Dandelionfest

It's been a long time since I've had the acrylics out.  There's been an ongoing oil vs acrylic debate in my mind.  I've been invited to the Toni Onley Project in Wells this year, which is a very big thrill for me.  What happens there is a group of artists gather in this very cool little town that has more art galleries than people (almost true) and we work together, along with two mentor artists, to develop our artwork.  One of the artists ends up getting a show at the Penticton Gallery next year.  I didn't want to show up with my little bag of watercolour sketch toys.  It seemed to demand something a little more substantial.  But what?  The look and feel of oils is so lovely, but I'm not sure they're a fit with my 'paint it today, hang it tonight' approach.  In other words, I'm not that patient.  Also, I'm painting at home now, and I think oils would be too stinky in our little place.  And so I thought I'd give the acrylics another try and see if I like them.  I had mixed results using them in the past, but I had so much fun painting this!  I think one of the things that worked for me, which I didn't do before, is using a medium instead of water to paint with.  The other thing that worked was having sketched this same scene in crayolas recently.  They're so unavoidably vibrant, and I used that as a guide to keep things on the lively and clean side colour-wise.  I learned some things, did some things I'd do differently in the future, but ended up deciding that yes, acrylics are the way to go.  Good timing too since Opus is having their annual inventory blow-out right now.  I took the van up there and loaded up: canvi, paints, palette, gel mediums, modeling paste, and a mitt full of brushes.  Wa-hoo!