Cubist painting with Matisse Dry Mediums

I started this painting some time ago. We decided to make a project sheet for doing a cubist painting with Matisse Dry Mediums. I’d painted this cubist painting at the Easter Show, so I had to do another one so that we could photograph it step by step. Here’s how this painting started out. I got sidetracked by all the watercolour pencil drawings I was doing for Kate Johnston’s Watercolour Pencil Class. Finally it got done now, and the project worksheet won’t be long.

Demonstrating on 2nd July – new Dry Mediums

Hi everyone,

On 2nd July (which is not far away at all) I will be demonstrating a semi-abstract landscape done with the new Matisse Dry Mediums at The Art Scene at Ryde (on Victoria Road and not far from the Homebush Bay turnoff (Concord Road)).  I will be putting the dry mediums onto a canvas and explaining them as I go. Then I will magically whip out another canvas where the texture has already dried, and I will proceed to paint it to completion. Full step-by-step project sheets will be available.  The painting I will be doing will be very similar to the one shown in the background of this advertisement.

There are some great demos coming up at the Art Scene in July …. read about more of them here.

Paste papers in the rain

This is what we did on Sunday. I had an arrangement made a very long time ago to teach some friends how to make paste paper.  We wanted a fine day, because we needed to dry the papers on the clothesline out in my courtyard so that we do could do more layers.

The weather was against us. First we put them on the line, but then we had to go out in the rain & quickly bring them in. So we had newspaper all over the floor of the lounge, the heater on, and papers pegged to the clothes-horse in front of that and all over the floor as well. We also had the heater on in the kitchen where we were working, and were drying off the driest ones   there.

We started off with some paste I’d cooked made from wheaten cornflour. When that was used up we used Matisse Print Paste, and it worked very well diluted a little.

These are some of the ones I made. I only wish that they’d scan as beautiful as they are. The top one is Matisse Indigo with the gold.  There’s a little cerulean blue in under there too. That’s my favourite.

This green one is Matisse Emerald over paper that had had blobs of paint put on it, pressed together and then pulled apart. It has a sort of batik look in under there.The orange one is Permament Orange over Cobalt Teal.

I made 10-11 pieces, which wasn’t bad under the circumstances. We started at 10am and it was getting dark when we finished.

Dry Mediums – cubist step by step

This is step two of my cubist painting. I’ve collaged ‘La Fiamma’ which is Sydney’s Italian language newspaper, then underpainted with a little yellow oxide mixed with Matisse Matt Gel Medium to strengthen the newsprint. Then I’ve applied the various textural Matisse Dry Mediums onto the shapes within the main objects.  There are also shapes in the background, done with Microspheres and Wollastonite, because they are relatively transparent and I wanted to retain some of the newsprint.

Fiamma – sketches for new cubist painting

Now I’ve regressed and done a bad drawing on bad (cartridge) paper.

I did a few little sketches and it just seemed such a waste of good Stonehenge paper that I’d already prepped – especially since the next page spread was strong greens and blues.

This drawing is the first step of a step-by-step Project Worksheet using the Matisse Dry Mediums that will be eventually on the new Matisse Derivan website.    I painted this cubist style painting at the Easter Show, and we decided I’d better do a different one for the worksheet so I could photograph each step as I did it. A different (landscape) step by step project should be online within  week or two.

New Dry Medium painting at the Easter Show

On Sunday I was demonstrating on the Matisse Derivan stand at the Sydney Royal Easter Show. I painted this new Cubist painting with the new Dry Mediums. I got this idea from a Cubist painting of a coffee pot in a great book I have called 200 Projects to Strengthen Your Art Skills: For Aspiring Art Students (Aspire) It is a great book with so many unusual ideas in it, and I particularly love the colours.  So, though you can’t see in this small image, I collaged the canvas with torn strips of the Sydney Morning Herald, then painted over them with Matisse Matt Gel Medium MM30 and a little Yellow Oxide to strengthen the newsprint.  Then I did the drawing (from some thumbnails I’d done in my sketchbook.  After that I put on the dry mediums. The pot and coffee cup are mostly the different grades of sand, the pumice and the mica flakes. In the background I made thin cube -like shapes, some  from Microspheres and  some from Wollastonite. These are relatively transparent and allowed the text on the newsprint to show through. Then I painted it at the show.