Experimenting with Watercolour, Inks, Gouache and Acrylic
A demonstration and workshop designed to challenge and animate ways of using these water-based media.
Working from initial marks with colour, the image is allowed to evolve, disintegrate and re-emerge, rather than have a particular idea imposed from the outset.
All that we learn by experimenting with paint in this way can be incorporated later into any genre such as landscape or figure painting, and practised alongside drawing from life.

MATERIALS TO BRING:

PAPER – watercolour, thick cartridge, coloured (Canson Ingres etc); for acrylics, primed paper can be bought in books, usually with a ‘linen’ texture, various kinds. Offcuts of mounting card are ideal for both acrylic painting and testing colours – ask your framer. Bring some old paintings which have not worked, and use these for painting over in acrylic.
PAINTS – watercolours (large pans or tubes are preferable; not too many colours, say cobalt blue, yellow ochre, purple madder, cadmium red, sepia, neutral tint. White gouache in a tube.
Coloured inks
Acrylics in tubes or pots. Again, not too many different pigments. Also sample tins of emulsion are good.
PALETTES – old white china plates are ideal
BRUSHES - one or two large flat ones for washes. (Need not be sable) and some smaller ones for watercolour. Large (1-2”) brushes for acrylic – good quality housepainter’s brushes are fine, and some smaller ones of various sizes. Palette knives and rubber ‘colour shapers’ or other implements to scrape away thick paint.

OUTLINE OF ACTIVITY: Demonstration and practice of
Watercolour: simple washes, wet on dry paint, on half dry and on wet.
Gouache – the addition of opaque white to watercolour, usually on a tinted paper.
Acrylic – the use of impasto, with scraping to reveal the layer underneath, and/or washes over the top, with thinned acrylic or inks.

Early booking is recommended. Please phone Pauline Latham on 01239 612580.
Price - £25 or £20 concessions.