Painting – Week 3

This week’s painting class was quite fun. We are now working with acrylics, and I love using my Jo Sonja collection every chance I get! We had to paint a still life again – the wooden vase/bottle thing, a different mask, a fruit basket and a sun hat at the back, spread on a purple cloth:

Not that inspiring a subject (to me), but it was made interesting by the use of impasto (gel medium). I’d never used this before. It’s like a very thick, white, sticky paste that can be diluted or mixed with paint, or used as it is and then painted over. Basically it provides texture, and brings 3D effects to an otherwise flat medium. When mixed with a colour, it makes the colour look as though it’s mixed with white (unsurprisingly…).

I worked with it using the brushes as well as a palette knife. I’m sure you can get really interesting effects by using other tools – things like chicken wire, for example. It’d also be interesting to see if you could embed things into it (beads, glass eyes, etc).

Here is my WIP:

We’re allocating a couple of weeks to this. Next week I’m going to add more detail to this canvas, like shading and extra bits of colour.

We’re also supposed to start thinking about our “major work” – what we’ll be working on for the rest of the term. I can’t decide between a more abstract charcoal piece (or a series of them), a watercolour cityscape (I was thinking of painting a wet road – this would have ample opportunity for bleeds), or something precise and minute in acrylic. Hmmm.