ACRYLIC WINTER 2014 CLASS

Acrylic Project: Arizona Color

Week 6

At this point in your painting it is all about finishing up. We have built the house, put in the plumbing and wiring, painted the walls and now we are adding the furniture and the decorations. Furniture is the necessary things like bushes and rocks and highlights that give a sense of time and place to our painting, how much you put in is up to you the artist, the decorations are the amount of detail you want to put in whether it is more rocks, or detail in the rocks and trees or dead grass or whatever you want to add to your painting, in both cases it can quickly go from just right to clutter if you add too much of either. Remember, if you are looking for areas to work on and are having trouble picking the spot, you are probably done. Set you painting aside and don’t look at it for a few days then look at it with new eyes. If you can’t see anything that jumps right out at you, you are probably done.

We did a lot of work on rocks in class and one of the things I am still seeing is most of you are being to particular when painting rocks. It is a challenge for me to try and explain how to do rocks that don’t look like turtles or paver stones because random is hard to explain. Rocks in their natural state are vary random in size shape and placement especially when water is involved because the water not only shapes the rocks, but it also moves them and piles them up. The best advice I can give is to move quickly through your painting. Think more of size and shape and where you are visually in your painting (foreground, background, water or land) and make random series of marks. Overlap some of the marks or make a few singles or connections between groups, you can define the individual rocks with your highlights and shadows. You can take one generic shape and create a pile of rocks with just a few brushstrokes of highlight color. This takes practice! I cannot stress this enough, you need to find an old canvas and practice painting rocks or get a piece of paper and pencil and practice drawing rocks and by all means, take photos of rocks or cut them out of magazines to use as reference when you are practicing.

I mention Jerry Yarnell quite often because he is a good teacher and he does amazing rocks. You can look him up on the Internet or find him on PBS (KVCR and the Create network have

good art shows) and just watch what he does. The camera gets in close so you can see his brush strokes, something I just don’t have access to in class. The more you can see how it is done, the better you will understand it when you practice. Rocks aren’t as difficult as most of you make them and if you are going to be a landscape painter you will need to learn to paint rocks.

When you highlight your rocks remember where the sun is coming from: The right hand side. Don’t bring your highlight color (white a touch or yellow and orange with a bit of mud from your brush or palette) all the way around your rocks. This color can also be used to highlight the trunks of your trees, I used a #4 flat sable and by using the very edge of the brush, I made a series of short choppy marks along the edge of the trunks, leaving some of the dark under painting for shadows and texture.

 

Another thing I did was to add some reflected highlights into the shadows of the tree trunks and some of the rocks. In our atmosphere, light is scattered and will bounce around especially if there are reflective surfaces like water around, but light will also bounce off the ground, walls, rocks and anything else and to add some reflected light into your shadows makes them look more three dimensional. Shadows are cool so you will use your purple and blue and a touch of white to lighten it enough so it will show in the shadow. This is not a bright highlight, it is reflected light, it should only be a shade or two lighter than the dark shadow and you just need to add it to the larger things like the tree trunks or large rocks.

Our next class will be our last class and I think I will have to have one more demo on this painting then it will be up to you to finish it up on your own. Remember to get registered for the next semester as soon as you can so you don’t miss out on our next project. Keep painting and I will see you soon.

WINTER 2014 ACRYLIC CLASS

ACRYLIC CLASS PROJECT: Az. Color

Week 5

The last class we started working on some of the finishing details that will make the water look wet, give the leaves trunks and branches to support them so we can finish this up maybe next week.

I made a larger section of the water and bank so it would be easier to see during the demo. In the painting things are so small and people tend to stand at the back of the room, it makes it hard to see what I am doing. Practicing elements of your painting is a good thing when you are learning because you can make them big enough to see what you is happening on your canvas so if you are having problems with the water, you might want to just do a section of the water and rocks like I did and it will help you.

Remember how we put in some rock shapes before we started adding the reflections? Well for most of you your rocks may have disappeared or are barely visible, which in some cases may be a good thing because now you have a chance to correct any rocks you didn’t like. To make the reflections look like reflections and the water to look clear, we need to see the rocks under the water, to do that we are going to mix some grayed colors that are a bit lighter than the water is now. These can and should be any color you have: yellows, oranges, reds, greens, blues and purples and scatter the colors liberally around in your water, If you can see the previous rock shapes, use the color as a highlight color, if you can’t see the rocks from earlier, just put them in. Please do not try to avoid the reflections you actually want these rocks to show in the reflection areas because the more they do show, the better your reflections will look.

Be careful of creating distinguishable patterns with your rocks, change the size, shape and color as you move around through the water area. You don’t need as many in the water that is furthest away from you but have most of them in the water that is closer to the viewer. I was using my #4 round sable for this step, BTW.

If you want to have some of the rocks stick up out of the water, mix a dark color – sienna, blue and purple is a good standard – and just create some dark shapes in the water in random places. There might naturally be more rocks around the banks of the river or embedded into the sandbars but don’t be afraid to put some in the middle of the water. We will highlight later.

The next thing we did was add the tree trunks and branches to our trees. If you have not been

using your liner brush, I strongly suggest that before your attempt this on your painting that you practice it on a scrap canvas or paper or something you don’t care about because this brush is a bit tricky if you don’t know how it works. The first thing you need to learn is how to get the correct consistency for your paint, it needs to be like ink with enough water so it will run but not so much that it won’t cover. If you tilt you palette, it should move slowly like warm syrup.

When you get the right mix of water and paint, get ALL  of the bristles down in the paint all the way up to the metal ferrule to get the paint into the entire length of the bristles, then as you lift it off your palette, roll the brush  between your fingers as you lift to form a nice point on your brush. There should be no drips if the paint is just thick enough and you loaded it properly.

Next, hold the brush at the very end and at a slightly downward angle. If you sit when you paint you might want to get your painting a bit lower and move your chair back so you aren’t all scrunched up in your shoulders and arm. You will be using your arm more than your hand and it needs to be free to move.

To start the tree, press the brush on the canvas so it slightly flattens out and then start to pull up. Keep the angle to your brush and as you pull up pull the brush away from the canvas until you are on the tip of the brush. If you have a natural shake to your hand, that is a good thing, it creates a more interesting branch, if you have a steadier hand like I do, you may have to put in a bit of a shake to get the same results. Lift off the brush to finish the limb.

When you want to start another limb or branch, start your stroke within an existing part of the trunk or branch, your branches will look more natural and you won’t have as many odd connections. It is also easier to start from a thicker part of the branch and go to the thinner end than the opposite direction. Practice this until you feel more comfortable before moving to your painting.

When you finally do put in the tree trunks and branches on your painting, use the same dark mix as we usually use – sienna, blue and purple - and paint the trunks. I do want you to note that the trunks and branches ARE NOT STRAIGHT. Many of you when I looked at your trees had painted telephone pole straight trunks on these trees and they lose a lot of character when you put in straight lines. These are desert trees, deciduous trees and they have had a hard life where they live. They have earned every twist and turn of their branches, don’t take that from them. Also remember that the trunks and branches go behind some of the clumps of leaves so skip over or come up through some of the holes in the trees, just keep it interesting.

We should be getting to the finishing touches during our next class so please try to get your paintings up to this point if you can. I will see you all in class.