50 Drawings with Carolyn Sullivan

Hello All

Here I am yet again. I know it has been a while, but I have been very busy making & creating.

On the 3rd & 4th of this month July, I did an amazing workshop with Carolyn Sullivan. We had to choose a piece of Textiles from the Guild collection as our inspiration & then creat 50 drawings. This is the name of the workshop. 50 Drawings.

Below you can see some of the things that I have done in this workshop. I do hope to get around to doing a lot more as I am no where near the 50 drawings as yet.

The piece that I chose to do was a piece from the UK's Embroiderers Guild collection. It is a piece that I love & have in the past done work from it. You can see what I did on module one's homework from my city & guilds course.

Here are some photos of the 50 drawings workshop:

The workshop was not as scary as I thought it would be doing 50 drawings☺ Most of our drawings where made with paints & papers. There was a little drawing on the first day☺☺ On the first day we made a book from just one piece of paper, then on pages 4&5 we had to glue a piece of newspaper to one & scrunched up tissue on the other.

Page 1:

Page2:

Page3:
Page4:
Page5:

Then we had to turn back to pages 1, 2 & 3 & divide these into four. On page one we drew sets of dots in each of the four sections. Then on page 2 we had to draw horizontal & vertical line patterns in each of the sections, on page 3 we combined dots & lines. On pages 4 & 5 we had to do the line & dot combinations again only this time we where not working on plain white surfaces.

Page 6 we had to create a collage of some of the papers we brought with us, then on pages 7 & 8 we has to do the line & dot thing again only this time we did them in collage & only page 7 had any drawing on it.

Page6:

Page7:

Page8:

After that exercise we then took our designs that we took with us, & had to pick out a small section of it to work with. We then glued this onto some of the coloured water colour paper we brought & then had to do a water colour wash over the top. We then choose just one element out of this design & drew it & enlarged it to fit our pages. This was what we used for most of the workshop, this one element. I chose a butterfly.

On the next page we had to then draw our butterfly well i drew a butterfly☺ & using either dots or lines we had to shade it it creating shadows. From this we then chose an element from the butterfly to then create a collage for a back ground. I chose the wing shapes to create my collage once we made a background we then added lots of our design.

Then to end the day we made some rubbing plates ready for the next day. These where from our drawings & where made by drawing our designs on some card with PVA glue. When the glue was dry they created the rubbing plates.

Pages 1&2

Pages 3&4 I have used the rubbing plate created the day before & used oil pastels to do the rubbing. Afterwards I have then added a water colour wash.

Pages 5&6: Page 5 I have used the rubbing plate & a candle. Then done a water colour wash over the top. Page 6 I have drawn on the butterflies then cut out some of the elements of the butterfly to reveal what is on the page behind.

Pages 7&8: These pages I have just done a water colour wash over. You can see the cut out from the previous page.

Pages 9&10: On page 9 I have taken some of the papers I painted up for the workshop & cut & weaved them back together again. On page 10 we had to create four small collages, but had to treat each one differently. Progressing from the first one.

Page 11: On page 11 we had to creat a collage tieing together everything that we have done over the two days, & adding the design that we started with.

These pictures below are the same as most of the above photos the only difference is that I have added elements to them.


















Here on day two we played with mono printing. Taking a positive & negative print of our designs.









This collage that I did on day one still needs some work doing to it. I am going to add some of the butterflies.

Day two of the workshop was very full on. In the morning we all sat around & listened to the tutor give us some demos of what we had to do for the rest of the day. There were about 9 in total. That kept us relatively busy till lunch time, Then after lunch we watched a short DVD from Jean Littlejohn about sketch books. Then the tutor gave another short talk on some design ideas that we could work on at our own leisure.

Then we went off & played for the rest of the day☺ It was very relaxing & very informative & great seeing what everyone else was doing with what we had learned.

I am still working on these pieces & adding to them. I still have quite a few things to work on as I did not get started on all 9 of the things that the tutor wanted us to do on day two. Once I have finishe doing all of the design ideas & have my 50 drawings, they will then be made into a book.

That will be another post ☺

Hope you have enjoyed reading about this workshop & try some of them for yourself. And who said you could not draw ☺ Have fun & happy creating.

Big Hugs Your Friend Elizabeth xx