ACRYLIC CLASS SUMMER 2013

Acrylic Project: Moonlight Fishing

Week 3

During the last class I concentrated on the wave by doing a larger demo so the class could see what I was painting because on the actual painting the wave is small and near the bottom making it very hard to see even when you are close. This would be considered a study and when you are unsure of what you are doing it is always good to practice on an old canvas you’ve painted out or smaller canvases or even heavy paper or acrylic paper so you can figure out exactly what you need to do before you start on your painting and get lost, it lessens the possibility of having to paint something out several times, adding to your frustration. Studies are good.

Often times in art the simplest looking thing turns out to be a lot more complicated than you ever imaged it to be, such is the case with waves. It is one thing to watch the waves crash against the shore, it is another to try and recreate a frozen version of that wave crashing so you need to break the parts of the wave down to understand what you are painting even harder to write about it, but I will try.

 

A piece of duct tubing as a model.

A wave is like a tube with a slice out of it. You see both the inside “face” of the wave and the back side of the wave as it breaks over the face. I took a piece of duct tubing and cut  part of it to illustrate a breaking wave, the red representing the face or inside of the wave/tube and the green the breaking part of the wave as the back side of the wave falls over the front. If you have a piece of duct tubing you might want to look at it the coils in it make a great visual to see a close representation of the action of the water. That combined with watching actual wave breaking will give you a better understanding of the dynamics that are going on in a wave.

The other parts of a wave that also show are the eye or transparency and the base. If you look close you will see that it is much lighter at the top of the wave than it is at the bottom because of the thickness of the water at the base. As the water peaks it becomes thinner and thinner allowing more light to come through until it becomes so thin it can’t support its weight and falls over. All of this is what we as artists are trying to represent on our canvases when we are painting, it is a lot simpler to do than it is to explain here put simply a wave is darker at the bottom than it is at the top.

Using my thalo blue, with touches of purple and Hooker’s green I started at the base of the wave with my flat bristle brush, at the very base my strokes are mostly flat but as I start up the face of the wave, I curl the stroke to follow the curl of the wave. It is always important to follow the shape of the object you are painting to give visual clues to whoever is looking at your painting no matter what it is you are painting. As I move up the face of the wave I add touches of cobalt blue along with the thalo and Hooker’s but leave out the purple, using more of the cobalt and less of the thalo until I get almost to the top when I add touches of white (gesso) to suggest the eye. You can also start from the eye and work down the wave, just reverse the process.

The breaking part of the wave has a similar process it is light along the top edge and gets darker where it turns into foam but you need to note the your brush strokes are going to be  going in a different direction. Where  the inside face may have curved to your right, the outside breaking water curves to the left (green stripes on the tube) and is very important to make the wave look like it is breaking.

I do want to remind you here that we are painting nighttime waves. You don’t want to get the water too yellow green or it won’t look like night time, stay in your cool blues for night, however, when you do daytime waves your light parts of the wave will almost look yellow because of the colors available in the sunlight.

One of the most common mistakes when you are learning to paint is when you want to paint white. Many beginner starts out painting white with white then wonders why they can’t make it look right. The reason is: White is not white. This is especially true in this painting, the only things that are white are the stars all other objects that might seem white are some form of blue or purple because it is night. Again, you need to observe white in both bright sunlight and in shadow and where they transition into shadow. Look at white objects so you can see that there may be very little, if any, pure white on it except maybe a bright highlight the rest may be greys or blues. Look at white houses at night, are they actually white? Whenever you want to paint white you always start out with a cool grey or blue or purple under painting, this will become the shadows and texture of the white.

For the under painting of the foam I used thalo, purple and gesso (white) to make a dark lavender blue. I loaded my flat bristle brush by tapping it straight down onto my palette which not only loaded my brush but also “fuzzed up” the end so it was very irregular. I tapped the color on where I wanted the foam always thinking about what foam does during this part of a wave break. It is a very violent motion with bubbling and churning, even in fairly calm ocean waves you will see a lot of motion, so be sure your foam has an interesting shape with lots of variation around the edges. If you want while the paint is still wet and at the top of the foam, you can pick up little touches of white or cobalt and tap it in as you form the tops of the foam. This is still going to be a dark color, we are nowhere near the final highlights, but this will give you just a bit of variation in value so you can start to see the waves take shape.

 

Added waves and a few stars

The only other thing we did in class was to add a few stars in with our tooth brush and white (gesso). Keep a wet paper towel handy so if they get too big or look more like comets or have fallen into your ocean, you can wipe them up before they dry. We may do some more individual types stars but this may be all you want, it will be up to you.

Next class we will be putting in the glow from the moon and more sparkle on the water. I want to get all of the water and sky finished so the following week we can put in our pier or whatever you want to put in (or nothing at all). I hope that everyone can get caught up to this point. See you in class.