Most of our second mixed media class was about creating textures with spackle, with the remainder being about glazing over the plaster/spackle textures.

Here is the glazing process:

• First apply acrylic medium over the plaster/spackle texture and let dry.
• Mix up colours with either acrylic medium or ‘glazing’ medium, and run the colours over the spackle texture.
• It is important to cover every single last bit of the whitish spackle to keep the white bits from distracting the eye.
• If you do not coat it with medium first the colours to be will be sucked into the spackle (see below). Be aware that this is a completely different effect, and will have a lot of potentially distracting white texture.

how NOT to glaze over plaster texture

Below I used a coloured glaze, a mix of medium and paint (Ultramarine Blue and Quinacridone Red), and applied it over the spackle texture with a fairly soft brush.

holyman with purples, blues and quinacridone red glazes over the plaster texture

thalo blue, dioxanene purple and liquid acrylic colours on textures previously separated by masking tape

Most of the ‘original’ mineral pigments tend to be fairly opaque, and need a fair amount of medium added in order to use them as glazes.

For transparent blacks Jeanne suggested we use Bone Black (also known as Ivory Black); for transparent whites, Zinc White.

The newer chemical colours, with chemical-sounding names such as Quinacridone Red, Dioxazine Purple and Thalo (Phthalocyanine) Blue (or Green), thin out while holding colour intensity and make excellent glazes.

‘Fluid’ or ‘Liquid’ acrylics (these descriptors depend on brand) work especially well when you want to use a more opaque mineral colour like Burnt Sienna or Raw Umber. Below is a glazing mix consisting of Sepia, similar to Burnt Umber but transparent (by Golden), and Payne’s Grey (by DeSerres). Note that there are many other brands available.

Sepia and Payne’s Grey ‘fluid’ acrylic glazes on medium-coated sand/spackle mix

Multiple layers of glaze add depth to a painting.

The thing that I’m finding most difficult about working with glazes is that you start with a colour that is lighter and different from the colour you finish with and the layers build up via ‘optical’ mixing. For example, you might start with a blue, then add multiple layers of yellow that will ultimately turn the colour into a very rich green. It’s COMPLICATED! There are a lot of things to try out and experience here…

Mixed Media Class Experience:

• My first mixed media class – selecting images suitable for transfer
• I am frantically wondering, “where’s the undo button?”
• Mistakes and more mistakes (using my scribbles painting as an example)
• How to do an image transfer, method # 1
• How to do an image transfer, method # 2
• Working with image transfers two years later
• Pressing objects into spackle (or spackle into stencils) to create textures
• Additions to spackle to create even more texture on your painting

Our super instructor’s site: http://jeannekrabbendam.com/ On her site she has her work and offers lots of different workshops and courses.