Spring 2018 Acrylic Class

Spring 2018 Acrylic Project: Magnolia Week 2

I probably should have thought to show this last week but since I am still using this color, it is still relevant. Even though I am starting the highlighting process, I am not going to go straight to white. There is actually very little "pure" white on the flower. 


The color in the middle is the base color for the flowers. I mixed white (gesso) with ultramarine blue and a little purple to make a soft lavender color. To make the dark color I added more blue and purple to make it lighter, I added white. I worked back and forth between these three variations of color as I added lighter areas and shadows.

Note: ALL shadows have blues and purples in them so when you are painting shadows you should add blue and/or purple to the color you are working with, it is it white, blue and purple or a cool grey will be the bulk of your painting for white so when you add the white, it will look white. If you are working from a photo remember the camera has limitations some of which are built in such as the UV filters that turn the cool shadows into shades of grey to black.

When you start doing detail you should have your photo in front of you where you can look at it often.

Look more to the shape and the value of that shape (light or dark) before you start painting. I was using my flat sable brush and the color you see above as I worked my way around the flower. There is no white on the flower yet but you can already see the dimensions coming out.
Remember to follow the direction of growth with your strokes, it will look like the veins in the petals if you do.

This is detail of the turned back petal with the other petal underneath it. I'm not sure this is correct but because it was so confusing I made as good of a guess as I could to sort that area out.

Still using the flat sable brush and rounded strokes, I started the highlighting of the branches as well.

I made a light grey using gesso, ultramarine blue and burnt sienna, same as the under painting but lighter. The shadows were just the blue and sienna with a little bit of the flower lavender to lighten it slightly, this should be a dark color.

I also added touches of green with a bit of orange or yellow and sienna alone to add texture and color variation to the branches. Near the ends of the ends where the buds are, the new growth is a reddish brown color so sienna with napthol for those parts and a mix or green (Hooker's or sap) with a touch of orange for the buds.

Another thing I did before stopping for the day was I needed to lighten some of the background so the branches would stand out from the back ground.

This time I used my flat bristle brush using the dry brush technique (very little water or paint) and used sienna, gesso, yellow green, using the side of the brush, making little circles with very little pressure on my brush, I added some lighter areas around the shadowed part of the branch near the flower but I blended it out into the existing area using less and less pressure until it faded out. I may need to do more later, but this is good for now.

This is where I stopped, try to get your painting close to this if possible, I will start getting more detail into the flower next class.

Keep painting and I will see you in class.