I am venturing north to Birmingham to day to do a workshop with Sutton Coldfield Creative Stitchers at their exciting ‘Stitched-Up’ summer event. Hope to meet up with Maggie Grey and Sue Rangeley and others. My next blog entry will be on Saturday so you have two day’s worth here. It’s raining today so if it’s the same with you, perhaps you’ll need to place your frame onto a window or use an indoor plant.
A very useful blogging tip from Kay Lockie – use Windows Live Writer to write your blog. I’m using it now – just like a Word programme - it’s so much easier than doing it in ‘blogger’. If this works, you must all download it.
SKETCHBOOK DAY 21 – Trial and error
TODAY’S TASK – Explore different media to find the best combination to make layers for scraping back (rather than scratching) – politely known as the technique of sgrafitto. Not all combinations will work. It is based on the principle of placing a layer of colour on top of another one and then scratching back to reveal the colour underneath.
TODAY’S TIPS – Do a tester page as this saves you colouring in vast areas only to find you can’t scrape it back!
The secret is to use a ‘slippery’ medium in the bottom layer so that the top layer doesn’t mix in when you add it.
Some media like to be left to ‘dry’ before adding the second layer.
SKETCHBOOK DAY 22 – building up and removing
I did this yesterday, outside in the lovely sunshine - I’m sorry that your working week has been sunny and the weekend a wet one Anne.
TODAY’S TASK - Prepare a coloured ground two layers of colour media.
TODAY’S TIPS – You can use more than one colour in each layer. The image below shows the ground colours of wax crayons which are going to be the colour of my scraped lines. The top layer of pastel crayons will be the colour of my background. Difficult to get your head round, but easier when you take time to think about it and actually do it.
This is the result – the tall stems of fennel with their feathery fronds and umbrella formation seed heads. Too much detail to give in such a small area of my sketchbook page so I just ‘suggested’ the effects.
I then did a simpler study of the fennel as it is such a beautiful structure. (Curved lines are really difficult! Any tips?)
These are absolutely gorgeous Sian. Thank you so much for this wonderful sketchbook workshop you are offering us every day!
ReplyDeleteI also use Windows Live Writer and think it really useful. My only problem with it is that after uploading images and resizing them it is not possible to enlarge them on the blog by doubleclicking. Is it the same with you?