SPRING 2013 ACRYLIC – Practice

 (Class Picture Page Link)

A bit of background so you can understand the process: When I am looking through my photos looking for something I think we can paint as a class project I am looking for something that is not only interesting but also doable in both acrylics and watercolor as class projects. The photo I chose for this semester’s class project was one that really interested me but I had to see if I could break it down enough so it wouldn’t intimidate my students too much. I want to present you with challenges, not brick walls so I did a couple of studies you may have seen in class.

 

Reference Photo

As I was doing the studies – one in acrylic and the other in watercolor – I saw that while it really wasn’t hard to do in either medium there were some areas that might cause some problems for students because they look complicated if you don’t know what you are doing, however, with a little practice I think we can muddle through and learn a lot in the process. So with that in mind I decided that for returning students it would be good review and for new students it would give them some practice with their equipment and paints if we did some practice studies the first couple of week. Once you have done it, it takes away the fear and I know most will not practice this on their own.

Since we always work from the furthest to the closest I thought we would start with the sky. This sky on the day I took the photo was after a rain so there were broken clouds that were white to almost charcoal with patches of blue shining through. The first thing I had students do was to mix up some gray. My standard gray – this should be committed to memory BTW – is ultramarine blue, burnt sienna (this makes a very dark color), white or gesso to change the value to a medium gray and sometimes just a tiny touch of purple but not so much that the color looks purple, the purple goes a long way so when I say tiny, I mean tiny. The color you end up with should be a nice medium value, cool gray. Mix enough because we will be using it in the next step as well.

I was using my #10 flat bristle brush to do this step and it will work better for you than a round brush of similar size.

Acrylic Sky (see Picture page for bigger image)

With my bristle brush and gesso, I coated an area where I will paint the sky and a little more. While you don’t have to paint the whole canvas with sky, you also don’t want to paint just the sky’s area because you want to be sure that when you put something, such as out mountains, in front of it, you want to be sure that your sky covers enough of your canvas that you won’t leave blank canvas showing when you paint your mountains in. I actually did that in class so we all are prone to not covering enough area for our sky. It can also look “cut and paste” because of canvas showing or hard lines between the two areas.

While the gesso is still wet, I streaked in some blue areas along with some gray areas and leaving some of the gesso for white cloud areas, to suggest clouds with breaks in them – same brush – then I rinsed my brush and wiped it out, then using a kinda flat “X” stroke with very little pressure. I lightly blended the areas together. I mean lightly. If you use too much pressure it will be too streaky and you will drag too much of the colors into each other and loose the distinction between them until all you have is a streaky gray color. You can pick up more of a color and add it back into an area, again using a light pressure on your brush.

This takes practice and patience learning how to hold your brush (it isn’t a pencil or pen), how to mix color, how to get the consistency right (your paint should be like soft butter)…So many things to think of all at once, doing these little practice studies are very important in your learning process so don’t overlook them. This was only one way to make a sky and it will be a more “painterly” sky than other techniques but I think it will work with this project.

 

Mountains based in.

The next thing we did was learn how to paint in our mountains. Keep in mind that as things go off into the distance they become softer, lighter and grayer in color and less detailed. Mountains that are 100 miles away won’t have much detail if any. You might see snow or where the sun is hitting them but that is about it, further away you won’t even see that much. As things come closer they become darker in value until you start to see some color of rocks and/or trees even closer you might see tops of trees or rock outcroppings and still on the grayish side but that is about as much detail you will see until they are right in front of you.

With that in mind, these mountains are about 10 – 15 miles from where I took the photo so you can see a little detail but the color is very blue gray, which is where your gray mix comes in to play again, if you have run out, mix up some more, it doesn’t have to be a perfect match as long as it is gray. I was still using my #10 flat bristle brush loading it with my gray and working it into the bristles, on my canvas I used my charcoal to sketch the outline of the top edge of the

Note the soft top edge made with the flat end of the bristle brush.

mountains then with the flat edge of my brush on that charcoal line I pulled down to form the top edge of the mountains. Because acrylics dry so fast you don’t usually want to outline with your brush or you can leave a hard line the reason I use the end of my brush and pull down to form the edge. In the body of the mountain it is just a matter of filling it in just keep in mind it is not a wall. Do not use long flat strokes, they can and will show in the final painting, instead use what is called a scumbling stroke which basically means your brush goes in all directions and you can scrub the color in as well. Be sure you bring the color down far enough to be behind any trees and that the bottom edge is soft, no hard line.

