WINTER 2014 ACRYLIC CLASS

Acrylic Class Project:

ArizonaColors Week 2

This week I started out class showing how I could correct things about my painting I wasn’t pleased with. Because I have to paint from the side in class, I see a distorted view of my painting and often times I don’t really see what is wrong with it until I’m at home and not distracted with helping students. Unfortunately for my students, many of you were trying to get your own paintings to look like mine and many of you did which meant you also needed to make adjustments to you paintings, so most of our class time we spent making changes.

 

I marked all the changes I needed
to make.

Making changes is actually a good thing. You need to understand that if you are not happy with something in your painting, you can change or fix it and you don’t need to paint out whole areas to do it. I had to move my background peak over a bit as well as change the angle of the hillside both top and bottom. For the distant peak I mixed a color that was similar in value (light or dark) to what was there and used my #10 flat bristle to create the edge using the edge of the bristle to create the edge of the mountain, this is to keep the edge soft, you don’t want a hard line in the distance. Still using the #10 I mixed a color similar to the dark green I previously used for the hillside creating a new edge full of brush and wet into wet blending with the paint from the distant mountain.

I used the same dark paint (Hooker’s green, blue, sienna and a touch of purple) to fix the angle of the bottom of the hillside, I need it to angle down to the Left side about a quarter of the way from the bottom of the canvas to almost half way up the right side of the canvas. The river bank needs to also be changed the same way with a similar angle, using the same brush but with a sienna, orange and touch of purple mix of paint. I also used this color to add the sand bars in

the water, just be careful when you paint in the sand bars because you could end up with giant foot prints in the water so watch your shapes. This got me back to where I could move forward on my painting. Yes it took some time, but less time than if I had continued and had to fix even more is I was unhappy and a lot less frustration with my final results. Every artist finds things they want/need to change so you do need to know how to make those changes and not be afraid to do so.

The sun light in this painting is coming from the upper right hand side and slightly behind so that we will have a slightly backlit situation going on with our highlights. Look at the photo before you start this next process and notice where the highlights are on the hillside. They are right along the top right edge then it gets very dark in the main part of the hillside though the sun is hitting the trees and river creating dramatic light and contrast. However, look into the dark areas of the hillside and you will see that there are some bushes that stick out far enough to catch a bit of sunlight, these hints of lights add some interest into the dark and let the viewer know that there are bushes in the darkness.

Still using the #10 bristle brush, and a mix of green (Hooker’s or sap), a touch of blue, sienna and/or purple and a touch of white to lighten the color I mixed a very gray/green color for my first highlight. By using the brush so I am using a corner of the brush and a stippling-type stroke (touch and lift), I can create the top edges of highlight on my bushes. Same for the tips of the brush in the dark area, just little touches but please remember what you are painting as you paint: These are bushes, they have shapes and they may overlap each other, they will touch, they are not groomed plants in someone’s garden that are pruned to never come in contact, nature is sloppy.

 

Some of these rocks will be underwater.

Then there are the rocks. I debated about putting them in but I was watching an episode of “Paint This! with Jerry Yarnell” and he was doing a river with rocks in the water and I thought how cool the rocks looked under the water and if you are going to do landscape with any kind of water be it river, lake or ocean there will be rocks, so we are painting rocks! (Insert evil laugh)

Most of our rocks are going to be river-type rocks and most will end up under the water, this is very cool. I started out by making a dark color of sienna, purple and blue keeping it on the brown side, I used my #4 flat bristle or you can us a small flat sable brush, and I was using the side of my brush (remember that every brush is a multi-tool, use all sides),to create the shapes. Notice I didn’t say “rocks” because they are not rocks yet, they are only shapes and they are ALL KINDS OF SHAPES. Big, small, flat, round, odd shaped, dots, dashes, they overlap, they make clusters, they bunch up they do many things because they have been pushed there and their shapes were created by the water. What they do not do is line themselves all up in a row, they do not evenly space themselves out and have big round ones in the back and little ones in the front, they do not form clusters that look more like leopard spots, they do not repeat patterns, they are not all the same size especially from front to back. It doesn’t matter what it is, as it goes into the distance it gets smaller and closer together. If all your rocks are the same size from foreground to background, visually the ones in front will look like pebbles and the same size in the background will look like boulders. While there may be boulders in the back ground, they won’t all be boulders.

You also want to get enough in the water and on the banks to make it look like they belongs, one or two, here and there don’t have a natural look when doing landscapes, so get enough in especially in the foreground that it looks like river rocks.

You can let them dry for a few minutes then you will do your first highlight.

The highlights can start out by adding a bit of white (gesso) to the dark mix to make a gray

Highlights are quick shapes. Note the different colors.

color, what you don’t want to do is make all of them gray. Add touches of different colors such as orange or blue or red or green to the gray to change the “flavor”, these rocks have all kinds of minerals in them and can be almost any color of the rainbow. This first highlight will still be a dull color which is why I say mixt it into the gray, we will come back and brighten the highlights on some of them later, this is just the first step.

I switched to my #4 flat sable for this process because it gives me a bit more control and accuracy as the bristles will stay together rather than spread apart like the bristle brush. But like the bristle brush, I use all parts of my sable brush. The full chisel edge for wider areas, the corner and sides for smaller areas, I am constantly twisting  my brush to get the part I need to make the shape I want (still just a shape, no rocks yet).

When I make a highlight on a rock, I do it quickly and move on to the next one. I do not belabor each and every rock and pebble. If I have a big dark shape that I think needs to be smaller, I just make it into several smaller shapes. I will just put dashes or dots of this highlight color here and there even if there is no dark spot, maybe it is buried under the sand and all you see is the top. Remember that the sun is coming from the upper right of the painting, so it will be the top and right hand side of the rocks that get the highlight. Be very cautious not to keep repeating the same size, shape and angles, that is a very human thing to do and it can easily happen, then the next thing you know you have a herd of turtles instead of random rocks, working quickly can help prevent too much planning and thinking which causes the turtles to appear.

This is where we stopped so try to get caught up to this point, practice on another spare canvas if you need to, try not to over think or over work your rocks. I will see you next week.