In my latest Live Online Class I had the highest ever percentage of canine subject matter. Of the twelve students, eight of them were creating dog portraits. Eight dog noses! (See nose annotations on Kelly Stafford’s “Molly” above.) Eight pairs of dog eyes and dog ears! Two of the three breakout rooms of this online class were all dog subjects, which in one way is beneficial for the students, as what I say to one student in a breakout room may be useful to all of them.
The four students in this breakout room were a mix of first-timers and returning students—half and half. In any collage project, the first push is to just get started. Then, with beginners, my effort is spent encouraging them to keep going—to push through the walls they may hit—to not get caught up with details when the basics aren’t in place yet. Instead, they need to get enough fabric pieces pinned down so that they have something for me to look at and (with my help) to fix up.
With more experienced students, if they’re cruising along I don’t want to kill any momentum they’ve got going, but if they have specific questions, I’m not concerned to pause and take our time working on the finer details with them. I know that the rest will come along as they continue to work on the collage, even if it’s after class has ended.
As I said previously in Part 1: the Paws-atives, we had students attending from all over the U.S: California, Kansas, Utah, Oregon, Oklahoma, Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, and from just an hour and a half from us in Maine. Some of you might be wondering how we handle the time difference between me and others in the Eastern time zone with my students spread across the continent. The solution is simple enough—here in the east we start at 11:00 a.m. and finish at 6:00 p.m. Central time class runs from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Mountain time 9:00 to 4:00, and Pacific time 8:00 to 3:00. This means that those on the east coast may do a little work before class begins, while those on the west coast may work a little bit after class.
And now, let me introduce you to the second group of students in this class, who named themselves the “Doggone-Its.” The ladies from the first Zoom breakout room, the “Paws-atives” were featured in a previous post here. The third group, the “Hodgepodgers”, will be introduced in next Saturday’s blog post.
Doggone-Its
Be sure to check out the Special Edition Finish Line:Live Online Class that we posted last Saturday over Thanksgiving weekend, featuring an impressive gallery of previously completed quilts from students in this class. The students from the Doggone-Its all had quilts featured in that post—between the four of them, there’s an impressive 16 fabric collage quilts in the “walk-through” Finish Line gallery! Wow!
In this post, you’ll get to see how their next collage creations get their start!
Jackie Dalley
Goal: to get acclimated to the process of fabric collage and to “loosen up” to create the big picture without getting caught up in the details.
Jackie Dalley and her sister Frankie Martinez (next up below) attended this online class together, from opposite coasts of the country—Massachusetts and California.
From Jackie:
My favorite part of class time was the one-on-one check-ins with Susan where we could get into detailed feedback. Susan has such a good eye and is able to figure out quickly where you need to make adjustments, This was also a great chance to discuss individual next steps, since all of us progressed at different rates. Susan is really good at tailoring her feedback for the level of each individual student. We all started with different fabric collage experience, and what is meaningful to one student could go right over the head of another. Susan was great at addressing each of us at our own level.
In the pre-class coaching with Jackie, we addressed combining the two photos of Bodie in order to give him two ears in the drawing that Jackie would be working from—it worked great. It wasn’t long into the class week that I asked if Jackie had any art experience—for a first collage, she already had a knack for color, values, and using the fabric patterns as contour. Turns out, she did. If I remember correctly (please correct me Jackie!), she had been a college-level costume design instructor—her eye for detail and love of fabric was evident.
Jackie obviously had the skills for even the details, but one of her goals was to work on the “big picture” and avoid getting caught in overthinking any one area. So that was my job, to remind her to work more intuitively and not to second-guess, yet. It’s hard to determine if a particular piece of fabric is “right” until (at least) it gets surrounded by more fabric pieces. So Jackie was able to cover a lot of area on Bodie during the course of the week.
For my Patreon supporters, Jackie has already submitted a current version of Bodie (he’s fabulous) for December’s monthly Zoom meeting review—so be sure to tune in, or check out the recording later. I look forward to working with her again.
Frankie Martinez
Goal: to learn as much as she can, especially with the blending of fabrics.
