"From Sketchbook to Wall"

I am at the end of the first week of a two week class called "From Sketchbook to Wall" by Tansy Hargan.  We get a lesson and a video every morning and submit our homework on a Facebook page (optional) where there is lots of conversation and interaction with people from all over the world. The goal is to end up with an art piece from repurposed and altered textiles. We shall see!

I follow Tansy on Instagram and her layered and textural fiber art and thumbnail sketching fascinate me. I'm also going to take her "Mixed Media Thumbnail Sketch" course in May and I'm pretty excited about that too.

https://www.instagram.com/palimpsestparade/

Tansy's work is about connecting what you see and feel...to what you make. She loves working with fabrics that have a story....so takes apart old garments and repurposes found fabrics.  

I'm getting better at the seeing and feeling part....but don't really know how to interpret that into my art.  So I take classes.

So far we've spent a couple days observing, sketching, and collaging lines, shapes....and the spaces in between...which will hopefully provide inspiration.

Since our pieces will be made from repurposed textiles...I spent part of one day taking apart a linen shirt and a few other things....there are a lot of pieces in a cuff....and we're embracing the frayed edges and needle holes.

I love the pocket!

I found some vintage quilt blocks that Jane gave me years ago and took them apart and found the block had been pieced on a grain sack...I felt like I struck gold.  That writing will work it's way into my piece.

Next we chose a color palette....and started painting our fabric.  I didn't want to stick with just the greens and browns against the blue sky of my collages from the woods.....so this is how I explained my color palette choice when I submitted my homework yesterday.  

The woods behind my condo is where I did my seeing and sketching and will likely inspire the textures, shapes, and layers in my piece. But the color pallette is directly inspired by the gardens around my patio where I sit and enjoy the woods. I love the contrast of my tidy gardens and the untamed woods and I painted my fabrics from the memories I have from last summer. When I was finished I put together the thumbnail collage of some garden photos and found I did pretty well.  I loved this first step in the painting process.

Our job over the weekend is to improve on our pallette and fill in the gaps....I can already see I need more greens and some neutrals. Then we're supposed to play with placement and color stories and take photographs through a viewfinder.  Stay tuned.