Acrylic Class Project : From My Garden

Week 2

Once you have your background in you may sketch in the veggies or whatever you have decided to paint. For now we have stopped working on the background but that is not to say we are finished with it, as your painting progresses you may or may not want to go back in and “fine tune” the background as needed.

I am not going to go with a blow by blow narrative of every veggie on there because besides the color, everything will be pretty much the same for each thing you paint, I will point out the things you need to keep in mind.

First off your brush, the size of your brush will depend on the size of your canvas. I was using my #6 flat bristle brush and was working on a 16 x 20 canvas, however, if you are working on a smaller canvas you might want to go to a #4 flat bristle, the general rule of brushes especially when you are just basing in your painting is to use the largest brush you can comfortable use for the size canvas you are working on. At this stage you want to cover things quickly and without too much fussing, so put away the smaller brushes and save your sable brushes for later and get out the bristle brushes and find one at a size that will cover quickly.

Next your paint. I am still seeing some of you put out just the paint you think you might need, then you struggle to mix your paint because the paint you need isn’t on your palette and you try to find an alternative but it doesn’t exist because the colors just aren’t there. If you can’t find meat tray, get some cheap plastic plates at the $.99 store and a plastic bag to store them in and put ALL your paints out! There are many times when I will add almost every color on my palette just to change the “flavor” of something so I don’t have just one boring color and in this case, every color will be used at some point when painting the veggies because they run from purple on through red with every color in between, so put out your paint. If you keep it moist and sealed in between uses it will stay good for weeks.

Watch the water you add to your paint. Your paint should be the consistency of soft butter to go on smoothly, if it is too thick, it is as much a problem then if it is too thin, you just use a bit more. If your paint is too thin, it won’t cover well, it will run it will cause you problems galore! Get into the habit when you rinse your brush that you dry it out completely. If you need to add a bit of moisture to your paint, look on your palette for drops of water or get it from another wet brush before you dip the brush you are working with into the glass of water. It takes very little water to get the results you need so it is better to sneak up on it than having to add more paint to thicken up paint that is too wet.

Keep in mind your brush strokes when you are painting. Everything in this painting is basically round, some have multiple curves, your brush strokes need to follow the curves of each thing you paint. This is not a wall, nothing is flat, you need to follow the shapes you are painting. Watch the outside edges of things as well so you don’t have hard edges with ridges of paint, these are very hard to get rid of without the use of sandpaper. It is better to use the end of your brush and pull in to form the edges than to try and do the whole edge in one fell swoop of the brush. On the insides of the shapes, you can use a scumbling stroke which simply means your brush can go in all direction, just not all in one direction.

The color of the veggies to start will be basically the middle tone of each veggie. In acrylic, we start with a medium dark and work to the dark and the light areas. It will look pretty bad when you get this stage done so don’t be discouraged. This is what I call the “terminal ugly” stage when you think there is no hope to salvage the painting but in reality, it is a good under painting.

You can start almost anywhere but I do like to start in the back and work forward so I will start with the pumpkin in the behind the yellow zucchini:

Note: I will be working in the same pile of paint and just adding or adjusting the color as I move from shape to shape I also did not wash or rinse my brush until noted.

Pumpkin – Orange with a touch of red and green for a burnt orange color.

Table queen squash – to the above color add some yellow and a touch more green.

Yellow onion – I added some burnt sienna and a tiny touch of purple to the color.

Cantaloupe – Added back in some more green and yellow with a touch of blue

Green Zucchs – added more hooker’s green and blue for a muddled green color

Purple peppers – I did rinse out my brush well and dried it off before I changed to this new color.

I mixed purple with either the ultramarine blue or if you have cobalt that will work as well.

Garlic – to the purple mix I added a touch of white (gesso) and a little of the orangish color from before to give me a soft grayed lavender color.

Rinse out your brush completely for the tomatoes and be sure to dry your brush well.

Using either the cad red (if you have it) or the napthol red, add some extra orange and a touch of either green to slightly darken and gray the color.

The cherry tomatoes can be easily done by loading your brush with paint, put the whole brush on the canvas with one corner at the center of the tomato, then pivot the rest of the brush around the centered corner. Be sure to overlap the small tomatoes, they will look more natural if you do.

I did not put the stems in yet, I will do that probably next class but I did add the green sprouts coming off the yellow onion with a bit of Hooker’s green and a bit of blue.

If you are painting other veggies or fruit, look for a middle valued tone  and that will be what you use to under paint your painting.

Good luck, I will see you all next week.