Creative Soul Retreat Day 1

I had the best long weekend last weekend. Treated myself to the inaugural Creative Soul Retreat.Organised by the wonderful Bevlea Ross, it was a very successful weekend and I am so glad I went.
I took classes from Bernie Berlin and DJ Pettit. The other tutor was Stephanie Lee and I wish I could have cloned myself in three and attended all 9 classes because all of the tutors were excellent teachers, generous women and inspiring artists.
It was also such a joy to meet many of the women I have "seen online" and put persons to the face and name. I came away exhausted and inspired and I didn't want to come back down to earth. It has taken a week to process and organise myself to blog.

The first photo is of Amberley Manor which was the venue. What a beautiful setting. The first morning greeted us with a glorious sunrise sen through the windows of the upstairs teaching room.

And from the back verandah.

My first class was with Bernie Berlin. We focused on using ordinary papers such as magazine paper to make interesting backgrounds and art. Below is on of the magazine paper backgrounds.

This is a page in an altered book with a magazine image and some surgical gauze as well as lots of paint and gesso.

This unfinished page used another one of the collage papers painted in green gold and phthalo turquoise.

Then we played with Luminarte polished pigments. I never could see why these had a benifit over Twinkling H2Os but after working with them I can. The difference is the medium. Because they use acrylic medium as a base, once dry, they don't re-activate when you wet them again so you can avoid the muddy mess that sometimes happens when you paint one H2O over another. What a pity the company is going out of business. I was glad to purchase some pots from Bevlea after playing with them in class. Thanks for the inspiration Bernie.

This is my nappy wipe after cleaning my brushes. I have to use it in a background somewhere.

Another BG with the polished pigments. This time with a wash of black over the top. See how the pigments resist the black so it just fills in the gaps. I love it.

These are Bernie's hands after class. Mine were MUCH worse. Think blood red. I looked like I had been in Sweeney Todd. But didn't remember to get a photo. It was so much fun to play and get messy without thinking of cooking or housework or work at the end of the day. Once again, thanks Bernie