| Back to Back Issues Page |
 |
|
Acrylics Anonymous, Issue #067 -- Peace, Love and Joy to All Earthlings. November 30, 2017 |
Passionate about painting with acrylics? Need a monthly fix chock full of inspiration? Need some help to take the pain out of your painting process? It's all here for you. Acrylics Anonymous. Zero elitism. Dive in. If you enjoy Acrylics Anonymous, and you know someone who might also enjoy it, you can share by forwarding it to your friends! If you are receiving this because a friend has forwarded this to you, and you would like to subscribe, click here! 
Every month, we will produce a Subscribers Only "sealed section". It could be a painting technique, a short video tip, or anything we can think of that we reckon you might enjoy. Please let us know what you think, we love your feedback! To leave comments, contact us here.
buy it now :) AUD$42
Or, click here for all the info first!
Art Supplies For Beginners. If you’re buying art supplies for a beginner as a gift this season, ensure you get the best quality student stuff you can get. This will give them a great chance at continuing on their artistic path, as they’ll learn to use a paint that behaves like a good quality professional paint. All the skills that they’ve developed while using this paint won’t be wasted when they use artist quality paints as a full time practising professional artist! 
Wave Fundamentals - Coming THIS Week. Yesss! This is your last chance to register for your very own pre-sale digital copy! Registration closes 3rd December, so do this right now! Click here to register for Wave Fundamentals pre-sale digital copy. Remember Dick Millott? It's been a while, but our very own Struggling Artist is back this month with his latest eloquent installment from Struggle Town. Click here to read more. The Green Padlock Our website is now "secure". We have a green padlock, yee-ha! You may not have noticed, however URL’s (web addresses) beginning with an "https" are deemed "secure" whereas URL’s beginning with "http" are not. We have made the move to security and peace of mind for our visitors, aka, you! Please let us know if you come across any glitches on our site while we change it over. To go a bit deeper into the meaning of the green padlock, click here. No AA in January. From us here at Explore HQ, we hope you have a safe and happy holiday season and see you in the first week of February! 2018! Whaaaat. Wow. Keep yourself sated with back issues in the meantime! Click here for AA Backissues. 
Every month, we choose an Artist from our
forum
to showcase. You can even nominate someone if you like. (Or yourself!). To do this, check out the forum and then send us an email! It’s that easy. This month we're featuring Madeleine O’Connor's work, from Australia titled "Working Out Water". Loving the clarity and movement in these waves Madeleine, awesome work! Click here for more info on Madeleine's piece "Working Out Water"
Zazac Namoo’s beautifully ethereal images are dreamlike, translucent and utterly magnificent. Do yourself a favour and check out his artwork and tutorials on this fantastic YT channel. Click here for Zazac's work. Ever been curious about how a paintbrush is actually made? Check out this process on Insiders YT channel. Mark’s comment at the end of viewing was “…and then watch me trash it!” Click here to see how a paintbrush is made. If you have a link you like, please share it with us! You can contact us to let us know. Thank you! 
This is the section where you can "get your name in lights!" (well at least out there in the internet world!).If you have works in progress you would love to show off, or finished pieces you are particularly proud of, we would love to see them! We especially like to hear about the story behind the creation. This month's story comes from our very own amazing Aussie artist, close friend and creator of Colour In Your Life, Graeme Stevenson. From Graeme: "Over the past several years I have had the great pleasure to watch some of the most talented Artists in a number of countries, learning in that time how to push the boundaries of many of the mediums I have seen these folks use. It has without a doubt expanded my own repertoire of techniques and enabled me to explore some pretty amazing ideas. The series of pics here are an example of just some of these techniques. I was introduced to Royal Talens inks by Rob Prior in Los Angeles, a multi-talented Artist who has become very successful with his career. His ability is extraordinary to say the least. I saw Rob mixing watercolours, gouache and inks together on very thick watercolour paper and achieving some amazing results. So, on getting back to Australia last year I began to experiment with the colours and inks to see what I could do with them. I was amazed at the luminescent colours that were produced by the Royal Talens inks and was also happy to find that they had a strong permanence once they had dried. What I mean by that is that I learned that I could re-wet the areas with water and then put watercolours and gouache over the top of the inks, and literally paint on top with the ink colours still maintaining their integrity. It is very difficult to do this with watercolours, without turning the whole picture into a giant mud bath. It took a few times and some experimentation to find out which of the inks were stay fast and which were not so good, but generally many of the colours will sit the way you want them to, even when more water is applied. A revelation to say the least, and a new style born on my behalf. Tons of fun as well.
In this series of pics I just sat down one day and decided to have some fun and started drawing random abstract shapes with an HB pencil. Once I had finished that I got all of the earthy colours in the Talens range and started, once again, putting down random colours, just balancing out from end to end as I went along, and then about one third in from each end I started using the cooler colours and randomly placed them down as well. Many people that saw that pattern said that that was a good picture as it was, but I had other plans in mind for this background. My Elephant pieces have been selling very well, a magnificent animal that I have had the pleasure of seeing in the wild on a number occasions. I cannot believe that Donald Trump has recently lifted the ban on elephant and trophy animals to the U.S.
What I do next so that I can get solid lines with no mistakes, is print out one of my photos and enlarge it onto just plain paper to the size that I want the piece to be. I have a very large printer that I use to do this, but there are print places that can do this for you for about $10. I then carbon the image onto the water colour paper or canvas, you can use a projector to do this, but I find the carbon more satisfying. Once I have done that I use only two colours, black and white to begin to highlight the areas, there is enough colour in the background to make the picture jump. On some of the watercolour pictures, I will use acrylic to block in the backgrounds, this just gives a more solid colour base, and with the Talens inks being stay fast it does not affect the acrylic at all.
On this piece, I mixed two inks together - both blue and purple, and added a little water and then got a fine wide brush. Princeton brushes have a great selection of soft wide brushes. I then painted the background, the brush strokes should be deliberate and paint over the dry areas only once, that enables the inks to stay fast. The board is laid flat for this technique and can be dried with a hairdryer to speed up the process. For the next part, I use mid-tones between the black and white colours and create the picture. I use a spritzer bottle occasionally to soften varying areas that I need the colour to go over quickly, so as not to work over the inks too much and strip the bottom colours.
For the dust I mix up a mixture of a few colours, Raw Sienna and a bit of Burnt as well and White gouache. I add a reasonable amount of water, and then lay the board flat again and use the water bottle to wet the area below the elephant. I then brush the colour over the wet area and then use some tissues to soak up any excess water, this enables a soft effect on the picture. The colour is put down fairly thick as it will dry light once you use the hair dryer. They can be a little labour intensive, but the end result is very vibrant images that have a depth to them than just working with watercolours and gouache alone. If folks would like me to do a workshop on these techniques, just give me a heads up and I will organise the girls to put it together. It would be on the Gold Coast (Australia) unless we can arrange facilities in Sydney or Melbourne. Hope you enjoy, Graeme"
Thanks so much Graeme for sharing your process with us! Graeme has a solo exhibition on now at Red Hill Gallery in Brisbane, QLD (this runs from 2nd - 17th December) titled "The Attitude of Colour". If you follow him on socials you'll have seen the progress of some of his amazing works. Don't miss it if you're in the vicinity. And to follow Graeme on said socials, let's go:
Hope you enjoyed this issue of Acrylics Anonymous! If you have any suggestions, comments or feedback for the ezine or our site, please don't hesitate to contact us. Until next time, make sure you chuck some paint around! Cheers from Frankie & Mark :) |
| Back to Back Issues Page |
