I can’t believe how fast this weekend has gone! I’m not surprised really… it’s been fab! full of art, homemade cake, tea (and a few with Gs :D) and great friends.  A winning combination don’t you think? 🙂

Saturday I spent at The Studios in New Mills on an art workshop I’ve been looking forward to for a while… Expressive Inks Masterclass with Tracy Fennell Illustration.  Tracy produces fantastic ink illustrations and is such an inspirational tutor.  As you can see from most of my artwork, I love to use inks.  It’s such an interesting medium with unique results.

In the morning session we got our creative juices flowing by mark-making with ink.  Using toothbrushes, bamboo canes, sponges and string – to name a few!  A fun (and messy) way to get use to the inks.  Tracy provided us with a brief.  We were to create a worksheet filled with marks made with the tools provided, to illustrate a list of words such as shadowy figures, a stately raven, gnarled bark of weathered trees.  A very dark/gloomy and spooky composition for ‘The witching time of night”.  After compiling all of my marks together in photoshop, here’s my composition…

After a delicious slice of chocolate and Guinness cake/cup of tea, we started to play with colourful inks. Picking an object to draw from a table full of trinkets, we drew silhouettes using just ink and water.  It was amazing watching the ink dance and bleed into each other on the page.  Then Tracy taught us about negative space and we drew the negative space around our chosen object with simple line.  I chose a bottle to draw…

Lastly we focused at a point on the table – bringing together the techniques Tracy taught us, we spent the last hour of the class drawing. I picked some rather fab leopard print vampy shoes and a bright orange teapot! 😀

All in all an arty great day out.  Thanks to Tracy for such an informative and exciting introduction to the world of Expressive Inks 🙂 There’s part two to look forward to next week! Looking forward to practising this week 🙂

Ms.B Wood x