We are close to completing the paintings! Next week we will drip the last two colors (artists’ picks) before letting them dry until next week when they finally go home. For the last class, the finished works will grace the studio walls as we dress up and dance to celebrate our last class of the fall semester.

These past two weeks we went to extremes, painting with only black one week and then only white the following week while also topping the white with glitter to put the week (and the paintings) completely over the top.

Black, as you might imagine, has a powerful effect on the artists. Many find it a challenging color to use after so many bright colors. Others dive right in using the tools suggested, and others look at it as just another color in which to cover everything they’ve done thus far and maybe scratch it away, or maybe not.

White, the following week, offers a chance to brighten the canvases again and then to bring some of the rainbow back through the glitter. A lot of these artists would choose to have the entire canvas be glitter and much to my chagrin, some get close to making it happen. Such is the power of glitter!

Anyway, the most important thing is that they have fun, learn to appreciate the notion of working on a piece of art over a longer period of time, and to walk away from this project in two weeks feeling they have succeeded.

FYI, I have now glazed the paintings with an acrylic polymer which should contain the glitter and all the tempura pigments underneath for many years to come. Jim