Fiddle Frenzy 2010
Amy gives a pep talk on pastels.
Mixed Media drop-in workshops
Sunday 8th – Sunday 15th August 2010
8 day workshop for Shetland Arts' Fiddle Frenzy
Shetland Fiddle Frenzy is a celebration of the music and the musicians that have made Shetland one of the world’s most highly acclaimed fiddle playing regions. The Fiddle Frenzy is a two part event – a fiddle school and a cultural festival run alongside to offer fiddlers and their families, friends and partners a creative alternative to fiddle tuition over the week. Cultural events have previously included: Textiles, Creative Writing and Story Telling tours.
In 2010 Blue Sky Studio were invited to bring their experience of teaching art on location in Shetland to the Fiddle Frenzy:
Wow! This has to have been one of our biggest and best Blue Sky challenges yet. Not just because it ran for eight consecutive days; not just because we covered the length and breadth of Shetland, from Burra to Yell, to Hillswick; but also because our small group of "fiddle widows" were as gregarious and mischevious as we could have possibly wished for! What a lot of fun. :)
Participants were each given their own hand made sketch book which they could fill with a variety of papers including preprepared sheets, wall paper and pastel papers. We used all our usual Blue Sky tricks to cover a variety of media in a range of locations - measured drawing with inks in the Lerwick Lanes, collage at Hay's Dock, "big" paints on board in the sun at Meal Beach and a rainy day spent painting the view from the Cullivoe School in watercolour. We rounded the week off at Stenness Herring Station with some beautiful large scale watercolours, which I hope everyone was extremely proud of! They were brilliant!
Of course, with eight days to fill we needed some additions to the Blue Sky repertoir and luckily we had a few more tricks up our sleeves:
Life Drawing classes were held at the back of the big hall in Isleburgh whilst fiddle classes were in progress and were a super challenge, for all of us. The space allowed us to either practice quicker sketches of the fiddle students or to set up Eve as a model for some longer poses. And the added bonus was listening to music!
We also introduced some widlife (as if we didn't already have enough on the bus!) to our outings with a visit to the orphaned seals at the Hillswick Wildlife Sanctuary. This was a big hit with everyone, and the group all managed to produce some adorable sketches, amidst the oo-ing and ah-ing of the baby selkies.
More animal antics were enjoyed at Burland Croft after our day painting (read "sunbathing!") on the beach in Burra. The Shetland hens, bantems and turkeys were a great amusement and fascinated the group, some of whom were still suffering slightly from too much (ahem!) music the previous evening! Despite being slightly under the weather we found that our time on the croft was all too short and it was a genuine struggle to tear everyone away from the animals. I'm still not sure that Mike didn't pop one of the chickens in his man-bag and take it home! A big thanks to Mary Isbister for showing us about, we will certainly be writing Burland into our 2011 programme.
Thanks to our participants for making this another memorable workshop. I hope you're all very proud of the work you produced - we are! :)
Sunday 8th – Sunday 15th August 2010
8 day workshop for Shetland Arts' Fiddle Frenzy
Shetland Fiddle Frenzy is a celebration of the music and the musicians that have made Shetland one of the world’s most highly acclaimed fiddle playing regions. The Fiddle Frenzy is a two part event – a fiddle school and a cultural festival run alongside to offer fiddlers and their families, friends and partners a creative alternative to fiddle tuition over the week. Cultural events have previously included: Textiles, Creative Writing and Story Telling tours.
In 2010 Blue Sky Studio were invited to bring their experience of teaching art on location in Shetland to the Fiddle Frenzy:
Wow! This has to have been one of our biggest and best Blue Sky challenges yet. Not just because it ran for eight consecutive days; not just because we covered the length and breadth of Shetland, from Burra to Yell, to Hillswick; but also because our small group of "fiddle widows" were as gregarious and mischevious as we could have possibly wished for! What a lot of fun. :)
Participants were each given their own hand made sketch book which they could fill with a variety of papers including preprepared sheets, wall paper and pastel papers. We used all our usual Blue Sky tricks to cover a variety of media in a range of locations - measured drawing with inks in the Lerwick Lanes, collage at Hay's Dock, "big" paints on board in the sun at Meal Beach and a rainy day spent painting the view from the Cullivoe School in watercolour. We rounded the week off at Stenness Herring Station with some beautiful large scale watercolours, which I hope everyone was extremely proud of! They were brilliant!
Of course, with eight days to fill we needed some additions to the Blue Sky repertoir and luckily we had a few more tricks up our sleeves:
Life Drawing classes were held at the back of the big hall in Isleburgh whilst fiddle classes were in progress and were a super challenge, for all of us. The space allowed us to either practice quicker sketches of the fiddle students or to set up Eve as a model for some longer poses. And the added bonus was listening to music!
We also introduced some widlife (as if we didn't already have enough on the bus!) to our outings with a visit to the orphaned seals at the Hillswick Wildlife Sanctuary. This was a big hit with everyone, and the group all managed to produce some adorable sketches, amidst the oo-ing and ah-ing of the baby selkies.
More animal antics were enjoyed at Burland Croft after our day painting (read "sunbathing!") on the beach in Burra. The Shetland hens, bantems and turkeys were a great amusement and fascinated the group, some of whom were still suffering slightly from too much (ahem!) music the previous evening! Despite being slightly under the weather we found that our time on the croft was all too short and it was a genuine struggle to tear everyone away from the animals. I'm still not sure that Mike didn't pop one of the chickens in his man-bag and take it home! A big thanks to Mary Isbister for showing us about, we will certainly be writing Burland into our 2011 programme.
Thanks to our participants for making this another memorable workshop. I hope you're all very proud of the work you produced - we are! :)
Lovely things people said about the Blue Sky 2010 Fiddle Frenzy Workshops:
"Amy and Eve arevery good tutors and very good fun to be with. They made it an excellent holiday and I hope they can put up with me next year! Drawing outside was very enjoyable. The workshops were all of good standard and even when the weather was not good the tutors managed to re-organise very well."
Mike
"Every session and every day was really enjoyable. We had great fun during the art workshops - just care free and like being a child again! We were able to try various subjects and media during the week."
Liz
Mike
"Every session and every day was really enjoyable. We had great fun during the art workshops - just care free and like being a child again! We were able to try various subjects and media during the week."
Liz
