next artfest installment (be warned: it's a long post, and has LOTS of pics)

Wednesday night was the Welcome meeting where Teesha and Tracy Moore spoke to welcome us all to ArtFest 2011, and to introduce all the instructors. They thanked us for attending, and talked bravery- thanking us for our bravery in attending, and being brave in our art. They also reminded us to be open to the experience of learning from the instructors, and each other. I don't remember much of the specifics, and I really wish I could-- it was a great welcome speech. I don't think of myself as particularly "brave" (quite the opposite, actually) so it was nice to get a reminder of the fact that putting myself out there to have this experience is an act of bravery, on a lot of different levels. (I never had a chance to meet Teesha or Tracy during the time I was up there, unfortunately; they're waay busy making sure everything goes okay for all of us.) For Teesha's viewpoint of ArtFest, you can read her blog post here. It was really interesting to read how the week went from her point of view, and what all has to be done to keep everything going smoothly.

After the Welcome gathering, I went with my roommates to another welcome meeting, a "Wine and Chocolate" party hosted in one of the neighboring dorm buildings. The two hostesses were veteran ArtFesters, and had a very lively party going; we mingled, chatted, signed their journals, and passed around trades. (more on trades in a later post, but the short story is: you can bring "trades" for trading with other people- charms, pins, collage goodies, Artist Trading Cards, small works of art-- you name it, anything can be a trade. I got plenty, and will show some of them once I take pics.)

My first class (on Thursday) was "Luscious Layered Canvas" taught by Roxanne Padgett. Layers of paint, stencils, and pattern on canvas that can then be used for whatever you want- below are a couple of her samples:

This class was a lot of fun, and I got some great ideas-- we started out making marks and patterns on our canvas with things as simple as crayon, gesso, or gluing down smaller pieces of paper. After that, we started in with building up our patterned layers using crayon rubbings, stencils, and stamps. Below is my table, partway through the morning: The pic below is three of my four pieces of fabric, partway through the process. There are probably 3 or four layers on them at this point... the colors I used are definitely more vivid and bright than I usually use; Roxanne's catchphrase is "fear no color!" Some of the stencils were made using manila file folder, and the stencil used to make the scroll-y pink pattern was a piece of die-cut scrapbook paper. (so many great tips, I tell you!! I just hope I remember them all!)

I'm glad I took the in-process pics-- the picture below is one of the fabrics from the pic above, turned to black & white on my computer... If I print it out, then voila! my very own printed paper! Doing this was a tip from one of my dorm-mates, I think... It makes for a really graphic patterned paper, that's for sure.

Below is one of my classmates, making a crayon rubbing on her canvas... we used chipboard letter stickers to make a rubbing plate, along with such mundane things as trivets, placemats, and manila file folder shapes... another great tip!

below is my table later on during the day when I was making my own stencils, and had more layers of color on my fabric. At this point, I was sort of hating a couple of my pieces; they just needed "something" but I wasn't sure what. Roxanne was very helpful, walking around seeing how all of use were doing, and she gave me some good advice. (notice, I was using the leftover paint to make a couple art journal pages, there-- I can't waste perfectly good paint and paper scraps!)

This is an overall shot of the room, as we were finishing up for the day... the building we were in was the USO building; it was quite spacious, and had plenty of light (it was sunny!), which made for a great workspace. We each had our own 6-foot table (and I still ran out of room, as usual- LOL!!) to spread out on, plus plenty of floor space to spread our canvases to dry.

below is a shot of all four of my pieces. A couple of them I still don't quite like; I started out thinking I would hate the piece that started out with black fabric but it turned out to be one of the ones I like best. Huh! just goes to show, you never know what direction your art will take you in. I learned TONS of things, though, and will definitely use this layering technique in my artwork. (part of the pattern on the top-right piece was made using a pizza cutter- just roll the wheel thru the paint, then roll it onto your surface: another memorable tip, and I have already found a pizza cutter at the thrift store, to do this myself!)

The art-making didn't stop once class was over, though! Dorm 202 had classrooms in the common areas on the first floor, so all evening long, there were plenty of people hanging out at the tables showing off their class projects, working on their projects (class or otherwise) or just chatting and socializing.

I hung out down here for a while, working on my art journal-- mind you, this was after I had already gone down to the beach with one of my roommates to roast marshmallows, make a smore, and do some socializing and trading with the people down there... I didn't get much sleep while I was at ArtFest: there was way too much to do, see, or talk about for sleeping! Next Artfest post coming up shortly... I need to take some pics of my class project, since I forgot my camera for part of the day during class (whoops!).