A Love Song to Golden Acrylic Paint Company
Kathy and I spent this weekend in a fabulous art class. We took Acrylic Surfacing with Tesia Blackburn at the Walnut Creek Civic Arts Education program. Tesia is a Golden Working Artist (Golden being Golden Acrylic Paint, my favorite brand of high-end artist acrylics). As such, she used Golden products for all of the techniques she taught in the two-day workshop. That was great, because that's what I have my studio stocked with. Imagine taking an art class where you don't have to buy anything afterward! I don't know about you, but it rarely happens to me.
She had stacks of 8x10 mat board that we used to make lots of sample boards, illustrating all of the many combinations she demonstrated. That way, we could take them with us and use them as reference, which was cool.
Tesia works with fluid acrylic instead of heavy body ones. She showed us how to make a heavy body paint using the fluids, without losing pigment intensity. She used 30% acrylic paint to 70% heavy gel gloss. To extend the paint, getting more transparency, she used 10% fluid acrylic to 90% heavy gel gloss. I knew how to make a fluid acrylic out of a heavy body, but it's useful to know how to do it the other way around. She even demonstrated the intensity by pouring fluid acrylic onto mat board and spreading some of the newly mixed up heavy body paint next to it. Once it dried, you could see that there was no loss in color or intensity.
Some of the other things we did were to mix different mediums together (ones that had body to them) and them use them through a stencil to create a raised impression. We experimented on our own, for example, combining coarse pumice gel with black mica to create an amazing granite effect. The results made we want to get back into the studio and work, right away!
She also had us do something I had not done before, and that was to use mediums to create surfaces that we could then paint on or use pastels on. Each medium had its own absorption attributes, making for some interesting effects.
Tesia doesn't use water for thinning acrylics (in general) because it weakens the polymer. I've actually never used water with the Golden acrylics, but I've used plenty of matte medium, heavy gel, and glazing medium. I haven't used much of the polymer gloss medium but she swears by it for extending fluid acrylics. She likes it better than the matte medium that I use for the same purpose. For layered collage, Tesia recommends using all gloss products until the very end, and then using a matte or satin top coat if you want to knock back the gloss. She said that this way, you keep much better transparency through the layers. I will have to try this.
While she had us try a great many techniques for different effects, it seems like that's only a small sample of what you can do. It's really something you have to experiment with. I highly recommend her class, because getting to do this over two days is wonderfully immersive. The second day is necessary because there are certain things you have to let dry overnight before you can do the next step.) I found it inspirational; I'm really glad we signed up.
My "duh" moment of the class: Tesia was showing how she uses heavy gel gloss to adhere 3D images onto a collage. Now, I was already doing this, but she did one thing differently. She mixed in some of the paint that she used on the collage, in with the gel, before applying it. Makes total sense because then the "glue" is camouflaged...but I never thought of it! DUH!
P.S. Have I mentioned yet that I love Golden acrylics? I do, I really do. Quinacridone Crimson and Permanent Violet Dark are only two of the many mad, passionate affairs I've had with their pigments. Knowing me, there are many more affairs to come. (Alix casts a slow, sidelong glance toward Jenkins Green. Heh, heh, heh.)
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