In September, 3 of my 4 beginner students came to the watercolor society meeting to see the program given by Trish McKinney. Trish works abstractly, using acrylic inks on watercolor canvas. My students liked it so much, they wanted to try it. So I purchased the canvas and inks and planned a lesson around using them. I used folding chairs and had a lot of plastic down since my classes are in the kitchen and I didn't want us staining the floor or chairs. It worked out fine and I found that Clorox wipes would take up any drops on the floor that weren't noticed immediately. And we all enjoyed trying some of the techniques Trish shared that she learned from Mary Ann Beckwith.
The first painting (mine) had Halloween cobweb stuff pulled across the canvas and around the edges to start. Then acrylic inks were drizzled on the canvas from a condiment bottle or the dropper from the smaller acrylic ink jars. Leaves were chosen and pushed into the ink and everything was wrapped in plastic wrap to dry, pushing down the plastic wrap to create even more texture.
When I removed the plastic wrap, everything was pretty dry so I removed the leaves and the cobwebbing. This is where it stood and I wanted to let it sit before making any changes, if any.
Linda and Nancy both tried this. Joan continued with her pepper paintings, doing one wet-in-wet and one with the glazing technique and she's doing very well. Joy is travelling so didn't get to play that day.
Linda and Nancy will do "the big reveal" next lesson, having left their wet canvases at my house until then. When you do this, you don't really know what you're going to get until you unwrap everything and take the extra stuff off the canvas, leaving it to then add or subtract (using white gesso) areas. I'm thinking I may leave mine as is except for shaping those red berries a bit more. It was fun, but messy, with a lot of extra coverings for everything so we'll return to our watercolors next time.
REMEMBER TO VOTE TOMORROW!
8 comments:
they say half the fun is making a mess! This one does look yummy Rhon, love it!
Beautiful results with this technique, Rhonda.
Gorgeous texture and colour. Love the impact of these.
Rhonda, the colors are awesome - great work. Love it!
Well I sure do like the colors and how fabulous are those leaf shapes?!
Hello Rhonda:) Love this:) What an exitement this must be! I always say: you've got to try everything. And you do!
Thanks to you, Teresa, Kathryn, Mick, Heather, Sherry and Renate. It really is a fun process and you can get some good stuff without much effort - just a bit of investment in the acrylic inks and canvases. Other odds and ends can be stamped into or used as resists to get even more texture but this was kept pretty simple for a first try.
Rhonda - this looks wonderful. I do love acrylic inks but you are right they are messy - thanks for the idea of covering everything with plastic before starting. Gave me the thought to use a dropcloth. Happy painting my friend.
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