Art Night and a Workshop Thought

As I was think­ing back on Claudine’s work­shops last week­end, it occurred to me that the most frus­trat­ing thing about work­shops is also the most free­ing. When I’m at a work­shop, I’m lim­ited in what I have to work with, and it always seems that what I’d really like to use is never there. It’s back in my stu­dio instead. On the other hand, that very sit­u­a­tion forces me to be more cre­ative, not less, as I try to make my ideas work with what I have on hand. I end up using items I never would have thought to use, items from the teacher’s stash or swapped for with fel­low stu­dents. I sus­pect it’s good for break­ing me out of ruts.

I took my stuff from the work­shops to Art Night tonight to show the other women. One piece with me, a 5x7 can­vas panel on which I’d tried a cou­ple of lay­ers of back­ground tech­niques, just wasn’t some­thing I was happy with. But some­thing inspired me to hold up against it one of the paper guest tow­els I’d got­ten ear­lier today at Tues­day Morn­ing, and some­thing clicked. I cut off a panel from the towel and started dis­sect­ing it, lay­ing pieces on the can­vas and glu­ing them on with beeswax. The paper went trans­par­ent with the beeswax, of course, and the com­bi­na­tion toned down the back­ground while still allow­ing the tex­ture of the rub­bing alco­hol cir­cles to show through. I also put beeswax alone on part of the uncov­ered panel, but left some of it uncov­ered to get a very nice con­trast between waxed and unwaxed areas. Within just a short time I had some­thing I was pretty darned pleased with!