More from the Gerry Chase workshop

One of the big breakthroughs I had in this workshop was around drawing and painting. Like a lot of folks, I don't have any confidence about drawing and painting and tend to avoid it.

When we started on Friday with our tjantings and flowy ink, and Gerry reminded us that we weren't to try to make anything attractive but just to be spontaneous and have fun, that really liberated me. I figure I can make unattractive stuff as well as the next person! So away I went.

My first pieces had big swoops of line and splodges of paint and those are now torn up, waiting to be put into artful compositions.



I kept squiggling and splodging paint and having tons of fun.



I had fun experimenting with drawing onto wet fabric, which resulted in a sort of eerie, streaky effect.



Then I started working on how to control the quality of the line I could get with the tjanting, and how to wash paint over the drawing while retaining a clear line. MORE fun.





I loved using the tjanting so much that I started drawing fat-quarter-sized pieces of all over patterns, which will be fun to cut up and use for something...



On this viney one, I loved how the greens I mixed separated into the water wash to make a yellow halo. What a lovely accident!







And by the end of this, the piece of muslin stretched under my painting surface took on a very artful look too. (Many people in the room exclaimed how much we liked our muslin under-surfaces almost better than the actual paintings we did!)



I can't wait to start playing with this fun fabric....but I have returned to an inbox full of real-life work, not to mention a family I've barely seen for 3 days. Ah well, this will be waiting when I come back to it.