The Dina story

My recent weekend spent with these two lovely (if slightly crazy!) ladies was a little bit of heaven...

...as you can see, amongst all the art making, much fun was had...

Dina is a fabulous tutor, her project for the weekend was a book, chock full of arty goodness and techniques galore... she showed us a fabulous way of stamping onto tissue and pasting the tissue over areas that had perhaps too much texture to get a crisp image from stamping in the normal way - 'twas indeedy very genius!!!

She taught us how to draw - the Dina way, using a magic pencil - available here

Now this is very different to the lady I drew with Chris (see previous post) but I LOVED doing this ... the others said she looks like Gillian Anderson (of Xfiles fame)

Our pages were full of paint, layers and texture, we used pan pastels, texture paste, gesso and so much more I can't begin to remember! the process was so enjoyable and some of the backgrounds I made were so lovely I didn't want to cover them with anything.... I did of course because another mantra that I have learned from Dina this weekend is "Don't fall in love with your backgrounds".... I shall store that away along with the first ever thing I learned from Dina which was "Remember the white space"!!! - I'm still working on that :)

This was another face I drew - yes I know it may not be perfect in the eyes of some artists (having said that I once went to the Tate Gallery in London and was bemused to see a whole hall the size of a football pitch given over to a crack in the floor that was described as art!!!) So yes this is MY art!

I love the oversized lips and decided to highlight them by colouring them in using inktense pencils... which from here on in shall be known as 'inktencils' so named by my humourous friend Ann

So Andy has named this page in my Dina book ' The Mick Jagger page' I loved loved loved the weekend and when Dina returns to AFTH, so shall I ... I recommend you do too!