Next week we will practice adding some detail to the mountains, adding some foreground trees and doing a wash to push the whole thing back. If there is time we may practice with the liner brush or we may wait to do that when we get closer to that part of the project. Keep your practice board handy, you may need to use it as you go along.

I also want to remind/encourage my returning students to consider being a part of the Torrance cable project that Hope presented in class last week, it could help encourage other people who have retired or are thinking of retiring and wondering what they are going to do with their life to get out and try something they may have thought they were too old to do. I think my mom would have been up to it if she were still alive, she was learning new things almost to the day she died and she was 94, so not only would you be doing a good deed encouraging other seniors, you can show your friends and family what you do. Think about it. See you in class.

ACRYLIC CLASS SPRING 2013

Project: Desert Wash Walk

Here is the link to the Picture page for this semester.
https://plus.google.com/photos/110300529433736983967/albums/5859327791094922657?banner=pwa

Feel free to download both the reference photo and the drawing to be used in class. Let me know if you have problems with the link, Google has been messing with things again now there are two places I have to tell it to share, at least the 2 that I could find.

See you in class.

WINTER 2013 ACRYLIC CLASS

Project:Clay Pots and Chilies

After having a week’s break, it was nice to come back and get working on our project again. The break did allow me to take a really good look at my painting and I noticed that there were a couple of things I wanted to change, one was one of the handles on the short jug, I didn’t feel it was in the right place in relationship to the other handles on the jug. The other was I wanted to put just a bit of light  right behind the tall vase, kind of adds to the “spot light” effect I am going for and puts a bit of a lighter color behind the jug’s dark side as well.

First the moving of the handle: This will happen to you upon occasion so it is a good lesson to show you that all is not lost if you need to change something in your painting that has already dried but you really don’t like something about it such as placement. I used my #8 bristle brush and to apply Hooker’s green, ultramarine blue and touches of sienna and purple to paint out the handle. The key to making it look like it never happened in the first place is to blend the new colors into the existing area and make it a big enough area so it doesn’t look like a solid spot. The handle was on the side and you could see thru the handle, I wanted to move it back so you just see the top part of it so I carefully painted out the handle with my mix of color and scrubbed the color up past the top of the jug and almost down to the bottom, I also blended out from the jug since I was going to deepen the color anyway I just continued to use those colors to deepen the wall on up to the corner and along the top to the chilies.

Almost done. Few more details and highlights
should finish this up.

This is where learning how to change the pressure on your brush will aid you, if you need more paint to come off your brush you press harder, if you want to blend into another color use less pressure. I used this same dry brush technique to add more light around the tall vase and blended the two areas together using less pressure on my brush. Practice this technique on a scrap canvas so you know how it works.

Once I painting out the handle and I was satisfied with the results, when the area had dried I under painted the handle where I wanted it and no one will be the wiser. This is important to know and to practice because we all will find the need from time to time and it shouldn’t be a big deal.

I also deepened the shadows on the ground, again using the dry brush technique, using the same brush with sienna, purple and blue, occasional touch of red and long flat overlapping “u” strokes.

Here is another example of fixing something you don’t really like: I had added more highlights to the ground and as I stood back and looked at it, it just seemed too bright and too big an area around the main features, it pulled the eye away from the pots and chilies and was this big light spot on the ground so I did two things. First, I mixed up a glaze of sienna, touch of orange and white with a lot of water and went over the light spot on the ground, then I went back to the shadow color or the ground and brought the side of it in closer to the pots and reshaped it so it wasn’t so round, I like it a lot better.

To the pots and chilies I just did more highlighting. Please keep in mind that the highlights on the pots are not white but a light version of the pots and very fuzzy at their edges because of the texture of the pots. I was still using my bristle brush for this because I was doing a lot of scrubbing and I don’t want to ruin my good sable brushes with a lot of scrubbing.

