Out of the Ordinary - A course in Painting Techniques for Backgrounds

Painting Techniques for Backgrounds - Tutor: Roisin Keown  - Week 3

Following on from the wire work course, and while the pupils' wire sculptures were on display at Eccles Community Art Gallery and also during the final week of the Out of the Ordinary exhibition at Salford Museum and Art Gallery, Greater Manchester, UK,. the selected year 9 and 10 pupils (ages 13-15) at Oasis Academy, King William Street in Salford, were offered this painting techniques course by Roisin Keown.

Roisin Keown is a recent graduate of Manchester Metropolitan School of Art, who specialises in painting.. She makes gigantic paintings using a technique, which consists of painting stretched calico with an oil-based primer, so that the surface is extremely smooth and allows it to dry thoroughly.  To make her paintings she uses a wide variety of scrapers, and tools to spread oil paint onto this smooth surface.  The effects which are realised are of the elements, the weather, storms, rivers, and clouds..
Trulybreathtaking!

 www.saatchiart.com > Roisinkeownfineartamerica.com › Artists › Roisin Keown › Imagesfineartamerica.com › Artists › Roisin Keown

Deutsch: Roisin Keown, Malerin, kommt aus Nordirland. Sie war Studentin in Manchester, und heutzutage malt und lehrt.

The painting techniques that Roisin showed us used pre-mixed acrylic paints of assorted colours, but thinned down even further with water, so that a fairly runny consistency was achieved.  The pupils were shown how to apply blobs of two or three selected colours onto a piece of paper and move it around in the air, to create their patterns.  This was executed enthusiastically by all the pupils and a wide variety and copious amount of work was done in a very short time.

The above was also printed with blue rings.                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

1. 

Another technique was to dip one or two pieces of string in the same paint and to place the string between the folded paper (Roisin brought with her an assortment of papers) and then to weigh the paper down and trap the string inside by placing a heavy book on top of the folded piece of paper..  The pieces of string were then pulled out of the paper, leaving a symmetrical pattern on either side of the paper.

                                                                                           

                                                                                             

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

A different technique used watercolour paint on thicker paper.  A variety of materials were placed onto the wet colours to create different effects.  Materials used for this were rice, cling film and salt amongst others. The pupils were shown how to change a drawing of a cat from a naturalistic image to an abstract one, using these paint effects.  Roisin used some printmaking ideas in her final workshop.