Notan, Near Notan & Not Notan

Black & White Beetle
20" by 30"

At the beginning of this year I took a Design 101 workshop given by Gail Rieke, an artist from Santa Fe.  I have taken a number of workshops from her and she is a favorite of Seaside Weavers having taught there at least four times.

In this two day workshop we did all the exercises in black and white.   It was a different perspective for me since my fiber color study group has been focusing on color for years. There were exercises in both two and three dimensions as well as individual and group exercises.  On the last afternoon we got to work on whatever we wanted.  I, of course, reverted to form and created a beetle through negative space.  It was an interesting project since it forced me to cut out the shapes involved and not draw the lines as I normally would do.

Although I did not learn anything earth shattering, the workshop did inspire me to create 100 different designs with black and white paper over the next 100 days.  I had a book on Notan with lots of different exercises so I did some of those.  I started out doing one a day but it was so fun I ended up doing more.  I had a station set up in my studio with the black and white paper and adhesive.  I kept the little bits from previous designs since I often found in that pile the perfect piece for a more recent design. I did not labor over any of the designs.  Just got an idea and got it done.  Once I completed 100 of them, I lined them up on my studio floor for a photo.

My 100 Designs lined up on my studio floor. 

Next, I played around with the image in photoshop to get an idea of what it would like like as fabric...

Then I send it off to Spoonflower to have it printed on a yard of cotton.  Brillant!

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