See www.saa.co.uk/art/aurora or contact her at aurora.spain@talktalk.net
 Aurora with an earlier work |
Aurora, spectacularly attired, had brought a good selection of her
work, with leaflets and samples from her sponsors: Chroma Atelier (paint) and
St. Cuthbert's Mills (paper). She left a sample pack of Saunders Waterford and
Bockingford papers on every seat and gave the Society a starter set of Atelier
Interactive Artists' Acrylics (which was raffled and won by a visitor who now
promises to become our newest member!). Aurora recommended a couple of books: "Acrylic Revolution" by Nancy Reyner and "The Acrylics Book" by Barclay Sheakes. But "interactives", as I'll call them, differ from other acrylics in that they can be re-activated (re-opened or un-locked). A water mist is OK initially (as for any acrylic) but once it has started to polymerise, interactives can be revived with a proprietary "un-locking medium". No need for a stay-wet pallette. |
| Interactives take well to paper, canvas or MDF (well primed). The
paints are used with a number of mediums but Aurora advised that one normally
needed only a couple: a gloss varnish and a binder medium, both of which can be
mixed with the paint, but she did also use an impasto gel. The demo addressed techniques, rather than finishing a picture. Scraffito is one such technique: for example, a layer of dark paint (let dry), a layer of binder medium (let dry) and then the pattern scratched out of a subsequent thick layer of a lighter colour. She was currently using 300lb w/c paper primed with thick gesso (the binder medium is as good). Either may be mixed with colour if you want. |
 Detail of an intermediate stage of a painting with indigo outlines and texture paste impasto |
 Tones in indigo and white |
Aurora recommends working with a black and white photo, so that
your perception of tone is not affected by colour. One of the pre-prepared boards had an outline drawing of a copper jug, in indigo and white (you could use Payne's Grey). She worked into this with the same mixture to create a tonal painting of the neck of the jug. Normally she would complete a background first but this can't be very important because she did it the other way round this time. But shadows, she says, are best left until the colours of the objects have been settled Before starting to add colour she talked us through a discourse on shadows etc. |
| Shadows are a combination of the complementary colour of the
object, the colour of the shadow surface itself and a touch of blue. The square on the right consists of five overlapped square areas derived from an earlier painting. The smallest square (1, on the right) is an exact copy of the original. Surrounding this is (2), more of the same painting using exactly its complementary colours, then, around that, (3) the original modified with black, then (4) mixtures of the original colours with their complementaries and finally (5) back to the original colours. She also digressed into a catalogue of what she called "wacky techniques":  impasto scribbles
on acetate, peeled off to make decorations;
mixtures with
ordinary acrylics, sand or sawdust;
dried work
overpainted with un-locking medium;
pools of paint and
medium poured and lightly stirred;
use of unprimed
paper for "monoprints", paper to paper, with paint and gel. |
 "Shadows" exercise |
 |
Then back to the jug. She replaced the board where
she'd done the tonal work on the neck of the jug with another one whose tonal
work had been completed, a rose had replaced the crumpled base and a foreground
impasto tablecloth had been added. To go from a monochrome indigo to a coppery look takes several glazes. For these you must use transparent colours (no cadmiums or whites unless they are diluted with plenty of gloss medium). Each glaze must be bone dry before you add the next. The only way to get it right is to experiment on old bits of paper until you get the effect you want. If the surface is well enought sealed you can wipe off any stray marks or, in extremis, use sandpaper. |
| The paints had strange names. She cited perinone orange and lemon
yellow as suitable but actually started with "June brilliant" (yellow) with
some "Red Gold" and a touch of a complementary purple, following the original
brush-strokes over the whole vase. (When I looked at the
colour chart a few days later I saw it was "Jaune Brillant". Sam
D) When this was thoroughly dry a similar mix was applied but with much more "red gold" and medium. Then a glaze of burnt sienna (with enough medium to make it transparent) and another one or two of crimson and burnt sienna. The same colour was glazed in to start the background on the left. There was no time for more but she said that some dilute white might be used to lighten some areas and that highlights needed to be added and the background and shadow completed. It had proved to be a very interesting evening. |
 At the end I saw money changing hands, so some people were obviously impressed enough with Interactive Acrylics to part with good money (a criterion I apply, unspoken, if people say that they like one of my paintings). Sam Dauncey |
The end of the demo. |
|
Top of Page - Home - Programme of Events - Gallery - Contacts - FCSA Site Map