Deborah Stachowic Acrylic Painting demo, "Figures in Abstract" at the Seattle DANIEL SMITH Store

Deborah Stachowic Acrylic Painting demo, "Figures in Abstract" at the Seattle DANIEL SMITH Store

Yesterday’s FREE demo at the Seattle DANIEL SMITH Store was with Deborah Stachowic demonstrating how she does Figures in Abstract when painting with Acylics.

 
Deborah also paints in Watercolor, Oils and Encaustic, and she recently did a demo on Watercolor painting; “Painting Dramatic Reds” at the Seattle Store.  With watercolor, Deborah has her paintings sketched and thought out, and are very controlled.  However, when painting in Acrylic, she finds it to be very freeing and that it allows her spontaneous side to develop.  One of the things that Deborah does that signifies the difference, is that for watercolor, she exclusively uses round brushes, and with acrylic, she uses only flat brushes….particular favorites are Hake brushes.
  
Working on full sheets of 140lb and 300lb cold press watercolor paper, Deborah begins with thin washes of acrylic paint to start with the very process oriented piece.  These thin washes Deborah calls “veils”, she has them dry in between steps, and she does a lot of prep work with these base layers.  As a result, she will have several paintings that she will be working on, she worked on three during the 1 hour demo.
 
Once she has the start of the acrylic painting, Deborah begins her layering using homemade Mylar stencils (these were the figurative elements in her paintings and she “glues” them down with Maskoid ) decorative stamps she has made from cardboard and Mylar, tape, paper collage elements and of course the acrylic paint.  The acrylic paint is both painted on with brushes, sprayed with water, blotted and manipulated to achieve many interesting and expressive effects.  This is one reason why painting in acrylic is so freeing to Deborah, as she said; “just experiment and play, go inside and just allow things to happen.”
 
At the end of the demo Deborah left us with this….  “Just be as creative as the process and let yourself go!”
 
Thank you Deborah!
 
 
Every Day,  Express Yourself with ART….
 
~Deborah Burns