However, when I was working on the chilies adding more highlights or basing in the ones on the table, I did use my #4 flat sable brush along with red and orange for the highlights and crimson and blue to under paint the chilies on the table. One of the reasons I use pure red or red with orange or yellow or orange to highlight the red chilies, if you add white to red, even in small doses, you will get pink and that may not be the color you want for your red hot chilies, so use the other light colors like the yellow and/or orange for the highlights an you r reds will stay looking red.

I am hoping to finish my painting up next class but if you are still working on the project, I will be bringing the set up in as long as you need it or the end of the semester, whichever comes first. Be thinking about what you would like to paint next, I am open to suggestions.

WINTER 2013 ACRYLIC CLASS

Project: Clay Pots and Chilies

I hope that you are all up to the point where you are done with the under painting because now we are going to start the highlighting process and everything needs to be under painted.

One of the biggest problems when we are doing a still life in class is being able to get proper lighting on the subject. There is a lot of ambient light in the room from several sources such as the overhead lights and the windows and all this “excess” light can confuse your actual light source which is the light I put on the subject. As an artist one of the things you need to practice is picturing in your mind where the light is coming from and how it is landing on your subjects, this skill can come in very handy when you don’t like a light source and want to change it, or there is more than one light source creating a flat lighting situation, if you do any plein air you will need to be able to remember the early morning or the late afternoon light you want or maybe it is over cast with no clear shadows… There are many situations where you can use the ability to “see” how the light hits an object and where shadows fall to make your painting more interesting and more dramatic.

My light is coming from the upper right.

I do this almost as a second nature because I love the drama one can get with the play of light and shadow, I know it can be confusing to my students who are watching me paint because they don’t see what I’m seeing in my mind’s eye, but because I do practice this skill all the time and I observe how light will fall under all conditions in the natural world, I can be fairly certain that the way I am painting the light is as close to seeing the real thing as I can get.

That said, I am assuming that I only have one light source (we only have one sun, so that is logical) and it is coming from the upper right hand side at about the 2 o’clock position, all other light I see on the real still life is not of consequence and I will ignore it. This means that as the light falls on my subject the brightest areas will be on the right side on the outside of the pots and chilies. I make that distinction because the light will hit on the left inside of the two vases/jugs, shadow will be on the left sides and fall towards the left.

More light on the chilies
and a reflected highlight
on the vase.

I mixed a beginning highlight color for the two vases with a base of burnt sienna, with touches of orange, yellow, white and even a bit of red on occasion. The taller of the two is a bit more on the orange side than the other which tends to be a bit redder so I adjusted my color accordingly. I was using a flat sable brush but you can use a flat bristle as well, I just have more control over the sable brush and I won’t be doing any scrubbing so the sable is perfect. Starting on the right hand side, following the contours of the vase (remember it is a rounded, curved surface), I pulled the color in and working across the vase and lightening the pressure on my brush as I got to my shadow areas to blend the highlight into the shadow. Your under painting in many areas will become the shadowed area so do not paint it out. THIS IS NOT MY FINAL HIGHLIGHT this is just the beginning of the highlighting process to create the shape and form of my pots. I was very aware of where the light was falling on the pots so I was sure to paint around the shadows.

The bowl was a bit different because it has some smoky color as well as the sienna color. To get that grey color I mixed my sienna with my blue and a touch of white just to lighten it slightly. Whine I was painting the inside of the bowl, I would pick up some straight burnt sienna and loosely blend the colors together so you could still see streaks of the sienna, looked almost exactly the same as the actual bowl when I was done. The outside was done the same way but I didn’t add any white to the sienna and blue mix so it stayed dark.

The rim of all the pots was a lighter version of the sienna and orange with a bit of the dark color to grey it a bit and white to lighten it. Still using a flat sable brush I put this color on the rims then with my finger, softened the edges because the edges are slightly rounded into the pots and the bowl.

Close-up of the ground. Note that the under painting shows through.

Going back to my #10 bristle brush, and mixing into that light rim color I was just using, I mix a bit more sienna into it and a bit of yellow and white (gesso) to get a soft peach color, using the long, flat strokes and the dry brush technique (very little paint or water on the brush) I dry brushed in another layer of light into the ground the pots are sitting on. Again, I am not trying to cover up everything I did before, just add a few more highlights to the ground, there will probably be at least one more round of highlights on the ground because acrylics always dry a bit darker and I want this to look like sun shine.

