The Pysanka Egg Decorating Workshop took Easter egg painting to a whole new level this weekend.

The workshop focused on the materials, designs and methods of traditional Ukrainian egg decorating to get into the spirit of the spring holiday.

Educational Program Specialist Jaime-Brett Sine runs the workshop and says the process is truly an art.

" What we do in the workshop is I do a presentation where I give a little bit of background on the history, talk about the process because we are using some of the traditional materials and processes including live flame, bees wax, as well as real pysanky dyes and real eggs. We talk about some of the designs of course we will mention and show a number of traditional Ukrainian designs and so that will involve designing their own designs that might mean something to them. As well as drawing using a kistka directly on the egg with wax and then using a number of dyes." She says, "It's a wax resist method and then at the very end you actually melt off the wax using candles and you have a really beautiful decorated egg."

Sine says the past two years they have had the workshop it's been a very hot commodity.

 "It's really, really neat. This year I also opened it up to teachers at a very limited capacity but I brought in over 100 hundred students this past week to do the eggs as well. So it's been very popular and a lot of fun. Last year our courses were sold out, we didn't offer it to schools but I had so many requests so I decided to do so this year and I'm hoping in future years to expand that even further. Hopefully with additional help so that we can bring in even more school groups and obviously offer more public programs as well because the demand is certainly there."

Sine says whether you are seven or a senior participating at the local workshop you will leave with a beautiful piece of art.

The gallery is also hosting another workshop for adults this spring focusing on painting wildlife with local artist Erica Neumann.

If interested drop by the gallery and grab a culture brochure or visit okotoksculture.ca for more information.

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