Fun with Acrylics

Having just joined the U3A in Bridlington, I am pleased to be able to paint with the art group. The leader is Rosie Abrahams who recently works on lovely vibrant seascape canvasses that really express the moods of the sea. She uses, and encourages us to use much water and acrylics. She has given me some larger brushes with feathered ends, rather like old house painting brushes but with far fewer bristles. I have started to experiment with these and with acrylics. It is great fun to be bigger and bolder and to enjoy the colour more. In  two of the three pictures I have added here today, I have used Maggi Hambling as my inspiration. The first painting, with the suggestion of waves and seagulls, was done very quickly, mixing the colours on the palette and almost on the paper as the water did what it wanted with the paint. I washed a piece of watercolour paper with lots of water, then swirled the blues onto it. The seagulls were suggested with the smallest of my newly acquired brushes. I then used a pallette knife to add white and finally threw watery white over the top of the waves. The second painting took a little longer but used the same approach with first water, then swirled colour and finally, white with watery white splashed on afterwards. The third picture is the first that I attempted and here I used my old brushes and you can see below just a small section of the work; the lower part of the paining works better than the upper section, which I think I will re-visit.