Friday 31 March 2017

Snapshot Girls

A friend and I have set up a group in Solihull called Snapshot Girls.  It's for women who like to take photos and who want to grow their photography skills in an encouraging environment.  We meet on the first Monday of the month.
We borrowed the idea and logo (with permission) from Snapshot Girls Swansea

We share our photos and discuss what we like about them and what different things could have been done with the subject.  I'm only going to share my photos here on my blog.

For our first sharing session we were asked to share 5 photos that summed up our style or interests.  Gosh, it was difficult to pare it down to 5.  I have thousands of photos.  However here is what I chose:





We chose trees as our subject for the next session.  Quite often people think it's difficult to take photos on a dull day or that you have to take a photo of the whole tree.  Don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with taking a photo of the whole tree but I am much more interested in the patterns and the textures.





Any ladies out there in blogland that live in the Solihull area and would be interested in joining us, please message me.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice




Monday 27 March 2017

Call to Adventure 10

This challenge was to pay attention to signs of decay.   I frequently take photos of crumbling buildings, peeling paint and rust.

So this time whilst out walking I thought I would concentrate on decay in nature and particularly trees.











I started looking for leaves that were decaying.

This is my favourite.  The decayed leaf is so embedded into the path that it looks like a fossil.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Friday 24 March 2017

ExTex - The Finale

Well it's over.  A nine month investment into creativity.  9 weekends of learning and playing finished with an exhibition at the Fashion & Embroidery Show at the NEC.

We had a fabulous exhibiton space and many visitors who made super comments about our work. Kim chose a selection of items from each of the 10 students to make up this amazing array of work.   She chose several f mine that were featured in my last ExTex post.








My final piece was a set of books hanging as a mobile.

The books mostly moved about except when I tried to film them!


And of course you can't go to a show and not spend money. Well, my plan was to go and NOT spend money.  But inevitably I did. 

I don't usually buy these blocks but this one had my name on it.

And then! I watched a Hilary Beattie video and was able to do this with the blue foamy thingy.

I'm really looking forward to working with this block.  I'll report back!

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Monday 20 March 2017

Bloxwich to Pelsall

Last week Roger and I went for another of our canal walks.  We took the train to Bloxwich and walked from there to Pelsall along the Wyrley and Essington Canal.

I have so many photos from all our canal walks and there are only so many photos of brown water going round a bend that one person could want.

So I decided to be a little more intentional about my photographs.



 




I don't usually take photographs of grafitti because usually I can't tell what they say and I worry that it might be something rude.  However the quality of this art and the shading was so good.

And here are a couple of abstract art reflections.


Despite being intentional I still came home with 43 photographs.  However that's less than half of what I usually take.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice

Friday 17 March 2017

Ruth Issett workshop

I recently attended a two day workshop organised by Becca of Textile Explorations.  It was held in a fabulous community association building in Yate near Bristol.

The workshop was taught by Ruth Issett who is well known for her colour expertise.   The first process of the day was to dye 9 main colours.   Ruth had chosen Antique Gold, Golden, Lemon, Magenta, Carmine Red, Scarlet, Medium Blue, Cerulean Blue and Turquoise.

Here are all my fabrics, dried and ironed.  (Yes! I picked up an iron!)

The second process involved choosing 2 colours which we mixed in 3 different proportions to create a family of colour.  Here are mine drying overnight.

And altogether before ironing.  Yes I ironed these as well.

I recorded the colour mixing for each set of 2 colours.



Two of the colour families followed on from each other.

I love this bundle of threads that frayed from the fabrics.

These are all the little bits I cut of each strip I stuck into my sketchbook.

I used some of the little bits to make these colour collages which need to be stitched.

The two days were fantastic.  I learned such a lot.

Thank you Becca for organising the workshop.  And thanks to Ruth for her excellent teaching.

Thanks for stopping by.
Bernice