Summer 2015 Acrylic Class

Acrylic Project: TJ’s Bouquet Week 1

I want to preface this by saying that you do not need to use a black canvas if you do not have one or if you don’t have black gesso or paint to make one, you can do this on a white canvas but to get the dark colors you will use a lot more dark paint to get the same results.

I am working on a black canvas and I started my painting by deciding where to put the table (horizon) line because I don’t want my flowers to look like they are floating in air, I decide to make the line a bit more than a third of the way up from the bottom (aprox. 6 ½” on a 16 x 20 canvas). I want a subtle background for my flowers and I want to keep it dark so I won’t be using much white except in certain areas around the basket and flowers.

For the most part, acrylics are on the transparent side and at times we need to we need to add something that is more opaque like gesso to give them more substance, keep this in mind during this project because if you have trouble with your colors fading into the background you may need to add little touches of gesso to opaque your colors.

Starting out the background on this project I was using my #10 flat bristle brush because I am going to be doing a lot of scrubbing to get the color on and the bristle brushes are designed for this kind of abuse. Please don’t use your good sable brushes or you will ruin them with this technique. It is not to say that you can’t use the sable brushes to do the back ground but it is a totally different technique.

I started with my gesso - white acrylic is also transparent and my not give you enough substance to your colors – to the gesso I added thalo blue, touch of purple, ultramarine blue and sienna but you can also either add Hooker’s green or other dark color what I was looking for was a cool gray blue color about a medium value. A note here: If you know where you want to hang a painting you can tweak colors to match the décor’ or if you aren’t sure what color you want, go with a muted version of the complimentary color to the predominant color of your subject, in this case we have deep yellows and reds so a gray green or blue/purple would work well.

What I am trying to create is the idea of a dark room with the only a small window for light which is back lighting the flowers, everything else is in shadow. Starting where I think the most light should be, which is the center third of the canvas, I started in the center of that area with this lighter color. When I say lighter I mean in comparison with the black canvas, this should be a mid-value color but it will look much lighter because of the black canvas until we get lighter things on it. I scrub this color on my canvas just above the table line, scrubbing in all directions. If I need more of this lighter color, I start in the same place and work out, I want the color to fade to little or nothing as I move to the corners. On my 20 x 16 (landscape) canvas that was an area of 9 x 5, I then wiped out my brush, I did not clean it, and then just picked up the dark colors on my brush no gesso or the gray color and starting just outside the area I just painted I scrubbed in these dark colors then worked them back into the edges of the lighter area. You must work quickly so you can get a nice graded transition from light to dark. Only use the dark colors as you cover to the corners of your canvas.

The table or counter area is more of less the same thing except you want to keep you strokes horizontal. Start in the center of the light area like you did for the top but this time you can scrub in a suggestion of a line where the wall meets the counter. Let it fade to nothing on the ends this just suggests a surface for the basket to sit on. The light will hit the surface a bit different than the wall which is more reflected light, the light on the counter “V’s” out from the center but quickly fades. Scrub the color in but use horizontal strokes, whip your brush and add the dark colors just as before, we can always make adjustments later but this gets us started. Let this dry before starting to draw your sketch.

You can use a light colored chalk to draw your design on your canvas and it does not need to be a detailed sketch but you do need to fill the canvas with the design. Too often when you are learning to paint you will get a canvas and put little tiny subjects in the center of a virtually blank canvas, you need to make your subject important and fill you canvas with it so it becomes important. Also, make sure that your design has interesting edges. By this I mean that the elements in the design have different heights or lengths so if you were to take a pencil or the end of a brush and just trace around the edges  of the design it would have a lot of in and out movement not all confined to one centralized basic shape. Be bold, no one will die.

 

In class we got as far as basing in the rusting basket the flowers are in, I switched to my #6 flat bristle brush and made a mix of gesso, ultramarine blue, a touch of purple and burnt sienna to make a very warm medium, gray color. Even though the basket looks white, it isn’t. On the gray scale it is about 40% to the black side so you do not want this to be too light at this point. Starting in the middle of the basket with this color I started to fill in the basket, as I filled in toward the left side it is a bit darker so I picked up more of the blue, and sienna and a little purple to darken the color, when I went to the right where it is getting a bit of reflected light I added a touch of my white mix which is mostly gesso with a teeny, tiny touch of yellow to tint the white and blended that into lighten the base color on the right side. I used this lighter version of the basket color to paint in the handle.

Lastly, through the flowers we can see the light inside of the basket, this is an oval shape not round or pointy on the ends. Using that white mix I stated above, I filled in the inside of the basket. A lot of this will go away as we add leaves and flowers but some of it will show through and help with the sense of light. This is where we ended class I hope that everyone can get their paintings to this point before next class. Keep painting.