Playing with Golden Artist Paints: Our Mixed-Media Attempts with Chris Cozen

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Not so many days ago, Val and I visited Chris Cozen in her home studio at Pasadena, California, USA for a private one-on-one (well, two actually) full day mixed media class where we focused on experimenting and playing with Golden Artist Paints products.

It was a long day which ended up extremely satisfying but brain draining - there is just so much techniques and outcomes you can achieve with Golden Artist Paints products!!!

By lunch, I was pumped up with ideas and by mid-afternoon, I just wanted to head back home to my very own craft studio and dig into my jars of Golden Mediums, Open Gels and Thinners, Acrylic Polymers and Additives; squeeze out my Acrylic paint stash, mix and create surfaces from grounds and gesso.

In short, a new world of endless possibility has opened for me.

Working with a brayer to 'paint' ... and creating variations with stencils, masks and stamps. 

Over the day, we "painted" with a brayer,  brushes, foam pads, stamps and stencils; and drew with pastel, charcoal and carbon.

Identical colours applied on two different surfaces with different techniques to create extremely different and unique outcomes - the tactile feel to both the surfaces are just amazing - you've got to see (shimmer, vibrant colours) and touch it (smooth and cold vs. rough-paper-like) to believe it.

Chris made the discovery even more exciting by limiting us to the use of 3 colours each time (from the primary colour palette), plus white, which "forced" us to mix paints to create hues and colours that can span across the secondary and tertiary colour wheel. 

Chris Cozen showing us how to create a spectrum of endless colours with 3 primary colours ... and Val doing the same while applying some painting techniques to her experimentation (bottom row left)

Best of all, we got our hands (literally) dirty with Golden's High Flow - which now, we are absolutely convinced it is a MUST have and MUST order when we get to the home of Golden Artist Products in Utica, New York.

My work-in-progress - Golden High Flow on Yupo paper ... I see a gecko!

After hearing what to expect at the Golden Artist Product factory - but yet nothing will ever prepare us for the great tour that will be a whirlwind romance of dizzy excitement and endless colours ... I'm suddenly thinking that -20 degrees Celsius is bearable!

Yes, that's how cold Utica is this time of the year.

Val at work in Chris Cozen's home studio

Chris Cozen explaining the creative process that went behind the creation of this piece ...

{close-up below - all rights reserved Chris Cozen}

Check out more of Chris Cozen's work in her blog HERE.

Follow her on facebook via this link ... and do inquire about her books available in Scrap-n-Crop.com

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If you'll like to try your hand on some mixed-media - cum - scrapbooking techniques, check out Scrap-n-Crop.com's 2014 Celeb Art Retreat with Nathalie Kalbach HERE.

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