Applying varnish to acrylic painting on canvas

There's something very satisfying about applying varnish to a finished painting, it's very calming and can really help to highlight the colours and textures. I would always recommend using a good quality varnish because a little goes a long way and provides a professional finish to your work. I prefer a matte finish but it's entirely down to personal taste, high gloss would work for some pieces. Use a good quality varnish brush, not too small according to the size of the canvas. For large canvases I'd use a 2" - 3" inch brush. I'm using a 1.5 inch brush for these 12" × 16" stretched canvas panels.

Mono-printing on canvas

This demo shows how you can apply the techniques of the previous videos that use paper or card and use those same processes working with a stretched canvas. It’s important to prepare the canvas first because the technique works best when applied to a smooth surface. Here I work on a stretched primed canvas 12” x 16” and in the first part of the video you see me applying a modelling paste with a plastic pallet knife, pushing the paste into the surface to achieve the smooth texture free surface that is required, you can wet the knife to make this easier and I would advise at least 2 coats, allow to dry before re-applying. You should be able to run your hands over the surface and feel no texture of the canvas, there may be a few indents from the modelling paste and it won’t be possible to achieve that perfectly glass smooth finish but that will be OK.

More details to follow. This will be updated.

Mono-printing with templates

The templates are hand cut and made from thin card, cerial boxes are ideal. Oil paint colours YellowOchre, Cadmium Red, Prussian Blue and Vandyke Brown. 270gsm smooth card, thin plastic sheets for paint transfer, cocktail stick, blunt pencil, newspaper, masking tape, template frame.

Mono-printing : Heads

Materials: 270gsm smooth card. Oil paint colours : Prussian Blue and Vandyke Brown. The stencils are cut from thin card using a sharp craft knife. Use reference photos as a guide but avoid any detail, use the stencils as a guide only. thin plastic sheets for paint transfer, cocktail stick, blunt pencil, newspaper. Cardboard mount. This does get messy so I really recommend wearing gloves if you can.

 Acrylic Paint

I've begun to explore the use of acrylic paint for a series of new videos. This is a little more complicated than using oil paint because of the very fast drying time, I have used a retarder to slow this down but wasn't happy with the results especially when working on paper. I would say the simplest way to begin is apply very small amounts of paint, work fast when mixing colours and if you need to apply a large area of paint, do this in stages. I'm using the Liquitex paint here but I'd try any of the well known brands that you may prefer. (Daler Rowney, Windsor and Newton for example)

Apply texture with monoprinting techniques using acrylic paint

Large Scale Mono-printing

Thought that I would end this months videos with a large scale monoprint, it's a technique that does work well with these compositions but it's easy to get carried away with the process and the artwork can suffer from being overworked and a little cluttered, deciding when to stop is essential and I found with this particular piece that leaving it for 24 hours before I finished the final stages really did help. My dog Buzz appears half way through this video and at this point I took a break to take him for his walk, returning after a couple of hours to continue with the monoprint. It's good to film these large works and I hope you enjoyed this demo and that it might inspire you to try this technique for yourself.

Materials: 250gsm mixedmediapaper suitable for oil paint. Oil paint colours Cadmium Yellow, Yellow Ochre, Cadmium Red, Prussian Blue and Vandyke Brown. thin plastic sheets for paint transfer, cocktail stick, blunt pencil, newspaper. This does get messy so I really recommend wearing gloves if you can.

City Lights Mono-printing with stencils

I want to show how you can apply the techniques from my demos for different types of compositions, transferring the mark making process and monoprinting method and produce interest in your work. Keeping the style loose and fairly abstract I've created these cityscape scenes, I wanted to portray a feeling and create an atmospheric artwork that could be interpreted how you wish, I thought about a recent train journey to London and arriving at a busy Euston station. Try adding a variety of figures, some seated or in groups. When you have more confidence you could create stencils for transport, street signs and road markings etc. I will follow this video up with other less abstract work and introduce portrait, landscape or still life subjects. Hope you enjoy this demo and it provides some inspiration. Thanks for watching. Beginning with cutting the stencils to build the composition. It helps to have lots of reference photos of crowds and cut stencils of various sizes to get a realistic perspective. Look also at the work of LS Lowry to see the brilliant and animated way he portrayed busy crowd scenes.

Materials: 270gsm smooth card. Oil paint colours : Prussian Blue and Vandyke Brown. The stencils are cut from thin card using a sharp craft knife. Use reference photos as a guide but keep the shapes fairly simple and abstract. thin plastic sheets for paint transfer, cocktail stick, blunt pencil, newspaper. Cardboard mount. This does get messy so I really recommend wearing gloves if you can.

Sketch book : Spray paint and stencils with oil paint

I really enjoy working with spray paint and there is a huge range of colours to work with. This is a simple exercise with a sketchbook with the templates developed from looking at images of sea life and plankton.