Expressive acrylics

Those of you following my ramblings must think that the art production has gone into a hiatus of late, and you are not wrong!  Since my break and trip overseas, I have been diverted into other activities, chief of all playing the keyboard.  It is nearly as satisfying and frustrating as visual art.  I learnt the organ as a child and so can read notes but was not taught classical piano although my sister learnt it, so the many pieces for piano exams is familiar.  I have since taught myself to play a couple of Sonatinas and am very pleased with my progress but this is of course, at the expense of painting....

To get going again, I persuaded Jennifer of Art Est to let me do the Contemporary Acrylics course as a casual.  Larissa who runs the course tells me that its aim is to help artists become more expressive.  Art works that are expressive are seldom as easy as they look - I've tried to loosen up but it still does not come easy.  Larissa also reminded me the basics of painting - block in your colours first and cover the canvas before getting into detail, darks should be laid down before light colours, etc.  She said she preferred to use a warm colour as a background wash as that gave the paintings a lovely glow.  Good tip.

To loosen up, she suggested the use of big brushes as that way it is hard to be precise.  I must say I struggled with the palette in this picture of a house set high on the hill with the wineyard before it.  It is a simple composition with those converging lines drawing attention to the house.  This painting was based on a photo I took in Milthorpe.  I am not sure I like my painting - it is certainly more expressive than my other works in the brushstroke.  But what I got out of the class was the spark to do more paintings.  I believe that if I copied a few works in expressive styles that I admire, I would learn much from the exercise.  A lady in the class did a work ala Charles Blackman and it was very colourful but beautifully done.  I would love to try something of that sort.