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Fall Acrylic Project: Fall Proposal Week 7
This week was all about finishing up the painting: Adding more color to leaves or deepening shadows or making the little fixes to your painting to your own satisfaction. If you are happy with the way your painting looks then stop and call it done, at least for now. I always put things I have been working on on an easel I can look at when I go into the computer room so I can glance at it to see if anything jumps out at me, if it doesn't, then I'm done. You need to learn to do the same because at some point in time you have to stop working on a painting. There are always the little things here or just a dab of paint their but if you aren't careful you can easily overwork your painting and ruin it. If your brush is circling over your canvas looking for a place to land, you are probably done. Live with it for a few days, if nothing jumps out at you sign it and stick it in a frame.
That is what I did in the last class: Look for the things I needed to finish then call it done. I added some more brightness around the ring box with the napthol and orange using a bristle brush and the dry brush technique to scrub in a bit more color to the box and to the fabric in front of it. I also added a bit more color to the tips of leaves and shadows around the bottle, just the little things I felt needed a bit of help.
I also finished the ring and added shadows on the box from the ring. I did notice when I looked at the photo I need to work a bit on the diamond and maybe tone down the ring part but that is a quick fix.
The last thing I did was take my liner brush and add the little squiggly things they always seem to stick in arrangements for some vertical elements to the arrangement, for us, it breaks up the dark area behind the bouquet making that large empty space a bit more interesting otherwise it is just a big,dark negative space that looks a bit odd.
I also used my liner to add some stems to the leaves and also to the roses .
As far as I am concerned, this painting is done. I think we learned a lot with this project because it is a challenge to deal with one color - in this case red - and make it different enough to separate elements out from each other by changing colors just a bit or by adding shadows behind, good practice and I am very happy with everyone's attempts at this challenging project.
Have a wonderful holiday season, don't forget to sign up for classes if you plan on coming back for the winter session, keep painting and I will see you in class.
Acrylic Class Project: A Fall Proposal Week 6
We are coming to the end of this project, so what I was doing in our last class was to fie tune my painting. One of the things I did was to put a wash of blue over the bouquet because I felt that all of the elements were too bright, particularly the white roses, and I wanted to knock them down a bit so in the end, they won't compete with the ring.
To do this I took my #10 flat bristle brush and made up a very watery color with my ultramarine blue, a touch of gesso and lots of water, this is called a "glaze" and it is a very effective technique for acrylic painters in situations where you want to add just a little color over an area just to change it just a little bit. You need to be able to see through this wash, and you use the dry brush technique: dry your brush, then load it the squeeze the bristles near the metal ferrule then use a circular motion and light pressure on the brush to go over the area you want the glaze on. It take practice and better to be too light than too dark.
Notice the light blue case to the roses and how the yellow sunflowers seem duller, this is just enough to push them back when I add the diamond to the ring.
The ring is a light blue/grey made with gesso, ultramarine blue and a very tiny amount of sienna, the darker values are the same 3 colors just less of the gesso.
The light is coming from the upper right hand side so on the outside of the ring, the lightest part will be the right side, on the inside of the ring it will be on the left side because of the way the light travels. Also not that the shadows are also opposite on the outside to the inside. I did this with a small flat sable brush.
I came back in and added some red to the ends of my flower keeping in mind I didn't want it to "grow" again and I also took a dark color (blue, sienna and alizarin) to make the separations between the petals. Please not those separations are not straight nor are they the same width start to end. I was using a flat sable brush to do the detail. I also took this dark color and lightly scrubbed it with my #4 bristle brush on the hydrangea to mute it and make the bottom and back end disappear into the shadows.
With my sable brush I added a touch of white and Hooker's green to that shadow color to make a grey blue/green for the leaves. The silver dollar leaves that they use are not green but more this grey blue/green, besides you do not want anything too light or bright in this area.
The label on the bottle really isn't as tough as you might think. Most of the writing on the label is just squiggly lines, even the large printing on the bottle doesn't need to be exact, it is better to suggest the writing than create a precise writing because the eye will want to read the label if there is too much exact detail, if it is just there, the eye accepts it and moves on. See next image.
This is the demo I did to show that all you need are vague lines that look like printing to fool the eye into thinking there is something there and the rough lines of the larger letters make them less distinct on the actual bottle, therefore less important. I was using small, round sable brushes.
I will probably finish up the project in our next class, we have 2 classes left if you need the time to finish up.
Keep painting and I will see you in class.
