Rosalie Dace's Workshop

Hard to believe this happened in April and now it is July and it's the first time I am getting to write about it -shocking. It was a thoroughly enjoyable workshop and Rosalie gave us lots of insights and tips. It was called "The Thinking Eye" and was about drawing inspiration from the work of Paul Klee. This was the first work I produced, with lots of trepidation and not much hope. I don't think I can reproduce the Klee work that I drew the inspiration from, here as I'm sure it is covered by copyrights, but if I can find a link, I'll post that.
(Edit 1 Aug 2007: It's called Insula Dulcamara from 1938)

I don't much like what I made, but Laura loves it, so it is going to hang in her room. Don't know if you can see the thinking eye in the brain - and the question mark I added because I didn't feel I knew what I was doing, and the tear because I actually went home in despair the first night... so actually it was quite autobiographical of the process...

Next I decided to work with Value, which Klee seemed to have a good grasp of and I definitely DON'T :) I made this small work, which I also don't really like, but it's better than the first.

After some unhappiness and wondering what was wrong with me, I came to the conclusion that I just wasn't very fired up about Paul Klee's work. It just doesn't make me want to get up and rush to create. Nevertheless I learnt an awful lot and have no regrets whatsoever. Just to be in a class with a person whose work I have admired for so long was a treat.

After I had this little epiphany about Klee, I tried working with the sheers, as Rosalie had also shown us, and made something totally unrelated to the work of Klee, and which I like the best:

Rosalie threw out several gems of wisdom, one of which really stuck with me:
"Value does the work and Colour gets the credit." That really made me look differently at my work, as I am totally seduced by Colour and tend to ignore Value.

The other maxim she has was "Cut and Shut" regarding the Rotary Cutter, and several people, including myself were caught out having Cut but not Shut. A good way to remember, especially for those of us who have children and pets about, as well as a degree of personal carelessness. (I've already had six stitches in my hand from a rotary cut.) And Rosalie, if you ever read this, I've been VERY good about this ever since the workshop.

All in all, an experience to be recommended if you ever get a chance to do a workshop with Rosalie Dace! :) And maybe one day I'll learn to appreciate Klee.

(Edited and photos added 31 July 2007)