Winter 2014 Acrylic Project

AzColors Week 3

This week we worked on the trees and the water after I fixed the problems I saw from the previous week when I was writing up the blog. Many of you also felt that you needed to change things in your own paintings and that is a good thing. This is paint and we can change things we don’t like or that just changing for whatever reason and it is good to see that you can just paint right over an area without having to first paint out then try to blend in the new with the old.

First the trees: You may want to take your charcoal or chalk and make a basic outline of your trees, mostly to get the size right and to give you some guidelines where to paint, please keep in mind these are only GUIDELINES they are not set in stone, they are chalk that can be erased and changed. When you are learning you often want to follow a drawing precisely and as a painter that makes your painting too stiff and overworked, create the shape with your brush, you will be a lot happier.

Whether you are drawing with your chalk or painting your brush, the most important thing to focus on it the negative shape around your tree. In acrylics we are usually painting the positive shape of something but that doesn’t mean that the space around whatever we are painting is any less important, creating interesting negative shapes makes what we are painting that much more interesting, these trees for example, need to have a lot of movement in their outside shape. Look at the reference photo and study the shapes of the trees. At his point that is all they are – Shapes. They are wild trees that get trimmed by the wind and water so their shapes are very irregular. Notice all the ins and outs along the edges of the tree and all the holes or spaces in the tree where you can see through to the dark hillside behind it. Really see these things BEFORE you start painting because these are the important things. You might want to practice on another canvas or piece of paper, no matter what medium you are using negative space is important and if you ever want to try watercolor, there can be more negative painting than positive painting because we paint from light to dark and it can be challenging.

Once you feel you understand how to draw the shape of the trees, locate them on your canvas. Blow off any excess chalk or charcoal dust before you start painting, it won’t hurt your paints but it can affect the color a bit.

I was using my #6 flat bristle brush, orange and a bit of burnt sienna to create a burnt orange color. There may have been some mud on my brush from what I was painting but that is not a problem, this is just the under painting for the leaves of the trees. You can even add touches of red if you want as you paint.

To load the brush and also to get it shaped right, I went straight down into the color and literally smashed the bristles into the paint. You want the end to be all fuzzed out and funky, this will give you interesting shapes when you are painting the shape of the trees. You NEVER want to do this with your good sable brushes because it will ruin them, bristle brushes are designed to take a lot of abuse and they are reasonable enough to be replaced when they are used up. Some people like to use a fan brush but I am not a fan of the fan, the reason being is it can make too regular of a shape and unless you are very careful when you are using a fan you will get a regular pattern going that is pretty hard to hide, to me, not worth the trouble but if you want you can give it a try, it is what works best for you and the overall look you are going for when you paint.

Once you have your brush loaded with paint you will be mostly using the very end of the brush and tapping and dabbing the color on where your shape is. Pressure is going to be very important when you are doing this step, if you tap hard, more paint will come off your brush, if you tap lightly you will see the individual bristle marks, one is good for more dense area and the other where the leaves are sparser. If you want to work in a small area use the corner of the brush, larger areas use the whole end of the brush. Remember to reshape your brush each time like I described above so you have irregular shapes.

Another thing to be aware of is the overlapping shapes within the branches of the tree. There are kinda rounded clumps but they will touch and overlap, if you have a bunch of clumps that aren’t touching or overlapping, you need to go in and connect some of those clumps, again, look at the reference photo or go out and look at trees.

While you have that color on your brush, down in the water you can lightly scrub that color horizontally into where your water will be. You will be going over some of your rocks and this process will make the rocks look like they are under the water so I emphasize the work LIGHTLY! Then lightly pull straight down using the flat end of your brush. When you are doing water it is good to remember “straight down and straight across” that will keep you water looking flat.

When you are done with the trees and the tree reflections, you will need to start adding some of the hill color that is behind the trees into the water and a bit of the sky color down in the lower right corner. It is the same thing: LIGHTLY scrub the color in horizontally, then lightly pull it straight down. You should get some streaks of dark going into the light and light going into the dark and that is a good thing. Each thing that we do to the water now will make the water look wetter and wetter, key here is not to put so much paint on that you cover up all your rock shapes, we can ass some of them back in if needed but if you can save yourself some work, that is a good thing.

Try to have your paintings up to the point where I stopped in class if you can. If you are having problems, wait and I can help you get through the rough patch, don’t keep working making it worse and worse. You have an extra week so no need to rush, I will see you all in class.