Artiscape: Barbara Close - Paper Textures

My first half-day class was with the wonderful Barbara Close. Titled "Paper Textures," it focused on watercolor as the coloring source, with a variety of items used to texture the paper and add depth to the colors.

We started with four sheets of watercolor paper, folded in half, so we had 16 pages or eight spreads to work with.

We painted all the pages, and while wet did a number of techniques to give them some life.

Included were stamping techniques (linoleum block with or without design), powders, pastel (wet down) and more. This is a swath of pastel, then watered, on a watercolor background.

Sometimes she used odd bits as a stamp -- these marks were made with a corrugated Starbucks drink holder all folded into a square or circle.

And here she's working with the linoleum block.

This is what it looks like on the page.

When done, we put our books together in a cover and stitched them up. Barbara showed us how to judge and place the holes for the awl...

And the stitch the binding.

I learned a lot in this class. You'll note, I'm not showing you my grand book! Well, maybe later! I did some pages I adored. And a few that -- well, let's just call them gross violations of the color wheel! So, I think I'm not done playing with it yet!

But I will say I will do this again -- and use the papers for books or cards. And, this class went well with my afternoon class, which you'll hear about next!

(New at Chopsticks and String: Anne Frank in Words and Pictures.)