Acrylic Project: Working the Steps - Final Week

While we didn't get the project completely done in class, you should have enough information to finish the project up the way you want.If you feel you are done then don't fuss with it, better if it is a bit under worked rather than over worked.

The following are a few things that we did in class as part of the finishing process:

Under painting the foam. Whenever you have something that is white you need to under paint it with a darker color, usually blues and lavenders, because it won't look white ir light without the contrast of values - white on white is a polar bear in a snow storm, it will just look flat and lifeless. I under painted my foam with a light blue violet using my gesso for white, a touch of blue, purple and a bit of mud from my palette to create a soft grayed color. Remember to follow the shape of what you are painting so if the foam is suppose to be flat, so will your strokes, if it is a crashing wave it will be a series of circular strokes.

The highlight for the foam is not white straight out of the tube because white can look chalky unless you mix it with something else like a tiny touch of yellow or orange. A word of caution here: both of these colors will be stronger than you think so take what you think is a tiny amount of color, cut it in half then use half of that particularly the orange, you just want to tint the white to warm it a bit. Add this light color just to the tops of the foam, leave some of the under painting it will give your foam depth.

Making sand. If you want to give your sand and rocks more texture you can use your toothbrush and splatter color into the areas  where you want it to look like little rocks and pebbles. Use all the colors on your palette and splatter lightly. Let it dry before highlighting a few of the larger dots. It's just quick touches, don't fuss with it.

Also get the bigger rocks under painted and highlighted, again it is best to work this quickly just making various sized strokes like upside down "U's". This is a mass of rocks so you won't be seeing individual rocks more like areas of texture, so paint it as an area not as individual rocks.

Highlighting the wet rocks. You can use the same highlight color that you used on the foam, just don't do what I did and put too much on. These are just supposed to be little sparkles on the wet rocks so you might need to get out a smaller brush. I am going to have to go back in and add dark until I get what  I am looking for but that is part of the process: If you don't like it, paint it out! don't be afraid of making adjustments as you are finishing up your painting.

Each of you will finish your paintings different from each other and different from mine and that is a good thing. I am here to teach you how to use the paint and the equipment so that you as an artist can develop your own style. Don't be afraid to experiment with brushes, colors, palette knives or styles. This is your painting and you need to own it and as you do you will find that painting becomes a lot more fun.

Keep painting and I will see you in the next class.

SUMMER 2016 ACRYLIC CLASS

ACRYLIC CLASS PROJECT: Work the Steps Week 5

We are winding down on this project and with any luck at all we should finish up in our next class, you should have your under painting complete and your first, even maybe your second layer of intermediate highlights. These intermediate highlights create the forms and shapes of the rocks and cliffs, they are not the bright final highlights we hope to get to in our next meeting.

I added another layer of these intermediate highlights to my cliffs using colors that were just a shade or two lighter than what was there, for instance: Near the outside edge I used a combination of sienna, white and little touches or either/or yellow orange with a dash of blue to gray the color slightly and using my #4 bristle brush I shaped the outside edge to the cliffs and worked my way in towards the dark cave, I was only using this color on the top and outside edges where the sun might be hitting, not on the underneath part of the rocks which will be in shadow.

The brightest of this color is on the outside where the light will be the strongest (the sun it overhead and slightly to the right of the painting). As I worked my way toward the cave I added more blue and purple even sienna and umber to darken the color though if I needed to lighten it slightly I would add tiny touches of white but only enough to make it just a bit lighter that the dark that is already there. By the time I got into the cave area my color was a very blue/gray to lavender/gray.

I do want to mention also that each time I add color and highlights to my rocks and cliff, I am leaving some of the previous colors. Those darker colors become the shadows and texture of the rocks. Another thing I do to create these textures is to lighten the pressure on my brush and use little color – dry brush – as I add shapes into the cliffs.

I am also looking at the brush marks in my paint as well as the reference photo to help me decide where to add the highlights to shape rocks and other features of the cliffs. I do not paint blindly. I have my reference photos to guide me: the photo of the scene to help me with the detail and my watercolor to help me with color.

One of the beauties of acrylic is you can paint over it if you need to adjust your shapes or your color. For instance: If you have gotten carried away with your highlighting until everything is all the same value, you can go back in with darker colors and put the shadows back in. I do this all the time. There are areas in this painting that I am going to need to add back some darker colors or to reshape some areas but it is no big deal, it is just part of the process. Learn to use this trait of acrylics to your advantage.

I will work back and forth between lights and darks at this stage of a painting as I refine the look I am going for and I will have several colors ready to go on my palette so I don’t have to stop and mix too much. I will have a larger pile of a mid-tone color then add blues and purple to one side for darker tones and white and warmer colors to another side for lighter colors and I can work back and forth between these colors.

