Tuesday, April 28, 2009

SELF PORTRAITS!!

Allison in various mediums and colors!

The weather is seriously wonderful here on the coast of Rhode Island and it is hard to concentrate on work work. We have 10 yards of compost sitting outside just waiting to get spread around!!!
But, back to Artgirlz and the Nation. We had a wonderful Self-Portrait Class last weekend! It was very gratifying to see hands and spirits at work! We used fabrics, papers, the sewing machine, glue, gel medium, the scanner, and the camera through out the day. Christy was once again our competent lunch server and superior scone maker. Linda brought oatmeal cookies to help the energy levels up.
We started off the class by doing an exercise from "Mixed- Media self-portraits" by Cate Coulacos Prato. Kelli Perkins instructs how to do a portrait in a mirror with transparent paper and a marker (p. 51). Tape the paper to the mirror, close one eye and outline your face. It is quite an interesting spacial and visual exercise.

I love this image of Jackie with the crack in the face! She mixed paper and fabric and was having a great time with our Bernina and the Stitch Regulator!! What a better way to do needle doodling!!
Linda (above) first did a drawing, added color, rubber stamps and and outline of the original sketch. She painted up leaves and machine stitched plain and painted leaves for a hair do.
Friends Elaine (L) and Alayne (below) showed up a bit nervous about their Artgirlz Adventure but I think we managed to put them somewhat at ease and they just rocked!

We were lucky to have the two big cheeses from "Art Is You" join us. Ellen and Sallianne dove right into their projects and shared some of their visions for their most wonderful fall gathering in Connecticut! Sallianne added some wonderful words about the class on her blog... and below you can see two images of her work.

Ellen's smiling self!
I believe that a good time was had by all! We formulating plans for the next class in which we will work on book components and celebrate the Summer Solstice!!!

Does anyone have any self-portrait tips?
Bye Bye for Now!

2 comments:

Jill said...

Wow - what an amazing collection of self-portraits! Wish I could have been there. Your book class looks great, too. If only Rhode Island wasn't so far away!

Anonymous said...

Hope you read your comments. We really enjoyed meeting the Charlestown girls this weekend. Can we exchange blog links for starts. Can't wait to get some in the store.
Roxanne(The Quilter's Alley/ not the accountant)