have gotten myself in a frenzy trying to get a grasp of acrylic painting! :p will be teaching it to a bunch of kids come mid-March (hopefully over the March holidays) and as usual I am trying to make sure I know enough to teach them so they get their money's worth! It is a lot more tricky than oil painting 'cos acrylic paints dry so quickly and it is hard to blend them after that.. as they say ""The major advantage of acrylics is that they dry really fast. The major disadvantage of acrylics is that they dry really fast!" durrh... maybe that's why they are so popular with the modern yuppie in their twenties - we get a lot of them coming into our shop buying acrylic paints to do abstract stuff - see this wonderful bunch of acrylic works by one of our customers.

still, managed to get talented artist-friend tonight to teach me about using guiding lines (short straight lines drawn at various points to divide up the picture) while doing sketches to ensure that proportions are kept right, painting from darker colours to lighter colours (instead of the other way round), being generous with paints, ensuring the placement of materials around you is correct while painting and what sort of brushes to use and all that. Very impressed considering he has never taught before..

Quite fun. Think I can paint acrylic painting now.. :p

Realised that I actually know a lot of people around me who are really talented in all sorts of different areas (from sports to computers to art, philosophy, photography and all that) and I can actually learn of lot of stuff from them as long as I take the trouble (and muster the guts) to sincerely ask them... :)