Summer 2018 Acrylic Class

Acrylic Project: Marsh Madness Week 3

This week I started out by under painting the tree trunks in. I will do more work on them later using the liner brush but because these are substantial trunks I used my #6 flat SABLE brush rather than the bristle brush because it stays together and I have more control over it.

Have your reference photo out - the actual photo or the marsh, not something I did in class - and look at it before you start painting. It might also be a good idea if you can bring it up on your computer and really look at it before you start enlarge areas so you can see what is really there, phones and photos don't always give you the whole picture. 

I did the darker trees first with a mix or burnt umber (burnt sienna will also work), and blue. When those trees were in, I added a little touch or gesso (white) and a little more sienna to warm it up slightly (should be a warm gray color) and under painted the closer, lighter tree trunks. Do not go for the final color of these trunks yet, we will get to that later, this color then becomes the shadows and texture of the tree trunks, it is important.

To the water, I added reflections of the brighter highlights of the background tree line. Reflections are a bit darker than what they are reflecting so I used sap green and yellow and used the side of my #4 flat bristle brush and pulled straight down and lightly went across after. This is a dry brush technique so you don't want to have too much paint or water on your brush and use very little pressure with your strokes.

I added the bushes on the right using Hooker's green and blue for the under painting,  added mid tones by adding yellow to that color,then highlights using a mix or yellow and sap green.  Each time I leave some of the previous color because that now becomes texture in the smaller bushes For this I was using my bristle brush. Then I used that dark mixture I used on the other trees to add the bases of the bushes going back to my sable brush. I have some things I need to do in the water behind these bushes so I will put in the branches later, I just needed to see where these went.

I also started some of the reflections from these small bushes and their bases with the same green, the same brown and same technique I used before, pulling down to create the reflections. There is more to do, but this is a start.

This is where I left off, try to have your paintings to this stage if you can because we will be working from there.

Keep painting and I will see you in class.