Fall 2017 Acrylic Class

A Fall Proposal Week 2

Once the background was dry I sketched on my design with chalk. I used the chalk because the background is dark, charcoal would be hard to see.

What I did next was to under paint the elements of my design: The flowers, leaves, wine bottle, ring box and the paper around the bouquet.

For those new to acrylics or still struggling with how it works, the under painting is like the foundation of your painting, it is what we build on. We start out a bit on the dark side then work to the lightest lights and to the darkest darks, what you see here will change as the painting progresses but some of these colors become shadows or texture or variations of value, don't try to skip over this step or you paintings will look flat.

The under painting for the leaves of the bouquet are just a mishmash of color. I used every color on my palette and used my #6 bristle brush with the scumbling stroke (strokes going every which way) to create the background for my leaves. I was more interested in interesting shapes at this point and not  completely mixing the colors so when I was done the brush strokes made it look like there is a lot going on in the bouquet.

The red paper against the red background needs to be handled cautiously. The red needs to be different from the background red (Alizarin, napthol and ultramarine blue) so it will stand out so I used the napthol with a touch of orange for the brighter red and the alizarin and blue to darken or to create shadows.

One of the things you need to be careful of when going to lighten red, it is better to lighten with either orange or yellow because white will turn it pink. That said, I did use a tiny amount of gesso (white) to slightly lighten the paper color because if you look at the photo you will see in front of the bottle the paper is slightly pink. Just be careful you do not add too much white or you will have to try again.

The bottle was a mix of my ultramarine blue, alizarin and Hooker's green with tiny touches of gesso on the right side. I worked wet into wet to blend.

The ring box had the same problem as the paper so I did a similar thing using orange to lighten the napthol red but no white this time. I used alizarin and UM blue for the shadows, gently blending wet into wet to give a soft rounded look to the edges of the box.

Always keep min mind the shape of the thing you are painting and follow the curves and remember that pressure is a big part of your brush stroke, very little pressure on the brush to blend.

Yes, I know that they are suppose to be white roses not lavender ones but this is how you start out painting things that are white with a blue or lavender under painting.

I used gesso (white) with touches of UM blue and purple or alizarin. to make it lighter you add more white to make it darker more blue and alizarin. I was still using my bristle brush pulling it from the outside edge of a petal in towards the center of the rose. The center of the rose was made with the end of the bristles turning it to create curves and the corners of the brush for the very center.

While I had that light blue color on my brush, I just made some loose leaf shapes that will be the sliver dollar leaves near the background. Please note that these are just shapes, nothing more at this point.

Finally, to that same blue color I added a touch of green and a bit more of the blue for the under painting of the hydrangea. Add white to make it lighter more blue and green to make it darker. Again this is just scumbling and creating an interesting edge around where the flowers will be.

I hope that most of you have your paintings to this point when we meet in class, we still have the under painting of a few flowers before we begin the detailing which I hope to start once we finish the under painting.




So keep painting and I will see you in class.