Back at the beginning of this summer, at the end of June—which somehow seems both like yesterday and a year ago at least—I taught a Live Online class focusing on collaged portraits only. This was the first such portrait-focused class I’ve taught—either online or in-person. The reason for this is that portraiture can be quite challenging—and that’s even before you put fabric into the mix! Of course, there’s been many, many fabric portraits collaged in my classes over the years, they just haven’t been everyone’s subject in one class. But since that sort of focus could be a good idea, I had to give it a try sometime—and at the end of June, it finally came to be. Above, in-progress double portrait by Jackie Dalley.
To make this portraiture class the best possible experience, I first limited the class to eight students—knowing there’d be more complicated questions asked with portraits than let’s say, fish. I wanted to be sure to have the class time to address their needs as they came up. Second, these students all came with previous fabric collage experience, having taken at least two or more classes with me—so that I already understood how they approached and worked on projects, and they already understood me when I talked about “drafts” or”blending” or “fabric palette” or “values.” And it all worked beautifully. I think you’ll quite enjoy seeing what this class accomplished in our five days together.
In anticipating this portraits class, I wanted to provide these students a resource of portraiture information that could be referred to before or after class, or when I otherwise occupied with their classmates. In other classes, for this same reason, I make sure that all my students own the Fabric Collage Master Class. For all online classes, I provide pre-recorded daily videos covering all the aspects of the collage technique. For this portraiture class, I also gathered together a collection of eight videos that became the Facial Features eWorkshop. This eWorkshop covers each of the features that make up a face—nose, mouth, eyes, and so on and is now available to anyone who would like more guidance on collage portraiture—working well with and elaborating on information found in the Fabric Collage Master Class.
East-Coasters
The two breakout rooms for this class were decided by time-zones: today you will meet the East-Coasters—next week will be the Women of the Wild West.
A couple weeks after class ended, Tom and I hosted a special Follow-Up Day thank you for this particular class, seeing how it was postponed from March after my mom passed, and then in June, the daily class schedule needed to be re-arranged so Tom and I could take mid-day naps in order to get us through our Covid infections (good thing this was an online class!). These ladies were so kind and accommodating about it all, even those on the West Coast who ended up beginning their class days at 7am!
Below you will see their class photos, Follow-Up Day progress photos, and photos of previous fabric collage quilts they sent in for a show-and-share with their classmates. Thank you, East Coasters!
Leigh McMorrow
Goal for the week: “Push the color” in a portrait and also, “I just wish I could work faster. I tend to obsess over a certain spot when I should just leave it for the next draft.”
I get it, “push the color,” I think that’s what attracts many people to my own work, and to take classes from me—the use of color. Among other classes, Leigh was in my November 2022 online collage class and took her first steps in color-pushing with her fantastical Highland Coo, “Princess Rosette Nicole.” You’re just going to have click on the link above to read the story about that travel and hurricane inspired beauty. Anyway, after Her Highness Rosette, Leigh was well on her way to letting go of realistic color in her collages, though letting go in portraits is a bit different than when it’s a hairy bovine. But Leigh has a great instinct for color and by keeping a particular “inspirational” fabric she loved close by, cutting into the bold and colorful patterns, and placing them into the portrait (such as the fan pattern on her forehead above), she kept her goal visually in front of her and it worked to remind her that when in doubt, go for the color. And she did.
From Leigh:
This photo of my sister and I has always been one of my favorites. Just a couple of Florida kids playing outside, stopping only for a second so our Dad could snap this pic.
The online classes are no different than the in person experience. With Susan’s ability to annotate on the screen she can virtually show you where she would cut fabric; where she might tuck it into your project. I love the convenience of learning while being relaxed at home.
Follow-Up Day Images:
Leigh’s other goal for the class was to “work faster and realize you can come back to it later.” Yes, that’s how working in drafts are good. If you get some pieces down, but aren’t sure about the yet, don’t over-stress it, move onto a different part of the collage. The more areas you get filled in, the more white space you cover up, the more the collage will emerge from the foundation, and the more ideas you may get for that problem area when you circle back to it.
Between the end of class week and the follow-up day, Leigh got a first-draft of her cute little outfit in place, so we could see better how her arm would look, with its colors and values. During the work day, she made great progress “working faster” on the first draft of her sister’s colorful face.
Show-and-Share Fabric Collage Quilts by Leigh McMorrow (Click on any photo to see them larger)
LeahGrace Kayler
Goal for the week: “I wanted to work with values and textures, allowing them to suggest the fabrics. It feels like a more intuitive way of working – I have to suspend judgment and try something new, and let it stay in the unknown until I have enough information to know whether it’s working or not. This class felt like a giant leap forward for me in working in this way.”
In my class notes, I had an additional goal written from LeahGrace, to be less tight in color. If you scroll down a little, you’ll see that the finished quilts LeahGrace shared are quite close in color to the subjects. Sure, there’s purples, greens, and blues, but they’re kinda “hidden”—LeahGrace is very good with that—including unexpected colors while still indicating what the true colors of the animals are. But in the portrait of her granddaughter, she started pulling out the stops, not just in color, but in visual texture—one of her goals—texture. I absolutely love that she saw a dragon girl from the beginning, and Ella is becoming a sort of mythical nymph.
