The year has moved around again and once more it is time for Summer School. This annual event is held at The Beaufort Community School in Gloucester and is organised by the Gloucester Arts and Crafts Group. Over a week, during the school's summer holidays, the group takes over numerous classrooms with which to provide various workshops at a very reasonable price. These workshops range from 2 to 5 day courses and covers subjects such as jewellery making, painting, sculpture, wood chair making, silk painting, mossaic's and batik.
My batik course runs for the full 5 days and this year I have 6 students, all ladies; four of whom have been on my course in previous years. Yesterday was Day One; the weather was hot and sunny (for a change) and I took the two newcommers, Avril and Monica, through the process of using the wax, building layers, colour mixing, brush and tjanting use and creating textures. They both seem to be enthused and I look forward to seeing their creations that they produce through the week.
Del, Jenny, and Gill have all been before and quickly got back into the swing of things, they started off with easier projects to 're-aqauaint' themselves with the medium. Hazel is only coming in for two days this year (Thursday and Friday) and Gill has to go back to work on Tuesday as one of her colleagues is on jury service.
Teaching is a little more tricky for me this year as I am currently in Phase One of a frozen shoulder, I had a steroid injection into the joint last Monday and this now seems to be lowering the amount of pain but not taken it away completely, so I am finding leaning over the table and not being able to sit and rest my arm during the day a little uncomfortable at the moment. Hopefully that will improve during the week.
We are in for a week of beautiful sunshine and fun playing with batik.
