Summer 2015 Acrylic Class

Acrylic Project: TJ's Bouquet Week 3

I hope that you have been practicing your leaf and petal strokes because you will need to use them in this part of the project it is also critical that you have your reference photo of the actual basket bouquet before you start painting, you can't paint this if you can't see what you’re painting.

Because of the transparent nature of acrylics you may need to add little touches of gesso to your paint before you start painting. Gesso will change the value of your color so you want to be sure that you only add little touches of it to opaque your color but not enough to change the value too much.

You will need to mix up a base green and that is going to be your sap green with a little touch of orange, a little touch of the gesso to opaque it and you will add to that color, as you go, touches of blue to make it darker, and touches of yellow to make it lighter, this will give you 3 different values of color to work from: you'll have the base color as your medium color, with the blue the dark color and with yellow, the lighter color.

This is a good place to use your flat sable brushes and depending on the size of your

canvas choose a brush that is not too small but will do the job quickly. Don't get out your teeny tiny brushes, try at least a medium size flat sable brush.

Before you start to paint I want you to study the reference photo and look to see where all the greens are the greens are the leaves and stems of all the flowers in the bouquet some of them are actual leaf shapes others are just spots of color, that's all we are concerned about right now, where they look like leaves you will have to use your brush accordingly and where they are just color fill up the space.

Where you start is up to you. You may want to start where it's just more solid color or you may want to get the smaller leaf structures around some of the sunflowers or where you can see definite leaf shapes and get those out of the way and then just fill in with color. When you're done with that, please note that I have not started the ferns yet. We will get to the

fern later but right now just concentrate on the leaves around the flowers. Remember that the technique to create these leaves is a matter of pressure and twisting your brush, so if you need to practice again, do so! You can start out on the end of your brush and then twist and press and pull up for longer leaves or you can start by pressing and twisting and pulling quickly for shorter leaves, but please practice this on something else other than your painting or you won't be happy.

The last thing I did was I added some light around the basket of the flowers. This needs to go in first before we start adding the ferns that will hang over it. I used my gesso with a little touch of orange and starting right at the edge of the basket I put the color down and as I scumbled and scrubbed away from basket with my bristle brush, I lighten the pressure and it became more of a dry brush technique so that it became lighter and lighter until it faded into the dark. Please note that there is a definite shape to the shadow of the basket its narrower coming off the bottom then as it moves away from the basket it starts to spread out and get softer in color. Also note that the shadow of the basket the sides go in the same direction towards the right because of the angle of the light behind it. Check your reference photo before you start so you can see the angles.

In the shadow area I mixed a dark color which was my blue and purple with a little touch of burnt sienna just to gray the color slightly, then starting at the very base of the basket I put in this dark color and I started moving away from the base I started adding little amounts of the gesso to lighten the color slightly. Don’t add too much you want it to remain dark but you also wanted to lighten a little as it moves away from the basket. A shadow is always darker right next to and underneath an object then as the shadow moves away from the object because light reflects into the shadows.

This is where we stopped for the day so please try to get your paintings to this point and always have that reference photo in front of you when you are painting. Keep painting and I will see you in class.