Category Archives: Workshop

Workshop – June 25-27

My challenge and theme for this workshop was CONSTRAINTS and how they may make your painting freer and more imaginative.

Had wonderful weather for my workshop this year, although the last day was rainy at times.  We covered lots of topics: some new pour techniques, making collage papers, monoprinting for texture background and spraying oil type paints over wet paper using leaves/flowers as templates,

For my major project this year, I gave each artist  a box of found objects, papers, etc, that they were to use at least 6 of them, in any number of paintings using an image I supplied for inspiration.  Of course, the images were all very abstract and some just highlights and shadows of unrecognizable objects. This was a very difficult project this year.

Here are some pictures taken during the workshop. Many keepers in the mix

Comments or questions always welcomed.

Mini Pour Workshop

Yesterday was another workshop on Acrylic pouring techniques. We started in the morning with 8″ tiles. I did a quick demo using a previously used wood panel. Then I prepared full cups of five paints–white, black, red, yellow and blue.  Diluted them with water and PaintEasy, added some silicone, but ran out, so I used some RainX I had.

This is after it had dried some, but still has a long way to go. Can change a lot.

I did the pour on a sheet of Yupo  (26×20″ ) supported on a 3/4″ insulation board. Amazingly this stayed flat during the drying process. I put it out in the sun in the afternoon,  but didn’t have it perfectly level, so had a little running before it stabilized.  It is still beautiful, especially if you like bright saturated color. Later I tried a pour using some of the same colors   but added some metallic bronze as the predominant color, on a 1/2″ Foamcore board.  Remind me not to use them again.  Within a couple hours it wa shaped like a bowl and the metallic paint seemed to want to turn to mud. Boo hiss!!!!

Here’s a couple of the student pours.

One of Carrie’s pours. She did three others in the same color scheme.
One of Linda’s Pours
She used an unconventional approach. After failure of her first pour on this tile (mud), she poured some pure colors on top, and then heated it. What a nice tile she has–surprised us all.

 

 

Last Day of Workshop and next day

Day three was spent on collage, mainly using the collage papers that we did on the 2nd day. Everybody seemed very successful.

Here’s the piece I worked on;

At the end of the workshop – day 3

Then today, it was very quiet and I still had my stuff ready to work on, so I almost finished it. Still have a few more pieces to add.

Worked on my own today. Quiet around

Day Two – Acrylic Pours

We spent all day working with acrylic pours. My first demo of this was yesterday (first image below), and today I initially went over the steps in detail, then decided to experiment a bit–did a demo using FW Acrylic Ink mixed with Floetrol. Used all ink, including the white. Since the inks were less viscous than the mixed acrylic paint, I decided that the addition of the thicker Floetrol would be better. It worked fantastically, drawing ooh’s from the gals watching. And the cells remained pretty stable. I must admit it did use a good 10 drops of Silicone. (Second image below)

We had three different kinds of mixtures being used today, all giving about equally good results. One was using PVA glue mixed with water and liquid Silicone. Another was using PaintEasy and silicone spray, I was using acrylic inks and Floetrol. The determining factors in the types and sizes of cells seemed to be three things–one the thickness or viscosity of the acrylic mixture, and  two, the amount of paint used, and thirdly, to a lesser degree, the amount of silicone used.

Some images of different pours.

 

Tomorrow we’re going to be using the collage papers from yesterday to do an abstract image, inspired by a photograph from me.