Last week was the first time I taught an acrylic class that included 4 different types of acrylics. At first, I had very few people sign up because most people that know and want to take my classes are watercolorists and don't really think of themselves as acrylic painters. In the end, I convinced a class full of students to try the class and I think they were extremely pleased with the class. We painted in acrylics but we did mostly watercolor techniques and most of the time you couldn't tell if the paintings were done in acrylic or watercolor.

There was only one time we painted on a canvas and that felt more like doing acrylics, but we still started the painting like a watercolor and we could have finished it like a watercolor but had decided to finish it with heavy bodied acrylics.

 

Painting your acrylics like watercolor has some advantages but also some disadvantages. The painting above of the clouds was done in acrylics but it looks like a watercolor. Some of the clouds were painted with white but you would be hard pressed to recognize which ones were the white of the paper and which ones I floated with white pigment.

 

If you are interested in this type of class I am doing these type classes again in Vermont at the Vermont Art Event this coming July-August. See INFO HERE.  Next year I will be teaching this class again at Dillman's in the fall.

 

The greatest thing about this workshop was you didn't need to bring any of your own supplies and students loved that because they could try 4 different kinds of acrylics with loads of different colors and papers without having to buy hundreds of dollars worth of supplies to try. 

 

As an artist, we are always growing to become better artists and sometimes I believe you should try something different to help you grow. I hopefully will get the chance to do more of these different classes but much of this will be decided if I can get students to take these classes.

 

David