About this workshop
About Southwestern Stripes: Sunsets and Serapes
This workshop is one of two I designed for a unit on the Art of the Southwest for Artful Gathering. The companion workshop is called "NeoSantos: New Interpretations of Folk Art Saints and Angels." I love both of those subjects, but this workshop about Southwestern Stripes is one of my all time favorites because it can be done by anyone and the techniques used in so many ways on so many surfaces.
Stripes are a foundational design in the Southwest - one, because the landscape is endless, horizontal, and striped with layers of sand and mesas, sunsets and wide open spaces. But also because the looms which produced the iconic serapes and rugs of the Southwest were linear in structure and process. Wool was woven in bands and geometric shapes. Some of the weavings are incredibly complex in both design and symbology. There are many good books on the subject.
In this workshop, I invite you to take the spirit of Southwestern Stripes and explore simple color mixing with various media on various surfaces. There are at least five different methods described in these lessons, and you are sure to find one that sits you and that you would like to expand on.
Here is an example of a Southwestern-style painting that has stripes based on a Japanese Sumi-e paint stroke! And the feather are done with a hand-cut stencil. You'll learn many combinations like this that produce interesting results. All are easy and enjoyable and require little in the way of expensive materials.
About the Video Lessons
There are several hours of video lessons on many different ways to practice Southwestern Stripes. You can skip around between sections if you like or you can do them sequentially, which I would probably recommend. The videos lessons are presented with no additional text introduction since they are really self-explanatory - just click and watch!