How I was introduced to resin painting at a resin workshop

Before we attended the workshop, Elicia sent us some very useful instructions describing what to wear. She advised old clothes that we would not mind if they got a little messy and closed in shoes. Resin is a skin irritant so it is important to keep everything covered.

Elicia also provided us with plastic aprons and gloves to keep us protected. She also advised to always only use resin in a well ventilated area.

Getting Started

Before we started working on our individual artwork, Elicia took us through a couple of exercises to familiarise us with the resin and the way it moves. I really liked the first exercise where we each had a plastic sheet. We had to combine 3 or 4 colours and try to get them to form a circle. This demonstrated to us how difficult it is to get the resin to go where you want it to.

It was also great for seeing how the resin continued to expand slightly after we finished tilting the plastic. We also discovered that we could use the palette knife to break the surface tension in places. This guided the resin into new areas.

Even thought I knew it would be a challenge, I wanted to try to create a figure using resin. I knew that it would likely end up more abstract than most of my pieces.

I chose the reference image of me doing a backbend on lyra/aerial hoop at CircoBats. The photo shows my body in profile. I thought that it would work for the resin because there is not a lot of overlap of my limbs.

It was fascinating seeing all the different ideas that each participant had for what they wanted to create. Each artwork was very individual. There were all sorts of shapes and colour schemes!

The finished piece did keep moving a bit after the workshop. So it looked a bit different once I got it home. I attribute this to the car ride home where the canvas was on a slight angle. In the future I would only use resin at home and have a flat surface ready to leave the artwork for a lot longer.

Have you tried painting with resin? I would love to hear about all the different ways that people have been using it!

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