But I digress. Lynne teaches her method of making highly textured, multileveled backgrounds/midgrounds, and then incorporating onto these surfaces a top layer of altered images based on photocopies. On Saturday the theme was Asia; on Sunday, Medieval. Lynne is a fabulous teacher -- she teaches her method and then coaches each student to deploy it to express her own way. Every piece produced each day was highly individualistic. I think this is a wonderful thing in a teacher. So Saturday I got my highly textured background done and, because I rarely get further than making a highly textured background in any mixed-media class I have taken, I am getting quite good at these backgrounds. I fell way short, however, on the altered image front, but Lynne suggested making a large drawing of one of the images, using it as a mask, and painting around it. This is the other amazing thing about this generous woman -- overflowing with terrific, achievable, spot-on ideas.
(detail: Cranes)
Still, I was frustrated and disappointed that I didn't get the collage part done. Because the base painting is 30 inches x 30 inches (almost three times bigger than my usual format! yikes!), I decided to make honking-big photocopies to use on Sunday. This was a good decision. I finished just in the nick of time, but I finished.
One option for the finished piece is to fold it to form a book. Most folks decided to do that (me, too) but some left their work open and flat as a painting, and Lynne suggested that my medieval piece might also work as panels. I don't know what a four-unit piece would be called -- a double diptych? -- but I wanted a book. Clumsily photographed, it looks like this.
Flat, folded, and cut (details from the Unicorn tapestries at the Cloisters): 
Inside pages
(we were encouraged not to be concerned about images appearing upside down, or sideways, or in partial views) 
Front cover (folded): 
Posts
