Winter 2018 Acrylic Class

Acrylic Study: Rocks

This week we did a study on painting rocks. All rocks are different depending on where they are, the kind of rocks they are, if they are natural or chiseled by humans so your best reference is the rocks themselves but the process to paint them is pretty much the same.

Since we will be doing a small painting using the rocks in the photo near Pelican Cove that I took, I used them as an example.

If you need to drawn in a sketch with your charcoal before you start, do so. This is a good idea because you can be sure that you haven't created a herd of turtles or a Stonehenge, you want the rocks to be of various sizes and shapes and it is easier to wipe off the chalk than try and paint out something you don't want. 

The first thing I did was to under paint the rocks by picking up sienna, blue and/or umber and mixing these colors ON THE CANVAS with my brush, this is call "brush mixing".  I also added other colors during this process like orange, red and green because those colors could very well be in the rocks.This is a good thing especially for rock because you get a variation in the color of the rock as long as you don't mix it too much. I was using a #6 flat bristle brush and doing a lot of scumbling which is moving your brush in all directions with the exception of shaping the edges of the rocks with the end of my brush and pulling in. This keeps you from creating a ridge of paint along the edge that could cause problems later.

I also showed that you can start some of the highlighting process while the under painting is still wet by picking up lighter colors and start finding rock shapes in the strokes I see. I used the same brush but picked up orange and yellow to go with the sienna and touches of green. I just want to find rocks with quick strokes, I don't want to think too much about what you are doing, just dibs and dabs, dots and dashes where you think the lighter sides of the rocks are. Remember that the dark under painting becomes shadows and texture so don't cover it all up. You can also wait until the dark under painting dries to do this step.

The water I added just so the rocks didn't look like they were floating in air.

I continued shaping the rocks with some lighter colors adding a bit of white or yellow to change the value and using this more on the areas where the sun may be hitting (sun is on the left). This gives you a chance to make more rocks if you need them or combine rocks if you don't like the shape or think you have too many.


The next thing I did was add a REFLECTED HIGHLIGHT into the shadows. Most things have some kind of reflected light in the shadowed side if you just look for it especially if there is water, snow or some other reflective surface like a building, the difference between a regular highlight and a reflected highlight is the highlight caused by the sun is bright and warm whereas the reflected highlight is very cool. you want the reflected light to be a medium value, lavender color which is ultramarine blue, a touch or purple or alizarin crimson and just enough white (gesso) to lighten the value to a middle tone. Again, just used this color to shape the form of the rock but don't labor your efforts. This reflected light with give your rocks dimension. 

The last step was final highlights and I added the "decorations" left by the birds.

The final highlights on these rocks are not real bright because they are dark rocks but I did take my sienna, a touch of orange and some white for the brighter areas of the rocks. This is where the sun is hitting, so basically the left sides of the rocks and I used a #4 flat sable to give me a bit more control. If you need to, you can add some dark back into the rocks if you got carried away with the highlighting process. It does happen, or you might want to adds some cracks. It is up to you.

The bird decorations were done by dabbing on the gesso tinted with a teeny, tiny touch or orange on the light side, and some light gray (gesso a touch of blue and sienna) on the shadowed side.

Next class we will start putting all of the things we have learned together and paint the rocks at Pelican Cove. Keep painting and I will see you in class.