Lastly, I under painted the chilies in the bowl with alizarin and blue to make a very deep red color basing it in with my sable brush. I made sure that the edges were very random so it looked like chilies in there and not Jello.

Please try to get you painting up to this point when class resumes. We should have maybe one or two more sessions for the class project so you will want to be looking for your own project when you are finished with this one.

Picture page link -   https://picasaweb.google.com/110300529433736983967/Winter2013ArtClsses

WINTER 2013 – ACRYLIC CLASS

Project: Clay Pots and Chilies

I want to reassure the newer students in class that there is method to my madness. I heard comments to the effect that “It’s very dark!” Yes it is! And that is a good thing. In any painting you need to have dark to show light so with most mediums – with a couple of exceptions like watercolor – your under painting tends to be on the dark side for the first couple layers, this is true in oils and also pastels. You have to have that darkness so when you put lighter colors on it they will show up. Don’t panic, we will start to put the light into it next week.

That said, I finished under painting my bowl. I want you to notice that aside from the string of chilies, I have not painted the chilies in the bowl or on the table, also notice that on the inside of the bowl I painted it as if there were no chilies in there at all. I did not paint around the area of the chilies because I do not know where those chilies will be when I do put them in but I know the back of the bowl will need to be there when I get around to it.

When I painted the bowl, I needed it to be a different color, this bowl was probably closer to the fire where the smoke was (called a reduction fire) which added blackened streaks to the bowl and a grayer color to the natural clay. Burnt sienna is still my base but to it I added ultramarine blue, a touch of purple and a tiny amount of white. It should be a warm (color-wise) charcoal gray. (If you don’t understand color “temperature” here is an abridged version: visual warm colors are red, orange, yellow and all their variations such as brown [orange family], magenta [red family] ocher [yellow family]. The cool colors are purple, blue and green and all their variations such as lavender [purple], turquoise [blue], khaki [green]). If the color is too cool – to the blue side – add a touch more sienna.

Everything is now under painted.

Using my #4 flat SABLE brush (a sable will give you more control, just don’t scrub with it) and following the curves of the bowl, if you don’t have a flat sable use a flat bristle, it’s just not as springy as a sable. I filled in the inside of my bowl with the color I mixed. Down toward the bottom, inside of the bowl where the light will be blocked I kept it very dark, as I painted up into the area where light will fall, I added touches of white and orange or sienna to SLIGHTLY lighten the area, I am not up to the lightest lights yet but I can start the process. On the outside I used the same dark mixture I used on the inside of the bowl, same brush but I streaked it on following the curve of the bowl and picking up straight burnt sienna with the mud on my brush to add the streaks of natural clay color you see in the bowl.

Once I had the bowl under painted, I now had all of my elements under painted so I could proceed on to the first phase of bringing in the light. I started with the peppers, using the same sable brush and alizarin crimson. If you don’t have alizarin add a touch of your ultramarine blue to the napthol red to cool it down it should be a value or two lighter than what is there. Again, this is just under painting for the chilies but we will be a bit more specific, yet, the chilies are just shapes, the quicker you get them in the better they look. If you try to nitpick each individual chili, your chilies will look over worked and won’t fit in with the rest of the painting. You might want to practice before you do it on your painting, however, if you twist your brush in your fingers and lift as you make your shapes, you will get a more natural looking chili then trying to be too specific.

The chilies go in all directions, they are twisted, curled, turn up and down or both, they overlap each other, some come at you some point away, just be free with shapes  and be sure to get them down behind the  vase in front of them. The chilies near the bottom will be in shadow so add a touch of blue and/or purple but keep it just slightly lighter than your first layer of paint. When you are satisfied with that layer of alizarin, this time pick up either your napthol red or your cad red and do the same thing but keep this color more where the light might hit it, you can also pick up touches or orange to paint either new chilies or to highlight existing chilies. DO NOT COVER UP ALL THAT ORIGINAL DARK AREA that becomes the shadows on the inside of the chili string.

The last thing I did in class is to start the highlighting of the ground around my bowls. I am going to have my bowls sitting in the dirt, if you are doing something different and need help figuring it out, catch me in class and I will help you achieve the desired effect.

