October

Hayley Mills Workshop 18^th October 2025, The Studio, Dunfermline Art Gallery, Townhill Community Centre.

The workshop started promptly at 10am. The tables were already prepared and covered with plastic and newspapers and Hayley brought plenty of materials for the class including additional boards.

Each placement had paper of various sizes and weights, with fine writer ink pens, traditional ink pens with nibs, a feather quill, piece of card and a wooden stick. Hayley then explained and demonstrated the effects of each instrument, including how to prepare the feather quill, the properties of waterproof ink, its pigment and how that varied to watercolours. She also practically demonstrated wet- on- dry and wet- on- wet techniques and the use of dabbing with paper towels and showed examples of her work for each on the various supports.

This was very entertaining and with a question-and-answer session was very informative based on her mixed-media background.

The class then went on to try out each implement sketching the item they had brought for this purpose. Hayley emphasized that it was to be a rough sketch using black ink initially but that each implement should be used, to move between each tool for drawing and to introduce colour at a later stage. The card was to be used for the largest sheet of paper and to be used expressively.

There were plenty of spare inks and paper on hand and Hayley walked amongst the class and took photographs of the pieces being worked on and gave tips and encouragement to each class member.

In a remarkably short time the class was over, indicating how intensive things had been. Everyone enjoyed the novelty of the work and the pieces were so diverse. It was a very satisfactory experience and you would never look at a feather or wooden stick in the same way again!