A workshop and a trip.....

I've been off the radar for a couple of weeks teaching and sight seeing......in the Pacific North West..
many things...wonderful things!!  Maybe there will be watercolors and quilts as a result, but certainly a lot of great memories.

We visited the Olympic National Park.  Unlike much of  the coastline of the USA, the Olympic peninsula coastline is a national park protected by our forefathers long ago so that we all could enjoy it.  It was wonderful to see open beaches and natural vegetation, no endless hotels and condos (my mother used to call them condoms, perhaps she was right...), no hoardings, no fast foods and exhortations to consume +++

and  the Butchart gardens on Vancouver Island...which were steaming with people but enough flowers for all!

And I think both of these images could be simplified into pleasing compositions with good structure and focal points without too much manipulation.

The view from one wonderful home was awe-inspiring:

On pictures like this you really can't beat nature...best just to look and look and look....and not try to interpret..I think.  Especially with your feet up and a glass of wine!

And the workshop went so beautifully - everyone working away hard and all producing very personal and very different work - see below...

first the studies on paper...which meant that many went home with lots of ideas for future work...and then beginning on a fabric piece...

My goal is always to open up possibilities..different designs that you can achieve from one photograph, encouragement to try different value patterns, to consider mood and personal interpretation..and simplicity.  So I show lots of O'Keefe and Dove and Avery and Katz in order to inspire.

For the first time I had interpreted most of my lecture notes into Power Point presentations which made the design points so clearly and were much better to look at than my physog trying to explain design niceties!  

There was lots more work, I just didn't have good photos of everyone....

and now for a nice cuppa tea while I think about my own work!

There's more info about my workshops on my website, by the way.

And I start a different online workshop with the Academy of Quilting every  month.

Dyeing to Design (which covers many different kinds of surface design) in August;

Abstract Art for Quiltmakers in September.

If you have been, thanks for reading and looking!!   Elizabeth