I really wanted to report that the class was amazing. It wasn’t, yes, I learned new things. Some of them because the teacher didn’t teach very well, so I made mistakes that I shouldn’t have. I don’t like it when a teacher just says, do whatever you ‘feel’ like, while he himself works on his own project. So those mistakes became a learning opportunity.
I had created these simple block letters, first thing was to cover them with clear plastic on a board.
Little by little, I filled in with the broken wedding glass. Some of the dark blue is from a broken bottle. Thomas, the teacher was all about using found objects, he was also all about cutting corners where ever possible. The plastic covered the paper, but my intentions were to continue to the edges of the board. No mention was made about covering the whole board with plastic. Even if I had wanted to, he ‘forgot’ to bring enough plastic.
I worked quickly, not something I like doing, but when in class, one works quickly. I wanted to be able to grout this in class, see if he had any special tips about grouting.
Once I finished the letters I had to come up with a background, something very different from the first one I made for Erez and Becky.
Hills and sky, either the Judean Hills in Israel, or the local mountains here in LA, both are usually a brown color. Not right now, after our super rainy winter they are all bright green! Once I was done, Thomas came over and mentioned that some of the spaces between the tesserae are too big. ‘Maybe I should have said something earlier’ – yeah, maybe you should have instead of working on your own project. Now I was somewhat aware of this, I was also working quickly, normally I’d take my time with a project this size. Since he was going to bring a special board to transfer this onto, I needed it done by the final class.
I created the sky with a bright white, blue, green and pale violet. This is what will give the sky depth. I also played with shapes, hoping that that would give some depth as well. We decided on 18″ x 18″, so I took the project home to finish. Green border, Yoch loves green. It wasn’t easy finding a green glass to break, so they used blue.
Before the border.
After the border. The boys saw it at this point and are very very impressed with my work. Yoch said the little green plants remind him of cactus – a plant he loves!
So far so good. Then I went back to class and disaster struck, and that will be dealt with in the next post.
Leah