Weekend roundup

Robb's cupcakes were a success. He asked me how to mix orange with the food coloring, and I showed him the mixing chart on the back of the box. Life's mysteries revealed. But once he got the hang of piping, the results were pretty darn adorable. He didn't realize at the time, but all of the carrots were marching in the same direction except one little red badge of courage who decided to turn back. After the dinner we watched some ladies wrapping up a few and tucking them in their purses. There's just something irresistable about a cupcake, especially to grownups.

I was back at the Art League again on Saturday for a free workshop put on by Chroma Acrylics. I snuck around snapping photos during the first session and then sat down to paint in the second one. The instructor was artist Julie Starling of Silver Spring, MD. The luscious jars you see above are interactive acrylic paints. In a nutshell, this product allows you to reactivate and rework areas of your painting after it has dried. The chemists at Atelier found a way to slow the curing process to five days. This is not an additive for your traditional acrylic paints--the magic is in the paint. And what creamy, buttery-smooth paint it is. The consistency of the paint does not vary from pigment to pigment. Those jars you see sat open on the table from 11:30 in the morning until 4pm, and no skin ever formed on the top surface. Let me repeat: the acrylics were open to the air for over 4 hours and never formed a skin. If the rapid drying time of traditional acrylics is a point of frustration for you, this is the product for you.

That said, this is not the product for me. Huh? I sing its praises, and then chuck it out with the bathwater. Isn't that just like me. I can be fair, though. Julie made a strong case, and the qualities of the Chroma paints are quite impressive. I absorbed the information with a smile. But I heard myself tell my painting to "dry already!" Then I demanded that the paint "stop reactivating!" Yes, out loud in a classroom full of people. Julie told me that with Chroma I had more choices about things like drying time (there are additives to speed up or slow down the process) and permanency (again, additives). I said that I already had a choice, and I chose to work with traditional acrylics. I know that I might be a little set in my ways. Maybe a tad rigid about my process of making art. Before you tell me that I ruined that poor woman's entire day, I will tell you that I was the only skeptic among 20 people. Almost everyone bought a starter kit of the paints and mediums. I watched my old painting students fall under her spell one by one. And when I got home I deleted those jerks from my email list. Traitors.

I had to wait FOREVER until I had enough surface tension to go back in with a china marker to line my painting. Oh, by the way, lately I've been playing with china markers (wax pencil) instead of all that tedious lining with paint. They stand out nice against the acrylic, allow me to rub and blend and make a mess, and require a top coat of gel medium to fix them into place. The result is a lot less controlled and much more like my sketch book. I am thrilled with how they are working so far. At the crack of dawn this morning I was able to sit down with my coffee and china marker and mark up yesterday's painting experiment. I sealed it all in with a couple layers of gel medium made to look soft and encaustic-ish. Then I picked and plucked at it throughout the day.
Meet my "Barometer." I will have her up on my website soon. The chicken scratch in the corner reads:

Today's Assignment
Make a list of all the things you dislike about yourself:
1.____
2.____
3.____

When you greet this young woman in the morning, your response to the assignment is a pretty good indicator of the kind of pressure you are under and how your day will go in general. The workshop made me reflect on my traditional acrylic paints: maybe they are loathesome and in need of improvement. Even so, I cannot fill a list with things I dislike about acrylic paint. There are still so many possibilities and infinite technical experiments I still want to run. I am not yet master of this field--I am not ready to move on.

Back to earth... I am very appreciative of the fact that Julie Starling came and presented Chroma Acrylics to us. You can check out all of the photos I took at the workshop on Flickr in an album called "ALOC - Chroma Workshop." (And no one was deleted from my email list--that was a joke.)