Nicholas Simmons Workshop ~ Thursday, June 12, 2008 ~ Poured Paintings

Nick and Bebe - Poured paintings

Here we are in day four of the Nicholas Simmons Workshop at Artists' Showplace in Dallas, TX. and this is a surprise day as Nick was a little secretive about our paintings for Thursday and Friday, wanting it to be a surprise.

Today I worked on my first poured painting on a canyon type design with successive liquid acrylic colors poured in layers using a full sheet of watercolor paper, which is large to me. The power of the Da Vinci fluid acrylics is apparent with the individual washes remaining transparent and not absorbing the previous layer. This is a little more difficult than the finished painting might appear and there were a lost of gasps and “help me’s” heard around the room during the many layering and drying process.

Here is Nick's finished piece.

The one below is my attempt and I haven't placed a "soaring bird" in it as I decided I'd better find a reference instead of "winging" it. One thing I will try and improve next time is that last dark wash as mine was too opaque but this was a new process to me and we were all working hard not to get an unwanted run across the page (canyon) while manipulating the paper and to leave a few edges showing of each wash we did.

Nancy's painting:

I would encourage my readers to visit and join Wet Canvas if you are not a member. Wet Canvas is a forum for artists to gather and discuss their work. Nicholas Simmons has posted some works in progress that I think you’d enjoy looking at the paintings and reading about the techniques he uses. I’ve printed them off for my "Nick Notebook" and enjoy reading about the process. Artists also post photographs that you may use in a painting.

Wet Canvas is a community of artists that began in 1998 and it has a gold mine of information with 119,000 active users. It is the largest bulletin board on the internet focused on the visual artist. Nick is a contributing member of Wet Canvas and most artist's would enjoy reading the articles he has presented on Wet Canvas.
Faded Glory
Watercolor Batik: Koi
Watercolor Life-Sized: Tarantella

Below is a slide show of some of the photos taken during the workshop. Mouse over for captions.

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