Acrylic Project: Moonlight Fishing

Week 6

We are now don’t to the final details of this painting and it is up to you do decide how much – if any – of the detail you want to put in, it is not a requirement, just suggestions.

The buildings on the Pier are light in color during the day so they will be a medium dark shadow color (purple, blue and a touch of white). Shadows have shadows as well where even the little amount of light available is blocked, this will give your buildings some shape such as the building on top of the closest pier. There are very dark shadows under the eaves and dark shadows on the side wall.

Finished acrylic "Moonlight Fishing"

The roofs of the buildings are sienna and purple, you want a very cool brown color. Remember to follow the angles of the roof when you are painting.

The windows of the restaurant (building on the  close pier) could be reflecting the coast so use similar colors to what you used in the water but add a bit more blue and/or purple to the color so it is darker. Don’t try to make a mirror reflection it is too dark and the windows aren’t that good of glass, just scumble the color on before you paint the dividers in, the dividers may almost disappear if you got the value right for the glass.

You might want to draw the light posts in with your charcoal or chalk and please look at the photo, you will see that the light posts are above the tops of the roof line, don’t make them too short. Paint them in with a dark color, the mix doesn’t matter so long as it is dark.

The glow from the lights on the Pier.

To make the glow from the lights, it is the same as when we did the glow for the moon though this time our color will be a bit more yellow for the incandescent lights. Use white or gesso and a touch of yellow to make a soft light yellow color. Wipe your brush to get any excess off your brush and with a very light touch and the side of your brush, start where the light will be coming from and with small circular, dry brush strokes add the glow from the lights. This color needs to disappear about half way down the pole. Don’t worry about going over the pole that is a good thing. You want the light to look like it is all around the pole and in front of the pole, just be sure you are doing dry brush so you don’t completely cover the pole. You can use this color to go around the edges of the close building.

Highlights on the pier are white with a touch of your thalo blue. It isn’t the bright moon color but a shade or two more blue and it goes on some of the edges that are directly in the moonlight. Don’t get carried away, keep it minimal and mostly in the foreground.

This is watercolor but the idea is the same. They are just
shapes when people are in the distance.

The people I put in are just “dots and dashes” they are even less detailed than stick figures. Put them in or don’t, if you do use a small, round sable or your liner brush and any dark color with a touch of white in it, should be slightly gray and you might have a good color already on your palette that just needs a little white.

I took pure white and made a few of my stars brighter by putting the color on very thick with my liner brush. The shooting star was an accident, I found a dried spot of white in my moon glow and rather than going through a lot of extra work, I just put a tail on it and now I have a shooting start or comet. Sometimes what looks like a problem really isn’t if you don’t panic, it could work out to your advantage.

I am done with this painting and will be doing some short demos for the next couple weeks. If you are done with your painting, bring in something of your own to work on or if you are still working on this project that is good as well. We only have 3 more weeks until the end of class so if you need my help getting started on your own project please bring it in before the end of class. See you all soon.

ACRYLIC CLASS SUMMER 2013

Acrylic Class Project: Moonlight Fishing

We are getting close to the finish line on this project, I think one more class and I will have done all I can do but not to worry if you have missed classes you can finish it up if you want in the remaining classes for this semester and I will come around and help where it is needed.

The last class I demonstrated how to put a glow aroundthe moon, however, I do want to reiterate that if you don’t want to add the glow or anything else, you don’t have to, details are up to you. I show how to do something so in case you feel so inclined you will know the steps, same goes for the pier, if you don’t want to put in the pier or you want to put in something else, it is totally up to you. What I show you is part of my vision and I am sharing it with you, you need to decide if it is the direction you want to go.

That said, I started with the moon glow and final highlights on the water. You will want to mix a color very similar to the base moon color and that is white (gesso) and a tiny, tiny touch of thalo blue. You just want to slightly tint the white so sneak up on that thalo blue with caution. I had about a table spoon’s worth of gesso (what I use instead of white) and to that I added maybe a double pin’s head size of thalo and I ended up adding more white because the blue was so strong even that tiny amount was more than I needed so don’t go jabbing your brush into the thalo, just lightly touch a few bristles to it and check to see how much you actually picked up, you may need to wipe some off. Your color should look just slightly bluish.

Once you get your color mixed, this is going to be a dry brush technique so you will need to wipe most of the paint off your brush. I was using my #4 flat bristle and using the small side of it. My brush was very parallel to the canvas and I was using very little pressure, plus, I used and over-hand hold, not like a pencil, so I had more versatility when moving my brush.

 

Glow can go over clouds.

Glow fades out.

On my canvas, starting just inside the edge of the moon, I started making little, dry brush circles then working my way out into the sky creating the glow. The further away from the moon you are, the lighter the pressure should be on the brush so that the glow just fades into space. If you have clouds going over the moon, go over them as well with this dry brush color to soften them and give them a more transparent look. You can also use this same color and same technique to highlight a few of the clouds but just the top parts that face the moon. Do as much or as little as you want but make sure that you are doing dry brush, you may want to practice on a spare canvas if you are unsure of how to do this technique. The amount of paint and the pressure you apply to the brush are critical. It is also better to have to go over an area again to build up the density thant to try to do it in one step because you can get too much and that is a harder problem to fix rather than building up the color in the first place.

The bright highlight in mostly in the
center and on the top of waves

When you have the glow the way you want it, switch brushes to either your liner or a small sable – I used my #4 flat sable brush but a small round sable brush will also work – and starting right under the moon start adding dips and dabs or this color and apply it pretty thick. This color will stay mostly in the center of the light track from the moon but it is only going to be hitting the tops of waves. Just like the previous colors we added to the light track, you want the edges of this color to be very random, it shouldn’t look like you could draw a straight line from the moon to the shore on either side. In the distance the dips and dabs will be smaller and closer together and as you come to the foreground they will be a bit longer – though not all of them vary the size – and further apart. This color can also be used to add the final bright highlights on the ver tops of the foam and waves.

When you have finished with the glow and the highlights NOW you can add the pier or whatever you were going to put in your painting. You may need to use white or light colored chalk to sketch in your pier because it might be too dark for charcoal to show up, either way be sure to blow off any excess dust when you are done.

You will need to mix a dark color for the under painting of the pier, to do this use all your dark colors: thalo blue, Hooker’s green, purple, burnt umber if you have it, burnt sienna if you don’t, even ultramarine blue, any two or three of these or all of them make a very dark color, the 3 I underlined will be good enough, the color will look black and that is what you want. You may also want to use the same small brush you used for the wave highlights for this part of the painting because it will give you more control than a bristle brush of similar size to get the pylons under the pier the right size and to add details.

The detail is just shapes.

A word about the details under the pier or on it for that matter: They are just shapes. The quicker you do the “details” the better it will be. Straight thicker lines will look like boards thinner lines will look like pipes or whatnot that hangs down under the pier, let the viewer do some of the work, your job is just to suggest that something is going on the person looking at your painting will fill in the blanks. Even the people are just going to be just dots and lines, they will be suggestions not portraits.

That is where we stopped in class; I think we can finish up in the next class. If you want to get something else started before the semester ends bring your reference material and canvas to class and I can help you get started if you need help. See you all soon.