Spring Acrylic 2011

Spring 2011 – Acrylic Demo – Fanta-Sea

Once you have your splattering and pouring to your own satisfaction you will have to let it dry completely. It may take an hour or more depending on how think your paint is on your canvas, parts of my painting were still wet to the touch when I was packing up to go home so you may have to wait for over night for it to be dry.

When it is dry, you can put your sketch on. I know you will get tired of me harping on this, but you all need to improve your drawing skills because most of you had your proportions were off and this will bother you are finishing up your painting. That said, you just need the basics of the boat and sail at this point, detail will come later.

I like to treat the subject of these paintings with the abstract backgrounds as if the were in a normal setting, I just ignore what it there and paint it like I would at any other time. So first I need to under paint the boat and the sail. Remember we always under paint with a darker version of the main color because this gives us someplace to go with our color. In this case because the boat and the sail are white, I went with a cool medium gray color (blue, white and touches of sienna and purple). I notices that some of you tried to get a head start, which is fine, just remember to follow the steps, under painting is very important it is the foundation of your painting, some tried to skip right to the highlight color and had trouble getting dimension into the boat and sail.

Fill in the entire sail and boat area with this color. It you want when you are painting the shadowed side of the boat, add a touch more blue. Also when you're a filling in these areas, start from the outside and pull in, don't paint it like a wall or you could get some hard lines you won't like later. Use a brush that is comfortable for the size of your painting. I was using a #4 flat sable brush so I had control of my paint. Don't worry about the stripes or the numbers on the sail at this point, get the form of your sail first and do the stripes last. Same on the hull of the boat, get the form first and worry about the detail later.

You might want to sketch with your charcoal where the shadow is on the sail before you start to highlight, it will let you know where you are going with your color. The first layer of highlight is made up of white or gesso, the mud on your brush and a touch of orange. This color should be a couple shades lighter than the gray. On the sail, starting on the outside edge of the sail, pull this color in toward the mast of the boat, fade it out when you get to the shadow area and if you have to smudge it with your finger to create a soft transition. Please look at the actual photo to see the detail of the shadow and the highlights. Use this color to start the highlighting of the boat as well.

The shadows in the sail are that gray you mixed before with more blue and sienna in it so it is a shade darker. Dry brush it on so you get soft lines and transitions. This dark color can be used on the inside of the boat hull.

The next highlight for the sail and the boat is white or gesso, with a tiny touch of orange, just enough to slightly tint the white. White on it's own can look chalky and cold, adding just a touch of warm color – red, orange or yellow – will help make the color warmer, sunnier.

Again, start on the outside edge and pull in but this time don't go quite as far in on the sail and be sure to soften the color into the previous color. If your shadow got too dark like mine did, you can lightly dry brush this color over the area you want to lighten until it is the degree of shadow you want. On the boat, your strokes should follow the shape of the hull which is curved not flat.

Also on the hull, there is a slight curve as it comes to the bow, you can add a tiny touch of green or blue and right near the bow and down around the waterline, dry brush this color on the boat. On the shadowed side, add a touch more of the color – green or blue – and do the same thing, this will suggest a bit of form to the boat.

If you want, at this point you can put on the stripes on the sail. They can be any color you want, it is your painting after all but I will give you my reasoning for why I painted mine the way I did. At the top of the sail I had a lot of bright color in the sky area: Yellows, reds and oranges. I needed a color that would be seen against those colors so I used the compliments to a couple of those colors – blue and green. At the base of the sail, it was next to the water which is blue, green and purple so again I used the compliments to those colors – red and orange - so the bottom stripe would stand out, that was my reasoning you need to look at your own painting to see what will work best for your sail.

I do have a little bit of finishing up to do on my boat before I call it done so that is what I will be doing next time, I will also be doing some demos on skies, these are just going to be some practice demos since we haven't done skies in a while. Just have an old canvas or two that you have gessoed over so you can practice these techniques. I will have a new project the following week.