Sunday, April 27, 2008

Golden Acrylic Collage with Gel Transfers Workshop




This weekend it was my great joy to attend a workshop at the Art Store in Des Moines which was taught by Bonnie Cutts, who is one of Golden Acrylics' Working Artists. If you are interested in working with acrylics, doing collage or transfer techniques, I highly recommend attending a workshop. Check out the link to see if there are offerings in your area.

I attended a lecture/demo on Friday night, which was very informative. There were so many sample boards! The Saturday workshop was a lot of fun. I learned more getting to work directly with the wonderful Golden products that were supplied to us. I've posted the collages that I worked on plus a sample board of direct transfer images. Bonnie prepared acrylic "skins" that we could include in our collages. These could be as simple as a textured gel that was tinted with Golden Fluid acrylic and left to dry on releasable surface such as glass. We adhered the skins to our collages using Gloss Soft Gel. We were also provided with transfers that were partially prepared. Clip art that was printed using a copier or laser printer (not regular ink jet) is coated with 4-5 layers of Gloss Soft Gel, drying between layers. Once the gel is thoroughly dry (no longer cloudy), put the image in lukewarm water to soak the paper. Place gel side down on firm surface & rub away the paper. Your image has transferred to the gel & it can be collaged onto your surface once it has dried (lay on a towel so it doesn't stick to surface while drying). Use Gloss Soft Gel to adhere transfer to the collage.
I have made transfers before using Liquitex products with satisfactory results, but I wasn't able to rub away the paper as thoroughly as I could with the Golden product. I think the toner bonded more thoroughly to the Golden film than it did to the Liquitex.
I would like to do more with the collages I started and will add an update when I get to that point.

Bonnie made the workshop a lot of fun as well as informative, and I recommend her very much. She is based out of the Twin Cities area. Check out her web site for workshop opportunities and to see samples of her art.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

What an interesting technique ! Thanks for sharing !

Shayla said...

Sounds like lots of fun, Regina! Can't wait to see all the stuff you'll make.

Leah said...

wow, what fun! i've been hoping that golden would do a workshop closer to me sometime soon. i'd love to take a class like that!

Jodi Ohl said...

This is a lot of fun-I'm glad you enjoyed the class, it sounds like there was a lot of great info shared.

Fannie said...

Wonderful collages. Thanks for sharing!

Kelly Warren said...

love that self portrait, regina!