Good news! You can still have art life even if you can' draw a still life! Collage is that wonderful way of making art where you don' have to be good at drawing! Explore its satisfying rewards with Lorraine whose years of working with Japanese papers gives her an extensive knowledge of how to use its natural translucence, malleability, strength, responsiveness and integrity to make compelling works of art. Drawing on an abundance of Japanese paper especially chosen for collage, you will experiment with overlapping, juxtaposition, and the relationship between diverse elements. These can include images, text, natural or found objects which can be used as is, or photocopied on thin Japanese papers and superimposed over one another to achieve striking effects.

Unlike artists in the West, an oriental painter will often pause before a sheet of paper and listen to it—in the sensitive belief that the character of the medium will suggest an approach to the work. Heather will examine this reciprocal relationship, exploring how washi responds to the delicacy, translucence and diffusion that are the hallmarks of the watercolour medium. She will lead you through a series of experiments and exercises intended to demonstrate how washi can become a responsive partner in your work and lead to greater creative accomplishments.

Émilie invites you to a “new pictorial adventure”, where the paper is the image and the image is paper. Washi fibre, rendered into pulp from end-cuts of Japanese papers, becomes the painter's rich and vibrant palette. The results are dramatic—where the building up of an image, gives it a 3-D effect as much a sculpture as a painting. The pulp can be used to create original pieces of an abstract or figurative nature, such as “relief” images or to achieve realistic additional tonalities to existing images, for instance, to give dimensional qualities to photos.
Techniques learned how to make the washi pulp and how to use it as a painting tool; how to organize the sequential shots of photo, shadow and light; the mixing of colors.

Image transfer is the hot new artists’ resource that’s got everyone’s creative juices flowing! Transferring images photocopied onto acrylic media opens up a world of creative potential whether you use your own drawings and paintings or borrow from the virtually unlimited sources of existing visual material. From the most smooth and crystal clear to the most opaque and gritty, each has its own unique and fascinating properties onto which one can draw, paint, and more. Transfers can be used in diverse artistic endeavours, from collage to mixed-media, from printmaking to installation.

Writing in oriental culture is an artform, a ballet for the hand. Peter's brushwork shows his love, deep knowledge and practice of Asian arts including tai chi and Kyudo (Way of the Bow), and Shodo (Way of the Brush). In this highly evolved art, writing becomes meditation. Under Peter's encouraging guidance, you will explore this ancient Japanese tradition using inks, colour and different washi. Discover the fluidity and freshness of the “first thought, best thought” approach to brush writing.

Carbon is the world's worst enemy today, but still an artist's best friend! In the form of ink, carbon provided humanity with its first means of writing and drawing. This course evolved out of Lorraine's extensive use of it in her own work as an artist and love of its capacity to produce the boldest of strokes or the most subtle of shading depending on its use and interaction with the surface it's used on. Explore the limitless possibilities of this interaction using pen, bamboo and brush on many different kinds of washi especially chosen for its receptivity to ink.

Lorraine asks, “Why should canvas be a surface only for painting on?? Japanese papers, with images, text, textures, and patterns that are painted, printed, drawn or copied on them, belong on canvas as much as paint!” Discover a wide range of results in affixing “washi” to canvas integrated with acrylic painting. The course gives special emphasis to the question of adhesives, and draws on the artist's many years of experience in creating her own works of art in this way. Tools, paints and papers are provided, but students will need to bring 3-5 small prepared (gessoed) canvases, no larger than 8”x10”.

Not a course for the soft-spoken, but more for those who like to leave the sunroof open and turn up the volume on their radio! As vibrant as Heather herself, acrylic colours have an intensity, depth and vividness that urge bold use. Heather, who you would never think of as a pastel kind of person, turns up the volume on the colour pallette this course that explores what you can do on washi with colour that shouts, not whispers.

Of the many virtues of washi, the chief must be its veil-like translucence which allows the opportunity to create effects where layers of different colours, textures or images intermingle and blend like colours. Explore the creative possibilities with Heather, (possessor of many virtues herself, not the least of which are her kindly energy, artistic integrity and patience) and discover what new creative opportunities emerge as you collage, juxtapose pre-tinted papers with self-coloured papers, play with the interaction of images, or discover how light can become another element in your work as you see how it still passes even through multiple layers.

A kind of radical plastic surgery for books that's far more than a “nip and tuck!” The Altered Book is a fascinating phenomenon that more and more people are recognizing as a new medium for self-expression and creativity—a book being used much like a painter would use a canvas. Under Melanie's upbeat direction, you will use paint, collage, layering, sewing, copying, carving, and other techniques to create patterns, colours, images and visual elements onto pages that have been pasted together, thus transforming the original volume into a sculptural object that tells a new story and will alter your definition of a “book” forever!

NEW!Instead of test tubes and decanters, you'll find Usuminos, Usukuchis, Tengujos, Gampis, Uwa Senkas along with many other of the creatively responsive Japanese pure “kozo” papers eager to be mixed together in collage, torn, painted on, crumpled, punctured, embossed, stitched, manipulated or otherwise experimented with. Rather than finished pieces, the purpose of this course is discovery—of the virtually unlimited capacities of washi in creative projects. Students will make many samples throughout the day that will be bound together and thus serve as a reference guide for future work on washi.

Ever find your creative juices frozen by a blank white sheet of paper staring up at you? Thaw them out by starting with a coloured sheet instead, and release new creative possibilities in this, Heather's final ode to colour this year. Among the many families of washi, Somegami stands out for its wide range of colours as well as the common virtues that it shares with all other Japanese papers of responsiveness, receptivity, warmth and refinement, and additionally the way it tears leaving a beautiful deckle edge. Using ink, watercolour and acrylic, explore how each is subtly modified by being on colour, and then either mount finished pieces on heavier hand made paper supports or foam core—or leave them to hang freely.