Fluid acrylic paints are flexible, exciting and forgiving materials for painting and expressing your unique creative visions. In this course, you will have the opportunity to learn a variety of techniques that will ignite your artistic joy and enhance the depth of your paintings. By focusing on abstracts instead of realistic images, you free yourself to concentrate on color, texture, line and form in a more playful, loose way. This is the stuff dreams are made of…discovery, experimentation and inspiration!

Your skilled facilitator, Valerie Kent, will be online with you each week, painting at the same time you paint while answering questions and giving you valuable lessons on the particular techniques you are exploring. These are live zoom meetings, not videos, so you won’t be working alone!

Each week you will receive a resource image that may be the starting point of your own painting. You can start painting what you see in the image (no more scary blank canvas!) then let the bravery of your own exploration take over and paint whatever inspires you. You will paint with brushes, palette knives, spatulas and create textures with pretty much everything under the sun.  You will learn unusual methods to apply and manipulate paint.

Below you will find a list of weekly themes. Each session will be recorded and you will receive these recordings for your permanent use. A materials list will be provided with options for low to high cost choices.

HERE IS WHAT YOU WILL BE EXPLORING EACH WEEK!

Week 1    Releasing Creativity

What is Abstract painting?  We will begin the journey and apply paint and texture. There are bold colors, complementary colors, defined shapes, outlining, loose strokes.  There is the use of a spatula or palette knife, and stamping and/or stencil.

Week 2    Memories

We will paint with a limited number of colors, and a selection of values to create interest. There are drips, and spatter, scraping and dry brush introduced. Interesting ways to divide the space on the canvas are important.

Week 3     Crossroads

We will look at varying the thickness of the paint and could add modeling paste to add more texture and thick layering with the palette knife.  Using a spatula, or a silicone wedge or a credit card is useful to drag paint.  Interest is added with a splash of color.

Week 4    Revelations

We will add dark against light and light against dark to create a mysterious look. This artwork can have a smooth background and then build up layers and add textures, introduce contrasts on the edges of shapes that can be hard, or soft.

Week 5    Metamorphoses

This is a painting about transitions and stamping – could be fabric such as burlap and the addition of squiggles,  and very loose applications, flinging paint, and applying many layers. We will be aware of making changes across the surface to create excitement.  Multi-color spatter is great to elicit interest.

Week 6   Peace

We can put an under-painting of various colors over the surface and then scrape paint over it.  The movement in the painting has a vertical/horizontal direction.  There is a lot of texture.  Some of it can be combed on and scratched out.  Some paint can be rolled on.  There are a variety of values that make it feel more sedate.

Week 7   Looking Beneath the Surface

We will apply paint vigorously and add a number of colors, both tints and shades of colors, to the vibrancy.  Flinging paint and drips are incorporated into the presentation.  There is black and white contrast. There is a lot going on here. There is texture where the top layer has been scratched and scraped out to open up to other colors underneath.

Week 8   Great Inner Worlds

We can practice blending and add shapes upon shapes.  Contrasting the circular shapes are straight lines.  Paint drips are useful for bringing interest.  There is combed color over other colors and outlining.  Pastel and bold color is contrasted.