I was fortunate to win a lovely set of Liquitex heavy body acrylic paints in a raffle run by TWB Framing & Art Supplies. They’re based in Feilding, have good stock at reasonable prices, and are lovely to deal with.
I don’t always swatch new paints but thought I’d have a play and see what I could come up with. I’m pleased with the lovely soft greys in particular. Now I just have to remember to use them; I might keep my swatch notebook on my desk for a while.
Today we were inspired by Tori Weyers, and I loved her technique so was excited to try it. She combines organic pen and pencil marks with acrylic paint and inks. I used a Pitt Big Brush pen, pencil, Golden fluid acrylics and napthol red ink by Liquitex. I’m pleased with how it turned out, although initially one of the shapes in the drawing reminded me of a penis, which was quite off-putting!
I’ve got the urge to start stitching again, so I’ve been reading the Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn books, including Stitchscapes. Looking at their sketchbook pages reminded me how much I enjoy creating abstracted landscapes so this afternoon I got out my Gelli Plate and some of the favourite Atelier paints. I taped my Gelli plate onto a piece of copier paper so I could line up multiple pulls and got to work. I’ve done 9 prints on good paper, and 4 on copier paper that are just from cleaning the plate – these often turn out really well because of all the tiny bits of colour that get picked up.
Most of the prints have 4 or 5 full or partial layers of paint, and all have the sun in them using Atelier’s Rich Gold series 4. This is a lovely metallic to use – it’s not as harsh as some metallics. Alongside my trusty old paints I’ve been trying out some new ones that I got sent as part of a sample kit; Liquitex heavy body Green Gold and Quinacridone Magenta. They are both really nice to use – they’re single pigment transparent colours and flow so well. I can see me moving to Liquitex from Atelier if I ever use up my paint stash!
These prints may stay as they are or I may try adding a little stitching to some of them, just to see how it feels.
Cath Sheard 