Monoprint Collage Workshop

Last weekend I took another workshop with Jane Davies at the Pacific Northwest Art School on Whidbey Island. It was a Monoprint Collage class using the gelli plate. I highly recommend any of her workshops but you have to sign up early because she sells out really fast, online and onsite. I made 14 paintings in 2 days, some of them unfinished, some of them I will probably just leave as is or add a little collage here and there. This was such a fun class that it inspired me to sign up for the Port Townsend Studio Tour on August 23rd and 24th and open my studio to demo this technique. Stay tuned for more info as it gets closer to the date.

Recipe Tea Towel Contest

This is my entry for the Recipe Tea Towel Contest on Spoonflower. Here's the contest guidelines: "No matter where you live in the world, nothing spells comfort like a home cooked meal from your mom or grandmother. Celebrate the important culinary women in your life this Mother's Day by designing a lovely recipe just like mom used to make." I decided to use my grandmother's recipe because she was such an inspiration to me, not only was she an amazing cook, she was also an incredibly talented seamstress. This is a french canadian version of a "trifle' that she called "bagatelle". You can vote here! Thank you for your support!

Grand-maman Lucile

Floral Coloring Book Wallpaper

And on to another Spoonflower contest! This time the theme is Floral Coloring Book Wallpaper. We had to create a black and white design that is ready for crayons, pencils, and markers to go wild! See all of them and vote here.

I made the top 10!

YAY! I made the top ten in the Spoonflower contest. This is the picture of the printed fabric they posted on the Spoonflower site with this very handsome gentlemen holding it, what a nice touch! I want this guy showcasing all of my fabrics, he would make anything look good! Thank you again for your votes!

Cut & Sew Reusable Shopping Bag

Here's my entry for the latest Spoonflower contest. We had to design a reusable shopping bag to fit on one yard of fabric. I used one of my original acrylic paintings on canvas as artwork since I didn't really have time to design anything new (I just decided to enter this contest at the last minute, there is nothing like a deadline!) You can vote and see all the entries here. Thank you for your vote!

Working in Series

For the last lesson in Jane's online class, we worked on a modular piece. We had to use one of our piece from a previous lesson and explore it further. I decided to use my grid collage as a starting point and create a series. Each piece in a modular piece is supposed to stand on its own. So I worked on 9 paintings at the same time and just started rolling paint on all of them first.

Then I added some collage elements with transparent tissue and deli wrap and other kind of papers.

Then I added paint, stamping and more collage on top until I was happy with each of them.

I could also use just these four pieces as a modular piece. I really liked working in a series because I wasn't getting too precious about them, I was just trying some stuff and using as much variety as I could using the same colors and design elements. I figured that if I ended up with 2 or 3 paintings that I liked, I would feel pretty good about it. Turns out I like all of them, even though some of them are not quite finished yet. That was a very fun class, I highly recommend it when she runs it again next year.

Working the Grid

This next lesson was about variety and connection and how to put it all together in a grid format. I had a lot of fun doing these because I love patchwork, texture and pattern, and because the graphic designer in me loves grids and the artist in me loves to break out of them. We used transparent collage paper to bring it all together which reminds me of working with beeswax and adds another dimension to the whole thing. I really need to do more of these...