Top Coats

We learned how to mount canvas paintings onto wood panels and then finish the projects with top coats.  Soft gel matte, self-leveling clear gel, GAC 100, fluid matte medium, soft gel gloss are all choices.  I used GAC 100.  I love the finished look.

Which you won't get to see here!

Almost simultaneous with the end of TSA I'm out of storage space on this blog for pictures.  May be a good spot to end this blog and start fresh?

Raw canvas

This week turned out to be an experiment in abstraction for most of us.  I really liked the results.



Encaustic

May as well back track a bit through the last couple acrylics classes.

Using the same composition as before we learned to make acrylic paint look like encaustic which is usually done with heated oil paint and wax.  Instead we used regular gel matte mixed with the paint to simulate the encaustic look.



The Toronto School of Art

... is bankrupt!

Here's me, three and a half academic years in and just half way through my credits.  I'll never get my Diploma in Fine Arts.  I do hope to get my money back for the no-longer-upcoming Winter term.

But all that is beside the point which is the loss of community.  So many people.  The loss of such excellent teaching.  My progress has been exponential this year.  I was never looking forward so eagerly to the term ahead.

We had our final critique in Fundamental Acrylics on the Tuesday.  We'd picked out our pieces for the Fall term Open House.  Then on Friday November 30, the doors were locked and that was that.

Shock.

There is now a Facebook group and talk of Phoenix from the ashes in some form or other.  I hope this happens -- I want to study further with those great teachers and students.

Impasto and Imprimatura

I started taking Fundamental Acrylics last fall but dropped it, finding the course overwhelming.  I tried again this fall and I love it!  I'm amazed.

We learned another great technique-tidbit this week that blew me away.  Tom Thomson, on his outdoor sketches on boards, began with an imprimatura layer.  That is, he first painted the board one colour which most often was ORANGE.  I really had trouble believing this.  I have to get to the AGO to look at dry brush on David Milne's work and orange imprimatura on Thomson's.  I would have said that the orange bits were added later.

So of course we began this week with an orange imprimatura layer.  Then we started with thin paint getting gradually thicker with the help of Regular Gloss Gel to create the look of a thick oil painting.  It was so fun I felt like an Old Master!  Same source material as last week.



Dry Brush

Today we did the first of four paintings of the same subject.  I chose a photograph of the lake from Grannie's cottage -- which now belongs to my middle brother.  I'm pretty sure he took the photo.  For the dry brush technique we began by painting the canvas black -- or black with one colour.  I added blue.  I was surprised to learn that David Milne used this technique almost exclusively  -- but then I thought about his black backgrounds or exposed bits of canvas.  Once the black was dry we painted with no medium, a dry bristle (not synthetic) brush, using only a small amount of paint.  The effect is kind of like pastel or chalk on a blackboard.

 

 

 



Assemblage

Our second assignment for Contemporary Art is an assemblage of found objects that speak to each other and speak of ourselves.  Rather than being something to set on a plinth, our work is meant to hang on a wall.  I started with a shoe box with navigational signs and boats on it, giving the idea of travel.  I added my Paula Rego copy that I love -- I really love her work and that painting.  Another small painting of mine.  From Scotland I have a Canadian-Scottish pin, a Scottish hat change purse and a Celtic leather bracelet.  From the past, a pen holder from Florida with the pen long gone.  The china face and the wooden duck.