Back to my #10 flat bristle brush, I mixed burnt sienna with a touch of white and maybe a little orange for the area where light will be hitting, I will be adding color to my brush as I go but this will be what I start with. When I load my brush I wipe out any excess either on my palette or on my paper towel so I’m not dealing with a glob of paint, then with the flat end of the brush slightly on its side but entirely on the surface of the canvas I make a long, flat “u” stroke. The harder you push on your brush, the more paint will come off it, conversely, the lighter the pressure the less paint comes off so adjust the pressure of your brush to your needs.

I added the light color in over lapping strokes but still leaving some of the under painting show through, this gives texture and depth to the ground, that said, by using varying pressure on my brush, I did congest the area so it didn’t look like a Flat U convention. When I got to the corners and to areas where I wanted shadow, the stroke was the same but to my brush I added more straight sienna, along with blue, purple and a touch of red here and there and mixed the colors on the canvas and blended them into the lighter areas. This is only step one for highlighting the dirt but it is an important step.

We will continue the highlighting process next week, if you have questions specific to your painting please let me know, someone else might be having the same problem. You are all doing great, I hope you are having fun, I know I’m liking this painting. See you in class.

WINTER 2013 – ACRYLIC CLASS

Project: Pots and Chilies

Small acrylic "test" painting.

We are finally started on our project, this week we finished up our preliminary sketches to determine whether our painting would be vertical or horizontal, the design and composition and what kind of background we were going to put in now we do our first layers of under painting.

For my new students and for some of my returning students who are still struggling with this whole concept of under painting in acrylics I want to emphasize what I did this first step: the only drawing I did was to determine where the wall behind my subjects met with the ground they were sitting on, nothing more. I did not do an elaborate sketch or drawing of the pots because I am not ready for that step yet. While it is not set in stone, when painting in acrylic I recommend you start with what is furthest away or behind you subject so when you do get to your subject what is behind will look like it would still be there if the subject was removed without there being an unpainted hole.

What I see happening quite often is my students want to start at the end so they do this detailed drawing then carefully paint around each individual thing trying very hard not to go over their drawing, then they paint the spaces they left blank and at the end they are not satisfied because it looks like the subject has been cut and pasted onto the canvas. Usually there are “halos” around the subject either small gaps that didn’t get painted or there are brush marks that outline the subject and these hard marks can be the most difficult to correct because they leave ridges of paint that won’t come off without drastic measures.

Acrylic paint has its own unique properties as do all mediums, the one thing that is great about acrylics (the traditional kind not the new open paint) is that they dry within a few minutes, at least enough that you can paint right over what is there. This can be good news/bad news: good news in that you can paint right over an area within minutes, bad news is blending can be a challenge, unlike oils that will stay workable for weeks if needed. Once you learn how to blend with acrylics it isn’t a problem, it does take practice on your part. So start in the back and work forward.

I just wanted a simple background for my painting so I wasn’t spending weeks on the background, however, this is an option for everyone in class, if you want to do something different such as put an Indian blanket or a serape in the background, you will need to do research on your own to find what you want to do, I suggest this for my more advanced students, beginners should follow what I’m doing for the time being – gotta crawl before you can run.

I used my #12 flat bristle brush and a variety of colors (dioxizine purple, ultramarine blue, Hooker’s green, burnt sienna and optional color pthalo blue) but I ALWAYS put out all my colors because if it isn’t out, I won’t stop to put it out, it is just human nature.

For the most part, I want my background to be dark as if it is in shade or shadow, I am always thinking of how I can work light against dark or dark against light, even from the very first stages of a painting. This will give depth and drama to my painting and a sense of where the light is coming from so I will exploit the entire range of values my paint can give me.

I pick up 2 or three colors at a time on my brush, then scrub the color on to my canvas, this is called brush mixing and it give a more random mix of color then blending to a homogeneous color on my palette and that is a good thing. The variety of color makes it look more interesting and more natural, contrary to what you might think. When I have to reload, I may pick up the same colors or I may pick up another color or two instead as long as they are dark, and I loosely blend it in with what is already on my canvas.

Background and ground for the pots.

