Art class - key fob

Everybody needs a Vanda!

Last Monday, was the day for art class.  Oh my word, did I need it!  I had my customary fit of the February blues - everything I touched fell apart, I felt sluggish and was dwelling on far too many negatives.  My solution to these issues is: stay busy, stay active, stay socialised.

It was good to arrive at the Granary and meet up with all my mates – a diverse bunch of women, with all different artistic styles, motivated by different inspirations, and all enjoying getting their preferred art tools into their preferred art media.  All of us get on better with the art tasks by starting with specific instructions to be followed.  I definitely needed to be just told what to do!  Which Vanda did!

Each of us was given a score of luggage labels, both white and brown paper.  We lined up 3 luggage labels, looked at our inspirational object and overlaid three lines from our object, across the labels. We then picked 3 suitable marks from our object to infill areas of pattern on the labels. As a group, the exercises followed the same principles, with areas of colour, collage, and increasing complexity, until we had a handful of luggage labels. My inspiring object was a bunch of car keys, which fitted with my ongoing theme of Ford Machinists and their 1968 strike.  My colour scheme was Ford blue, silver (chrome), black, white, and a tiny amount of red (from the inside of the leather key fob).  

In the afternoon, some of the group continued working small, but I scaled up to A2, and of my 3 drawings, one was dreadful, but the other two, even if not successful in a refined way, had potential.  And the one that just did not work, was duly cut up to make more luggage labels, which considerably improved it(!) – large scale marks on a small scale object.  

Now I had about 20 labels, and I threaded them on the key ring that Vanda had provided, and fanned them out for display.  Quite promising!  Vanda sagely observed that as my subject matter was Ford, and I was looking at car keys, what my keyring needed was a Ford key fob. 

The following day, after my swim, I trotted off to the local Ford dealer, and spoke to their used car salesperson to source a used Ford key fob.  Oh my word!  How successful was I!  The perfect key fob – leather, softened from much use, with an embossed metal Ford logo (perfect for rubbings). 

I was so inspired that once I got home, I worked into the labels further, with stitch, and stencil cutting, chopping up a Ford Cortina Haynes manual, and thoroughly enjoying the collage.

And what does my car key sketchbook look like now?  Voila! I went home in high good humour. Nothing like an art class (especially one that involves cutting and sticking!) to beat the February blues!  Thank you Vanda!