Rhonda Bracey: At Random

We’ve spent the past two days learning to use Tsukineko All-purpose Inks, Fantastix applicators, and Fabrico markers (also Tsukineko), as  well as artists’ coloured pencils and oil crayons to enhance fabric. Lura Schwarz Smith taught this part of the class. So much of the past two days was learning the techniques via demonstration and some hands-on practice; however, there’s not a lot of ‘product’ to show for how much we’ve learned, so there aren’t many pictures. I finally did some stitching late this afternoon prior to the walkthrough of everyone’s classes, doing some thread painting of the hair and shirt of the boy’s face I had traced and coloured with inks, markers, and pencils yesterday and last night after ‘show and tell’.

After a rocky start with drawing a face yesterday (guided by Lura), I felt much more comfortable working from a line drawing, tracing it onto fabric, and then shading it with the various media. It was quite amazing (and scary!) how some horrible emotions bubbled to the surface during the freehand drawing phase — faces were one of things I was awful at when I did Art at school (I was fine with still life, pattern and design, and poster work, but could never get faces right… all those yucky feelings came back…).

I also had two more photos printed onto fabric, taking advantage of the printer that Kerby and Lura had bought with them.

I won’t have a chance to start stitching work on any of the photos I’ve had printed until I get home — we’ve had so much learning of techniques in this workshop that there hasn’t been much time to ‘do’ and work on our own pieces. But that’s OK. Learning new stuff is why I chose this workshop. That said, I guess I’m a bit disappointed that I haven’t made any progress on the photos I had printed. However, that was MY expectation based on previous experience at other workshops; Lura and Kerby have definitely fulfilled all the expectations listed for the workshop.

Here are the photos from the end of today for each of the students in my class (all five of us!).

This was my design wall late Wednesday afternoon. The boy in the lower right has been partly shaded with inks. The boy on the top left was my freehand drawing of a face — the one that gave me such angst.

My design wall late Thursday afternoon. Two more photos printed on to fabric (corn from Santa Fe and a frosted leaf from Michigan), and a fabric chosen to perhaps border the fox. More ink and coloured pencil work etc. on the boy in the lower right, including thread painting of his hair and shirt.