"If you approach your art with a playful attitude you will be more apt to keep making art, and the more art you make, the better your art will be." --pg. 10

Like a diving board for creativity, Abstract Explorations in Acrylic Painting will help you plunge joyfully into artmaking. With the belief that an attitude of playfulness is key to artistic growth, award-winning acrylic artist Jo Toye leads you on an engaging workshop-style adventure filled with innovative techniques, inventive approaches and breakthrough results.

• Work Small. Start by discovering how working on a small canvas yields big payoffs. When you don't have anything to lose but a few minutes and a little piece of paper, you'll find that you paint more fearlessly, absorb new concepts faster and enjoy yourself more.
• Step-by-Step Instruction. Learn what tools Toye finds most useful in making art, along with 17 step-by-step demonstrations showing how to use them to best effect.
• Start-to-Finish Painting Projects. At the heart of the book, 8 start-to-finish painting projects put it all together. Discover fresh takes on stenciling, sponging, making and working with gesso. Use razor blades and applicator bottles to create distinctive linework. Achieve wonderfully original patterns using resist pens, mouth atomizers and India ink. Experiment with Clear Tar Gel, pour paint with pipettes, work over top a "failed" painting...all yielding brilliantly original results.

Heavily illustrated and filled with exciting ideas you won't find anywhere else, Abstract Explorations in Acrylic Painting will inspire you to paint, experiment, play...and come away with some of your best work yet!

lastly, the combination of India ink and wet paint produces results where control seems to be left out of the equation. It can be a bit intimidating to run an uncontrollable line of dark black ink right through a wet, vibrant underpainting, but the results and quality of line are not possible with any other method. Pieces of a Theme Jo Toye 20" × 20" (51cm × 51cm) Acrylic and ink on 140-lb. (300 gsm) watercolor paper Demonstration: Razor Blade Technique The straight black line, produced by

rest of the painting. This process demands that you move quickly as most of the painting must be done while all the paint is wet. Both watercolor paper and Yupo can be coated with white gesso and used for this technique. Both give lovely results, but the watercolor paper dries a bit more quickly and the colors will absorb into the paper more than on the Yupo. Autumn Shore Jo Toye 12" × 12" (30cm × 30cm) Acrylic and ink on Yupo Demonstration: Gesso Pull Technique Before you start this demo

created by the black gesso. Finished Practice Sample Jo Toye 10" × 10" (25cm × 25cm) Acrylic on 140-lb. (300 gsm) Yupo STEP 18: Add Final Touches Add any final touches and let the painting dry. This finished sample is a bit larger than the previous demonstrations. Working on a larger surface keeps the Tar Gel from filling in the open areas as it dries and spreads. Many of my original Tar Gel lines are now covered by opaque and black paint allowing the tinted lines and transparent passages

rectangle. This area will become the center of focus so it’s important for it to have an interesting and well-defined pattern. STEP 11: Define Some Black Areas To further define this area as your center of focus, add areas of black gesso. Be careful not to paint a complete rectangle as this will look too solid against all of the other texture. Use masking tape to help paint a straight edge where desired. Step Back and Evaluate Once the texture is sprayed and the focal area defined, it’s

small squares or rectangles to make several black color cards at once. Because you may not be familiar with opaque paint and how it appears on a black surface, these reference cards are even more useful and valuable than those you make with transparent color on white paper. Avoid Unpleasant Surprises Until you become familiar with the opaque and translucent mixtures that your paints produce when white is added, always try out your colors before starting a painting. Reds will become pink or