ACRYLIC WORKSHOP

We had a great fun day on Saturday with our acrylic workshop. As most attending had never used acrylics before, we spent the morning practicing how to apply the paint in different ways from blending wet on wet, thin glazes, scraping back and cutting into heavy paint, pressing on heavy textured paint and a form of screen printing. Here are some examples of the group members' exercises:

1 scraping back to earlier lighter glaze by Philippa

2 glazes, textured paint, cutting into wet thick paint by Brian
3 Four different methods of applying acrylic by Audrey

Then we planned a full acrylic piece for the afternoon using as many of the different methods of application as was appropriate, choosing from one of two subjects I had set up.

Two different methods of working. Philippa kept her colours muted and used soft glazes for the background and cloth, but created the textured flower heads by the method of pressing thick paint we practiced in the morning. Helen used primary colour glazes to prepare her work and at the stage of this photo had only just started to add thicker paint to develop the flowers and jug.

Here Maggie is working on her china and fruit subject with thin glazes to start. By adding blue to her red for the background cloth (an old sari of mine when I visited India) Maggie was able to reverse the norm and put reds in the background and bring the soft blue and white plate and bowl forward.

Anne had a problem when applying her first thin background layer although the manufacturer of the acrylic board said it had been primed twice - but as usual errors give some stunning results and it created this textured/spotted effect in the gray/blues. Anne had to leave early so didnt get any further with her acrylic piece.

Didnt they do well???