Yesterday, four of us had a group outing to see Helen's exhibition at the Embroiderers Guild. We were blown away. We knew Helen was a very talented person but seeing her work on display together convinced us that she's been hiding her light under a bushel! Some were works we'd seen her making; others were completely new to us, coming from ten, twenty and even forty years ago. It's an amazing body of work. If you get a chance, go and have a look before it closes on Wednesday.
After Helen had given us a guided tour of the works and told us the stories associated with them, we took ourselves next door to the Love Life Store for lunch. I can really recommend this place for lunch - friendly staff, very tasty pies and delicious cakes.
We swapped postcards as usual. Here's Helen's, with her signature rug canvas:
She painted over the rug canvas grid and the background, and then added gold to the stitched area.
Maz's postcard comes from a series of works celebrating her years of travelling the world.
Tricia's postcard was a cheerful collection of buttons with a beach mood.
She coloured the background and then added buttons and beads to emphasise the flow of the colours.
Nola embroidered on one of her painted cloths for her postcard.
We also shared the work we'd done in our sketchbooks for the Fish theme.
Maz drew some fish shapes in her book:
Here's a detail of the fish at the top.
The technique is called sgraffito. She laid down a thick layer of water pencil on the piece of film negative and then scratched back through it to form the fish. It looks very sea monsterish!
Helen had been manipulating images in Photoshop.
She also drew a design, a fish made of fish, in unwetted water colour pencil, with a collection of fish names. She insisted, "the best fish in the world - Arbroath smokies."
Nola drew fish too, but her first pair of fish were based on the shape of a set of unusual pegs she bought from one of the local Chinese shops. She also wanted to play with repeat shapes.
Her next fish was made from fabric.
She built up the background pages with layers of watercolour and Inktense pencils and watercolour crayons, using the page wet and dry. She cut out the fish shape and layers were cut from a commercial patterned fabric and attached to the fish with fusible web. The whole fish was trimmed and attached to the page with fusible web. Then she drew in the shadow fish in the water, so the brilliant fish is surrounded by shadowy echoes.
Her last fish was stencilled through a simple shape, using different 1/2in square stamps and watercolour pencils.
Our next theme is Circle. As our group is called Fibrecircle, that seems very appropriate!
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