Weekend at Wanaka

I spent a weekend at the Otago Embroiderers Guild Wanaka School. It is a great weekend of embroidery classes - lots to see! I did a class on Personal Sketchbooks with Jan Wilson. My theme for the sketchbook was bird nests. We tried different techniques and mediums to create pages on our subject.

I love bird nests and want to create one in 3D and this was not the place to do any sketching or get ideas - unfortunately. There didn't seem much direction that I could take a bird nest in or so it seemed to me but I did have a lot of fun creating lots of ideas and trying a lot of different techniques.

These four sketches show just one idea.

Firstly just charcoal pencil on newsprint.



Then I did collage on black paper with a photocopy of lace!



Another pencil sketch but this time I put in some colour.



And lastly a stencil print - kinda looks like a stylised rose (well I thought so).



We were shown a neat idea to bind all our pages together which I want to do at a later stage. It would be a great way to create a sketch book of different types of paper to print/draw on and save pictures/scraps. It would make a great present for an artist. When I get around to doing the book I will do a step by step process of how it is done.

I definitely want to try this idea again - I just have to find an object that inspires me !!