Acrylic Class Summer 2012 –PV Bunny

I am just going to give a brief description of what we have done to this point, if you have questions please ask in class or email me I will try to answer.

The under painting was done mostly in earth tones which include yellow, orange, sienna, red, green blue and purple. To lighten a color I added gesso, if I needed the color darker I didn’t use gesso. I was just trying to get the overall feel of light and shadow, I wasn’t doing anything specific.

I used a #10 bristle brush and a scumbling stroke. When you scumble on your canvas, you brush is going in all different directions, I tend to use the small side of the brush or the flat of it, but my brush moves constantly and I am “brush mixing” my colors. That means I pick up a color or colors and mix them on the canvas. this is a good habit to get into because it creates a more interesting painting.

I didn’t worry about the rabbit, I just painted everything with these dry, weedy colors. I had done some preliminary weeds but that isn’t necessary at this point. That was week one.

Week Two: I sketched in the rabbit. Be sure he is big enough on your canvas that he is the focal point but give him some room in front so he can run. This is a “landscape” (horizontal) format, vertical or portrait would make him too small in the painting and give too much importance to the rocks and weeds. Be careful of proportions his body is about 2 and an 1/8^th length of his head from ears to nose.

To under paint the rabbit I mixed up a base gray color which consists of ultra marine blue, purple, burnt sienna and a touch of gesso or white. I want it pretty dark but not black. As I paint, I will add more sienna to make it warmer in some areas or more gesso to make it lighter in other areas, I am looking at the rabbit while I am painting so I know where I need to make slight changes to my colors.

I was using a #6 flat bristle brush and my strokes follow the direction of fur growth on the rabbit. It is not all one direction and changes as it covers the rabbit.

On the inside of the front ear there is a touch of pink showing, without cleaning my brush I added a touch of red and gesso to make a dirty pink color. The dark mix for the eye, nose, and tip of the ear was the above mix for gray without the gesso or white.

At this point I needed to adjust the background colors around the rabbit so he will stand out when we are finished, His back is a bit darker that the rocks behind him so I added some gray to the rocks (one of the reasons I changed my mind about doing the weeds earlier) and there are some flattened weeds in front and behind him I used a mix or yellow, orange, sienna, some of the gray and just scumbled some shapes in front and behind him. This scumbling is still going all directions but is mostly horizontal.

That is the basic idea up to this point. There will be adjustments as we go along so don’t worry about anything right now, this is just under painting and it can look a bit sloppy and it will turn out great in the end. Be patient and don’t sweat the small stuff.