Summer 2019 Acrylic Class

Project: Apple Turnover Revised Week 6

In our last class, I started the finishing detail to my painting and will finish it up next week.

This week we worked on the finishing details to make our paintings come alive.

First we worked on adding the final highlights to our apples. For the green apples I used a mixture of yellow, white and a tiny touch of sap green. I wanted a bright yellow green.

I was using a #4 flat bristle brush and tapping this color on, starting in the brightest area of the apple. This is NOT the final highlight or the shine, this is next level down and shows up mostly around the tops of the apples.

Tapping allows you to gradually blend it into the mid-tones of the apple, use your fingers to soften between the light and darker areas. If you reload, start in a bright area around the top and work down. Remember the lighter the pressure you put on your brush, the less paint comes off, this is how you blend.

Once that area is dry, you can take a little bit of pure white and lightly tap where the sparkle is, just remember to tap and not dab or paint a circle of white or it will look fake.

For the highlight areas on the red apples, I used orange, yellow and white and the occasional cad red or napthol red depending on the apple (have your photo in front of you), again, I was tapping on the color, some blending with my fingers and using the white after the area was dry.

I brightened the highlights on my basket again because acrylics do dry lighter and I wanted the sun lit areas to have a bit of sparkle, it also helps define the weave of the basket.

I worked a bit on the table adding cracks and chips. The cracks need to have some blue and/or purple in them because they are usually in shadow and usually where you have a crack, the edges of the crack are a bit higher so catch a bit more light so will need a bit of highlight, I used white with a touch or orange and sienna. I was using my  liner brush.

Finally, using my liner brush I added some tree branches and twigs to give me an idea where my leaves will be. This is not the finished product and that white smudge will go away, this is just the framework for what I will be doing in our next and final class.

Be ready to work, I am hoping that we will be able to have a show and tell by the end of class so we can see how we all did. It won't be as painful as it sounds, I think you will be pretty impressed, I know I am, you are all doing great.

Keep painting.