Category Archives: Teaching

Wax and Words – no worries, everything worked!

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After a month away from teaching workshops, I was a little fearful about starting off the new sessions with something I hadn’t done before, a class called Words and Wax. It was inspired by some of Nancy Crawford‘s beautiful Love and Gratitude encaustic series pieces.

Nancy Crawford, 4x4", Even More Love and Gratitude

Nancy Crawford, 4×4″, Even More Love and Gratitude

I wanted to emphasize the mark-making within the words, so I designed a four-layer process that involved ink, stencils, graphite and stamping as the initial approach,followed by the addition of beeswax, and incising into that. The results were wonderful, thoughtful, accidental but purposeful. Please see what the students did in the video below.

I’m happy to share with you the general outline of the class in case you want to play around with this idea. You can find the steps here.

Postscript:

Ironically, just as I was writing this post about words, I received some sad news about the death of an old friend and consummate man of words, Professor John Igo. John was a San Antonio educator, writer, artist, photographer, producer, and critic. He kept us all on the straight and narrow path with our word usage in his delightful radio program called Grammar Gripes.

John leaves a legacy that is wide and deep across the arts and letters community – he will be greatly missed.

John Igo

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What a weekend – high fives all around

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I absolutely love showing off my students’ work, and this weekend I had two workshop opportunities to give a round of high fives!

Saturday, the talented Karen McCauley, artist and teacher at the Coppini Academy, brought her group over to the studio for three hours of encaustic  collage exploration. Here are some of the details of their work – notice the depth and texture that the beeswax layers produce. (Remember, if you can’t see the photo gallery, click on the top of this post to take you to the original site)

Lots of people ask me about the foil that produces those fine gold lines – encaustic artists call it “Book Foil.” I learned about it from Michelle Belto. You can order it under other names, including this one from Amazon. Just remember, it takes a few layers of wax to make it stick to the surface of your work.

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On Sunday, I taught an acrylic painting workshop inspired by some of the techniques I learned with Jane Davies at our Big Fat Art Weekend – line, shape, texture pattern, layering (thanks, Jane!).

This was not an easy workshop to grasp, particularly for beginning painters who had just three hours to practice the process. but they did it! The abstract acrylic studies they produced are beautifully symbolic and richly constructed over layers of marks and color history. Take a look!

I am convinced that there is some sort of magic synergy that takes place at the Studio when a group gathers for a three-hour workshop. The students never fail to amaze me – and themselves – with their insightful artwork. They help make Lyn Belisle Studio a true place of creative belonging, and, dang, am I grateful! Good work, everyone – what a winner of a weekend!

 

 

 

Jane Davies workshop, Day Two

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Today’s workshop was as intense and enjoyable as yesterday’s, and we all worked just as hard. Jane had us build on yesterday’s foundation paintings, adding more shapes, lines, veils and pattern. She focused on contrasts of scale, value and hue. It was tough to paint over our previous hard work, but it resulted in growth and options – and a bit of good-natured grumbling.

Jane strongly suggests beginning with a list of elements to explore and use that to get into the piece until the process itself takes over. She has many techniques to help move the painting forward, and a lot of those can be found right here on her website, but working with her in person is amazing. She also plays a mean ukulele – we painted to “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Take a look at some of today’s photos to see how we are progressing. As to where we’ll end up . . .it’s a mystery – but tomorrow is our last day! Stay tuned, y’all.

 

Dale Jenssen Workshop at the Studio

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mirror

Contemporary mirror by Dale Jenssen, 2015 – owned by me! Yay!

Dale Jenssen is a multi-talented artist whose work I love. I have one of her iconic mirrors and several pieces of her jewelry. Whenever I wear the earrings she created, other artist friends always admire them and say, “Dale, right?”

Exciting news – Dale is coming to Lyn Belisle Studio in June for a one-time afternoon workshop to show you how to create these wonderful earrings from metal, beads and small found objects. You will NOT want to miss this. You can find the details here.

