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Acrylic Class Project: Summer Fun Week 6
This was the last week I worked on my project. Remember this wasn't about having a photo-realistic painting at the end but to explore and experiment. Mine is more a fantasy or dream like painting and while I am not sure I will keep it as is, I am not unhappy with it. It is very different from the way I usually paint and it was fun to do which was the whole purpose: To have fun and cross personal boundaries if for no other reason than to give yourself permission to explore.
I started out finishing up the highlights and shadows on the tower as well as a bit of detail like the bolt heads, the sign on the back and the wires to the window shutters.
I also highlighted the edge of the roof and tops of rails using a mix of white (gesso) and a tiny touch of yellow to warm it up and tint the white.
I also made the tracks in the sand look less high by breaking up the ridges and flattening out the spaces in between. I alternated between a medium sand color and the highlight color to create more texture in the sand.
Finally I got to the drips. I had to add a bit more water to my paint so it was like a thick ink and I kept applying it until it ran, tilting my canvas to control the direction of the drips. I wanted to repeat colors I had in the sky but there is no rhyme or reason for why I put them where I did, it's all made up anyway.
This is the final stage of this painting and I hope that it gave you the courage to try something different. Until next time, keep painting and I will see you in class.
Acrylic Class Project: Summer Fun Week 5
As I have said before, if you see something you don't like fix it! When I looked at my sand from the previous week I realized I had a small mountain range rather than truck ruts in the sand. My strokes were too steep and the ridges too sharp so I went in with 2 versions of the sand color on just a bit darker that the other and broke up some of the ridges and made the height less by steep with shorter gentler strokes. I also added in the float.
Because the float is so small in the painting, I did a larger version to show what I was doing on the smaller one as a demo.
These floats are plastic so some light will pass through them and their shadows won't be as deep so for the shadow areas I used my alizarin crimson then blended in some of my napthol red as I moved into lighter areas, working wet into wet with a sable brush. From the napthol red I added orange and for the highlight I moved to yellow, all the time working quickly so I could work into the wet previous color.
One of the things about the warm colors, particularly red, they tend to lose their vibrancy. Reds become pink and orange become dull and muddy when you add white so instead of adding white add orange or yellow to those colors they will keep their vibrant color while also showing light and shadow.
I also started doing some detail on the tower. I added what looks like roof tiles mixing a dark color (blue, umber or sienna and purple make a good dark or any dark colors you have) then using a small flat sable brush, I touched the edge of the brush to the roof line with a series of uneven, overlapping shapes so that it looks like the edges of tiles.
The other thing I did was put the frames around the windows. contrary to what you might think, the windows are not white because they are in the shadow of the roof so they will be a cool gray color. If you have some mud on your brush or palette, mix in a bit of gesso(white) to get a gray color. I used the same small flat sable brush to make the window frames as I did with the roof tiles.
I also started to add more color, highlights and shadows to parts of the tower, I haven't finished with it yet because acrylic dries darker and what looked good in class dulled down later, so I will continue to add more color with variations of the tower color - darks and lights - until I am satisfied with my efforts. I will also add a few simple touches of shadow in places to separate out overlapping boards to give them dimension.
Where things come together there is usually a dark shadow. By adding even some simple shadows you create depth, dimension, and separation between objects.
This is where I left off at the end of class with a bit of what I am going to do along the bottom of my painting. I have some final highlights and detail work to do but I should finish it up in our next class.
Keep painting and I will see you in class.
