2014 Saffron Craig Workshop

It was definitely something completely out of my comfort zone as I am not the least artistic (i.e. I can't draw). I have to confess that I only passed art in year 9 because I aced the Art History questions! I failed the Art part.

Fortunately, a friend Julie, who had done the workshop before suggested that I think about what I would like to draw before the workshop. 

I recently helped my father downsize his house in South Africa. My mother was an avid collector of seashells. She would walk for miles collecting shells. When she returned home, she would wash and sort them by size and type - her favourite being a cowrie shell. She also collected beautifully shaped glass bottles which she then filled with her shells. She passed on this love to all her children and grandchildren.

Needless to say, I have a few shells lying around my house. So I took some along with me to the workshop. Initially, I tried tracing the shells onto paper (I did say I couldn't draw!). When that looked pretty hopeless, I asked my friend "google" to show me some images of seashell silouettes. I selected 2 and somehow managed to copy them reasonably accurately. 

Using a scalpel, we cut out our images and taped to our silkscreens. Saffron suggested a charcoal grey and mixed the ink for me and off I went. We also graduated the colour, by mixing more black in the gray to give it an ombre effect.We tried silver for the second shell - but it didn't show up well on the beige linen - not enough contrast. I switched to white and was really happy with the result. 

I wish I had learnt something like this when I was at school - I definitely would have enjoyed art a lot more and may have had the confidence to try new things.

We all took a group photo with Saffron at the end - I can definitely say that we were all thrilled with the results of our day.