Yesterday I took an abstract acrylic class with artists Mimi Little  (see here too) through the Calvert Artists' Guild.  It was great!  I seldom take classes, preferring to discover what is possible on my own.  But I love Mimi's work and she has techniques, like getting photos onto the canvass, that I couldn't figure out myself.  So I took the course and this is the result – a little bit of everything.

Can you find:

the transfers?  You need to xerox, not desk jet and not laser print, something – a photo of yours, a piece of your art, something else that catches your eye.  Then, to transfer it, you brush GAC 100 (a golden medium – I thought "adhesive" so I looked in the wrong place, in the adhesives, when I was looking for it.  It'll be in the paint mediums) on the canvas.  Then you brush it onto the face of the transfer.  Place the transfer face down on the brushed part of the canvas.  Squeegee with the edge of a credit card or embosser.  Do not get the GAC 100 on the back of the transfer.  Either let dry or, if you're like me and can't wait, take a hair dryer to it and dry (about 6 minutes for all my pieces).  Then flood the back with water and rub your fingers over it.  The paper rolls away and the image stays.  Very cool.

the stencils?  not hard.  You can also use stamps instead of stencils.

the tissue paper?  Also put on with GAC 100 which turns out to be an all purpose medium.  These are custom tissue.  Take plain craft tissue and then paint it with a combination of GAC 100 and paint.  A drop will do a nice tint.  The more paint, the more opaque.  Dry (again, you can use a hair dyer) and tear up for accents.

the other tissue paper?  nope.  You can't see it.  Use crayon d'arche (spelling?) which is a water color crayon.  Draw on your plain craft tissue.  Place the tissue onto the canvas.  Wet.  it disappears and all you have left is your drawing.  cover with, what else, GAC 100.

charcoal accent?  You can fix it or not.  with…oh, I'll let you guess what you fix it with.  It blurs the lines a bit making it really soft (mine isn't fixed).

the transfers?

She also got some great texture with Gac100 and paint used over wire mesh of different hole size.  I didn't do that.  A fellow artist noted she uses lace (so much of what I have for clay is transferrable).  And I have a batch of Lazertran stuff that didn't work as I wanted it to on clay that I think will work just fine with this technique.  And since GAC 100 works fine on acrylic, I could also maybe use this transfer method onto a torso or other clay piece that was relatively flat (bubbles leave gaps, which is okay if you like that.  I do).

We started the canvas with water and drops of paint and an embosser (or popsicle sticks or credit cards) to get it covered – for those who freeze at a blank white space.  Mimi said work on the whole canvas the whole time.  Do not fall in love with one section that may, in the end, need to be painted over.

Off to my 36 x 36 canvases!  I'm so excited!

thought for the day:  a bumble bee flies into my apartment/it didn't mean to be there – it panics/and seeing the outside through a glass window/ it proceeds to push and push against the glass/trying to get where it wants to go/in its panic never moving from its task long enough/to see the open window just inches away/how like the bumble bee I am in my work or my life/ i see where i want to go/ and in my panic/ i forget to look for the open window/so i push and push and push/thinking i should be rewarded for all this hard work/ when, in fact, i am so frantic/ like the bee against the glass.  Marybeth Fidler, "The bumble Bee" quoted by Patti Digh in life is a verb