Fall 2010 Acrylic Class

Fall 2010 Acrylic Project – PV Eucalyptus Final Touches

Mostly what was left to do were some final touches. Some final highlights to brighten some areas, some shadows to give more form, some detail to define certain things…The detail and finishing of a painting becomes a personal preference: You can do a lot to make it more realistic or do nothing at all and give it a more impressionistic look, it is totally up to you at this point, I will run through what I did in class and what I did at home to finish the painting the way I wanted it to look.

In class, I did some more highlighting to the leaves of the tree. This was brighter than the first highlights using yellow, sap green and white on my #4 flat bristle brush occasionally adding touches of orange and or sienna to the mix and trying not to cover up everything I have done up to this point. The original under painting becomes shadowed leaves, the first highlight color becomes leaves that are closer to the ends of the branches and the final highlights become the leaves that are at the ends of the branches. All are important so leave some of each preceding color as you add the next.

The top and the left hand side are getting most of the light so as I moved around to the right side of the tree I lightened the pressure on my brush and faded the highlight colors so the tree looks rounded, leaving the shadowed side dark. Be very careful not to leave a line of demarcation on your tree. It is not light side vs dark side but a gradual transition from one to the other.

Using my liner brush, I mixed up a dark color using burnt sienna and blue and added in more tree limbs and branches. If you look at the reference photo you will see that the tree has a lot of branches just remember when you are adding the branches to make some of them go behind the leaves as well as in front. Look for some of your clumps that don't have any support, they are the ones to do first so the leaves don't look like they are suspended in air then in the spaces between the clumps where you can see sky, add branches.

To the very ends of some of the clumps I used my liner to makes some little squiggly lines to suggest individual leaves. I did this mostly at the outer edges and a few on some of the inner clumps. This helps to suggest the feeling of eucalyptus tree.

I brightened the trunk just a bit with white and a tiny touch of yellow – you only want a slight tint – and I kept this color on the lower part of the trunk as the branches probably have shadows on them. I also took my sienna and suggested some of the shedding bark on the tree in places and highlighted them with a touch of orange and yellow.

I brightened the sunny side of the road again using my #4 bristle brush (acrylics always dry a bit darker so you may have to go over something a couple time to get the look you want) and I also took my tooth brush and scattered some random colors on my road. When I finished that, I rinsed my brush and mixed a shadow color of blue, purple a touch of sienna and some water and using the dry brush technique, I suggested some shadows from the tree on the road. Don't loose all the highlights and it will give it a more "dappled" look.

Finally, using my liner, I added a touch of white to my shadow color to get a gray color and added some birds to my sky. Please note that the birds are small "V" shapes or some very flat "M" shapes of different sizes and going in different directions. This is where I finished in class but this is not how I wanted to finish it for myself so I added a few things.

First, I brightened the highlight on the house, on the road especially as it goes over the edge by the ocean and I brightened the very left side of the tree. I also darkened the corners of my sky using a darker glaze of blue, purple and sienna and a VERY dry brush. In the foreground, I added some more grasses and some dead bushes and I also darkened the corners a bit with the same color but a touch more sienna. And finally, I thought that there should be something on the path so I added a surfer headed down to catch a wave, but it could have been anything like a dog or horse or a couple walking, whatever you want to put in or leave as is, just be sure that if you do add something that it is in proportion to the tree in the foreground.

Next class bring in something that you want to get started on so you can get some help before we head for the holiday vacation break and on our final class, please bring in something for critique whether it is something we have done in class or what you've been working on at home or something you did a while ago and would like a second opinion on, you can learn a lot from what others see in your painting. See you in class.