returning from the art nest

i am home from such a fabulous weekend at the art nest!! i had an amazing time. i loved the classes, all the snow, everyone i met, and the food was over the top delish. . . here are the darling stockings for each of us filled with vintage goodies and chocolate and all the cool artists that attended (except jayne, so sorry sweetey you were sick that night)



my first class was with anahata katkin, symbolic icons. i had no idea what to bring for this class but just threw in some paper ephemera and copied faces. it was down right incredible to watch anahata work! she works quickly and intuitively with lots of color, pattern, and movement. to give you an idea of the artistic abandon going on she rolled right through her sample piece with ink on a pizza cutter!!
i had such a great time watching her doodle all over her pieces with white and black pens. i was blown away by how cool it all looked together.
here is my first piece in progress. i am actually so glad i took this photo, look at the difference. check out how bad the vintage ledger paper bubbled when i used gel medium. regular old glue stick actually worked better to stick the paper down, then i used gel mediuim over the top.



this is 'the snail cart' completed.

my second piece started out like such a dud. i tried to sew on the page and then add dribbled ink. total disaster, so i turned the paper over quick before anahata could see it and began again.
here is 'miss western hemisphere'. i really like all the black and white doodling! i brought pitt pens and five new micron pens and they didn't really work. the magic is the uni-ball pen. it wrote all over everything!! plus my all time favorite white gel pen uni-ball signo.


here is anahata at the end of the day at our show and tell with her piece. each of us showed the pieces we created in her class and talked about what we did. it was amazing the work that everyone created that day with anahata's suggestions. if you ever have the opportunity to take a class from her, totally go for it!!
the sun is just streaming through the cabin windows around anahata like a halo. what a lovely day. . .

anahata's very cool kit filled with her collage bits and pieces




anahata and jen working on jen's very cool and colorful symbolic icon.

after the class i wanted to try working on a smaller piece and made this collage 'flower face' i just feel more comfortable working small. i made myself do the big collage on canvas with the class and was surprised how much i really liked it!