Experimenting with Textures

I taught a "Making Textures with Acrylics" workshop on Saturday and had SO much fun! Not only with the class day itself, but with the preparations...especially with making additional sample boards.

I put together some examples of textures made with basic gels... my inspiration was this recipe with High Solid Gel from the Golden website... which, when I gave it a shot, turned out like this:

It's a really easy recipe... High Solid Gel (Matte) + Iridescent Bronze + Palette knife control, add a dusting of Iridescent Pearl when the texture dries and you're done. I thought I'd branch off and try a variation... the same High Sold Gel (Matte) + Bronze mixture... but a different pattern with the palette knife, and a different set of colors to finish off the look. It turned into some faux-reptile skin technique that was really cool to play around with:

My support for these texture experiments was the 6x6 inch size of the Strathmore Acrylic Linen Canvas Paper...two thumbs up in terms of a strong base for heavy gels!!

P.S.: Minnesota and other Botanic photos next post!!