Golden Acrylics Workshop 2009

Late last month I had the opportunity to take another Golden Acrylic Workshop with Bonnie Cutts at the ART Store in Des Moines. Last year I took her acrylic skins and transfers workshop. This year we explored gels, pastes, and grounds, compared gloss with matte, fluid paint with heavy body paint. It was a blast!
This is my favorite project from the day:

We started the day making reference sheets with a samples of Golden products being placed on papers and tinted mixtures of the same products placed beside them. Another sheet compares heavy body paint to fluid paint mixed in a variety of gels and mediums. A third sheet shows paint mixed with a variety of gels, covered with the gel and painted over the gel. We also prepped a couple of our boards with grounds to allow time for drying. We would paint them in the afternoon.
Bonnie is a very knowledgeable and experienced artist. And to make it even better, she's a lot of fun. There was a wide range of experience and interest represented in the workshop. Even though I've been painting with acrylics for a few years, I found this workshop very valuable and worth taking. The less experienced that I observed seemed to be having a great time, too.
Check out the links I provided at the beginning of this post. Golden has a Working Artist Program with instructors located around the world! Patti Brady is the director of the Working Artist Program. If you can't attend one of the workshops, then you should certainly check out Patti's new book: "Rethinking Acrylic". This book is a great resource with plenty of inspiration for anyone who is driven by the "What If?" when playing with acrylic. In addition to Patti's work, she has featured several other artist's work including three of Bonnie Cutts' pieces.