Happiness is ...: An Art Retreat

Monday, December 04, 2017

An Art Retreat

The end of October I had an awesome vacation at an art retreat with ReMe Retreats. It was a week of relaxation and creativity run by Jodi Ohl and Jean Skipper. They tag team on on the projects for the week. More on that below.

One of the things they do is send attendees a blank item to decorate and this time it was a wooden block shaped like a house. One of the things I like is there is no pressure to finish it but it is always a fun project. I decorated mine with gelli prints, some of which I doodle on. It's hard to see but I had some wire tag frames from my scrapbooking days that I used to frame out the doors and windows. Hammered them a bit to give them more texture.

For the retreat the first thing we worked on was what Jodi calls Zen painting. We started with gesso board and played with a number of water soluble pencils to design shapes and lines.

Then used paynes grey and nickle azo for shading along with some grey tones.

Then more colors. I still have more to do to add depth but it is a start.

Our next batch of projects revolved around copper etching. So much fun and I may have to invest in some of the supplies to do this at home. The etching is done using stamps, stazon ink, sharpies, and then etching acid. The acid eats away around the ink so where you stamped or drew is the raised portion.

This is another project using a box made from barn wood and hanging one of the finished necklaces in it. Haven't figured out which wall this is going to hang on and I don't think I'm done with embellishing the box yet.

One of the other things we did was a field trip to one of the local pottery shops. They taught us how to use horse hair and coffee grounds to create patterns. So much fun!