Fall 2012 Acrylic Class – Scotty’s Truck Week 3

Once your truck is under painted you need to start the highlighting process. The problem most beginning students have is they want to go to the final highlight straight out of the gate when there are usually several more subtle layers before you get to the final highlight. On this truck there are shades of orange, yellow and red that need to be dry brushed on to get the truck a more rusted look, you can start with the base color you mixed up if you have any left, or just use burnt sienna with touches of the above mentioned colors, the key is to “dry brush” the highlights along with some of the darker areas and shadows.

The newer students in class may not have heard the term dry brush but it is exactly what it sounds like: A brush with little water and little paint on it. First, if you have washed or dipped you brush in water, it needs to be dried really well, if you need to add touches of water to your paint and you use your brush to add and mix the water into the paint, squeeze the bristles of the brush with a paper towel before loading your brush with color and again after you have loaded the color wipe the brush on the towel to remove any excess paint, there should be very little paint on your brush.

With you brush now loaded, start in the lightest areas with this color and work out. Use very little pressure on your brush when doing this technique, the harder you push the more paint will come off and you want the color of your under painting to come through. Also, use all sides of the brush and move it around in all directions like a scumbling stroke as you follow the form of the part you are painting. The size and type of your brush matters here, you may need to use a smaller bristle brush if you are working on a smaller sized painting. Be sure you are using a bristle brush because a soft sable not only won’t work very well, you will destroy the brush using it to dry brush.

Before you get too involved with details on the truck there are a couple of things you need to consider, the first is putting the shadows on the ground under the truck and the second is adding some things in the background like some rocksand or bushes in the background. If your truck fills up most of your canvas, this may not be necessary but if you have space around the truck like I have, you might need something to set the truck in its environment. I used a slightly darker version of the ground color which is yellow, white and touches of purple to give me a warm gray rock color. While it was still wet, I also added tiny touches of purple or orange or yellow or white, just to give it some life, mixing the color right on the canvas.

The wood frame in the cab has both shadows and highlights visible but just like the rusted parts of the truck it will look best if you dry brush color on but this time using a small bristle brush and making strokes that would follow the natural grain of the wood. The colors are similar to what you used for the under painting to make the color darker add more blue and purple maybe touches of sienna to grey it or touches of white to lighten the shadow color, to make a light color blue and white.

Depending on where the class is at the end of next session, we may finish this project in class this time. If you feel you are getting close to being done, please have another project of your own to start with you, I will do mini demos for specific needs. See you all in class.

FALL 2012 ACRYLIC CLASS – Scotty’s Truck Week 2

Thanks to Gary we found out that this is probably a 1928 Ford dump truck. Leave it to a guy to be curious about an old rusted out truck. Thanks Gary, I do appreciate your efforts.

In the last class we under painted the truck and the rock, as always, we start out with a mid-tone version of the final color to that we can add other colors to make it lighter or darker. My basic mix of color for the rusted parts of the truck was burnt sienna, orange and a touch of purple. That is a good basic rust color. If you need to make it darker you can add blue and purple to it if you want to change the sun lit color a bit you can add more orange, or yellow or red.

When you under paint the truck, use a brush that will fit the truck size you are working on. I’m on a 16 x 20 canvas and my truck is fairly large in the frame so I started out with a #6 flat sable and went down to a #2 flat sable for the finer detail, if you are working on a smaller canvas, your truck it going to be smaller as well. You may want to start with a #4 either a sable or a bristle and use a small round brush for the detail, don’t try to use a jack hammer when all you need is a tooth pick.

Be sure to have the reference photo IN FRONT OF YOU. That photo has all the information you need to finish this painting, not the photo of where I was in class, that only lets you know where I stopped for the day, the reference photo is where you are headed and helps you see where you are in relationship. Get it out and use it.

I know it is tempting to just put paint on the brush and follow along those long sweeping lines of the fenders and truck body but please resist the urge. Remember that you want to keep the edges soft for now. It may be hard in some areas but do the best you can. Using the flat edge or you brush, place it on the outside edge of what you are painting and pull in. Move down the entire edge of what you are painting in this manner to keep the edge soft. The inside can be scumbled – strokes going every which way – rather than smooth strokes, it will add texture to the area and this is an old, beat-up truck, it has lots of texture.

I had mixed up a pretty good sized amount of my base color to start out, when I got to lighter areas I added more red or yellow, to the darker areas I added touches of blue and/or purple depending on how dark the area was. You can mix the colors on your canvas or you can pre mix on your palette just using a corner of your base color to mix in saving the rest for other areas. For the real dark areas I added a lot of blue, mostly, and some purple, this dark can also be used to paint the tire. Some of my students who have been with me for a while need to start working a bit more wet into wet to blend colors, it will give you more variation.

Also notice that I wasn’t worried about what I was painting. I didn’t try to figure out all those parts and pieces yet, I just under painted them with the base color for now, I will pick them out later – if I feel so inclined.

The rock was under painted with a different type or gray mix than I usually use, this time I used yellow with touches of purple to get a warm gray color. These are complimentary colors and together they make a very nice gray. To make it darker I added more purple with touches of blue. Remember it is not a wall but a rough rock, dab and poke and scumble the color on, this is a good place to practice wet into wet, start with the warm gray color and – without cleaning your brush – pick up touches of purple and blue and work it into the shadowed areas under the truck.

The wood frame inside the cab is a bit on the blue side if you have cobalt or cerulean blue, you can use either of those with a touch of purple and sienna to darken and gray the color if you only have ultramarine blue, add a touch of green, purple, sienna and white to get a soft blue/green color, this is for the shadow areas of the frame and the whitewall of the tire. For the sunlit parts of the frame mix more white and blue with your dirty brush to get a lighter version.

You should have your whole truck under painted at this point; we will start on the highlighting and shadows next class. See you soon.