Art class - Not Oils

Sicily

For this class we were asked to bring in a photograph of a landscape that we liked. I chose to base my painting on a photograph that I took on a holiday in Sicily a few years ago.  We are supposed to be experimenting using oil paints for the next couple of weeks but it is difficult to transport a wet oil painting and I have to travel twenty miles to the class. Added to the fact that I don't own any oils, I have decided I will continue to use my acrylic paints but try to use them like oils. For this painting I have been trying out some more Acrylic mediums. In some areas I used fluid retarder to lengthen the time the paint takes  to dry. To add the shadows on the path in the foreground I made a glaze with gloss medium.  This allowed the underpainting to still show through. However, the painting looked patchy when finished with some parts matt and some glossy so I ended up going over the whole painting with a glaze to even it out.  My tutor suggested that it might look better less glossy and that you can mix matt and gloss medium together to get an eggshell like effect.  That will have to wait until my next trip to an art store. 

Lesley x