effectively, line expresses a variety of verbal and visual concepts. Line works either by itself or in conjunction with other lines to communicate messages and impact audience.
• Direction 
• Vertical lines suggest strength and power. An example on line direction is this grouping of tall buildings, or a single tall building - lines going upwards, visually pulling your eye up. Line can be used to suggest the path your eye should follow and where it should rest.
• Horizontal lines symbolize tranquility and rest. This state reflects objects parallel to the earth that are “at rest in relation to gravity." Examples of horizontal lines are those in ocean waves and horizons.
• Diagonal lines convey a feeling of action or direction: (Lightning)
• Weight The weight of a line conveys meaning as well. Thinner lines suggest weakness, while thicker lines convey power.
• Emotion Lines can imply emotion such as fatigue, contentment, relaxation, or frustration.  Long curvy lines suggest looseness.
• Focus A line draws the audience's attention to a specific object. An example is an arrow pointing to one man in a crowd. A more subtle example is a path leading to an abandoned house.
• Texture Finally, many lines work together to form texture, providing images with more depth. 

Fog Tuesday

With the October exhibition behind us we are finally able to catch up on some long overdue blog postings.

As Jan mentioned last month we decided to do a 30-minute warm up collage each session to reinforce Elements and Principles of Design. In September we covered Shape and the Rule of Thirds and in October we covered Colour and again used Shape to focus the design.

Each person drew a monochromatic paint chip from the hardware store and was challenged to use that colour and incorporate a shape (element from the previous month) and complete their collage in 30 minutes.

Design Element – COLOUR

Warm Up Collages - Design Element COLOUR

• As a design element, colour is likely the one that gets the most visceral response from a viewer. The liking or not liking of a quilt, art piece or garment can often be swayed by its colour.
•  Colour may suggest a mood, convey an ethnic or cultural background or elicit a response that may have a psychological origin.
•  Colours can be warm or cool, create the illusion of depth or luminosity or create a focal point in your piece.
•  There are 12 colour HUES on a colour wheel made up of 3 primary colours (red, blue and yellow), three secondary colours (orange, green and violet) and 6 tertiary colours.
•  Colours are further categorized as tints (white is added), tones (grey is added) and shades (black is added)
• There are a multitude of colour schemes, the most common ones being monochromatic, triads, complimentary, analogous, achromatic and polychromatic.

Bodacious Blooms

You may remember the posting on making felt flowers a while back. While I was making those flowers an idea "blossomed" (pun intended) and I suggested to Jan that we should do a joint project for the show on October 20. Now that the show is over we can finally unveil our arrangement.

It started by making a wet felted vessel for the vase and then finding a source for the non woven paper. We incorporated leaves and flowers made from commercial poly felt and the non woven papers. Both fibres can be easily cut with scissors or using Sizzix dies, can be stitched by hand or machine and heat distressed with our trusty heat guns.  The final touch was the hot pink wire spirals.

"Bodacious Blooms"
Meredith Helgeson and Jan Scruggs

   

Needless to say we had lots of fun over the summer with this project and the day before launch day decided against trying to calculate how many hours we had put into it. Feedback on it was great at the exhibition and we even got the green thumbs up from floral arranger guru Arlee Barr (thanks Arlee!)

Fibre Optics Group Exhibition

It's coming up quickly.

Here is a blurb on our show.

Please come and join us!!!

Sun Prints!

Last week, the Fibre Optics Group met for our fall kickoff. It was a warm sunny day, so we did sun printing, leaf and object printing as our technique exploration.

First, we started with a warm up exercise looking at the design element - SHAPE. We all know what shapes are, but sometimes we forget to seriously consider the different aspects of shapes when we are designing artwork. Shapes can be categorized as geometric, organic (realistic shapes in nature and man-made), and abstract.  One of the interesting things about abstract shapes is that we all try to interpret them organically. For example, we can interpret a circle as a flower. Also shapes can represent values. We all understand that a square would represent stability or solidity, certainly not fluidity.

Warm Up Collages - SHAPE

The Rule of Thirds was also introduced. The Rule of Thirds is a guideline used for composing visual images. This guideline suggests that you divide your image or background into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal lines and two equally spaced vertical lines ( Making a grid). All your important compositional elements and your focal point should be placed at the intersections of the lines, or along the lines. This will create more interest and energy in your composition.

Our exercise was to use materials from a box of "stuff" on hand to create a 4" X 6" collage in 30 minutes. The collage was to illustrate the element Shape and the Rule of Thirds.


Next, on to SUN PRINTING!!

Everyone did some experimenting with the sun prints, and some of us continued to explore it over the next few days.

Some of the Sun Prints by FOG members

Here are some of the conclusions we have reached:

1.  Sun prints are dependent on the amount of paint on the fabric. The wetter or more saturated the fabric, the better the print.

2.  Objects that stick onto the fabric produce a much better print.

Terri Heinrich's prints on rice paper

3.   Paper with sizing does not seem to work. Paper without (like rice paper) will work really well, as does fabric that has been washed to remove the sizing.

4.   Pebeo Setacolor Transparent Paint is what we used. However, Pebeo Setacolour Opaque paints, and chromacolour acrylic artists colour paint also work. All these paints are available at art supply stores.

5.  The prints need to be set with an iron. One of our group did find that she ironed her prints, left them out in the sun and they faded.  Not sure why that happened, but I plan to see if I can figure it out.

More prints done by Terri the next day

So, we would encourage all of you to try sun printing. You can really create some wonderful unique prints.