Fantastic experience hanging with fellow creatives and playing with new tools at the Art of the Carolinas convention in Raleigh.
I learn a lot about art by following creatives on YouTube. One artist I binge watched is Bob Burridge from California. He has such a fluorescent and distinctive style and is a fabulous teacher of basic design principles of using color, focal points, contrast, composition, texture and form. I especially admire his abstract acrylic flower paintings and his exaggerated style of light and shadow.
Quite the marketer, he keeps his fans informed of his upcoming workshops… And that is the first time I heard of AOC. Well, I just had to take his abstract floral class so I booked a seat.
Since we were driving from Florida, I couldn’t take classes Thursday through Sunday but I did pack Friday and Saturday with plenty of new media workshops including watercolor on wax batik, fluid acrylic abstracts on yupo, and oil with cold wax on gessoed panels.
It was a great opportunity to play with new media under the direction of artists who are passionate about their media and what they accomplish in their unique art styles.
Friday started with watercolor batik on Ginwashi paper with Kathie George. Batik uses hot paraffin wax as a resist to protect lighter values. There were at least 6 stages of successive washes that Ms. George carefully diagrammed out in a packet for each of us. She also provided all the supplies including use of melted wax, brushes, blow dryers, newspaper, watercolor paint, and a present design on a half sheet of Ginwashi rice paper. The subject was a cascading white orchids in Terra Cotta pots using violets, crimsons, blues and orangey browns.
We started off completing part of the drawing with a waterproof micron pen. Next we preserved whites with wax. Then we followed her diagrams for light washes. After each step, we dried the Ginwashi and waxed the areas we wanted to keep. After 6 steps, we dried the paper, waxed the entire piece and crinkled it so the wax would crack. A final layer of contrasting color was applied for a crackle effect.
Once that was dried and waxed again, it was time to iron under heavy sheets of newsprint until all the wax was removed.
Friday evening I had one of my favorite classes ever with fluid acrylic abstract artist Jody Ohl. We played with fluids in Yupo paper using brayers, stencils, alcohol and mark making.
Here is the fluid acrylic painting I did in Ohl’s class.
For more posts on this fantastic event, please view other articles on my blog including this one on Kathie George’s watercolor batik on ricepaper.
