Thursday 9 June 2011

At Quarry Bank Mill with Louise Gardiner

Oh what a blissful three days I have had away at Quarry Bank Mill with the wonderful Louise Gardiner. I LOVED her creative enthusiam and on the first day she had us all mark making to music and then we were blindfolded and had to draw what was put in our hands. Fun!
Later we drew each other without looking at what we were drawing. That is difficult. Fianally, we were set free on our machines to create what we had drawn. Well.....my drawing was such rubbish I altered it somewhat but hung onto the quirkiness which was the whole point of the piece.
Here it is, unfinished, but I am quite pleased with it. It is worked on canvas 
There were 14 of us on the course and we all produced completely different faces. Here is the line up. Unfortunately there is no flash so the pictures all look very wrinkled
Here is a close up of my work as I started to paint in the eyes...
and the body

The course ran from 10-4.30 each day which left a LONG evening to fill and so I went along to a quilt meeting where the speaker talked very knowledgebly about kimonos and was really entertaining too.
I could not believe my eyes when this trolley appeared laden with cakes....so cake for supper it was....3 big pieces. Yummy! When I asked if they always had this much cake after meetings I was told 'only when we have a speaker' and that does not happen often, so it was my lucky night!
I arrived home at 8 last night to a pile of mail...as you do, but can you imagine my total DELIGHT when i opened this package and out tumbled all these gorgeous goodies form Sue. Just look at that tube that her hand made beads are packed in...a humble paper towel roll cunningly printed and made into a pillow package. How clever is that? and those beads....all hand made, and 4 dyed quill stalks from feathers. very clever indeed....!
But that was not all. There were  these lovely cards and delicious pieces of fabric and coffee filter all dyed with blackberries. Oh I am going to really, really enjoy playing with this lot but first, I must get my business back on track. I have had dozens of emails to open and the printers to chase. Aaaaarrrrgh!

3 comments:

Giggles said...

Your character turned out amazing!! I LOVE IT!!! The rest of them are cool too! Love that whimsical style, so fun and interesting!! Thanks for sharing!

Gina said...

You lucky thing! I worked with Lou in Jersey and her enthusiasm is wonderful. Love the results too!

Ruth said...

What a fantastic time you had! Love the end result, and you were plied with cake. Yummy too!