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.

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.

Watercolor Workshop Recap

I really enjoyed the women who participated in the workshop I led on Saturday at Swinging Bridge Studio. They were good sports about all the information I shared and I kept them busy all afternoon. Dear Hubby came to help me set up and stayed all afternoon - which I had not expected. He was an excellent assistant and he took the workshop pictures I'm posting today.

I still need to finish typing my workshop info sheets to get to the studio. Yesterday was a wash for me, because I picked up some bug that left me without energy, a sore throat & no voice. I'm feeling a little better today, but the voice is still mostly gone.

Watercolor Painting Workshop - Valentine Cards

I will be teaching a watercolor technique workshop on Feb. 2nd at the Swinging Bridge Studio in Story City.

I love to take a sheet of watercolor paper and fill it with color and texture. It can be used as a background for collage/assemblage or torn up as focal pieces on a greeting card. The finished paper can also be scanned or photocopied. When scanned, further manipulation of the design is possible in a program like Photoshop Elements.

Here are just a couple examples of what can be done.