Dear Liza,
Ruthie Inman is at it again! She has our Zoom Art class making lovely things and having fun. Since we are all in different places (Metamora, Illinois, Portland, Oregon and Edinburgh, Scotland) we meet over Zoom. Since she likes an element of surprise, she usually gives us just enough directions to get part of the project done, without giving it all away at once.
Her first direction was “collect newspaper, black and white text only.” This took a while, but having an artist in the house helps.
While we were in the Zoom meeting, Ruthie had us paint our sheets of newspaper whatever colors we chose. I pulled hand-me-down acrylics out of my box and slathered them on while we all chatted. I laid them aside, making sure they were mostly dry before they got piled up.
Our papers had time to get completely dry by our next meeting, and the next direction was “cut the papers in irregular circles, to stack into five layers, largest on the bottom, smallest on the top.” This needed some thinking. How big? Which color on the top? Which on the bottom? My biggest layer ended up being about four inches across.
Flowers. We were definitely making flowers.
After some fiddling around, I made my choice and started snipping. I love things that don’t need to be measured!
Then came the tricky bit… putting all the layers together. Depending on what we had handy, we all used different techniques. I chose five shafted buttons and, at Ruthie’s suggestion, used small twist-ties to keep them in place. Here’s how they looked, front and back.
Ruthie sent us a guide for the next part of the project, a mosaic art piece of a bicycle and a basket, and I trimmed and traced it into a piece of heavy watercolor paper for the mosaic to come, editing it as I went.
The theory is that the bike’s basket will be overflowing with the flowers.
I’ll show you what comes next at the end of the month, when we get it done.
Love,
Grandma Judy
Dear Liza 