Thanks to Nick for my Geishas

I so enjoyed workshop with Nicholas Simmons at Kanuga Watercolors Workshop in Hendersonville, North Carolina, in April, that I wanted to do more.  I've been teaching both watercolors and acrylics at the local Senior Centers, and shared my experience of Nick's workshop with my students.  Nick showed us that these geishas [and his process] could be done in both watercolors and acrylics. Pouring,throwing, masking and layers were involved ...  Sometimes, I forget which medium was used on which painting.  At the workshop, Nick did his demo geisha with fluid acrylics, all while keeping a watercolor-like transparency in his painting.  The point was well taken that indeed acrylics can be transparent.

I did the first geisha here in watercolors only, for my watercolor class, and the second one is done in acrylics, both using Nick's pouring, throwing, masking processes.  I was pleased and surprised at the results of both.  The classes enjoyed doing them, too. 

The third in the series is an attempt to integrate yet another experiement of doing a quick acylic "sketch" of three geisha heads on a piece of scrap while I was preparing for class, and believing it turned out to be kind of fun, I fiddled some more, creating an acrylic background on a gessoed "bad" watercolor painting from my closet.  I attached the sketch to the background, applied a bit of modeling paste around its edges, then stamped and etched in a few spirals in the paste.   When it was dry [it seemed to take forever], I applied some gold fluid acrylic to the "ridges," then went over that with a bit of quinachidone gold and quinachridone burnt orange.

All of it was fun, and I felt as if I were evolving, blending lessons from Nick's workshop, with some ideas of my own.  Isn't that the way? That we learn from extremely talented artists in workshops, classes, books, etc., who share insights, techniques, style, and then integrate what we learn from them into our own creativity and style, then go on to teach and share with others.  Paying it forward, yes?