Image a Watercolour that doesn’t fade and doesn’t lose luminance as you build up the layers. Acrylic is a medium which makes images designed  even on raw canvas look like silk paintings!  Lupe Cunha MA will work with acrylic washes and resists to show you how to create lovely abstracted fluid images inspired on the style she has absorbed from the works of Helen Frankenthaler and Louis Morris both artists who worked with fluid acrylic on raw canvas. You will learn how to control and direct the washes to create your finished piece. And then later embellish it with media We start with wash and resist techniques on rag watercolour paper sheets and then progress to working on a piece of raw canvas to a dimension of your choice  (priced separately). Bring a selection of photos or cut-outs to inspire you.This workshop is the first of three exploring the different ways to use modern acrylic media to explore vibrant colour effects in your work. What we will show you in exploring media is useful both for the abstract and more figurative artist.

Are you a painter with a yen to do some sculpture. With Lupe Cunha MA you will begin to take your work into the world of relief. By using modeling pastes and gels to build up and also carve into, your painting will slowly become 3-D. We ask you to bring any found materials you might have to hand: natural leaves and twigs, pebbles and beads, seashells or miniature objects and ornaments to build into your panel. Working also with fabrics and twine and colour pignment. Students do not only paint up their work layer by layer but literally construct by means or media, colour and objects. An expressive and personal work of art. As part of this workshop we will be looking at the work of Kurt Jackson who uses quite extensively textured media in his images of Cornwall exhibited in the Tate St Ives and Cork Street.

Acrylic as Re-birth of Failed Work. We all have pieces that didn’t quite cut it. Acrylic mediums is ideal to give new life.The last of the series on painting with acrylic, we explore how you can build on a existing acrylic paintings either with more acrylic or to construct a base for working in oil paint and oil bars and so eliminate the long drying time of oil work.Inks and the use of resists, with acrylic of different textures and thicknesses and then by adding also a range of different media that can be collaged onto the existing surface and then reworked, by glazing over to create different effects, or to develop the work further by use of pigment, oil bars, pastels and acrylic inks. Some of the material available to textile artists can also be used to further embellish your painting using the texture that can be obtained to serve as creative base for exploring these embellishments. For inspiration we will be looking further at the work of Barbara Rae which works extensively in acrylic mixed media.