Today was my first day teaching my 5 day mixed media workshop at Series in Red Deer, Alberta. I have 10 eager students, many of whom have little art background -fresh fields!! The first thing we did was to play with fluid acrylics, using them transparently, translucently and opaquely. We began with transparent glazes and splatters -happy accidents -and then went back in with opaques to make shapes, keeping what we loved and painting out the rest in interesting shapes. We talked about making linkages between these shapes and how to deal with edges. We introduced line and pattern as well. Then we painted some translucent areas, played with darks and lights and generally got off to a good start. The nice thing about mixed media, is it's never over until it's over :) So you might just see where this one goes from here...
This is our second painting of the day, courtesy of an exercise I did in Bob Burridges' workshop. We began with play, splattering paint in transparent then opaques splatters all over our gesso covered paper. Then we worked with negative painting, which means painting out the background, thus leaving the flowers. (sort of like Michelangelo did when he chiseled away the stone from the block containing his amazing David, but not nearly so elegantly!) I decided to put a transparent glaze on the tabletop so that the pattern showed through, thus making a connection to the 'flowers'. A translucent white glaze over the vase allowed it to be separated from the flowers, a shadow was cast on the table, and a couple of flowers were defined in the focal point along with some suggestions of leaves, which makes all the other splatters look like flowers. Cool eh -all you need to do is to suggest what people are looking at, and voila, they see them.
These are 5 of my students at the absolutely FAB new painting studios at Red Deer College. There is a sound system built in along with computer technology and projection screens, remotely controlled blinds and air conditioning. And look at all this space! What a dream. I am one happy teacher!
Today was my first day teaching my 5 day mixed media workshop at Series in Red Deer, Alberta. I have 10 eager students, many of whom have little art background -fresh fields!! The first thing we did was to play with fluid acrylics, using them transparently, translucently and opaquely. We began with transparent glazes and splatters -happy accidents -and then went back in with opaques to make shapes, keeping what we loved and painting out the rest in interesting shapes. We talked about making linkages between these shapes and how to deal with edges. We introduced line and pattern as well. Then we painted some translucent areas, played with darks and lights and generally got off to a good start. The nice thing about mixed media, is it's never over until it's over :) So you might just see where this one goes from here...
This is our second painting of the day, courtesy of an exercise I did in Bob Burridges' workshop. We began with play, splattering paint in transparent then opaques splatters all over our gesso covered paper. Then we worked with negative painting, which means painting out the background, thus leaving the flowers. (sort of like Michelangelo did when he chiseled away the stone from the block containing his amazing David, but not nearly so elegantly!) I decided to put a transparent glaze on the tabletop so that the pattern showed through, thus making a connection to the 'flowers'. A translucent white glaze over the vase allowed it to be separated from the flowers, a shadow was cast on the table, and a couple of flowers were defined in the focal point along with some suggestions of leaves, which makes all the other splatters look like flowers. Cool eh -all you need to do is to suggest what people are looking at, and voila, they see them.
These are 5 of my students at the absolutely FAB new painting studios at Red Deer College. There is a sound system built in along with computer technology and projection screens, remotely controlled blinds and air conditioning. And look at all this space! What a dream. I am one happy teacher!
WoooWWW me gusta mucho esta obra....Felicidades!!!!.Un abrazo.
ReplyDeleteWonderful post! I love your example of the negative painting...wow...gorgeous! RB can be really proud! When I scrolled down and saw the SIZE of the space I said out loud...holy cow!! Then you said it has sound, air, blinds...oh holy molllly!!! What a space for a great workshop. Looking forward to the next few days!
ReplyDeleteSharon,
ReplyDeleteYour workshop demos are beautiful...and you make them sound like so much fun! You're right, the studio is FAB! Look forward to seeing more.
Bobbi
Sharon,
ReplyDeleteYour workshop demos look beautiful...and you make them look like so much fun! You're right, the studio is FAB! I look forward to seeing more.
Bobbi