gideon rubin inspired self portrait pillows

Have I mentioned what a huge fan I am of the work of Contemporary Artist Gideon Rubin?

This will be the second time I have introduced his work to children at the studio. The first time was with this printmaking project.

This time I had the young artist who were participating in the Contemporary Art themed camp focus on creating a self portrait inspired by Rubin. Also after hearing loud and clear from the campers in the Textile and Paint camp that they would love to do more work on pillows and such to put on their bed, I had the children create their inspired Rubin self portraits on canvas bags that I then turned into pillows.

I always find it interesting how children respond to his work. The idea that the facial features are left off the piece is difficult for some of them to accept, for others there is a great relief knowing they won't have to face the challenge of getting their eyes, nose and mouth correctly in the portrait.

Each child created a sketch on paper and once they were happy with their sketch, we transferred it onto the canvas bag using graphite paper. They then began adding acrylic paint that was watered down slightly, to help it move easier, onto the bag.

The results were lovely and caught the essence of each child perfectly.

9 year old

If you knew this young girl, you would be amazed at how accurately she captured the posture of how she holds her shoulders and the essence of her hair. There is no doubt who this portrait belongs to when you know the child.

7 year old

10 year old

The same can be said for these two young artist also.

7 year old

Of course some children needed to add their own twist to their portraits! Like these bunny ears added to this sweet portrait. And yes, her hair is that long and thick! 

9 year old

And then there were the two young artist who could not deal with not having facial features. I think he captured his feelings about my encouraging words to capture their portraits without facial features. 

He was not amused.

6 year old

The youngest artist did not want a pillow. She was quite excited to have a bag to carry to school. And no, I have not reversed the image. I am always impressed when children write their names so easily backwards! I don't know what possesses them to do it but she did that freehand and I think that is no easy task to do. She has this beautiful head of curly locks and I just smile at the way she decided to interpret this feature in paint.

I hope the kids enjoy these pillows for years to come. It was a lot of fun watching the kids create them.

Sun Print Dye!!!

Last summer, I discovered Sun Print dye for fabric at the art store.

It works just like Sun Paper.

And with the same reasoning used for why one needs a 16th pair of black high heel shoes, I bought the dye in every color.

I came home and immediately gave it a try, painting an original artwork with a piece of clear acetate and India Ink, then placing it over the fabric painted with dye outside in the sun

It came out gorgeous and so I tucked the new project idea neatly away for the perfect class at a later date.

The perfect class seemed to be the Printmaking Workshop I ran at the studio last week.

I asked each parent to send their child with a white t-shirt so they could make a sun print of their own artwork to wear.

But since the students ranged in age from 5 to 11, I thought why not make it a bit easier for them and use Sharpie pens instead of the India Ink?

It'll be great!

Until it wasn't great.

This is what printed, TADA!!

terribly unsuccessful sun dye print on fabric

Thank goodness I had the kids do a test run on some scrap fabric first! I would have died if I ruined the t-shirts their parents had gone to all the trouble to buy for the class.

For all my, "embrace the mistakes", I preach to the kids, I panicked.

(although I'm quite intrigued with the way the masking tape printed on the left side of the above work and will be pursuing experimenting with creating an artwork with masking tape on acetate to use over the dye, so I guess I am embracing the mistake after all )

What went wrong?

Why didn't it work?

I knew I didn't want the kids to wait around while I figured it out and so I pulled out the gelatin plates I had made to start a monoprint project. I would figure out the sun dye fail once the kids had gone home for the day.

The prints are made with acrylic paint mixed with a bit of retarder, they turned out beautiful and most importantly, without a glitch!

Thank goodness!

6 year old

7 year old

11 year old

5 year old

7 year old

So once the artist had gone home for the night, I sat down and faced the fact that changing from India Ink to Sharpie pen was not a good idea.

I carefully went over every Sharpie line the artists created with India Ink, making sure I did not change the integrity of their work. It seemed unfair to have the kids have to redo everything after they had already worked so hard because of my blunder.

Then I did another test run on scrap fabric.

I refused to use their t-shirts until I was positive the project was going to work.

Lo and behold, mystery solved.

So if you want to do original artworks on acetate to print on either Sun paper or Sun dye, DO NOT use Sharpie pen. You MUST use India Ink. 

So I went ahead and put the "test" fabric work on Bristol using matte medium so the girls could take it home. It only seemed right after how patient they had been when things weren't working for them to have their artwork to not only wear but also display.

6 year old (this is a fish caught in a droplet of water, sitting on a leaf)

7 year old

8 year old

11 year old

5 year old

And no, that is not an issue with my photography skills, the wolf is yellow. You see I wasn't quite done messing around with blunders and did the first scrap"test"on a heavy linen. It did not register as well as cotton and so I needed to redo it one more time and accidentally grabbed the yellow dye instead of the brown.

Honestly by this point, I didn't need a glass of wine but the whole bottle! Best for my health to just leave it at yellow and move on.

7 year old

And then the next morning, we FINALLY created their t-shirts and they couldn't wait to put them on after they had been washed and almost dried.  They could of used another 10 minutes in the dryer, but camp day closing waits for no one...even slow dryers.

I certainly hope the artist enjoy them. Once I got the project back on track, they all turned out great.