Monday, June 6, 2011

workshop with Rogene Manas



Art by Rogene Manas

Rogene Manas traveled to Portland from her home in Eugene, Oregon this month to open an exhibit of her work at the Guardino Gallery and teach a 2-day workshop at Collage on Alberta Street. Lucky us! Rogene was featured recently on the OPB program, "Oregon Art Beat" and you can view her segment here.

In class, we learned how to use paper clay to create dimensional artwork that resembles wood carving, a distinctive feature of Rogene's work. Starting with a sketch, I chose an image of a familiar figure in my yard as inspiration, a scrub jay.

After transferring the sketch to rolled-out paper clay, the piece was cut out with an exacto knife and attached to a board. The clay was "carved" while wet with the help of a wooden clay shaping tool.

After allowing the clay parts to air-dry overnight, we returned the next day to paint and finish our pieces. Rogene taught a "dark to light" painting technique, which gives her work a folk art look. Some of us added paper collage to our backgrounds; I used some torn dress pattern tissue.


I was happy with the final result and look forward to doing more with what I learned this weekend...so many possibilities come to mind!

6 comments:

Robin Olsen said...

Wow--your jay is gorgeous Suzanne! I can't wait to see what else you do with this technique. Very cool!

Anonymous said...

You are just a blogin' fool - three posts!
Love the solder work - look forward to seeing it in person and the paper clay has some interesting posibilities!
Maggie

Dreamcicle Journeys said...

Sounds like a great class. I really like your bird and Rogene's artwork.

WesternWilson said...

I love that Jay! Beautiful work Suzanne, looking forward to seeing more of you work.

Mona Monkey said...

Do you have to glue the paper clay to the wooden surface or does it just naturally stick to it?

Suzanne Reynolds said...

Mona, It's been a while but I think we applied the wet paper clay directly to the surface. Along with the painting done on top after it dries, everything seems to stick. But I suppose you could really brush on a thin layer of PVA-type glue or matte medium on the wood first.