The stroke I use is a scrubbing or scumbling motion. I am using all sides of my brush – I usually twisting the brush in my hand holding it more like a knife not a pencil – and I am going in all directions with it. Even if you are painting a wall in your painting, it is much more interesting if your brush strokes are more random, it is a lot different than repainting the wall in your home because you have different goals. I am also not dabbing the paint on, this is a place that you can work out your frustrations and really work the paint into your canvas.

The area on my painting that will be the wall behind my pots I kept mostly to the blues and greens though I did throw in a bit or orange and red and worked it into the colors that were there. When you are working wet paint into wet paint it is call wet into wet ironically, and while the paint is wet you can make some nice gentle blends of color. In the area that will be the ground – and I want mine to look like dirt – I used burnt sienna with touches of purple, orange and red but again, I want a rather dark color especially in the corners and because I was working quickly enough, the blue of the wall was still wet and I blended the two areas together so there were no hard lines. If you are having trouble with this, you are probably applying too much pressure to your brush so lighten the pressure when you are trying to make a soft blend or transition. The stroke is very similar to what I used on the wall but this time it was more like long shallow, over lapping “u” shapes so the brush strokes help the dirt look flat.

This was my under painting and at this point I had to let it dry before doing my drawing. Once my painting was dry, because it was so dark, I used white chalk to sketch on my basic design. You don’t deed a detailed drawing because you will be painting over a lot of these lines, you just need their basic shapes. For instance: The string of chilies in the back, I just suggested the rough outline of the edge of the string, I DID NOT draw individual chilies, just the outside edge because that is all I need. Don’t make any more work for yourself than necessary, your efforts should go into your painting.

White chalk was used to sketch in the design.

I used a #8 flat bristle brush for this next part to fill in the elements of my painting. For the chilies I used alizarin crimson and a touch of blue and/or purple (if you don’t have alizarin you can use the napthol red with your blue and purple) this color will be very dark. The stroke was still a bit random within the string of chilies but when I got to the edge I made it very random. There should be a lot of ins and outs since these are to ends of the individual chilies. They will go in different directions, some up some out some down. Some will be longer, some shorter, some missing… please don’t make it look like the edge of a comb which is the tendency or to paint it solid, these things are sticking out all over so keep that in mind when you are painting the chilies.

On the pots I started in the lightest side with a mix of burnt sienna a touch or orange and/or red and a little touch of blue lightly mixed on my palette and putting the end of the bristles near the sketch line, I pulled in towards the center of the pots forming the edges of the pots with a series of brush strokes rather than an outline of the entire edge. Using this kind of stroke – pulling in to form an edge – keep your edges soft and it also prevents leaving a ridge of paint that once it is dry it is almost impossible to get rid of at least not easily or without damage to what is around it. This is in the “ounce of prevention…” category, so use this technique when you are filling in elements of your painting.

Also note that the tall vase is a bit different color from the smaller jug, it is slightly more orange the other slightly more red, take this into account when you are mixing your color.

As I moved from the light side to the shadowed side, I added more blue or purple to my color. Doing this while the paint is still wet allows you to get some nice transitions between your colors and starts showing where light and shadow fall on your subjects. Don’t be afraid to paint over the edges of one of the other pots if the pot you are painting is behind it, you can always fix it later and you won’t leave an unsightly gap between one pot and the other that will be much harder to fix.

I just got the vase and the jug under painted and will do the bowl next time. Please note that I DID NOT put in any of the lose chilies on the ground yet. That will be one of the last things I do because there are things I need to do to the ground before I worry about the chilies.

Please have at least your sketch on your canvas for next time and if possible get some of it under painted, we will continue with this next class. It should take 3 or 4 classes to finish. See you all soon.

For any of my students who are interested in taking a workshop, Jerry Yarnell will be having a workshop out in Rancho Cucamunga in March (3/13-14) and an open workshop that follows (3/15-16). If you want to see more about his workshop, go down to Lerri's Links and click on the YarnellSchool link. 

I have signed up again because he won't be back in Calif this year and he is a very good teacher. I figure the more I learn the better off you are, however, it is always good to get other perspectives and I encourage you to take workshops or other classes because you can always learn something or hear something that said a different way that finally makes sense.

Just wanted to pass along the info. See you soon.