ACRYLIC WORKSHOP

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14 members of the Sutton Bridge art group attended this workshop in Lincolnshire last Wednesday, before I moved on to stay with friends. Arriving after a very easy journey with hardly any traffic, the first thing I asked was for the tables to be set up as above, so that everyone could face inwards to the 4 or 5 different still life subjects I setup in the middle. These covered

my good old copper pots with oranges and my tall African family statue;

grapes and china plate and bowl;

brown ceramic fruit bowl with pineapple and white and terracotta tea towel;

blue vase with yellow daffodils ;

dried flower arrangement of hydrangea heads, artichokes, my wooden snowdrops and large peonies all in a chunky creamy and brown country vase and my bronze cat.

All had draped cloths of varying colours and patterns as backdrops.

I also took along a few paintings to demonstrate the various techniques from sculpting with modelling paste, use of crackleglaze for some candles, blending soft colours, splattering, glazes of thin layers, and applications of heavy duty, normal consistency pigment through to acrylic inks and finally the use of gutta silk paints to add decorative elements.

After discussing the various acrylics and mediums available on the market over a cup of coffee, we then quickly moved onto the methods of applying acrylic paint. We started with thin washes overlaying dried paint to see how glazes work to create luminosity and the method of mixing paint on the canvas to keep the colours pure. Moved on to applying thick paint with knife in large areas and then mosaic broken lines of various colours or tones to achieve an impressionist effect.

Before lunch break, we had covered

masking with card, torn paper and masking tape;

spattering with toothbrushes;

flicking a loaded brush;

all wet on wet and wet on dry to see the different effects.

Finally I gave away my secret of 'printing' colour shapes after applying paint to pieces of watercolour paper.

Everyone had the chance to try various mediums from flow enhancer, sand, beads, etc and my gutta silk paints for gold or silver highlights. We discussed crackleglaze and tried using modelling paste.

During the last few moments of the morning everyone prepared a stretched canvas with gesso coloured and applied as they chose. A very busy morning, getting us all ready for a 'masterpiece' using chosen techniques in the afternoon.

AFTERNOON CANVAS WORK

Amazingly, quite a number chose to work with modelling paste and one lady did a close up of a daffodil simply using this technique for the petal shapes and placing colour afterwards. Two other ladies asked if they might use my 'sculptured poppies' painting as inspiration to use modelling paste and the impressionist mosaic style of applying acrylic paint.

modelling paste close up daffodil and sculptured poppies in progress

photo of one of the still life subjects with acrylic painting in progress , paint having been applied very thickly on gessoed smooth background.

This lady was very clever in creating the artichokes and teasel by placing modelling paste with a knife in small marks to create the various shapes that made up the individual dried heads.

Two other works created in the afternoon are posted below. Unfortunately, I did not get round to everyone with the camera as they finished their main work, such a pity as there were some really different interesting pieces such as the African family statue, where the artist had added beads, seeds and silk gutta in gold to create their costume jewellery.



this gentleman used varied washes for his background on top of white gesso (the white area would turn into a lace tablecloth by the end)

and another gentleman started to block in after placing composition with brush and diluted acrylic

All in all a very happy, funfilled and successful day - of that I am assured as I have been asked to visit them again for another workshop. Sorry if it has turned out to be rather a long post - hope you manage to drag yourself through all the text to the images at the end.