Winter 2014 Acrylic Project: Az Color

Week 4

This past week we worked on the river bank, the sand bars, the trees and the reflections by putting brighter highlights on them. One thing I do want to make clear is when you are putting layers of paint on your painting, you DO NOT cover up all of the under painting. The under painting becomes the subtleshadows or texture in your painting and it is the subtle things like this that help bring interest to your painting otherwise what you end up with is something very flat and lifeless. Protect and use your under painting to its best effect and your paintings will literally take on a different dimension.

When you highlight in acrylic, you will use a dry brush technique. That means there will be little paint on your brush and you will use little pressure on your brush. You will also use various parts of your brush from the long side to the flat edge so do not grip your brush like it was your life line, use an overhand grip and keep that brush moving from edge to side to edge again. My brush is constantly rolling between my fingers and I am holding it so lightly I have occasionally dropped it, as painters we are like sculptors only we sculpt paint instead of stone or clay.

The highlight color for the river bank is white/gesso, cad yellow light, teeny, tiny touch of purple to grey it and a tiny touch of sienna to warm it. You should have a very light warm grey, like beach sand. Be sure to wipe off any excess paint from your brush (I was using my #4 flat bristle brush) and using the small side of the brush I lightly dry brushed on my highlights. Keep your strokes going mostly in a horizontal direction as you go from one side to the canvas to the other while making a series of overlapping, flat “u” shapes and upside down “u” shapes. Just like the water, when you want something to appear flat, your strokes need to be parallel to the top and bottom of your canvas. If you remember the old Etcha-Sketch you only had up and down or side to side, yet with a bit of patience and practice you could make a curved line using a series of parallel marks, that is kinda the same thing here except you can slightly curve your strokes. Remember to leave some of the under painting to create the texture of the sand/dirt.

The brightest part of the river bank is from just behind the trees to the water, when you go back towards the dark hillside, lighten the pressure on your brush even more and fade the color into the dark color, you will be letting a lot more of the under painting show and it will visually look like the sand is going back into the darkness. You can suggest shapes of rocks or paths or whatever, with just a few light strokes. One thing to be very aware of on both sides of the river bank is to not have straight lines, remember about being human, we want to have nice organized spaces the problem with that is it doesn’t look natural so be sure that you have a lot of variation to the edges where it goes into the dark hillside and also where it meets the water.

For the sand bars and the ends of the river bank, I added a bit more sienna to create a slightly darker color. On the river bank, I blended it into the lighter color so there was no abrupt color change and on the sand bars my strokes were mostly slightly rounded upside down “U” shapes so that the sand bars look like they are just above the water line.

The sun in this photo is behind and to the right of the trees so there is a lot of back lighting and light coming through the leaves to illuminate them so you can use pure color from your palette: Yellow, orange and even red or touches of green. Please note that I have NOT put in the trunks or the limbs at this point, I will do it next time, if you have already added your trunks and limbs, do not be afraid to paint over some of them because chances are you have not skipped areas that make it look like there are leaves in front of the branches so you will need to do that any way.

I switched to my #6 bristle brush because I wanted to cover the area quickly, however, if you are working on a smaller canvas you can stick with a #4. Don’t get too small with your brushes because you become too obsessed with it and your work will look overworked and you won’t be happy.

To load my brush I went straight into the paint and worked it into the bristles by jamming the bristles straight down on my palette. This is why we use bristle because they will take a lot of abuse to get the effects we want. The end of your brush should have and interesting – for lack of a better term – shape to it. You want this interesting shape so that your trees don’t have a cookie cutter look, one of the reasons I do not use a fan brush, it is way too easy to have trees with perfect little fan shapes all over rather than a more natural trees shape.

You want to tap the color straight on in slightly rounded shapes for these trees. Every tree has a unique shape but in general for these deciduous trees they will have a rounded “clump” look to them. The harder you tap, the more paint will come off your brush, the lighter you tap, less paint will come off so in areas where there is a lot of leaves, tap harder, around the edges tap lighter. Leave some of the under painting and keep the brightest colors to the outsides of the clumps. Keep an interesting shape to your trees and try not to fill them in. However, if you do manage to put too many leaves into your trees, do not panic!, Just mix a dark color similar to what you painted the hillside behind the trees with and just like you were adding the bright colors, tap some dark holes back into your trees.

While you have the bright colors on your brush, you need to scrub these colors into your water. Remember to scrub them in with horizontal and vertical strokes and PLEASE don’t try to go around the rocks you painted! Most of the rocks are under the water and they need to have these colors on top we will go back and bring some of these rocks out later but for now, just trust me and paint right over

them. Remember this is dry brush so you should still be able to see at least some of the rocks when you are done.

Try to get your painting up to this point by next class we only have 3 more weeks before the end of the semester. I will see you all in class.