Acrylic as Water Media

This instructional workshop allows you to learn alongside Stephen Quiller, one of the world’s most accomplished water media artists. According to Quiller, acrylics are the most versatile of any painting medium, and encourages both beginner and advanced artists to embrace its unique characteristics. To begin the workshop, Quiller demonstrates the way that acrylics behave when combined with different surfaces, and under various circumstances or qualifying situations. Students will be encouraged to view painting with acrylics as an adventure, as they learn what to expect from the medium and how to manipulate it to their advantage. Through a series of demonstrations, Quiller introduces students to all the different personalities of acrylics, and how they can be used to achieve many different qualities, including wet, juicy, soft, runny, thick and creamy, sculptural, buttery like finger paint, transparent, translucent, or close to opaque. Advice and tips are extended not just for how to paint with acrylics, but also why all artists should have experience with these fascinating paints. One of the reasons that Quiller is so enamored with acrylic paints is because the artists is required to remain actively engaged with the paint, paying attention to what it wants to do on the canvas. Using a glass palette and luminous, intense colors, Quiller demonstrates how to achieve intricate detail and amazing washes that are only possible with acrylics. Students will learn how to lay translucent compliments over transparent washes to make their paintings pop, as well as how to place opaque highlights to provide structure and focus the eye. This video also includes demonstrations of how to use negative and positive colors to create a painting of wild irises, and how to push colors to the limit to achieve a breathtaking landscape. Quiller also includes a discussion of color theory and how it affects composition.