As part of Stitch Department’s ‘Masterclass’ series and in celebration of Isle of Wight Pride Week, we have Oly Bliss joining us next week.
Join Worcester-based textile artist Oly Bliss in a workshop masterclass. The workshop will explore hand stitch, colour theory and tonal values to make great portraits.
The workshop will help you improve your drawing and sewing skills and introduce you to steps that can help you make any artwork feel more realistic and colourful.
Who should come
This workshop is aimed at beginners but any sewing veteran will still learn and gain new insights through this process.
This workshop is good for anyone wanting to improve how they make a portrait by sewing and the approaches can be applied to other artistic mediums like painting and drawing.
Where and when
This Masterclass Workshop with textile artist, Oliver Bliss takes place at Stitch Department, Department, Cross Street, Ryde on Friday 14th July between 6.30pm and 8.30pm.
Tickets for this incredible workshop are priced at £20 each and can be secured by heading over to EventBrite.
About the artist: Oliver Bliss
Oliver Bliss is a textile artist based in Worcester UK. He is a Hand and Lock finalist and has previously been selected for the Royal Scottish Academy’s annual show and was long listed for Zealous Amplify: Mental Health And Wellbeing.
In 2022 he released his first series of work titled ‘#SoftLads’ in Partnership with The Word Association, Shout! Festival, Bransford Trust and Arts Council England funding.
Contemporary tapestries exploring notions of masculinity
SoftLads is a large-scale series of handmade, pictorial, contemporary tapestry portraits exploring notions of masculinity. Themes included contemporary hero worship, body image, impact of social, democratic celebrity, activism, sexuality, gender variation and history of identity.
The series is focused on male tattoo facial and body art from Instagram as a starting point. The pieces explore how and why we generate images of ourselves and promote ourselves on social media.
The series aims to collect a sample of portraits of men, all sourced through the global social network, Instagram. The images were found exploring images uploaded on Instagram with hashtag #tattoos #facialtattoos #bodytattoos as a starting point to transform the images into tapestries. The series uses textiles as a nod to historic approaches in portraiture and craft with a contemporary twist.
Our thanks to Stitch Department for sponsoring for this feature. They and other businesses and organisations taking paid promotion enables you to continue reading OnTheWight for free.
Image: © Gerald Hughes
