Did you see the first part of this two-part series? And were you were properly impressed with the progress made by each of the students? If so, be prepared to be wowed again. Even though I was there and involved in the making of these quilts, looking back at them—after almost three months away—I am so impressed by the work these ladies produced.
This was a portraits only class and was made up of students with some form of prior experience—such as Mary McKay with the portrait of her husband, Frank, above. They all had taken at least a couple classes with me, have used the Fabric Collage Master Class, and were quite familiar with the fabric collage process. This familiarity allowed us to jump in with both feet and tackle the particular challenges of portraiture without dealing with the basics of the technique.
To help them along toward success, I provided 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.
Wild Women of the West
The two breakout rooms for this class were decided by time-zones. Up this week: the Women of the Wild West. See the East Coasters in the post from last week.
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.
Grace Crocker
Goal for the week: for this double portrait, one of Grace’s goals was to recreate the sun-dappled quality in a photo of her grandchildren, from 30 or so years ago.
From Grace:
In this class, I particularly enjoyed our times in the main room. We were able to share and see what each other had done, as well as get wonderful feedback from Susan as she did her “brain dump.” Tom used this phrase once and I thought it was appropriate. Susan willingly shares everything!
By now, I’m familiar enough with how Grace works, and expected her to be well on her way with this collage even before class week began. I wasn’t disappointed—she showed up with Coulton’s face pretty much done, above, on Day One.
However, she had plenty more to do—and “too much skin!” she said at one point. But Grace is getting better with each collage, and tackled those t-shirts, and arms and legs, with (seemingly) no problem at all.
Follow-Up Day Images:
No surprise, Grace got a lot of work done in the two weeks between the end of class and our follow-up day—Will’s face was down to the final edits, annotated above—and both kids, plus that shark hat, turned out nicely dappled with sunlight. Mostly, we finished up by discussing the background and tree leaves. Grace had a variety of leaf prints (which unfortunately I don’t have a photo to show), you’ll just have to take my word for it that in the end, she did a great job melding them together.
Grace continued working on this portrait collage over the summer, with feed-back through out monthly Patreon meetings. In September, she sent in photos of the finished quilt! It’s fantastic and I look forward to sharing it in a future Finish Line post. Below, is a fun panorama shot of Grace’s workspace.
Show-and-Share Fabric Collage Quilts by Grace Crocker (Click on any photo to see them larger)
Mary McKay
Goal for the week: “Get Frank finished!”
From Mary:
The eight student advanced class was my best experience yet. The smaller number of students and a slightly modified daily schedule provided an optimum balance of Susan time, work time, and break time. Everyone had a good amount of experience and was well acquainted with Susan’s methods and videos so everyone was ready to start and keep moving in high gear.
Mary is one of those folks who seem to have more than one fire going at a time, and the portrait of her husband Frank, has been on a slow burn for more than a year now. I love how this portrait has come together as she’s worked on it between other collage projects—truly getting better with age, and more collage experience.
As Mary finishes up Frank, we’ve been taking close looks at: his ears, above; his mustache and teeth, below; and adding dark contrast around his mouth, farther below.
For the third and final draft, Mary made a checklist for each time I came around for feedback—so satisfying to check things off! Congrats, Mary! Frank is almost there!
Show-and-Share Fabric Collage Quilts by Mary McKay (Click on any photo to see them larger)
Nancy Bonkowski
Goal for the week: to play with warm vs. cool colors in this portrait of her mother Joan, pictured in her beautiful 1950 engagement photo.
Nancy gave herself quite a challenge with this portrait of her mom—translating the smoothness of skin and hair of the 1950’s photo into the color and texture of batik prints—and she did a beautiful job. As you can see in Nancy’s Show-and-Share section below, she has very nice experience working with the designs found in fabric, but this project had to have a lighter touch.
As Nancy moved into the shadowed side of her mom’s face, it was deeper peach tones with touches of green that worked the best. It’s not the “cool” colors she mentioned at the beginning of class, but it’s the direction this portrait “wanted” to go. Usually a collage takes on a life of its own, and this was no exception.
Follow-Up Day Images:
By the end of class week, Nancy had fabrics selected and a direction to go, she just needed the time to work on the portrait. Two weeks later, she had most of it done—neck and chest, with nice additions for the dark texture of her mom’s hair.
Show-and-Share Fabric Collage Quilts by Nancy Bonkowski (Click on any photo to see them larger)
Nancy Semich
Goal for the week: to “work in stages” (or “drafts”)—keeping all parts of the portrait of her granddaughter, Ashley, at a similar level of development.
Nancy S. had the same challenge with interpreting the portrait of her granddaughter that Nancy B. had with her mom—both images were of lovely and “perfect” faces.
From Nancy:
I decided to do a collage of my granddaughter because it included the various aspects of portraits – hair, mouth, teeth, eyes, etc. My goal was to work in drafts – I have a hard time advancing to another area in my collage if the previous one isn’t to my satisfaction.
Susan gently suggested moving on thus relieving my frustration and allowing her to make suggestions and constructive criticism on the various aspects of a portrait.
The darker peach values Nancy was working with in the photo above right, were later replaced with lighter “younger” values, below. Annotations around Ashley’s mouth helped to figure out what, “wasn’t quite right,” giving Nancy guidelines for adjustments she could make.
My favorite time was the end of each day when we all got back together (via the Zoom classroom) and saw the progress each of us had made during that day.
Follow-Up Day Image:
Nancy made great progress on her portrait of Ashley between the end of class and the follow-up day—what a lovely expression, hair, colors, and energy of a young person. And a great find for a coat zipper.
From Nancy:
This was my first on-line class and after taking 3 of Susan’s in-person classes, I must say that I liked this format the best. I felt that I received more individual feedback and loved being able to take screenshots of the annotations that Susan made on my daily “in progress” photos. Added benefits of this on-line class were not accruing the expenses of air travel, 5 days of lodging etc. Viewing the Facial Videos that Susan and Tom created prior to class was very helpful.
Show-and-Share Fabric Collage Quilts by Nancy Semich (Click on any photo to see them larger)
In addition to sharing her quilts with others, Nancy shares daily quotes. For in-person classes, she’d pin print-outs on each person’s board as a morning greeting. For this online class, she sent out daily emails. I now have a multi-class collection that I hold on to—bits and pieces of thoughts that I “rediscover” at just the right times. Thanks, Nancy.
And to finish up this class post—a view of Nancy’s inspirational workstation, and her very soulful looking helper.
I look forward to taking this class one day! All of the pieces are wonderful!
These are beautiful. Will you offer this course again? Sorry, I am just stumbling upon it now! Also, do you use photoshop to create the shapes of the planes and shadows?