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I met Dale several years ago through the Fiber Artists of San Antonio – yep, she’s an amazing fiber artist as well as metals sculptor. Check out two of her creations for FASA, below, and don’t miss the chance to work with Dale at my Studio on June 12th. I’m so excited!! Thanks, Dale, and TGIF, Y’all.

Artful Gathering, Artful Abstraction

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180 wingsAs you might guess, I’m excited to be teaching at Artful Gathering Online Art Retreats 2016, June 6 – July 17 and July 16 – August 26. The preseason kick-off includes the Artful Gathering annual Hop Contest.  I’m one of the featured  instructors this week! Just follow this link

These are the two uber-nifty classes I’m teaching for Artful Gathering – both designed by yours truly –
A Story Within a Story: Narrative Collage Covers for your Personal Technology & Journals and The Mystical Cat Shaman. Be very afraid of that cat one – Meow!

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What’s in it for you, you ask?  When you join the class for just $85 each session, you get almost three hours of video instruction right from my studio, plus “live” feedback in our online classroom. And these workshops are never “sold out.”

This is my third year with Artful Gathering, and I wasn’t sure how it all worked when I first started. But it’s very cool! And you can come to class in your PJs! Registration opens on May 1st. Hope to see you at Artful Gathering!

smNow – –  on to ARTFUL ABSTRACTION.

Wednesday’s workshop, Abstract Acrylic Exploration, was hard work – just ask any of the participants! Painting from an abstract perspective is like walking a tightrope without a net – there are no representational objects to look at. You are on your own, trusting the process and making decisions every moment while trying not to over-think. It’s tough.

I am so proud of their results! Each of the students had the same guidelines (layers, textures, limited palette with just two colors on a 12×12″ canvas) but individuality ruled! Take a look at these amazing abstracts – intricate, passionate, personal – nice work, everyone!

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Indigo Wednesday

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I’ve scheduled a few Wednesday afternoon workshops this spring at the Studio  and it’s working out well. Yesterday’s Indigo session was kind of a “test drive” of the three hour format – the second Indigo workshop is on Sunday, and there is another special request group on Monday, so the Studio will be blue for almost a week.

Wednesday’s participants had some excellent suggestions about how to keep the dyeing process flowing during the short three hours. It was a rainy day, so our drying was done inside or on the bench under the awning. Everything clicked, the indigo did its magic, and we had a fantastic time.

I’ll be wrapping up the indigo experiences next week and will give you some tips and resources on how you can do this at home or in your own studio. One of the most-repeated comments from yesterday’s students was , “This is sooooo much easier than I thought it would be!” And it is!

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Sunday’s workshop rocked

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GET IT? It was a Pebble Mosaic workshop! Well, the pun may be bad, but the workshop was great – David Chidgey, Master Mosaicist, did a splendid job of teaching us how to turn pebbles into art. We learned new terms, such as “Interstice” (pronounced inter-STEE-cee) and “scratch coat.” We delighted in picking through bins of tiny multi-colored pebbles looking for just the right one to fit our designs. There wasn’t (much) rock throwing. Honest.

Free free to admire our results in the video (below). Not bad for beginners – high fives to everyone, especially David!

I was afraid for a while that I’d never make it home in time for the workshop. My plane out of Boston was delayed and I missed a connection in Minneapolis and had to stay there overnight. Unfortunately, that caused me to miss the opening of the HotWax/Cold Wax show in Kerrville. Bummer. But I’ll get there soon.

One good thing the trip delay provided was extra time to play with some iPad art. I’m trying to learn ProCreate, a really cool digital art program that I had mentioned in an earlier blog post. The experimental work below is a photo of my water bottle in the seat-back pocket on the plane, combined with a selfie and some other stuff, including some filters and special effects. (You can see a warning about keeping your seat-belt fastened while seated if you look closely.)

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So, see – you can make art anywhere, even on a plane (especially if you have an iPad), and out of anything, even plain old pebbles (especially if you have David Chidgey). Artists are never at a loss for fodder.

