Fall 2017 Acrylic Class

Acrylic Class Project: A Fall Proposal Week 5

This week was more of a fine tuning week before we get into doing the details and finishing up our project. Never be afraid to make changes or improvements to your painting, if you see something that bothers you go in and fix it. We are working with paint not stone, fixes are a lot easier. this week I did several fixes and adjustments.

The first adjustment I did was on the paper around the bouquet. When I looked at it at home it looked too pink and I needed more shadows on the paper behind the bottle.

First, I took my #6 flat bristle brush and a mix of napthol with a little orange (you can use cad red light and orange as well) and water to thin it so it is very washy looking, then with a very dry brush (little water and little paint, remember to squeeze the back end of the brush with your paper towel) using small circles and very light pressure on my brush, I did a dry brush glaze over the whole paper area to give it a redder look but not lose some of the pinkish look. I also did a similar thing with a mix of ultramarine blue and alizarin  to shade the back part of the  paper that goes off the canvas to fade it out.

Another place I used this dry brush technique is putting a lavender reflected light on the bottle with my #4 bristle brush. 

Practice this technique because it is very useful in acrylic. It should look almost transparent when you put it on, just hitting some of the tops of the canvas threads, if it is too solid looking you are pressing too hard, if it looks blotchy or runny, you have too much water on your brush, make sure after you rinse your brush you dry it and after you pick up the paint squeeze the back end of the brush to get out excess water you picked up when loading your brush.

 The next fix I did was to change the shape of the lower rose petal. I thought it was too long and the wrong shape so I took my #6 flat SABLE brush and a mix of blue, alizarin and a touch of green to make a dark green shadow color and used that color to reshape the petal and add another leaf in the process. To make the outside edge of the leaf, I added a bit of white to the mix, just enough to make it lighter but not bright light.

You do not need to go through the whole process of painting out something that needs fixing, just fix it but remember to make the fix look like it is part of the  painting, not just some random stripe or blotch.

I also fixed the bulge in the ring box using a dark mix of blue, alizarin with the bristle brush this time so I could scrub in the color to reshape the the box. Again, I didn't just make a stripe of color, I used the dry brush technique, scrubbed in the color around the box and also out away from the box. Once I have the shape the way I liked it I added some napthol and touches of orange to get the light back into the fabric working those colors in by scrubbing the color in and blending it with what is already there. It is important you learn to fix things so they look like they were always like that, you will be happier with your paintings.

Still more fixing and adjusting. I had made the petals on the red flower too long and too bright so this was a 2 part fix. First I took the #4 bristle brush and dark colors - blue, alizarin, sometimes I added green if I was on a leaf - and I reshaped the petals by painting in the dark around them. All of these fixes are what is called "negative painting" meaning you are painting the space AROUND something not the thing itself. With this fix I am changing the shape of the petals by changing and adding shadows. Remember to blend the fixes out into the surrounding area so they look like they were always there. The second part of the flower fix I did with my sable brush and a mix of napthol and alizarin trying not to make the petals longer again but to clean up the edges and darken the bright red color I had at the tips.

Another thing I did here was to add shapes to the hydrangea to make it look like it had flowers. Funny thing about this is there are very few actual flower shapes in this cluster but because of the few that look like flowers the rest of the shapes suggest more flowers.

 I did a separate demo to show how just adding a few shapes that look like flowers and the rest are just marks, tricks the viewer into thinking that there are a bunch of flowers, even the center dots add to the illusion. I was using the sable brush, with blue for the base then adding white for lighter colors or alizarin for those "flowers" that were in shadow. Blue and burnt sienna or umber for the very dark centers.

This is where I left off on Monday and I am thinking I could possible finish this in our next class, don't worry if you are not as far along we still have 3 more weeks so take you time just keep painting and I will see you in class.