Still on the terrracotta & blue theme

 Ok, it's still just a pile of unfinished work, but I'm moving on....slowly. The 3 small pieces at the top of the pile if you can see them are a sample for the sketchbook, behind that a 'spare' piece & behind that a smaller piece, that will become 2 brooches. Underneath those is a book cover, a purse & cuff sized piece & below those are 2 hangings to be, one with a half moon, heron & trees to be thought about the other, well, without ;) I should have looked up in Thesaurus for an alternative to 'piece'. I do hate repeating one word 4 times in a paragraph.

The most exciting achievement this week is that i have finally got my very own 'hand dyed' cloth! see above Oh, my, I've joined the big boys! How I've longed to be a dyer, I've managed a bit of rusting here & there, but the word 'procion' fills me with horror. But, I found myself thinking, 'I don't have enough of the right blue in my collection of recycled fabrics' & I answered myself, well I can use silk/fabric paint. OK so I know it's not real dyeing but it's close, using what I have ;)

I brought it painted & dripping  into the house to drape over the Aga & horror of horrors thought I'd either made a mess on the (very clean) oven door (it is a turquoise Aga tho, ...of course) or burnt it, as it stuck to the door. I didn't realize if you 'applied heat directly to 'dyed' cloth it drew the color to that spot so, while he wasn't looking I roughly folded the cloth & put it on the warm plate under the weight of an oven glove & left it.....he didn't notice. & the above happened. Nobody anywhere has said you could use an Aga for resist dyeing!  Half of it, a piece of cloth about 5 x 12 has gone into my 'pieces' & I've just noticed the look of a stand of birch trees..... Can you tell I'm excited?

 Anyway, here are a few pic that were drying from my class last week. Do just scroll thru quickly!

 Chine Colle

 I'm not normally one for 'seeing things' but there's definitely an otter swimming in my clean up print!

 More turps

 using up ink

 cleaning rollers

 more ink cleaning

 more turps. Some wonderful makrks

one of the other students lino cuts, wish I'd done a tree!

 We did  lithographs in perspex this week. Boy, I thought I'd found a new career, with perspex being accessible & no acid involved, & just a sharp tool but apart from the teeth itching noise I could barely scratch the surface without wanting to wearing wrist, elbow & hand supports! It is my very first time, scratching - I couldn't call it sketching - for a lithograph, but still, my 'sampler'  which is laying on it's side with exhaustion, looks like it's been done by a 5 yr old, very naiive ;(

These above are by 2 other students, lovely, the nude was traced directly onto the perspex from a book, but still! As the DH said, 'very different' to mine. It was fun, tho. Right, off to stitch into those pieces!