Welcome to the first Live Online Fabric Collage class of my (so-called) sabbatical year. I may be staying home, cozy in my studio, but through this and other upcoming classes, I can still keep up with teaching and the satisfaction it brings. As I make my way around an online classroom, students send updated photos of their projects to Tom, who sets them up in a way that I can closely examine and annotate them (see Tracy Hughes’ photo above). It’s a process that has been working great in so many ways—for my students and for us. Last week was fabulous—these ladies inspired me by their creativity and their dedication to working so hard throughout the five days of class.
Students from all over the US participated—California, Kansas, Utah, Oregon, Oklahoma, Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, and from just an hour and a half from us in Maine. A few of them had extra-curricular activities to add to their week of collage, such as: volunteering at a voting center; selling their house; celebrating a birthday; preparing their home for a holiday tour and expecting hundreds of viewers beginning the day after class ended; preparing for and going through knee replacement surgery; house training an absolutely adorable new puppy; evacuating and re-locating their workspace due to a hurricane; and being at hand for the birth of their second grand baby. Did I miss anyone?
Yet through all that, as you’ll see in the following post—and in the next two weeks of posts—their collage projects became a positive focus and a break from other concerns. They accomplished much in their five days of class. It’s truly the wonder of the internet that folks can attend together from such far apart locations, interact with each other on such a creative basis and become friends who keep tabs on the weather, surgery, babies, and day-to-day progress and stress levels of their fellow classmates. It was a pleasure for Tom and I to work with each and every one of these twelve ladies.
And now, let me introduce you to the first four from the self-named “Paws-a-tives” breakout room. The ladies from the other two Zoom breakout rooms—the “Doggone-Its” and “Hodgepodgers”—will be introduced in our next two Saturday blog posts.
Paws-a-tives
Jan Weibe
Goal: learning the fabric collage process on her son’s husky, Dungey’s, portrait.
From the very beginning, Jan Wiebe, from Kansas, had a great selection of fabrics to work with for Dungey’s portrait—especially for his black fur (with lovely blue and aqua print accents for his lighter bits of black fur) and the more greyed out values of his white fur. She worked with the prints in those fabrics very nicely to give his fur lots of visual interest and texture.
About halfway through the week, it became clear that lighter white values were needed, so Jan headed off to a local fabric shop to try her luck at finding patterned whites to give him the light value boost he needed—aquas were a second option for the lightest values. The Muse of Fabric Collage was looking out for her as she returned with a great selection of whites and creams, all with interesting prints that she could merge with the grey values to bring out the brightest parts of his fluffy fur.
Jan has since attended our monthly Zoom meeting for Patreon subscribers to get further guidance on Dungey’s progress—I’d guess that she’s finished filling him in already.
Tracy Hughes
Goal: bringing out the personality—active and fun—of mini-Aussie, Mudgie. Plus adding more color to his tri-colors.
Tracy Hughes from Oklahoma (though she grew up in Maine and says she still considers herself a Mainer) had a breakthrough mid-week. At the beginning of every collage there’s the stage that I call the “messy scary stage,” and walls will be hit. I know that from my own work and I warn my students about it. Tracy hit it hard, but we were able to figure out how to get her through. Thank goodness we did, since she just took off after that, soon creating a fantastic eye and face for her portrait of Mudgie.
If you look at Tracy’s original drawing above, and compare it to the screenshot below, you’ll notice that there are quite a few less lines. She had a great original drawing, she just saw too much detail in her subject.
The solution was to lay tracing paper over the first drawing and then, while referring to the source photo, pick and choose which lines to follow, concentrating primarily on his color changes, and leaving out most of the value changes. That’s all it took, ’cause before you knew it, that eye was in place. Tracy’s on a roll now.
Of course all this was happening as Tracy and her family were on labor watch. Tracy got a bit less sleep in the middle of class week as she welcomed grand baby Logan (below with his grandpa Bob) into the world. Congratulations again to Tracy and her family!
Janet Wilson
Goal: learning to work with color tones within blues and yellows, creating movement (contours) on her dog Flower’s face. And working with flowered fabrics, of course!
The next (and final) two students in the Paws-a-tives are mother and daughter, Janet Wilson and Janelle Nimer, both from Utah. They work together with Canine Companions for Independence with their dogs Flower and Galaxy—and they worked together on their subjects at Janet’s home. We knew Janet would only have three good working days in class before her already scheduled knee replacement—Janelle had arranged to be her caretaker for the next month. So it just happened that they had time (somewhat) cleared for the week when I advertised the class.
Both Janet and Janelle had an overabundance of good photos to choose from—Flower and Galaxy are working dogs after all, and have had professional photo portraits taken in the past. For the purpose of this fabric collage portrait, we chose the pose lower center in screen shot above for Janet’s Flower. We did this as part of the pre-class coaching Tom and I provide as part of a Live Online class.
