22 April, 2009

Felt workshop

Today & tomorrow I am doing a felting workshop with Michelle Sales. We are having a lot of fun. I will post completed pictures tomorrow but for the moment, if you want to see some photos, check out my Flickr page.

Drawing with Paint

While doing the class with Judy Coats Perez at IQF, one of the things that we discussed was a ruling pen. It is a pen that, pre-computers, was used with mechanical drawing. Now that computers do most of the work, they are hard to come by.

Well, I found something similar in Michael's! It is called a Fine Line Painting Pen by Lowe-Cornell, Inc. I found it in the section where they sell the inks.

This is a close up of the nib.








And here is a picture of what it looked like when I was drawing.

I had to thin the paint just a little with a bit of water but once I had it flowing, it worked beautiful.

I also tried using Tsukineko Inks. I like to experiment but there are no pictures as it was a disaster! It ran and would not give a smooth line. I also had a little bit of trouble getting the ink into the nib as I didn't have the little squeeze thing to do that with. I tried by using a syringe. Don't do it! It was a disaster.

On a related note, does anyone know how long it takes for red Tsukineko Ink to wash out of hair?

18 April, 2009

IQF 2009

I have just spent the last 2 days in workshops taught by Judy Coates Perez. They were wonderful classes!

The first day we did Tsukineko Inks. I still need to take a photo of what I did for that class.

Yesterday the workshop was about whole cloth painting. This is my piece to the left. I am happy with the painting as I have tried this before & it never seemed to work. Now it does. Judy is a wonderful teacher. Next I have to quilt it which will add more detail. Once that is done, I may come back in with some more paints.

These were wonderful classes. If you ever get the chance, take a workshop with Judy. You can see photos from the class in my Flickr account. Still learning the camera so some of the photos didn't get the flash that they so desperately needed!

The show itself was wonderful. They had vendors selling everything that I just had to have! And even though we were in the classrooms, we felt like we were right on the floor when Pokey's Tweet came through saying she had spilt green paint all over herself so they were obviously having a good time!

06 April, 2009

Dyeing with food colouring

For those of you that are just dyeing to know :), No, it is not possible to use food colouring to dye Fabric Dryer sheets. For some reason the colour will just not stay, even with a good amount of citric acid.

So, next try. I know that tea bag dyeing works really well but those vibrant colours would be so much more fun!

I'm finally getting some time in my studio. Hopefully soon I'll have pictures of work.