Hope you all have a great week – it sure is nice to be back in Texas.

PS – Registration for most of the summer workshops at the Studio is now open at this link – yay!

Composition Camp – transferring ideas

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In yesterday’s workshop at the Studio, we explored composition through a mixed-media collage process using Ebony pencils, watercolor pencils, stencils, graphite transfer paper, white tempera paint, TAP heat transfers and digitally altered images. This non-traditional combination of tools led to some pretty spectacular results!

Image transfer, whether done with graphite sheets, TAP paper, gel mediums or any other method is simply another way of selectively inputting and arranging images on a substrate. It’s neither “cheating” or “tracing.” Even if drawing is not your forte, you can use graphite media to produce striking lights and darks in a classic drafting  style. Look at some of the work by iconic painter Larry Rivers to see how a master uses this technique.

We had some poets and prose writers in yesterday’s group – always a good sign for cross-genre inspiration! And our post-workshop critique was one of the best I can remember. There were lots of dream images and personal insights floating around. Fascinating stuff! Here are a few photos from a very rich and productive afternoon! Thanks, All!

I’m headed to Boston tomorrow for a few days so I can see the family and come home with a renewed appreciation of South Texas temperatures (it’s supposed to be 17F while I’m there – yikes). Now, y’all go outside, smell the Mountain Laurel, and bask in this lovely weather!

Texas Mountain Laurel - scratch and sniff :)

Texas Mountain Laurel – scratch and sniff 🙂

 

 

Calligraphy Guild, a project for YOU, and a Friday Freebie – or two . . .

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10Last night, I visited the San Antonio Calligraphy Guild to show them how to make a pretty paper pocket purse/pendant project (say that three times fast) and a folding votive screen card. Calligraphers are nice people! I can’t wait to see how they take these projects and adapt them to their own many talents.

Here are some photos – there were 30+ participants, all cutting and gluing and having fun and following the directions (mostly!)

ppppI thought that YOU might like to have the directions for the pretty paper pocket purse, so as the first Friday Freebie, I’m giving you a link to the downloadable Pocket Pattern handout that I gave the calligraphers last night. All you need is 9×12″ construction paper and 8.5×11″ decorative paper, plus some ribbon and such. Easy!

And to sweeten the deal (after all, it’s getting close to Valentine’s Day), I’ll give away TWO Friday Freebies, the little purses pictured below, one to each of two lucky SHARDS subscribers. Just be a subscriber by Sunday at midnight – winners announced Monday morning. Good luck, and happy weekend!!

Dragonfly

Dragonfly

Gaisha

geisha

Composition Camp commences with collages

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My demo collage created during Sunday’s Composition Camp workshop – 8×10″, mixed media, titled “Again?”

First workshop of the year taught by ME (yay!- I love teaching workshops) was Part One of Composition Camp. So what is Composition Camp?? It’s an intensive three-hour workshop directed toward planning and starting your artwork with strong composition bones, no matter in what medium. And it’s super easy.

I’ve developed a composition system called the AB3’s, which stands for

  • Alignment
  • Breathing Room
  • Threes and Thirds

It’s kind of like a simple kick-start for your artwork because it lets you know in advance where your main elements will be most effective. The students in yesterday’s Composition Camp: Collage workshop were given a folder with photos of a random person and a random cat along with some scraps of paper – they had to make a narrative collage using only those elements.  Everyone  took the challenge and ran with it. Take a look!

Before we began our work yesterday, we talked about painterly influences on collage imagery, particularly the works of Larry Rivers and Robert Rauschenberg, two of my favorite artists ever. Rauschenberg said that he works “in the gap between art and life,”  that he wanted to question the distinction between everyday objects and art objects. I like that!

Robert Rauschenberg, Buffalo II, 1964

Larry Rivers, French Money, 1962

It’s always good to go to the Masters for inspiration! There are two more sessions of Composition Camp to come, and there will be more in the summer and fall.