By Rick Waters

The TCU Magazine

 

Watercolor is not just two-dimensional to Amanda Allison.

 

If an artist wants to create craggy rocks, applying plastic wrap over wet paint, letting it dry and peeling it away can make those boulders loom off the paper. 

That's one of more than a dozen watercolor mixed media techniques Allison, a TCU assistant professor of art since 2006, showed off last week to a collection of K-12 art teachers, art professors and art administrators from around the country. The educators were in town for the 53rd annual conference of the National Art Education Association and spent the day making their own artwork in TCU's School of Art.

 

Billed as an Artmaking Extravaganza, the event was a preconference workshop for 55 art educators and allowed them to see and experience a top-notch college art program, Allison said. More than 4,000 are expected to attend the conference in downtown Fort Worth.

 

"It was a chance for these art teachers to expand their own artistic practice through a concentrated day of artmaking," said Allison, who is also TCU's art education coordinator. "It was a great opportunity for them to get better at their own skills and learn new techniques they can take back to their own classrooms or programs."

 

Participants also learned as much from one another as they did their TCU instructors, said Allison, who showed off an array of watercolor techniques through guided demonstration in her afternoon workshop. Participants tried their hand at artmaking with masking tape, Saran Wrap, salt, watercolor pencil and watercolor crayon, among others.

 

Other TCU faculty-led sessions included ceramics (guided by Chris Powell), printmaking (led by Jonathan Stewart) and new media (organized by Nick Bontrager).