Cas Holmes Workshop

I was lucky enough today to attend a Cas Holmes workshop in the theme of "Spring Greens" collage work with fabric and papers. Below is a quick recap of what we did, so you can try out a few of the techniques. Don't forget to check out Cas's website!

First, we prepared our mono-printing plate with yellow acrylic paint in a thick layer. We used a brush, but you could use a roller; the plate's we used were 4mm glass, but you could use metal or perspex plastic.

Next, we mixed blue acrylic with the yellow straight onto the plate. Cas was trying to get us to mix interesting colours and encourage us to use unusual mark making techniques straight onto the plate. 

We laid plants onto the plate; wildflowers, leaves, weeds, as well as other interesting mark-making materials such as laces or strips of fabrics.

We lay a sheet of fabric over the plate, and pressed hard to create a print on the fabric. After lifting the fabric off, you could use the leftover paint on the plate to create a second, reverse print, on another bit of fabric (or the same fabric). The flowers and plants could also then be used to create a print as well. All in all, three prints from the one plate of paint.

We created a complete glut of these prints; it was so much fun playing with different colours and compositions; you could use so many different things to create prints, including stencils or draw on the back of the fabric with pens.

Above is an example of the prints we made, I think this one was made by mum. It really was such fun, and the work you can do afterward with the prints are limitless.

Cas Holmes does some really marvelous work with her collages and textiles. If you would like to see more, check out her website (link at the top) or get yourself one of her books Here and Here. She also teaches courses like this one today, and is a wonderful teacher; if you get a chance to take one of her workshops, I would really suggest you do!