(Note: Apparently Google has added some kind of notice regarding the collecting of information, cookies and things of that nature, I only add links to the picture pages, if any info is collected it is Google not me because I wouldn't know how to do it in the first place, let alone use it. Just an FYI.)
We started our class project this past week by getting our background in
(Sky and starting the water) and some of the background trees, not a bad start until I got it home and looked at it. First the background.
In acrylics you want to start from the furthest thing to the closest or the thing that is under everything else. Since the sky is always going to be the furthest and the water is behind and below most other things in this painting we start there, first the sky.
I lightly sprayed the sky area with a couple spritz from my spray bottle then coated the sky area with gesso. Gesso is slightly opaque and it also takes a bit longer to dry then say titanium white so it helps when we are doing large areas so they stay workable for the duration. It also is what I use for white so it will lighten the colors I blend into it, if I wanted a color to stay dark I would not use gesso. In this instance I do want the sky to be a medium light gray/blue.
I used my 2" blending brush to do both the sky and the water because it helps me get it done quickly as well as allows me to get soft blended areas because of the goat hair used in the brush. Be sure that you get most of the water out of this brush before you load it or it will thin down your colors too much. I squeegee it between my fingers after I rinse it out.
After I got the sky area covered in gesso, I picked up ultramarine blue and a very tiny touch of burnt sienna and even tinier touch of purple while the gesso is still wet and blended the colors into it. You want the sky to still look blue and both the sienna and the purple are very strong colors so maybe 5 to 1 blue to sienna and 8 to one blue to the purple. You should have a soft blue/gray, if it looks to brown or purple add more gesso (white) and blue to get the color you want. Be sure to cover the canvas all the way behind the trees it won't hurt anything because we can paint right over the dried paint.
The water was done in a similar way except I didn't start out with gesso because I wanted it to be darker. Still using the blending brush, I sprayed the water area with my spray bottle and smoothed it out with the brush then picked up blue on one corner and little touches of sienna and purple on the other and applied it to my canvas with long flat strokes. As well as reloading with the blue, sienna and purple I occasionally picked up a little gesso as well to work it onto the canvas. This is called brush blending and it give you an uneven blend which is what I want in this area.
I then mixed up a dark green with my Hooker's green, blue and a touch of purple for areas in the water that will be the dark reflections. Again, I used a long, flat stroke to add this color as well and to blend into the blue areas a bit but I also, pulled straight down with my brush, this starts the reflection process in the water.
This is the point where I went off course. Talking and painting are not necessarily good things to do at the same time and because I am off to the side, I am seeing a distorted view of my canvas, I also get so focused on what you are all doing I just don't see something until I get home. That is what happened last class. Even though some were questioning me about it, I couldn't see it until I took it out and looked at it and knew immediately there was something wrong. So you will get to learn from my mistakes.
That is one of the things I like about acrylics, is it is so forgiving, I am going to have to make corrections to most of the treeline so if you followed me too closely, you may need to do what I will do in class, it will take a few minutes but you will learn that you can fix almost anything with just a bit of patience and paint.
Until then, keep painting (on something else) and I will see you in class.
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