Frankie Martinez of California wanted to create a portrait of her son’s dog, PeaKay. I loved that Frankie dove right into combining two different colors—browns and aquas—for this cute little white-furred rescue pup from Mexico. It may be more difficult to mentally switch from side-to-side when you’re interpreting colors and values—especially on a monochromatic subject—but Frankie did a great job with PeaKay.
Click on any photos in these galleries to see them larger.
Once Frankie got past the “messy-scary” stage that all collages go through, and started using some bolder prints, she hit her stride. Getting that little polka-dot nose in place was good to then branch out from. And his eyes. Even at this stage, they’re so expressive and soulful. Toward the end of the week, Frankie had to split her time in class with preparation for a weekend holiday showing in her home (hope that went well, Frankie!), but she was still able to progress to PeaKay’s ears—and has her home already decorated for the holidays!
From Frankie:
I think you have done an amazing job making this workshop user-friendly. I was very impressed with Susan’s ability to annotate our collages and referencing our drawings and our photos. It made it very easy to understand why and how to make edits. She is not only an amazing creative artist but also a phenomenal teacher. I was also very impressed with the communication, before, during, after the workshop. The Susan-Tom team is a great combo!
LeahGrace Kayler
Goal: to tackle “shadows,” to have this week of time for herself, and to enjoy the groups of students in the class.
From LeahGrace:
As always, Tom and Susan were the best, playing off each other’s strengths, and together providing a caring container within which to explore our visions and our limits.
LeahGrace Kayler has now been in multiple online classes with me, and it’s been a pleasure to get to know her better. She’s got such a great eye for the subtleties of value change—which has been quite helpful for her as she created portraits of her black cat, her local ravens, and her white dog, Baayla. Baayla’s tongue-heavy portrait below, was “finished” in one class, but turned out it was only half of Baayla’s final portrait.
LeahGrace has since moved into a new home in Florida with a big empty space of wall, directly over Baayla’s new food and water spot, photos below. So the already larger-than-life portrait got even larger this week with the addition of Baayla’s legs and chest.
When LeahGrace set her goal to be “shadows,” highlights were part of the deal. I think that she became well acquainted with the ins and outs and lights and shadows of the legs and chest of a sitting dog. She did a remarkable job of tiling together two different photos of Baayla (above) to extend her body all the way to her toes—unfortunately the sunlight was hitting opposite sides of her body in each one. But LeahGrace worked with what she had and chose sunlight from the left, altering Baayla’s original portrait accordingly. By the end of the week, Baayla was beautifully seamless and colorfully “shadow-full.”
Kelly Stafford
Goal: to work with colors and values on her recently passed Molly and to have fun with it.
Kelly Stafford is from Oregon, and Molly isn’t her first canine subject and certainly not the first time Kelly’s used color in their portraits—see Roscoe the chihuahua and Tilly the golden retriever and Moose the schnauzer. She might say they’re monochromatic, but they definitely stretch the boundaries of that definition. So when Kelly talks about using an alternate color palette for Molly the dachshund’s portrait below, she’s talking distinctly multiple colors, like blue, green, and pink (so far). I love the direction she went with those warm greens for Molly’s warm whites. The colors Kelly chose are soft and sweet. Note the depth of Molly’s eyes with the use of a “universe” print fabric.
From Kelly:
I had wanted to work with an alternate color palette and to expand my subject to include the whole dog and background. I got a great start and feel confident going forward on my own.
Kelly is one of the students who I’ve worked with often enough to know she’ll do fine outside of class completing this collage. So we took extra time in class to really delve into one aspect or another—such as Molly’s nose (see opening photo of this post), her yellow/green snout itself, or her wispy ears.
Well, we’ve come to the end of this post, and exhausted Kelly’s newest addition to her family, an adorable puppy of the Cairn terrier variety. I wonder when her portrait will be started?
Amazing doggie collages
So many sweet dogs! And, such beautiful work capturing each dog’s personality–I love seeing so much color!
It’s always inspiring to see what happens in a class. It should encourage everyone to “give it a try.” Enjoy these posts that put each room together.
How do you get the outline of the picture? What program are you using.