Summer 2019 Acrylic Class

Acrylic Project: Apple Turnover Revisited Week 1

When we start a new acrylic project, it is to your advantage to start with what is furthest away and things that are behind other things so we don't end up with halos around everything. Acrylics dry so fast the you can paint right over them in minutes without fear of colors mixing where you don't want them to.


I am working on a 16 x 20 canvas board and will be using my #10 flat bristle brush for all of what I did on the first day.

I started this painting by sketching in where the table's edges are with my soft vine charcoal and that is all the drawing I needed to do at this point because I will be painting over these lines just to be sure I get my background behind the table. The charcoal or chalk does not hurt the paint and is easy to remove with a damp paper towel to make changes.

Using a series of crisscross strokes, I picked up 2 or more colors at once and blended them on the canvas. This is called "brush mixing" and is a great way to create variations in color when painting something like a background - like these leaves or under painting for rocks, or water - just about  anything you paint to give it more color and texture.

I started out using Hooker's green, ultramarine blue and a bit of purple and adding other colors like yellow, orange, touches of red even a bit of white (gesso) along with the green, blue and purple. I was very aware of the brush strokes as I was doing this because I wanted my strokes to look like out of focus leaves so these strokes are quick, short strokes.

A tip: Don't try to stretch a brush load of paint across the entire canvas, reload often and watch the water. Your paint should be the consistency of soft butter, a little water goes a long way. If your paint is too transparent or if it looks like it is running down our canvas, you have too much water.

After my leaf background was dry, I used some white chalk to re-establish the edges of my table (see top image). to make the edges of the table so I didn't have a hard edge, I used the flat edge of my brush and pulled down to form the edges, once I had the edges established, I used a similar technique to fill in the under painting for the table as I did with the leaves, but this time I made longer flatter strokes, using burnt sienna, ultramarine blue with touches of red,yellow orange, purple, and gesso.

This color needs to be darker than the final color because this color becomes part of the texture of the table and the base for the next step.

Once the under painting for the table was dry, using the same flat brush I used a dry brush technique to start adding the texture to the table.

This time I mixed color on my palette using yellow, a touch of orange and burnt sienna along with gesso (I used this instead of white), to make a lighter, but not the lightest, color.

After I loaded my brush, I wiped some of it off so I didn't have much paint on the outside of my brush, then using very little pressure on my brush I skimmed the surface of my canvas trying to make my strokes as straight as possible going across the table area. Look at the image here, you can see how the dry brush leaves some of the previous color exposed, you can even see the texture of the canvas, that is what you want. You can do this technique with different colors and values, always leaving some of the previous color exposed until you have wood that looks like you can get splinters from it, you just need to be patient with the process and watch it develop.

BTW, if all you have is a sable brush, you can do a similar technique with your brush, again watch the water, sable brushes hole more water than bristle brushes do, you might have to squeeze the bristles near the metal ferrule and at the same time you can fan out the end of the brush so you cans see individual hairs. use a light touch and reform the brush often but it will work.

This is where we left off at the end of our first class, I think we will need to do one or two more dry brush layers before we get to the basket of apples but all in all, I think we have a good start getting the canvas covered.

Keep painting, I will see you in class.