handworkstudio.ca » Art Class Categories http://handworkstudio.ca Felting, drawing, and watercolor painting for adults and children. Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:50:02 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Felting http://handworkstudio.ca/2009/05/felting/ http://handworkstudio.ca/2009/05/felting/#comments Thu, 14 May 2009 00:15:43 +0000 Larry http://handworkstudio.ca/?p=411 Felting is the process by which natural wool fiber is stimulated by friction to bind loose fibers together. Natural, unprocessed wool has scaly fibers, which when moistened and agitated bond together, creating a denser fabric. Using a variety of layering and wool colors, beautifully crafted objects ranging from dolls to purses can be created. Handwork Studio felting workshops utilize both wet and needle felting techniques, allowing participants to sculpt, decorate, and form everything ball ornaments and jewelry to wine/tea cozies to felt paintings and dolls.

Needle felting is a popular fiber arts craft conducted without the use of water. Special barbed felting needles that are used in industrial felting machines are used as a sculpting tool. Using a single needle or a small group of needles (2-5) in a hand held tool, the needles are used to sculpt the wool fiber. The barbs catch the scales on the fiber and push them through the layers of wool tangling them and binding them together much like the wet felting process. Fine details can be achieved using this technique and it is popular for 3D felted work.

Felt is made by a process called wet felting, where the natural wool fiber is stimulated by friction and lubricated by moisture (usually soapy water), and the fibers move at a 90 degree angle towards the friction source[clarification needed] and then away again, in effect making little “tacking” stitches. Only 5% of the fibers are active at any one moment, but the process is continual, and so different ‘sets’ of fibers become activated and then deactivated in the continual process.
This “wet” process utilizes the inherent nature of wool and other animal hairs, because the hairs have scales on them which are directional. The hairs also have kinks in them, and this combination of scales (like the structure of a pine cone) is what reacts to the stimulation of friction and causes the phenomenon of felting. It tends to work well with woolen fibers as their scales, when aggravated, bond together to form a clo

In both children and adults, handwork fosters creativity and confidence, allowing participants to formulate an idea and see it come to fruition by their own hands.

Gnome/Doll Felting Workshop

Felt Poupee Workshop

Felt Bead/Jewelry Workshop

Wine/Tea Cozy Workshop

]]> http://handworkstudio.ca/2009/05/felting/feed/ 0 Watercolor Painting http://handworkstudio.ca/2009/05/painting/ http://handworkstudio.ca/2009/05/painting/#comments Thu, 14 May 2009 00:06:40 +0000 Larry http://handworkstudio.ca/?p=400 Unlike oil or acrylic painting, where the paints essentially stay where they are placed, watercolor painting is a much more fluid process, involving the application of pigments and their interaction within a watery medium. Utilizing a wet-on-wet approach, students will become familiar with how form flows into being and the effects of intermingling colors, creating landscapes of color exploration.

Wet-on-wet has a loosening and strengthening effect. In this method of painting, liquid pigment is applied to moistened paper. Water facilitates the movement and intermingling of the colours as they create new colours among themselves. Form flows into being, and can dissolve out of it again. The process remains fluid until we choose to stop and let it dry.

More information on watercolor painting:

]]> http://handworkstudio.ca/2009/05/painting/feed/ 0 Drawing http://handworkstudio.ca/2009/04/drawing/ http://handworkstudio.ca/2009/04/drawing/#comments Thu, 16 Apr 2009 00:12:51 +0000 Larry http://handworkstudio.ca/?p=409 Drawing exercises train fine motor skills, develop hand/eye coordination and have a calming effect on the inner life. Black and white drawing exercises focus on line and form and the dynamic interplay of light and darkness. Pencil drawing, in particular, with its fine, clear line “sharpens” the intellect; our faculty of objective thinking.

Drawings using continuous, unbroken lines work with the fluid, formative qualities found in nature. When using broken lines we call upon the will and intellect. Studies in light, darkness and shadow speak more to our feelings.

One technique that we use is shaded drawing where light-infused forms are created by applying parallel, oblique pencil strokes, bringing darkness into the light with pencil on white paper. This technique is highly meditative and ego strengthening. Form Drawing with colored pencils calls on the inner intelligence hidden in each human being. In the form of a spiral we have all the directions of space contained in a movement – left-right, above-below, in-out, forward and back. Seeing such forms, the child senses these qualities; they relate him to the past and bring him into relationship with the true and beautiful.

]]> http://handworkstudio.ca/2009/04/drawing/feed/ 2