Today’s #cjs20 artist was Marsha Valk, whose colourful work I’ve seen (and liked) before. Her entire project wasn’t something I wanted to tackle in an evening so I used elements of her style to decorate a manilla folder. I use plain brown manilla folders for storing collage elements, painted papers, gelli prints etc so this was a useful project and a lot of messy fun.
I love scrapbooking. It might not be ‘trendy’ anymore, but I enjoy recording our lives, documenting what I know of old photos, and generally playing with paper, scissors & glue. I was a tutor for a national scrapbooking company so had access to all the newest supplies; one of my favourites was Basic Grey
I was tidying up some supplies today and found my stash of old letters. Some of the self-adhesive ones aren’t any more. and I had quite a lot of Basic Grey heavy paper letters left. All the useful letters like a, e & s are long gone, and I’m left with a pile of g, x and q!
I was going to throw them out but suddenly realised I could repurpose them. Out with my 16×20 Gelli plate and some Gold Open acrylics. I put down one colour, then used the letters as masks and pulled a print – the yellow one shows what this looks like. I removed the letters, put down a fresh colour, more letters and overprinted; I did three layers on each.
The page that looks a bit like old leather is where I pulled the leftover paint off the plate each time. I’m not sure what I will do with these yet, but like the look, and have tucked the paint covered letters away to use another day.
I love teaching art, but it requires a lot of preparation if you want people to get the most out of it. Over the last week or so I’ve been working on samples for the advanced gelli print class I’m teaching in Greymouth in early December. You can book though Left Bank Art Gallery or message me. Each person who attends gets a class kit with instructions, sample photos, mixed media paper and so on – that’s why booking is essential.
Here’s a sneak preview of the process, and how the prints progress from initial layers to a (possibly) finished print or two.
This evening I’ve started to put together some samples for the gelli print landscape class I’m teaching in Greymouth in early December. This is only the first layers, they have a long way to go yet.
I’m using the traditional colour set in the Golden Open paints. I also added some Titan Pale Green, which is one of my ‘go to’ colours. Open are lovely to use, give more working time, and react well when sprayed with water for a different effect. They’re also a lot dearer than the normal Golden paints unfortunately.
The class is being held at CoRe, through Left Bank Art Gallery … contact them if you’d like to book a place. Bookings are essential because I’ll be preparing class packs for everyone, and numbers are limited so I can give people enough time and attention.
Cath Sheard 