Saturday 11 July 2015

More on the Lesley Birch workshop

The Dutch House Gallery, cafe, and garden is lovely, well worth a visit.  The food is great, all freshly prepared.  Lunch was included in the workshop price and we ate outside as it was a sunny day.

In the morning we experimented with tints and shades, using a couple of different colours, and then mixed colours and made more tints and shades.

We then each had a large piece of paper that we tore into smaller pieces, all the pieces stuck down to a large board with masking tape.  We then added different acrylic mediums; Black Lava, Fine Grain, Molding paste and gesso.  We tried to make different marks and textures into these, and then left them to dry whilst we had lunch.

After lunch we added acrylic paint, again trying to make interesting marks and textures.  I thought this a great exercise, but I need at least three boards as I had finished within half-an-hour whilst most of the other people on the course were hardly started.  I should have just left it and gone for a walk or something, but I just continued working and completely ruined them.







These pieces are around 4-5 inch wide.  We were also given pencils and charcoal to help with the mark making.  I love charcoal, so of course I went over the top - again and again unfortunately.

Lesley told us that she uses this method to get abstracted thumbnails of the landscape, which she can then work up into larger pieces back in her studio.  There is a picture of her doing just that on her blog here Lesley Birch


This is something I will definitely try again, but I will prep up at least three boards before I start.  I will also be more careful tearing the paper and  applying the masking tape - I didn't at Crayke!


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