From LeahGrace:
It’s my granddaughter, Ella, although I told my daughter that Ella was a starting point and the purpose of the exercise was to create a portrait, even if it didn’t look like Ella. I wanted to do a girl dragon because Ella loves dragons, but my daughter wasn’t too keen on that idea. Still, as I worked on Ella’s portrait, I noticed “other-worldly” qualities – like spotted eyelids – show up. So, the fantasy dragon part is in there, insisting on showing up without my even trying to make her that way.
Follow-Up Day Images:
For the follow-up day, LeahGrace had begun Ella’s hair. She wanted to bring more movement into her locks, so we looked at some fabrics for highlights and shadows and talked about how to cut them in ways that created more flow.
Show-and-Share Fabric Collage Quilts by LeahGrace Kayler: (Click on any photo to see them larger)
Jackie Dalley
Goals for the week: “Work in stages,” and, “Collage a pair of glasses!”
In past fabric collages, Jackie found herself working in one area from start to finish before moving on to another area of the subject. While that’s an okay way to work—everyone works a little differently—she wanted to work more in stages, or drafts, keeping the different areas at similar layers of completion, and then going back to add more. She kinda managed that on this double portrait. It’s just that she’s so good at interpreting what she sees, that even her first draft is quite complete. Working in drafts can feel more freeing because you know you’ll be getting back to it, it allows you let go a little of perfection on the first go-round. And that’s good too.
Jackie’s other goal was to create Will’s glasses in the sort-of backwards way I present them in the Facial Features eWorkshop glasses video. And she did a beautiful job. Take special note of the highlight detail she was able to add on the lower edges of his lenses. Now that’s perfection.
Once Jackie got past the glasses, she did seem to work on Will’s portrait as a whole—cheeks for awhile, then moustache, then back to cheeks, etc.—keeping them at similar stages. I happened across Jackie’s comment (below), from the November online class she attended. Here, she was referring to the dog portrait you can see in the Show-and-Share, but I think she’s correct, she certainly was equipped to work looser on her next project, these portraits.
My goal was to loosen up and not get too caught up in detail early on. I would say I partially achieved this–especially on the first day when I was able to get a lot down quickly. Once I got to the nose, eyes and mouth the work necessarily became more detailed and things slowed down. But I THINK I am better equipped to move forward in a looser way as a result of this workshop!
Follow-Up Day Images:
Jackie returned on the follow-up day to get feed-back and make progress on her grandson’s portrait. Note how she subtly the colors and fabrics from one portrait to the other. Her grandson’s colors are just a little brighter and “fresher”than her husband’s, though they still relate to each other.
Show-and-Share Fabric Collage Quilts by Jackie Dalley: (Click on any photo to see them larger)
Marie Wood
Goal for the week: make a realistic portrait with emphasis on the shading.
Marie’s goals for the week were almost opposite of Leigh and LeahGrace’s goals. Where they wanted to work with more color than they had on previous quilts, Marie wanted to work more realistically with color and value, having already played with brighter colors on her previous quilts (see her Show-and-Share section, below). Her subject this time was her husband, Bob, happily enjoying a fishing trip—and this was such a happy portrait to be working on all week with Marie. She chose a very nice peach/rust/brown palette of fabrics that lent themselves very nicely to her goal of working with values. Just look how well she’s blended from light to dark in his chin area—and his neck. I think it’s the prints she chose that give him an appropriately scruffy look as well.
And just like Jackie, Marie was able to review the collage glasses video from the Facial Features eWorkshop as she tackled Bob’s glasses. It’s like you can pick them right off his face—with slivers of highlights underneath and to the right, against the inside of the frames.
Follow-Up Day Image:
Marie used her follow-up day for a third draft of Bob—really looking close at the parts of his portrait and checking off the “to-do’s.” Adding detail around his eyes and the shadows in his eye sockets were the big thing, and really gave his portrait extra dimension. Great job.
Show-and-Share Fabric Collage Quilts by Marie Wood: (Click on any photo to see them larger)
The thing that was very noticeable about this class was how well they bonded as a group. It’s so satisfying as a teacher to see that happen. Below is a comment from Marie about the Zoom breakout rooms:
The breakout rooms were an added value to the Zoom Course as we only had 4 people in the breakouts so we could encourage and remind each other of the valuable tidbits that Susan had taught us. In the breakout rooms we were able to hear the individualized attention that Susan gave to each of the four of us as well as on our own pieces and thus we could learn from that as well. The smaller breakout rooms allowed us the opportunity to get to know those ladies better. Having the “Zoom Room” open at night was a great way that we could get to know the whole group better as well.
Come back next week as we visit the second breakout room of this Portraits Only Online Class—the Women of the Wild West ;-).
These are wonderful portraits-in-progress. Especially the faces with glasses. Well done and look forward to seeing them finished. The extra show and tell quilts are beautiful also. Thanks for sharing. I hope Susan is feeling better.
How lovely to see the works in progress from this class! I’m sad that I had to miss out this year due to my health challenges, so it is extra special to see the quilts. Ladies, you all knocked it out of the park!!!
Wow! Amazing work ladies; I am in awe!
Amazing collages thanks.