acrylic and collage workshops

Gloss Medium and Passion Vining

We wrapped up another 6-week series of Tuesday Muse Group this week with a lesson I haven’t taught for years – painting on a glossy surface.

First you coat the paper with a couple layers of gloss medium and let them dry. What you get is a surface with a shiny plastic-y surface which makes for some particularly odd effects when you paint your acrylics on.

I like to use fluid acrylics and wet the surface lightly in places so that the paint starts to move and colors blend. If you spritz the paint lightly with alcohol just before it dries, you get even more surprises as the alcohol pushes the paint around some more.

I can’t quite remember when the floral garland here grew the native face and then the feather? headdress appeared. There’s always a matter of brain off-line and resulting hallucination involved. The passion vine flower came into the picture as it resembled the flowers outside on my studio wall that lure the butterflies and mess with the mind of visiting artists as well.

nativepassionvine

acrylic and collage on acrylic gloss medium coated w/c paper, 10 X 11″

a native plunges ahead on the trail of passion’s twining

clad in fragrance of meadows and dark sky

of floral garland and warrior headdress

         . . .destination unknown

        (and unnecessary)

For more painting on gloss, you might want to visit another lesson on my blog and try it out.

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Holiday Trees

We see the color red in the fall and the effect is of fall leaves or, in our case here in “fire country”, flames. But it’s December now and we are drenched from the atmospheric river and open door to storms from the ocean, and now red reminds us of. . .Santa!

I was thinking of the tree of life here, and later the words Christmas tree popped up unbidden. Recently I was giving a private lesson about ways to work with crinkled Masa paper. I painted on a sheet of water-soaked Masa paper which had been crinkled. And then made collage papers using the same method,  which I then used on the first piece after mounting it on watercolor paper.

The writing is a bit of fun. Take me seriously, but not too much!

flametree

Flame outside, flame inside, each making space for the other.

This world is made of positive and negative holding hands,

sometimes in secret cahoots.

Both want to be noticed,

forever in need of each other.

 

The painting wants to be noticed.

Every part wanting to tell her story.

 

Yet the artist can only think of how she has

yet again failed to make a masterpiece.

How can she be so shallow, when she promised herself

to be free, leaving behind judgments.

“But I wanted to scribble somewhere!” she whines,

ungrateful wretch that she is.

Asleep in the Woods

Last week in Muse group we did that strangest of art techniques. To start you wet the (Masa) paper and crinkle it til it’s wadded up in a ball! Then spread it out and paint on it.

sleepinthewoods

Oh to fall asleep in the woods

But on a soft bed with pillows and down comforter

After all, does the fox not have a preferred bedding

And what of my cat Phil (who prefers dry dirt)

Oh to fill the nostrils with pine and damp wood

and let the breeze cool your cheeks

and dream of streams running with fish

and skies pulsing with birdsong

and even worms tunneling through earth (just not in my sheets please)

Break down the barriers between inside and out

Let night in

Let nature in