I have spent this week teaching a color gradation technique class in my studio in Santa Fe. We have been practicing how to move color in tapestry using various techniques including hatching, hachure, use of texture, weft bundling, and pick and pick. The class has done a wonderful job and many new innovations surfaced during our work. Here are some photos. And if you missed my newsletter on 1/23, make sure to hit the link at the bottom as it shows a great transparency exercise.
After the usualargument discussion about weaving from the front or the back (in which I was soundly defeated--every single student chose to weave from the front much to my chagrin), we dove into irregular hatching. Hatching is one of the cornerstones of tapestry work and an important tool for moving color horizontally.
But the favorite exercises are usually the ones where we move color vertically.
This is really rewarding to do and after experimenting with moving one hue from light to dark, some people got crazy with grading between hues while changing values. (I expect great things out of this lot, I have to tell you.)
A big thanks to Kevynne Layne for getting this particular class off the ground with a group of weavers from the Damascus Fiber Arts School in Oregon. Marcia and Heather joined the group from Colorado and California and we had a wonderful group of 6 plus me.
As a teacher, you're always on alert at the beginning of a class to try to figure out which students are going to understand the way you best like to teach and which ones are going to need you to re-arrange your brain to explain things in their thinking style. And then there are the students like Janet who pick everything up right away and run with it.
That progressive hachure exercise she did in peach and orange is always the hardest exercise in the class. This time around I even printed out a whole instruction sheet just for this figure. Janet nailed it without a word from me and then proceeded to weave the pink meander with color gradation in the figure. Smarty pants.
This class was a whiz at color. Everyone had so much natural ability to mix and use color. It was astonishing.
And then Kiki pulls out this green sampler (eventually she added other colors and even had to use someone else's loom when she filled hers so full she bloodied her fingers trying to pick the tight warp)... Blood = dedication.
The techniques done all in green were so striking.
The whir of the swivel...
The thunk of the handbeaters...
The call of the double chocolate cookies at the coffee shop across the parking lot...
It was a really good week.
I am teaching some of this material in a two-day class at Convergence 2014 in Providence, RI. Join me!
You can sign up for my newsletter at the top right corner or the very bottom of the blog... so you don't miss the next one!
After the usual
This class was a whiz at color. Everyone had so much natural ability to mix and use color. It was astonishing.
And then Kiki pulls out this green sampler (eventually she added other colors and even had to use someone else's loom when she filled hers so full she bloodied her fingers trying to pick the tight warp)... Blood = dedication.
The whir of the swivel...
It was a really good week.
I am teaching some of this material in a two-day class at Convergence 2014 in Providence, RI. Join me!
NEWSLETTER ALERT!
My newsletter this week showed an example of a wonderful exercise a student in this class did with transparency. You can see that newsletter HERE. You'll be surprised which colors you need to mix to create illusions of transparency.You can sign up for my newsletter at the top right corner or the very bottom of the blog... so you don't miss the next one!