NEWS FROM MOOR HALL

There is such a wealth of produce this year, both in the garden and further afield. I couldn't resist a photo or two from our walnut tree. This year I decided I would not waste the husks so collected them and made some walnut ink. I still have a huge vat of the ink ready for bottling.

Look at these really glorious colours from the walnut husks. We of course have a good supply of walnuts ready for Christmas. 

Barney has an eye for spotting a mushroom or two and this year things were a little crazy. Take a look at the size of these Porcini Mushrooms.The good news is that Barney does the cooking as well!!!!

This year has been a little fraught with health issues so we took what we felt was a well-deserved break to France just for a few days.

We were visiting Lucie, our son Barney's girlfriend and staying with her parents. We had a fabulous time.  This was the view from one of the windows.

The sky was this intense blue which just looked fabulous against the changing colours of the leaves and such was the weather for our time out there.

We did so much when we were there and saw so much. This is Eguisheim, voted the best village in France in 2013. It was really pretty and I loved these soft colours of the painted buildings.

We were also taken to see a well known French artist José Pimmel, at his studio, La Tuilerie, a typical French house where you can imagine artists gathering and discussing the latest trends, politics, religion etc in an atmosphere of total creativity. Link to Website

 

It is now used by Pimmel and another artist, Marie-Laure Collange, where they practice their own art and give courses to children and adults.

José Pimmel is the grandfather of Lucie and I hope we will get to see more of him, his family and his amazing art. 

WOLVERHAMPTON BRANCH 

OF THE EMBROIDERERS GUILD

I gave a workshop for the Wolverhampton Branch on the same day as we left for France and what a great day that was. The students were just brilliant and I hope that they enjoyed themselves as much as I did.The first warming up exercise had them working very quickly with charcoal, rubbers, knifes and a cloth for rubbing down and then working back into their creations. This and all other exercises were worked on A2 sheets of 220gm cartridge paper.

We then moved onto large scale collaborative drawings, which involved students using the room itself as the inspiration and I had them walking around the room drawing what they were seeing and drawing on top of each others lines. Students then started to add colour to the compositions, still moving around the room.

Each student was then given the original sheet that they started with and continued to add colour, selecting just one or two of the coloured pastels. These are the results from this exercise ~ a beautiful array of colour.

But it didn't end there............I had the students cut off a strip from the side of their work and cut this into further squares or rectangles.

These units were then superimposed over their original drawings giving such wonderful effects. These were moved around and photographed to document all the possibilities.

I am not sure how we managed it, but we still had time for another exercise, which I must say had us falling about the floor in laughter. Students were given six different instructions of how to draw the person opposite them, resulting in these 'realistic' impressions!!!! These were also coloured in, but do visit their blog to see more.

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THANK YOU WOLVERHAMPTON BRANCH