Flora Bowley

What a fabulous teacher, fabulous artist and a fabulous group of people. Can you tell I had a fabulous time in Flora Bowley's painting workshop over the weekend. I could only attend the first day but still had a wonderful day. Flora is so open and generous with her techniques. I learned a whole new way to free up in my painting. There was an expectant air when we first started the class but by lunch time we were all in the swing. I met some lovely fellow artists and it was great to meet a lovely lady from north of our state who reads my blog. These events really do bring like minded people together. I have to thank Julia for having the courage to organize such an event, she did a great job.

This was the very start of my first canvas, I loved it like this, but this was the first of many layers.

The second canvas up to layer three.

This was the last layer I did in the class on the previous painting. I still have a few more layers to go.

This is the last layer of the first painting, still not quite sure how many more layers will be needed to complete it.

Flora demonstrating on her painting.

Some of the other students fabulous work, everyone was different.

After the class Patsy, Julia and I went out to dinner with Flora, we had a lovely meal and it was great to get to know a little more about Flora too.

Patsy, Flora and Julia.

Patsy, Flora and me.

Dyeing up a storm

I've got the dyeing bug at present, anything and everything is fair game. I've been over dyeing fabrics I don't like, old cloth doilies, small sample swatches, silk, muslin, cotton, lace, embroidery thread, trims, if it's white it ends up in the dye pot. I have a beautiful golden yellow on the line and soon there will be fuchsia hanging out with it.
I use these fabrics and laces in my journals. Best of all I love looking at them all grouped together.

This is what they looked like before I did some serious sorting.

Some colour combinations.

Carefully stacked.

Some of the blue/teal range.

Love this vibrant orange, sorry to all of you vintage ladies, if this is offensive to your eyes.

Gorgeous purple.

I'm not a huge green fan so I mixed the teal and yellow together to get the lime.

Finally the vibrant red.

The remaining colours are on the line, I hope they end up as colourful.

Painting in the round

At our Altered books and beyond get together last Thursday night we decided to do a Painting in the round session, that's what I call it anyway. We had this huge piece of canvas and then the eleven of us walked around the table armed with paint and brushes and just kept walking and painting.

Doing the rounds.

Almost ready to cut up.

My piece after I'd done some work on it.

My finished piece. I'm thinking of turning it into a HUGE holder for all of my markers and pens.

I've spent the last two days dying lots and lots of fabric and lace, I'll have pictures in the next post.

Paintings plus

I've been working on new paintings as well as journals, the paintings are for our upcoming exhibition in June, the journals are the commissions I'm working on, they take sooooo long.

This is an 8" x 8" canvas painted with acrylics. I've started painting in my graphicy style again.

This painting's much larger, 20" x 24", and it's not quite finished yet. It's at the 'sitting' stage where I keep walking past it waiting for it to tell me what to do next.

I love the colour schemes in both of these and I'm looking forward to starting another one soon.

I made these owls for the rest of the 'five take flight' group when we had our art get together recently. These are made using my fabric paper as the backgrounds, then layered and stitched with fabrics, sequin waste and beads for eyes. The hangers are sari silks wired with beads and a hand made ring at the top.

These were gorgeous chandeliers in the restaurant where our group, Patsy, Jacky, Dot, Julia and I, met for lunch just over a week ago Julia has more photos on her blog. 

We had a fabulous time sharing our show and tell, the food was divine too.

This was part of the garden at the restaurant, there are many rooms inside and lots of garden rooms outside. You could be in Asia, Italy and almost Mexico all here in Oz.

This is another fabulous cafe hubby and I went to this weekend. We have friends living in the very arty town of Daylesford about an hour and a half from here. We spent the weekend with them and visited Cliffys, a great little, very bohemian cafe. I managed to get this picture just before the rush. The walls on the left are fabric panels. 

I had to show you these columns as Patsy doesn't have a blog. They are magnificent, you can see how tall they are. Patsy has been painting them with fantastic images of people, animals, flowers, buildings, lovely words, images depicting everyday life and community. They will be on display in Melbourne outside St Michael's church in the city.

This is Patsy's gorgeous dog Milly who is now with the angels.

Some of the people. Don't you just love the birds in the bag of the lady on the back column.

Another view of the column.

And for the cat lovers.

Finally I added a dash of purple to my hair, nothing too radical.

Sketchbook class

I've had a few of my group ask if I could start a Sketchbook class. I decided rather than hold a workshop I'd form a sketchbook group where we meet for an afternoon at my house and everyone progresses at their own pace. I've had such a great response I've had to generate a weekday and a weekend group. Each will meet once a month, but it may develop into fortnightly get togethers depending on the response.
I've started to sort through some of my sketch books for reference and it was very interesting go back and see some of these.

I use an old ledger for some of my preliminary sketches. I often paint a wash for a background then work over the top, this eliminates the dreaded white page.

This same book also provides a testing place for my stamps.

You can see how I avoid using a white page. This is a photo album which works really well with uni-posca markers.

Another page in the album.

These are more pages in my latest book, I've finally accepted white pages.

If you care to join our sketching group just send me an email for details.

My City - Melbourne

We had a wonderful day last Saturday, we took a visit to the city, about forty five minutes from our home.
We han't been for awhile so it was good to visit the art stores, galleries etc. The sun shone, the temperature was lovely and there were lots of people milling around and taking advantage of such a glorious day. I thought I'd share some of it with you.

All the little lane ways have taken advantage of our weather and there are wall to wall cafes everywhere.

This cafe even has it's own resident parrot.

This lane way had a fabulous band playing gypsy style music, the little boy at the bottom of the photo was dancing his heart out.

The band.

A very famous tea room in the Block arcade, such luscious cakes in the window.

The new Myer. This is a large department store that was very out dated. This is their new look, very trendy now.

The view over the top rail looking down through all of the levels.

Cafes everywhere even in the middle of the river.

The new and the old, our beautiful old railway station.

Beautiful tree lined walking areas and more restaurants along the river

Finally I've been a part of Seth's Pulse group since it's inception, Seth has been displaying all sorts of information, that the members have provided, on his blog. Last Sunday was another of The Collectors edition, this features photos of members collections and I was lucky enough to have mine included.

If you'd like to see it the links here