Tag: acrylic

Norman Rossiter – Acrylic demonstration

Norman Rossiter – Acrylic demonstration

Life on the wild side

At this time Normans work varied from Oil and Pastel Portraits (all commissioned) to Seascapes and landscapes. However it was his love of the countryside and natural history which convinced him to specialise in Wildlife and countryside subjects. Many of his wildlife paintings of game birds and wildfowl are commissioned and are held in private collections. His work has been exhibited and sold all over the U.K. and as far a field as Kenya and Australia. He has won many awards for his work, and has had a one man exhibition each year for the last four years.

This is a pay on the door event

£2 for members and £5 for non members

Picture and content taken from http://www.artprofile.co.uk/artist.asp?artist=Norman%20Rossiter&alpha=Rossiter,%20Norman

 

Sonia Bacchus still life in the style of old masters

Sonia Bacchus – Still life in the style of old masters

It was great to welcome Sonia back to demonstrate her take on painting a still life, using acrylic and oils.

still life scene

Starting with placing four objects carefully, not too close together and giving a sense of space, then considering the lighting and placing her lamp to maximum shadow effect.

Sonia Baccus still life sketch

The room we were in was well lit and it was hard not to be deceived by the additional light, Sonia said that if she were with her students the lights would be off altogether and only the still life lit. We will have to remember that for next time she comes she is the first artist that doesn’t mind the lights being off!

Sonia starts with a sketch of her composition, ideally a colour sketch. She worked on cardboard as it is easy to cut to size, and her choice of backgrounds are green for portraits and terracotta for other paintings.

Beginning with acrylics painted thinly she sketched out the composition outlines then applied a wash of violet, green and brown mixed with yellow ocre with a 2.5” decorators brush for the background. Using varying brush strokes for impact and interest.

Then using thin layers of acrylic finding the lights, darks and mid-tone of the under painting getting the basic colours in place.

Sonia Baccus still life demonstration

The second half of the demonstration moved to oils, with her preference for Reeves, Windsor & Newton, Rowney oils. Using painting medium to thin the paint Sonia began building up the layers to create impact.

Sonia chatted her way through the demonstration giving lots of information about how the “Old Masters” were painted, and lots of tips on how we can have a go too. Then demonstrated how colours can react to each other when placed together, often giving a different hue than imagined. It was a great demonstration, appreciated by all thank you Sonia!

The following week we turned up at the new Nanpantan Art group session, set up a still life and Barry said he was going to have a go at painting the way Sonia demonstrated the week before, starting with Acrylics then moving on to oils, to make it more of a challenge he did a double act with Neil both working on the same picture.

 

A couple of us joined in, with the Acrylics, it was a very good exercise, we all enjoyed it, and of course Barry and Neil’s painting was awesome even though still a work in progress.

 

If you would like to come and join us at Nanpantan Art Group, whatever your standard we would love to meet you.

Charles Evans Returns!

On Tuesday night we enjoyed the welcome return of Charles Evans, a professional artist and demonstrator from the North East of England. Painting in his preferred medium, Windsor & Newton acrylics. We watched him create a woodland landscape and, after a short break, a beach scene from his beloved Northumbria.

 

Charles has the unique ability to paint, talk and entertain whilst simultaneously delivering advice and very useful tips on all manner of painting topics.

 

The two paintings showed us two vastly different representations of skies: The landscape with a pleasing sunlit summer sky; the beach scene with its dark foreboding storm cloud. Both were painted in a similar way to demonstrate how colour choice can make a huge difference to a painted scene.

 

Charles also showed us how a restricted palette of 8 or 9 colours can help maintain colour harmony and save cost, as any other colour can be mixed from those few colours.

 

He gave us many other pieces of advice during the demonstration including using wet and dry acrylic palettes and a tip on restricting blue within a painting. Stick to one blue he recommended using the same colour in both the sky and in the green mixes, again in order to maintain harmony within the work. For Charles this is invariably Cobalt Blue.

 

Altogether it was a very interesting demonstration by a master of his craft as well as being a very entertaining evening. Thank you Charles!

Amanda Jackson

Amanda Jackson
Amanda’s demonstration style was excellent, informative, and challenging, most of the Acrylic painters learnt something new. The glazing technique is equally useful for watercolour and oil mediums which benefit from glazes, the slow build-up of colour from multiple layers of transparent washes. The surface shines through these multiple layers causing additive colour mixing which give the results a greater depth.   
Amanda’s use of large brushes and a free style was also worth noting as we can get so easily tied up with the details and forget that it is the composition that counts. Her use of frequent stops and “the 10 metre rule” when she stood back from the work and considered the composition, hue and values of the painting, checking that the overall effect was what she required, was something we all know about but frequently forget.
The mixing of the glazing medium and the colour was interesting as even W&M don’t put that on the cans of medium and it took me a lot of wasted time and medium to appreciate that the ratio should be about 60% medium to 40% colour things us armatures don’t like wasting.
An additional inquiry after the demo highlighted that most Acrylic glazing mediums leave the finished work with a gloss sheen, so if the glaze is not over the whole work then a layer of gloss varnish pulls the work together.

Tas Severis

Tas Severis – Acrylics palette knife flowers

Tas’s technique with paint is lively, colourful and plentiful, it will be a treat to see how he creates his popular flower paintings.