Getting students past the photo selection step to being able to begin the class week with their line drawing enlarged and ready for piecing to begin is a big advantage as far as our time together goes. Janet planned to be back on Friday, even if just cutting out more fabric pieces with her leg elevated! She did get home on Friday, but alas, not in time to get back to class.
Even with a shortened week for Janet (Janelle was able to drop into and out of class on Thursday and Friday), Flower got a great start with a lovely nose—a good nose takes time, just ask any of the eight students in this class working on dog noses—there was a lot of commiserating, and congratulating, going around the classroom! Janet also found nice contoured prints to give the movement she was looking for across the bridge of Flower’s nose and for her big dark eyes.
Janelle Nimer
Goal: blending fabrics, with an emphasis on collaging with “galaxy” patterned fabrics, for Galaxy’s portrait.
In Janelle’s pre-class coaching session, she chose the photo below for Galaxy’s portrait—best for portraying her regal pose—that of a pharaoh, Janelle said. She described Galaxy’s personality as a “Queen Bee,” keeping an eye on things and intent on her duties as a therapist for the humans in her care. It was interesting for me to hear how each dog has their special therapeutic talents.
Janelle had collected quite a few fabrics of a galaxy/universe theme. As you can imagine, many were quite dark with stars and moons, but also golden stars and suns—most in high contrast to each other. So for interpreting a softly shaded, light colored dog into a fabric portrait, she had her work cut out for her (so to say;-)) fabric-wise. But as Janelle worked away, you could see her pharaonic vision starting to take shape. Personally, I enjoy the challenge of working with novelty prints such as Galaxy’s fabric palette, and I’m thrilled with where Janelle is going—it’s like Galaxy is turning into one of those gilded statues found in ancient Egyptian tombs.
Very inspiring.
And as a final inspirational photo for you, Janelle shared her fingernail art—during our pre-class coaching session—right around Halloween. 🙂
Fly on the Wall: Susan Carlson Studio Watch 2022-2023
I have scheduled three new month-long Fly on the Wall: Susan Carlson Studio Watch series. The first, this December 2022, will continue my lace-collaged polar bear “Winfrieda.” The second Fly on the Wall series in January, may be popular with those interested in portraiture—as I create a portrait of my mom, Meta, as a shining sun. The subject of the third series in May is yet to be determined.
• Fly on the Wall—December: Winfrieda #2
December 1, 8, 15, 22, 2022
$78
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
All those who sign up for this upcoming December Fly on the Wall series will be given access to an hour-long video combining the four opening slideshow presentations from the October Winfrieda series #1 (see beginning and end photos above). This will allow those who may have missed the first series to easily catch up to where the second series will begin.
For those who previously registered for Winfrieda #1 in October, you already have access to the full recordings of those weekly sessions. Check your mailbox for an email from Zoom with the links or contact Tom ([email protected]).
Want to know more about what Winfrieda the polar bear is all about? See below, for the recorded free introductory session released prior to the October series.
• Fly on the Wall—January: Sunshine Oma
January 5, 12, 19, 26, 2023
$98
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
To begin 2023, I’ve set a goal for myself to collage a portrait of my lovely mama (a.k.a. Oma) as a radiant sun face—to have ready for her 90th birthday at the end of January.
I know that quite a few of you, my readers, are also interested in pursuing this sort of personal adaptation to both my sun and moon patterns. With that in mind, I’m thinking that some of you may be interested in “working along” with me throughout the month of January. If so, I suggest you sit back and take in my Fly on the Wall portrait as a demo to give you ideas for your own version.
Therefore, in addition to the slideshow, demo, Q&A, and full recordings of the four presentations, registrants will also receive all of the following:
• A free PDF of my Sun Portrait pattern.
• Free access to the Thursday Night in My Studio Live! recorded presentation (see preview below) that explains how to adapt my Sun Face pattern to a photo of a particular person.
• And a $20 discount for a one-on-one coaching session scheduled for January or February 2023—in case you’re interested in specialized help with your own work-along creation.
If desired, the video previewed above can also be purchased without Fly on the Wall registration through this link. If you attended my 2020 Thursday Night in My Studio Live! presentations, you may already own the recording—check your vimeo.com account.
• Fly on the Wall—May: Subject TBD
May 4, 11, 18, 25, 2023
SAVE THE DATE!
May is just too far ahead for me to know what I’ll be working on by then. However, when inspiration hits I’ll let you know! Stay tuned for information on the subject and registration.
Hi Susan and Tom,
Today’s post is one of my all time favorites. As a fellow dog lover, I enjoy seeing beloved family dogs spring to life through the magical medium of fabric collage. But, the personal life stories that were shared made each project even more interesting. Jan, I’m sure your son will cherish Dungey’s portrait. Janelle, so kind of you to help your mom and I love Galaxy’s progress! Congratulations, Tracy, on your beautiful new grandbaby–and to Janet on your new knee! I look forward to seeing all four of these beautiful dogs in a future “finish line”.