Materials List

Essential Materials

  • Acrylic Paint in a range of colors

  • Brushes - Your own brushes suitable for acrylic paint - a variety of sizes 

  • A surface to paint on 

I will be demonstrating on a pre-stretched, pre-primed 18” x 24” canvas. 

You could also use wood panel, or watercolor paper for this technique. 

  • Colored paper for collage

Collect at least 10-15 sheets/scraps of paper. Choose what makes you happy! You don’t need all of the following but here are some ideas of where to find good collage papers:

Handmade paper, Scrapbook papers, Gift wrap, Wallpaper scraps, Maps

  • Collage medium

I like to use an acrylic gel medium, acrylic matte medium, or mod podge.

  • Palette 

  • Water cup for rinsing brushes

  • Rag

  • Reference imagery  

Choose a leaf or flower as your subject. We are working with negative space to make our main plant shape.  Think of something that makes a nice silhouette.  Simple leaf and flower shapes that have smooth edges, make an easy silhouette and don’t overlap very much work best for this technique - for example,  the large simple leaves of a Salal bush, or the simple shape of a Lily flower, will work better than the complex frond of a fern or the overlapping blossom of a rose. You will feel more successful with this technique when you do it with simpler shapes for the first time. Save the more complex shapes for later, so you won’t get frustrated during your first attempts.

Additional Materials (Optional.  Not required, but nice to have.)‍

  • A quality titanium white paint.  A good quality titanium white will give you good opacity; good coverage for the negative space technique we will be doing in this workshop. 

  • Acrylic paint pens. These are nice for quickly and easily making fine lines and dots on your paintings. They are expensive, and you can just use a small brush to make fine lines if you don’t want to buy a paint pen. If you only buy one color, buy a white acrylic paint pen.

  • Stabilo “All” all-surface water-soluble pencil in white. This works well for sketching on top of acrylic paint, and then the water-soluble white marks easily wipe off or disappear as they mixes into fresh paint.

  • Heat gun or hair dryer to quickly dry each layer as you are painting.

This video will help you learn a little more about the materials we will be using.