At the bottom of the closer cliff, the rocks are grayer than they are higher up which are more ocher. I still had some of my original gray I mixed at the very beginning of this painting so that was my middle value for the bottom rocks. I added more blue and umber to make it darker and white to make it lighter. I also added touches of purple to create lavender colors for the more shadowy rocks and white and a touch of yellow for the rocks out in the sun. You really need to look at the reference photo to determine where your colors need to go but a rule of thumb is if something is in the sun it will have a warmer color (warm colors are red, orange and yellow) when they are in the shadows they need to be cool colors (mostly blues, purples and some blue/greens), keep this in mind as you are painting.

The other area that seems to be causing a lot of problems is the areas of rocks on the

beach. These are rocks that are partially in the sand and are all very close together. You really don’t see individual rocks, you see a mass of rocks which are basically just a bunch of overlapping shapes. I used a series of inverted “U” shapes – some bigger some smaller; some rounder some flatter – all overlapping to SUGGEST rocks. The under painting was dark which becomes the shadows between the rocks, I used a lighter gray for the mid-tone form of the rocks and I will later highlight the rocks but I am not going to necessarily make individual rocks because I still want it to look like a bunch of rocks. You may have to trust me on this one.

The sand and the eroded road on the left side was a mix of yellow, sienna, white and a touch of mud from my palette or brush, it just needs to be a bit lighter than what you have there already. Remember to follow the angles on the surface with your brush: If it is flat, your brush strokes should be flat, if rounded your strokes need to follow the curve. The sandy area on the beach angles down so your brush strokes also need to angle down.

We will work on the water and finishing this project up in our next class so you need to have your painting to this point.

Keep painting and I will see you in class.

Acrylic Class Project: Working the Steps – Week 4

This week in class we started working on some of the elements that will help us finish this painting. Keep in mind that we work in layers, building on what is there with new colors and/or values that bring life to our paintings.

I want to keep emphasizing the word “Layers” because I want it to stick into your minds. Just because I call something “under painting” doesn’t mean that we are going to totally paint over it, no, under painting means it is the layer you need to put down first and in acrylics it is usually a medium dark color that we add other lighter AND darker layers to as we create the depth in our painting. Some of that under painting and parts of the next layers are going to show. They become the shadows and the form of your object, they are important to your final painting so learn to leave parts of each layer showing.

My entire painting has been under painted so last class I started adding lighter layers to start forming my rocks and cliffs. I was using my same basic colors – ultramarine blue, burnt sienna an little touches of purple and white – but to that base color (which was to the warm, sienna, side) I also added touches of orange and red when I was to the outside edge of the cliff where it might be getting a bit more sun, to greens, lavenders and blues where it goes into the dark cave. LOOK AT YOUR REFERENCE PHOTOS to see where the shadows are and what colors you should be using.These colors are just a shade or so lighter than what was there and a scumbled the colors on often times picking up color on my brush and mixing it in with what was there on my canvas, this is called brush mixing, and it leaves bits of unmixed color and that is a good thing especially with rocks where you might see several spots of color mixed in with the overall color of the dirt and rocks.

If you can, enlarge the images on the picture page to really look at my strokes. They are not neat, they are a bit haphazard but they do follow the idea that this is sedimentary rock, I was purposely going at angles with my strokes.

If you need to add more dark into the cave area, use that opportunity to shape the front side of the cliffs to give them a rougher shape – lots or ins and outs, rocks and divots – and use that dark color to make some shadows in the far cliff. Just be sure to soften those shadows in the cliff with either your brush or finger, you don’t want any hard lines.

I still have some of the original gray color I mixed in the first week, I took some of that gray and added a bit of yellow and a touch of white to create my next layer for the closer cliff, again, I was looking at my reference photos BEFORE I started painting. Using that same controlled, scumbling stroke, I created shapes that will become rocks. This IS NOT the final layer, just another of several as I start the shaping process for my rocks.

I also added more color to my water. Still not the final color and I have not started on the foam yet, this is just more underpainting for the water.

If you have other shades of blue such as pthalo blue, turquoise, cobalt or other blues, you can use these in your water as well as other greens, the colors I have on the equipment list is just a basic list to get you started, not a list to end all lists. Most artists find colors and brands they like or need to use occasionally and add them to their palette as needed, in this instance I had 2 colors I usually don’t have on my everyday palette but I had been doing something at home that required them, they are turquoise deep (a Liquitex color) and pthalo green. Both of these are very strong colors and hard to mix with other colors but adding a bit of white to them and using them that way on my painting brought some life to my water. That is not to say that I didn’t also add more of my ultramarine blue, purples greens and sienna, I just included these new colors to my painting.

Remember what you are painting when you are doing the water: It is moving water so use long, flat banana strokes, overlapping these strokes where the water is supposed to be flat and where it is bumping up against the rocks or forming a wave, follow the direction the wave would be going with your stroke with a little up turn at the end.

This is where we left off and we have a ways to go and only 3 classes to finish this in so please try to get your paintings to this point and we will continue the shaping and highlighting process next time.

Keep painting and I will see you in class.