It’s my final day in Summer School and I’ve taken on board a lot of good advice and new suggestions on how to push my work. Mixed media is such a wide ranging, interesting aspect of painting and can give so much depth, shape and form.

Today’s session was focused on fine-tuning our paintings, of which some were almost finished… alas, just not mine. I still feel there is a lot more that I can do including more ink-work, heavy bodied acrylic painting and crazy collaging… not quite the thing I’d do surrounded by people as it could frighten them away! Other artists continued working with a wide range of materials including attaching more paper directly onto the surface to create dynamic forms and patterns, as well as further use of Oil Bars, acrylic paint, ink, oil pastels and Brusho.

New additions were suggested and contain some of my own personal favourites such as metallic crayons (in silver, gold, copper), metallic wax pigments, gold glitter paint, bronze powder and lastly, gold-leaf sheets and flakes. These materials give added lustre to any image… imagine any of Klimt’s work to get the idea of how amazing it can look.

Once again I finish with a variety of images, some from finished works and some not so finished but they give you an idea of the final ideas and concepts the other artists were doing. After these images, I list a couple of decent books that I found useful to read… plus there was another one focusing on Paperwork… called ‘Paperwork’ 🙂

Combined paper elements, wire, ink, stained fabric, etc

Acrylic washes over wallpaper collage, sanded over

Fabric used to give a ‘shell-like’ texture

Metallic bronzing powder smudged on (sample board)

Black stamp lettering

Various techniques inc. gold glitter paint (available pretty much anywhere!!!)

Exotic papers inc. an old passport, Japanese food menu used to form shape (unfinished work)

Excellent books:
‘Artefacts’ by Jean Dryrdale Green
‘Abstract Painting’ by Vicky Perry