Shaken out of my comfort zone.

What a great way to start my half term holiday, than a weekend at Missenden. Nickie and I were on a course with Hilary Bower. It was a bit of a shock to find we were in 'the big girls' class. Apart from one other lady, everyone knew each other and had been coming for years. We started the evening off with drawing natural objects or getting on with a project that you had on the go. While everyone was busy, Hilary started going round giving tutorials. She is a very perceptive lady and summed Nickie up very quickly, showing her the link between her work that she hadn't realised!

This is the dear little cottage that Nickie and I stayed in to save the drive backwards and forwards to my mothers. Anne was a lovely lady and made us very welcome.

I just love the beehive in the front garden!Nickie had a problem setting the alarm on her phone yesterday, it went off far too early so she went for a walk across the fields behind the cottage. This morning I woke up to a lovely sunrise, what a good start to the day!

I have never seen a well like this one.
Gillsew and Art Van Go came to the Abbey yesterday, and I found a few different bits to experiment with.

This model railway enthusiast (he was on a model engine building course) was phoning home to find out if his wife wanted any threads, isn't he well trained?

In our lunch hour we had to go to Rainbow Silks, it would be rude not too! I found these lovely fibres and a stencil.

One of the design exercises was to draw with a charcoal on a stick, Nickie enjoyed this and had two attempts at it.

After my tutorial, it was suggested that instead of continuing to work on the natural objects, I use some of my 60's fabric images and draw those instead- aaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!!!
This is the finished artwork, I then had to tear or cut it. So, after photo copying it, in positive and negative, the image with the white background was cut up and I decided to stick it onto black card. I them had to draw into it. I was really surprise how much I enjoyed this exercise, cant wait to do some more. I now want to paint this design onto fabric and embroider and embellish it. Watch this space.

What to do next? Cut up positive and negative images and weave together Very 60's! After another tutorial, my challenge is to TRY and put famous faces of the 60's into the pattern. I am not sure if I am clever enough to do this. As the photo copier was playing up today, I could not start on this.

Nickie and I had a good journey home, no hold ups on the M25, and planning projects all the way back to Essex!