Anchor Academy Art
About
Anchor Academy offers the courses Visual Arts 10, Art Foundations 11 and Art Foundations 12. None of these classes require a prerequisite, but students may benefit from beginning with Visual Arts 10. This will help with a stronger foundation in the Elements and Principles of Art.
For information on how you will be marked, click here.
Art Materials
You will receive a package with much of your required art materials, such as art pencils and erasers, sketchbook of paper, paints, paintbrushes, pastels and quality pencil crayons.
There are some materials you will be required to purchase over and above what you receive from the school, such as materials for papier mache, collages, sculpture, etc. or surplus supplies should you run out.
Art 11 and 12 will require some use of a digital camera.
Go to the 'Links' page for Instructional Videos on various materials.
Tempera Paints
Tempera is relatively inexpensive, water-soluble, and available in liquid or cake form. It is deal for helping students understand colour mixing by combining complementary and analogous colours on the colour or creating values and tones. It may be used as a wash by diluting with water, but it resembles oil paint when applied without diluting. Mistakes can be covered because of it's opacity, thouh it cracks if applied too thickly. A luster can be added by mixing in a little polymer medium, and an entire painting can be enhanced (when dry) by "varnishing" with polymer liquid.
Acrylic Paints
Acrylic paint has much the same effect as oil paint, and had advantages and disadvantages. It is water-soluble, so cleanup is easier than solvent based pigmets. Unlike oil paint, it does not crack or change colour. It comes in tube or liquid form in bright, premixed colours. It can be used for an undercoat to be painted over later with oil paints. It adheres to surfaces such as wood or glass. Some artists use diluted acrylic as if it were watercolour, building up thin layers of transparent colour.
Beginners are advised to put on small amounts of colour as needed.
Artists are warned to keep brushes in water until needed, as the paint dries quickly and can ruin a brush. When a brush isn't being used, it should be in water. There ar emany solutions for cleaning dried brushes, such as Dow Bathroom Cleaner, acetone (nail polish remover), hand sanitizer or alcohol for soaking, or acrylic paintbrush cleaner. It is far easier to keep them in water until you have a chance to clean them with soap and water.
Pastel
Pastels are considered drawing or painting medium. A pasel painting may have a combination of drawing and underpainting (in watercolour). Some areas are carefully finished (such as a face in a portriat), and other areas are deliberately sketchy. Much of the charm of some pastels is their casual, unfinished quality.
Pastel pigment is combined with a binder and compressed into sticks with varying degrees of hardness. Softer pastels leave more of the pigment on the paper. Included in teh dry pastel family are Conte crayon, chalk and charcoal. Pastels may be used for emphasizing detail in watercolour underpainting.
Pastel artists generally put dark masses fist, working from dark to light. Some artist apply spray fixative between layers or on the finished painting, but others prefer not to. Paintings are normally double matted before putting them under glass, as teh painting surface is fragile and should not touch the glass.
Oil Pastel
Oil pastels have a waxy base and resemble ordinary crayons, but do not require the pressure that crayons need to yield rich, vibrant colours. Sets come with limited colours, but may be built up from dark to light to achieve colour variations and rick textures. They are especially effective on dark paper. They are sometimes used to embellish paintings created in acrylic paint or similar media. They may be dipped in solvents such as odorless mineral spirits or Turpenoid to give intense colour.
Watercolour
Watercolours in cake form such as Prang or Crayola are most commonly used in secondary school, though most professionals prefer to use watercolour bought in tubes. Because an effect made with watercolour is difficult to change, artists often use draw lightly in pencil and plan before applying paint. You should learn about a few watercolour techniques, and exerperiment with them, before beginning a painting assignment.
There is no white in transparent watercolour, so white areas must be planned for by leaving areas unpainted or by applying a watercolour resist (frisket). If an area has been painted too darkly, it can be quickly diluted with water and blotted. It is much easier to paint by working form light to dark, building up colour. To prevent paint from soaking unevenly into the paper, inexpensive paper should never be erased. An investment int watercolour paper will give better results.
Try mixing colours in the lid of the paint box or on a plate, and test colours on a piece of paper before applying to the actual painting. Each workspace should have two containers, one for clean water and one for dirty. Check that individual colour pans in the box of watercolours are not dirty and the lid of the box is clean and dry before closing.
Ink
Long favoured by Asian painters, black or coloured inks are used for sumi-e painting.
Encaustic
Although not a new medium (the ancient Greeks and Egyptians used it), molten beeswax mixed with coloured pigments gives an entirely different surface effect and richness to painting. Although specialized materials such as solvent-free paints may be purchased through art suppliers, many supplies can be adapted for use in encaustic paintings.
