January Class Review

First, a huge thank-you to everyone for all the wonderful comments you left yesterday.  They really made me feel terrific!!! I appreciate each and every comment and will treasure them.  Now, on to the review . . .
Glass Bead Gel (with Connie Anderson) - Connie is the Queen of Texture Mediums, and she has been leading a series of classes exploring the use of texture mediums in collage.  Glass bead gel is a beautiful medium that glistens, and Connie put a lot of thought into the various ways it can be used.  Everyone got two canvases on which to work, and we were encouraged to explore at least two different treatments with the glass beads.  Here's my first:

I have always loved glass, and I stenciled with the glass beads to suggest some of the  depression glass I have.  I call this piece "Childhood Portal." It's not finished yet.  I plan to put it in a black frame and add some adornment  to emphasize the "childhood" theme.  I'd love it if I could find a frame in the shape of a house.  I thought about making a "Narnia" reference, but I think it's implied.  The other piece I made used glass beads as a transfer medium.  Transfers are tough for me, but this worked pretty well.  That piece is very unfinished, but I may share it later.
All-in-all, another terrific class by Connie.







Masterful Art Journaling with Dina Wakley at Get it Scrapped - This was, simply put, an amazing class!  It was structured as a four week class, with each class focusing on a different "master" (Van Gogh, Picasso, Mary Cassatt and Frida Kahlo).  Each week supposedly had two lessons:  one full of art challenges and one full of journaling challenges.  I say "supposedly" because each individual "lesson" had between 4-6 different sub-lessons, any of which could keep you occupied for a week. Each lesson also included fascinating biographical information about the artist and 1-2 videos demonstrating techniques. It was truly a class jam-packed with new techniques, inspiration and information.  For instance, in the Mary Cassatt week, we were encouraged to explore pastels because Cassatt worked in pastels, create a page about the mother-child relationships because that was a recurring theme in her work, and use the not-quite-white background technique that was common in Cassatt's work.  The art journal page above incorporates all these ideas.  It is so different from anything I have done, but also very authentic to me.  I've posted lots of other pages from the class on my blog that you can check out.  I'm actually still working on the Frida Kahlo section, and I can see myself returning again and again to the lessons for inspiration in the surface.  I made over 20 art journal pages and just scratched the surface of the content in this course.


What's up next?  This month, I'm taking Building Pages with Debbie Hodge at Get it Scrapped and Develop on Fridays at Paislee Press.  There are two year-long art journal classes going on that look interesting, but that's too long a commitment for me.  You can find them at Art Journal Caravan  and Journal 365 with Pam Carriker.