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.