Yesterday & a Bit of Today

The workshop I went to yesterday was difficult but interesting. It was difficult because everyone else in the class had prior experience in doing picture transfers using a polymer medium except me. It was made more difficult because I didn’t have enough sense to speak out when the instructor asked who had done this before. The only polymer I had ever used before was the basic gesso and we had samples of a few more than this!

 The instructor was English from Devon and although she was talented, she talked far too much. We began by doing something which we were going to use later but she didn’t say that. Then we did this. And then we did that. That was followed by the other! It was not until the last hour of class that all of this came together and the light dawned! Fortunately, we had quite good handouts and I sat next to an experienced person who was only to willing to help me because I kept zoning out and stopped listening to the instructor!

Anyway, I learned a lot. Mostly, I realized that transfer collage using polymer coating is MUCH too fiddly for me. But I found one idea that appealed to me. The instructor had a book where the writer had taken ephemera and done very interesting things with some of them. The one I liked was a map. He had coated it with soft gel and then put on a layer of pale yellow tissue paper which he crumpled up. He used matte gel to attach it and this had the effect of making the map look old but it wasn’t shiny. Then he drew cave-art type pictures on the map with black ink. it was very effective and I can see myself doing something like that. When everything was dry, he then put one more layer of matt polymer glaze {which is matt polymer gel with a tiny amount of acrylic color added}  on the top.
Today so far I have done next to nothing. I checked over my homework for Italian and redid my piece of writing about the web site on "Made in Italy." I have a feeling that la prof said she would ask us to SAY something about our web site rather than just hand the writing in, so I did mine so I could do either. I am going to talk about  "le macchinne per scrivere", the Olivetti typewriters. Now, of course, Olivetti produce much more than typewriters but there is what sounds like an interesting little museum in Ivera {Torino} where the original typewriters were made. I like museums…Finally, the calligraphy pens and books I offered on Freecycle have been picked up. The first two people were full of enthusiasm but never turned up. The last woman said she would be round to pick them up between 7:30 and 8:30 this morning. At 8 am I looked out of the back door and the bag was gone! Yes! This is the first time I have had this happen to me. But it is easy to see who has been a victim of this because they write,  "Please don’t ask for this if you are not sure you can make it out here to pick it up!"

Drawings and Pastel Paintings

Until later….