This week I taught two workshops that were all about acrylic painting on Dura-Lar, an thin archival plastic material. The fun part is that you can paint on the front and the back of both the matte film (slightly hazy surface) and the clear water-media film, giving a feeling of depth since you can see both the front and the back. You can adhere one sheet of film to another allowing the painter to stack layer upon layer to create depth and intricacy to artwork. Plus it’s forgiving. You goofed? Just wipe the film off with a damp paper towel. You only like one section of what you’ve painted on a sheet of Dura-Lar? Cut it out and glue it onto another sheet. Not sure how to assemble the layers you’ve painted? Stack them in one sequence, then another and another and even upside down, until you find what works, then glue the layers together. You want to work large? Rolls of Dura-Lar are available in various widths and lengths. Small? Pads of various types of films in various sizes are available at most art supply stores and online.
The combination of Dura-Lar products and Golden Acrylics is a dynamite duo. The intensity of Golden paints adds a visual punch, and when you mix the paint with various gels, grits and pastes and add that to the film, you have countless options for building the surfaces of your artwork. Play with transparent versus opaque paint on the matte & clear film. Use stencils, which you can design and cut from Dura-Lar stencil film, or buy ready made (I like Stencil Girl stencils a lot!), adds a fun twist to the work. Weaving painted pieces of the film together is another interesting option.
I’m going to be teaching Dura-Lar/Acrylic Painting workshops coming up soon. Two are in September: Go With the Flow, Acrylic on Dura-Lar Film at The Drawing Studio in Tucson, September 9/6-9/20, three Tuesdays, and a 3 hour version at the Artisan Expo in Santa Fe, Saturday October 1. I’m also going to be doing a Demo at the Artisan Expo.
Jim, my brilliant photographer husband shot photos and several short videos of the workshops this week. I have to say it pays to have a professional photographer do this. His photographs clearly show what’s going on in a great sequence with a variety of scenes, group and individual. When I take photographs of workshops, they don’t accomplish what I want, which is to tell the story of the workshop. His do.
Below are a few:
Many thanks to the great group of experimenters—as you can see they were having lots of creative fun. Fun for the teacher, too!