The day we were influenced by Barbara Hepworth part 1

One or two of the group had said they fancied trying sculpture of some kind. While looking at the Step Up material provided by Outside In, I had seen a Barbara Hepworth pack. I looked at this and modified slightly the ideas of using plaster to carve into as the people at our group would find proper carving difficult.

We collected plastic trays, the sort from supermarkets that have fruit and meat in them of different depths and sizes. We then used Plasticine to make shapes on the inside of the trays. Some used cardboard tubes to make large holes through the sculpture, others just put long sausages of Plasticine to make holes.

We then mixed plaster of paris and filled the trays. It took around 20 minutes for the plaster to set enough to take the trays away. Some needed cutting away and others just peeled off. We then removed all the tubes and Plasticine to leave our sculptures.

This is just step one. We are going to leave them a while to fully set then work into them more and smooth off the rough edges but that's for another time!

Return of the Withes- An Update

Here are a few of the projects that were not finished last time I took pictures. I also found out how to spell withes (good old dictionary).

The Day We took inspiration from Alfred Wallis

Alfred Wallis was an artist who had been a fisherman in Cornwall who only started painting late in life. he had a marine scrapyard and painted in any paint he had, often for yachts, and on any bits of card or wood he had around. His images were simple, flat and without perspective but were very detailed. Especially the pictures of ships.

We looked at his work and found some old bits of wood we had lying around and each painted a scene in his style. We used acrylic paints, not having any yacht paint to hand.

This idea came from an artist pack from the Pallant House Gallery Outside In website. The Step Up project has some great ideas and information about artists with resources to download. Go to:

http://www.outsidein.org.uk/Step-Up

Have a look round the website as some of our group have artists pages there with work up on display.

The day we got withy it!

This is something we had never intended to do but the art coordinator at Workbase, Ruth, brought in a load of willow withies from wasteland she new. If you cut them near the base they grow again and will remain supple stood in water for a good while. Also if you stick them in the ground fairly quickly they will start to grow new plants.

We started of bending and fastening the withies into heart shapes wrapping string and strips of cloth round them. When you twist two together they pretty much stay put. Some of us thought we had a selection of carpet beaters. We also added tissue paper to fill in gaps. If you paint over the tissue with PVA it goes taught across an area when it dries.

After getting more confident some of us became a little more sculpture inclined and the projects began to get a little large and intricate!

The day we did Scottie Wilson Pics Again!

We enjoyed using the Artists pack from Pallant House Gallery Outside In that we did it again. We had some new group members who wanted to have a go so we did. Scottie Wilson worked in pen and filled in areas with colour. The mix of colour and pen seems to lift the image and make it more vibrant.

The day we rearanged Kendal Town Hall!

This is an easy on to do. Take a photograph of a building. The more interesting the better. Blow it up to A4 or bigger and then cut up the bits. If you look at the picture you can cut out chunks of window, doorways, roff etc. Then rearrange the bits to make a new building and stick them down on a new piece of paper. The result is an odly familiar building. They catch people eye as they are never sure if they recognise the building or not.

When we had done this we realisewd they would all join together to make one long town scene. We added a few small pics and gave it a sky.



The day we made decorations

Sorry for the gap in posting- things were very chaotic over Christmas and it's only the last few weeks the WellArt group has gotten going again. Anyway, the last post was about melting wax to make fridge magnets. This is just an extension. We dipped ping pong balls in different coloured molten wax then dipped them in sparkly stuff. How easy is that. Word of caution- danger of having a wax covered sparkly finger!