Saturday, March 30, 2013

Brush Cleaner

I am sure most of you have your own favorite brush cleaner but I thought I would share something I have found.  I've tried a lot of brush cleaners and for my use, Murphy Oil Soap works really well and is very economical, but my all time ultimate favorite brush cleaner is "Brush Plus" made by Plaid Enterprises.  I can clean my brush with any other soap then switch to my Plaid cleaner and still get more paint out of that brush.

Here is the photo and link from their website:




I would love to hear from you on your favorite brush cleaners.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Workshop News

My days have been really busy lately and I have really neglected posting.  I have been painting and will try to post some of what I have been doing in the coming days.

On February 22, 2013 I took a one-day workshop from the all talented Pat Bourque, a local teacher here.  The majority of the day was concentrated on color studies and mixing, value and tone.  It was a very good workshop!

She always preps her canvases by what she calls applying a ground which needs to be done days in advance.  She applies 2 coats of Acrylic Gesso to her canvas (with linen you do not have to do this step).  With a palette knife she applies a mix of oil burnt sienna + white + Liquin.   Or if she applies a coat of acrylic for the ground instead of the oil, she always puts a coat of Liquin over the acrylic and lets that dry which gives it that oil feel.

We did do some painting in the workshop, but she tricked us. She had this vase with juniper branches sitting up at the front of the class.  She had us put the outline of the vase then concentrated on the color of the foliage and the light source shining through. We scumbled in burnt sienna + Liquiglaze for the center light coming through the foilage.  [Liquiglaze is made by Weber and is a fast drying translucent gel that dries very quick.  When mixed with paint and applied with a palette knife, you get a sticky impasto effect.]  Then we concentrated on laying in the darks, medium tones and lights of the foilage.

At the very end she had us turn the painting into a tree by applying the tree trunk with a palette knife and pulled moss down  taking advantage of the light against dark wet paint.  Of course this painting is in no way completed, but you get the idea.  It's an exercise...