Ken Austin Demonstration

On Wednesday November 17 I had the good fortune to watch a demo done by Ken Austin at the Mt. Dora Florida art league meeting. I had seen Ken's work before and admired it.

The part that fascinated me the most was his gouache/ink technique.

This painting is an example of this.

I need to find out more about it...but it seems that after the gouache is completely dry, he gently paints the whole painting (this was a full sheet) with black ink. (not acrylic ink). He says Sennelier makes a shellack-based ink he thinks works best for this.

He leaves this on overnight and then takes the painting outside and "gently" washes off the ink with his garden hose! He mentioned as an aside that sometimes he has to press the fully dried painting at the end to remove any warping.

He mentioned that he purposely leaves white space that will be black as he paints.

I was wondering if any of you has tried this technique and has anything to offer. See this link.

Missing in Action

My blog buddies are complaining to me...why am I not posting??!!

I stand contrite. I have arrived in Fl (Oct 24) and hit the ground running...squeezing art in between other activities instead of making art first and squeezing in other things. Tsk Tsk.

I am coming back. And I do miss my art creation. I am currently preparing a syllabus for an ATC class and will send a photo VERY soon. I promise. Don't desert me. Meanwhile, let's celebrate a birthday.....

It's the birthday of Georgia O'Keeffe, born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin (1887), who was an unknown 29-year-old art teacher when a series of her charcoal drawings wound up in the hands of the photographer and art promoter Alfred Stieglitz, and he put the drawings in his art gallery on Fifth Avenue in New York City without even asking her. At first, she was angry that her work had been exhibited without her permission, but the drawings made her famous, the first American woman to be taken seriously by the art world.

She eventually met Stieglitz; they hit it off and got married. O'Keeffe eventually became even more famous for her paintings of flowers, but when asked why she chose flowers as her subject, she said, "Because they're cheaper than models and they don't move."