ACRYLIC CLASS WEEK 1

Acrylic Class Summer 2013

Project: Moonlight Fishing

The first class on this new project was basically under painting the canvas with the sky and water, giving us a place to start, please remember that this should be done quickly without too much fussing otherwise you can muddy up both your sky and your water. I also want to point out that this is a basically made up scene, while it could possible happen if I waited long enough and camped out down at the pier at the right time and conditions, this moonlight scene is a mix of imagination and reality and it could be any moonlit scene: mountains, buildings, trees…whatever you want the lesson is basically the moon glow and the water, what you put in front of it is up to you if you don’t like the pier but I do suggest that you find other reference photos of what you do want to paint because you will want to get shapes and distance figured correctly.

The first thing I did – and the only drawing so far – was to locate my horizon line. I wanted a bit more sky than water so I drew my horizon a bit below the center of my canvas which I am using horizontal or landscape. I’m using a 16 x 20 so I came up about 7” from the bottom, if you are using a smaller canvas an inch might be too much draw your line first and step back to look at it, you should just have a bit more sky than water.

Be sure that your horizon is straight whenever you are painting large bodies of water like oceans or lakes even large rivers that start at the horizon will be straight across, if your water is tilted it will look very strange in the final painting, the only time water will be at an angle is if it is falling over something like waterfalls, rapids or breaking waves anything else will cause you a lot of problems to fix.

 

Under painting for sky and water.

Working quickly, the first thing I did, and this is to help the gesso go on easier, was to spray or paint just water on my canvas. It there is a bit of water on the canvas it helps the paint go on easier, on dry days it really helps a lot just remember not to use too much water, you aren’t soaking the area just dampening it. Next using my #12 flat bristle brush (you can use a blending brush if you want but do use a large brush) I brushed on a thin coat of gesso right along and above the horizon line, the area I coated was maybe 1 ½” wide but if you are using a smaller canvas, it won’t be that wide. Keep working quickly so your paint doesn’t dry and pick up a touch of Thalo Blue (this is the common spelling I will use) no need to rise your brush at this point and work the color into the wet gesso along the horizon and up a bit beyond the area coated with gesso using crisscross strokes. DO NOT STOP! Keep working but now rinse your brush out well to get all the light color out of it and be sure to dry the bristles well, no drippy water.

Now you will be picking up 3 different colors all at the same time: You will pick up thalo blue, purple and burnt sienna and you will mix these colors on your canvas. Don’t try to stretch these colors or you won’t get a nice dark sky. Start at the top of your canvas and work down, reload often adding only touches of water if your paint feels sticky, it should be like soft butter going on. Use the crisscross strokes if you are seeing to many brush strokes you are pressing too hard on your brush, sometimes new brushes will also cause this problem, if it looks too thin you are probably using too much water pick up more paint and work it in.

When you get down to the area where the gesso is stop, rinse your brush, dry it and lightly – no pressure on your brush – blend the two areas together. You can go a little bit up into the dark area with the litter color and a little bit down into the light area with the dark, what you are looking for is a soft blend called a transitional blend where you can’t tell where one area stops and the other begins. Do the best you can, use your blending brush if you need to, this is a challenging technique and will take more than a time or two to perfect but once you do get it, you can make some amazing skies.

In class I let the sky dry as the rest of you were putting in your own skies but in reality, if you are doing this at home you can continue to work and it might actually work better because you will be able to blend the horizon line a bit to soften it.

To do the water I first wet the whole area where the water will be with plain water (brush it on or spray it) then I coated the entire area with a thin coat of gesso. This area isn’t going to be as dark so we can lighten this first step a bit but you are still going to be using a lot of paint so please don’t try to skimp or stretch you paint, you won’t be happy.

Still using my #12 flat bristle brush again triple loading my brush, this time I used my thalo blue, Hooker’s green (sap is okay if you don’t have Hooker’s) and purple, start about halfway down the water area and this time use long flat overlapping strokes in the water area. If you do short choppy strokes it will look like a stormy sea, which is fine if that is what you want, but for a calm sea, long flat (horizontal) strokes. Don’t try to blend the dark and light streaks, those will actually look like incoming waves, remember to work quickly and reload often. When you are near the horizon be careful not to ruin your straight line but do take your finger or you blending brush and lightly smudge the line so it is not hard. This is where if you had continued to work, the sky would probably be just wet enough to help with the light blending, for now a bit of a smudge.

This is where we stopped for the day, remember if you want to do something besides the pier, find your own reference material and have it for class next week. See you soon.