Spring 2018 Acrylic Class

Spring 2018 Acrylic Class Project: Magnolia Week 5

This was my final week on this project. I think it is done as far as I am concerned you will need to finish your projects to you own liking.

To the center of the flower I added some lighter pinks and yellows along with so darker shadows. This is the stage where you look to see where you can add some brighter highlights and some dark shadows, just keep in mind these are subtle additions - dots and dashes - not huge swaths of color or darkness.

On the petals I did a couple of things: one was to add my brightest white to the sunlit edges with my white (gesso) with a teeny, tiny touch of orange to warm it up. This color went on the edges that got the most sunlight so not all edges got this color.

I also added "bug bites" or those damaged areas all flowers have. First I mixed orange and yellow for the dying part of the petal and softened the inside edge of this color a bit. Then I took just burnt sienna to make the next darkest color and finally a little burnt umber for the really dead part (sienna and blue will make a good dark color if you don't have umber).

When I did the dying area on the shadowed petal, I didn't use the yellow and orange mix just the sienna and umber.

On the branches I added a little sienna and blue to the white to make a very light warm gray for the brightest highlights on the branches. This color hits the tops of some of the bumps to suggest the bumps a bit more. I also used a mix of yellow with a touch of sap green and white for a bright green highlight for the mossy parts.

This is the final image for this project. Remember this was about negative space (the background spaces around the flower) and how to paint white by starting with a soft lavender under painting. If you look close you will see that even though this flower looks white, there is very little - if any- actual white on this flower, it is mostly light lavenders with even less warm whites.

Next time you can start your own painting as we have a few weeks left so you can get started and I will be doing some short demos on various things. Keep painting and I will see you in class.

Spring 2018 Acrylic Class

Spring 2018 Acrylic Project: Magnolia Week 4

This week we really got into some of the finishing detail of this project, I think one more week should finish this up.

This week I started adding a warm white to the sunlit areas. Note I said WARM white, not white out of the tube because white out of the tube can look cold and chalky if you use too much of it so you want to be careful how much pure white you use in a painting. For this I used my gesso and a tiny amount of orange. The orange warms up the white just enough to give it a warm, sunlit look.

This warm white only goes into the brightest areas of the flower so look at the reference photo to see where the bright areas are. Most of what you will be doing is the dry brush technique - little paint or water and scrubbing the color on. Start in the brightest area to start your scrubbing (I use the side of my bristle brush) and as you move away from the brightest area, lighten the pressure on the brush until the color just fades into the shadow colors. If you look close, you will see how if you are doing the dry brush correctly, it is only hitting the top of the canvas threads, leaving the darker previous color in the deeper parts of the canvas, this is what gives you the soft blends in acrylic.

I added the center cone and some detail to the stamens coming up from the center. In the photo, the center cone seems to be lighter in the middle and darker top and bottom. Most important when you are adding centers to flowers be it cones or other structures, they need to follow the direction of the stem that the flower is growing off of, if you have to, use your chalk or charcoal to continue the line of the stem up through the flower so you know where all those inside structures need to go to. Also note that the stamens are longer than you might think and they curve up and around the cone radiating from where they all attach at the bottom of the flower.

I added a brighter highlight to the tops of the sunlit parts of the branches and filled in the new buds and the ends of the new growth. I used the warm white and added a touch of sienna for the stem color and for the moss I added yellow to my sap green and a little touch of the warm white. There is also some highlights on the new growth that are yellow, orange and sienna.

Do as much or as little detail as you want such as the scar marks on the branches (round things on the branches), if you don't want to put them in - don't. Do try to get your painting close to where I am so we can all finish this up next class.

Keep painting and I will see you in class.