Winter 2016 Acrylic Class

WINTER 2016 ACRYLIC CLASS PROJECT: Cozy Cottage Week 3

This week we finished getting our underpainting in and putting in our reflection, this is an important step as we progressed through this painting.

While I under painted the snow first, it is probably better practice to put in the reflection first, that way you can size it with the underpainting for the snow and reshape it if you have to. I am going to have to reshape my reflection a little bit next time we meet, but either way it is fine.

The underpainting for my snow is a mix of my ultramarine blue, my purple and white to change the value if you have a little mud on your brush or on your palate you can use that to grey the color just slightly or add just a tiny bit of burnt sienna so that it is not so brilliant, more of a blue gray.

Using my number 6 flat bristle brush, I started around the house with this blue/purple color, this is the underpainting for the snow. Where it might be in a more sunlit area add just a touch more white, if it is in a shadow area you can add a touch more blue to start the shaping process, it is important whenever you are painting white you need to under paint it in some form of blue or purple or a combination of the two or a soft, cool grey, white will not look white unless there are contrasting colors - darks and lights.

Remember whatever you are painting your brush strokes need to follow the shape of the thing that you are painting. When you are painting the drifts of snow up against the house be sure that you are using comma type stroke as the snow drifts up against the house and don't make the edges even, the snow doesn't come in and aligned perfectly all the way around the house it comes up in, piles up on top of things, you don't know what is around the bottom of the house that may be under the snow creating these different shapes. If you are trying to make a hillside or a larger drift of snow be sure that your strokes follow the shape of that drift, flat strokes will make it look flat so you need to have some curves strokes following the shape of what you are painting. This is especially true when it comes to putting in the ruts in the road the ruts are embedded into the snow so your strokes should be more like “U” shapes and as it comes up out of the rut it flattens out or slightly mound shaped to create that sense of it going from high to low.

The reflection is usually what causes beginners some problems because they try to create a mirror image and it's not exactly a mirror it is either frozen water or almost frozen water so the image is going to be distorted, plus there may be some distance between the water and

the object that is reflecting such as the cottage. Remember when you want to know what will be reflected into the water measured either with your fingers or the end of a brush, putting one point at the top and finding the bottom of the object with the other, then moving that top point down to the bottom and see where the bottom point shows up in the reflection and that will be the top point of the reflection (please see photograph).

Once you have determined what is going to show in the water you might want to lightly sketch it in with your chalk or charcoal do not try to make an exact copy of what is above and it might serve to make a rather fuzzy line when drawing in your cottage reflection.

Using similar colors to what you used for your cottage and using a bristle brush pull straight down you want this to be afuzzy reflection so you want to pull the strokes down no matter what the color or the shape is above, just pull color down with your brush to fill in the area. See photographs.

Be sure to also include the snow and you can use the color you used to under paint the snow just add a touch more white into it and pull it straight down it does not have to be exact. You are also going to be pulling down the colors from the sky which will be your alizarin crimson and white with a little touch of the cloud grey here and there pulling straight down and blending as you go. Don't worry if some of that paint gets into your cottage or vice a versa that will make it look more realistic. Try to work as fast as you can and while the paint is still wet, rinse your brush, and lightly pull across the reflection horizontally. The key word here is “lightly” you just want to disturb the downward stroke that you had just put in.

Please try to get as much of this under painted as you can, our time is growing short and we have a lot to do so you need to be at least to this point when we meet again. Until then, keep painting and I will see you in class.