Summer 2018 Acrylic Class

Acrylic Class Project: Marsh Madness Week 2

Last week's stopping point.

            






Remember I said last week that I needed to make changes to what I had done in class (smaller image), well, the first part of the class I spent changing the things I didn't like. I made a soft orange color with gesso and a tiny touch of orange, to re-shape the tree line in the back using the dry brush techniques (little paint or water on the brush) and scrubbing it on using little circles to create a bit of haze behind the trees and blending it up into the sky (use less pressure). this way I didn't have to worry about matching the blue of the sky and it added a bit of warmth into the painting. I may do more of that later.

Next I added the big tree behind the trees that are along the water's edge. It is a more blue-green tree from the ones in front of it so I used Hooker's green, ultramarine BLUE, a touch of burnt sienna and a little gesso. Leave some of the sky showing through near the top, Near the bottom you can add a bit more blue and green to make it darker and it can be more dense, also, you can use this darker color to shape the trees in from of this new tree, that is called negative painting.

When these were dry, I went back in and highlighted the trees: A lighter lime green for the trees along the water (sap green, a little yellow and a touch of orange and white) and a lighter version of the big tree (add yellow and a touch of white to the colors you used to create the big tree)

That got me caught up and things fixed so I could start moving forward.

I have been using a #6 flat bristle brush to do all of the work so far. the bristle brushes are the workhorses of acrylic painting because of all the scrubbing we do, I will continue to use the bristle brushes for most of the rest of this painting.

Here I mixed a dark blue/green using the Hooker's green and blue with a little touch of purple to create the dark reflections in the water and the dark in and under the tree line. When the dark color was dry, I used a medium lime green (same as above just no white but a touch of blue) to suggest limbs hanging over the dark areas under the trees.

In the water I scrubbed in that dark green color using the dry brush method (little paint or water on the brush) to create some of the dark reflections. When working on water, your strokes need to be horizontal or parallel to the top and bottom of the canvas so it will look flat. If you have reflections n the water, after you scrub them on parallel, you can lightly pull straight down, this will give the effect of movement in the water.

Be sure you have the reference photo IN FRONT OF YOU, not a photo of my painting because the best information you have is the photo, if you were working outside, the real thing would be your best information.

Look at the shape of the reflections and try to do your best to recreate them. they do not have to be perfect and if need be we now know how to fix something so just get it in as best you can.

The last thing we did was to add some of the dark foreground leaves where the trunks are going to be coming out of the water.

Yes, you will be covering up some of that background we have been working on bit it needed to be there so you can leave holes in the new color (same as we used in the water, just put it on a bit thicker), and it will look like you can see through the trees. 

If you want, you can add blue when you are working in the area near the bottom of the trees where it is naturally darker and a more solid color and you go up into the top of the trees, add more sap green instead of the blue though you want to keep it on the cool (blue) side for now. Remember to leave holes near the top and  "flip" your brush to soften the edges of the dark and create clumps of what will be leaves. You DO NOT have to do leaves yet, we will get to them, this is just the under painting for them.

I know it is a lot but this is going to start coming together in the next class or two, so hang in there, keep painting and I will see you in class.

Summer 2018 Acrylic Class

Summer Acrylic Project: Marsh Madness Week 1
(Note: Apparently Google has added some kind of notice regarding the collecting of information, cookies and things of that nature, I only add links to the picture pages, if any info is collected it is Google not me because I wouldn't know how to do it in the first place, let alone use it. Just an FYI.)

We started our class project this past week by getting our background in
(Sky and starting the water) and some of the background trees, not a bad start until I got it home and looked at it. First the background.

In acrylics you want to start from the furthest thing to the closest or the thing that is under everything else. Since the sky is always going to be the furthest and the water is behind and below most other things in this painting we start there, first the sky.

I lightly sprayed the sky area with a couple spritz from my spray bottle then coated the sky area with gesso. Gesso is slightly opaque and it also takes a bit longer to dry then say titanium white so it helps when we are doing large areas so they stay workable for the duration. It also is what I use for white so it will lighten the colors I blend into it, if I wanted a color to stay dark I would not use gesso. In this instance I do want the sky to be a medium light gray/blue. 

I used my 2" blending brush to do both the sky and the water because it helps me get it done quickly as well as allows me to get soft blended areas because of the goat hair used in the brush. Be sure that you get most of the water out of this brush before you load it or it will thin down your colors too much. I squeegee it between my fingers after I rinse it out. 

After I got the sky area covered in gesso, I picked up ultramarine blue and a very tiny touch of burnt sienna and even tinier touch of purple while the gesso is still wet and blended the colors into it. You want the sky to still look blue and both the sienna and the purple are very strong colors so maybe 5 to 1 blue to sienna and 8 to one blue to the purple. You should have a soft blue/gray, if it looks to brown or purple add more gesso (white) and blue to get the color you want. Be sure to cover the canvas all the way behind the trees it won't hurt anything because we can paint right over the dried paint.

The water was done in a similar way except I didn't start out with gesso because I wanted it to be darker. Still using the blending brush, I sprayed the water area with my spray bottle and smoothed it out with the brush then picked up blue on one corner and little touches of sienna and purple on the other and applied it to my canvas with long flat strokes. As well as reloading with the blue, sienna and purple I occasionally picked up a little gesso as well to work it onto the canvas. This is called brush blending and it give you an uneven blend which is what I want in this area.

I then mixed up a dark green with my Hooker's green, blue and a touch of purple for areas in the water that will be the dark reflections. Again, I used a long, flat stroke to add this color as well and to blend into the blue areas a bit but I also, pulled straight down with my brush, this starts the reflection process in the water.

This is the point where I went off course. Talking and painting are not necessarily good things to do at the same time and because I am off to the side, I am seeing a distorted view of my canvas, I also get so focused on what you are all doing I just don't see something until I get home. That is what happened last class. Even though some were questioning me about it, I couldn't see it until I took it out and looked at it and knew immediately there was something wrong. So you will get to learn from my mistakes.

That is one of the things I like about acrylics, is it is so forgiving, I am going to have to make corrections to most of the treeline so if you followed me too closely, you may need to do what I will do in class, it will take a few minutes but you will learn that you can fix almost anything with just a bit of patience and paint.

Until then, keep painting (on something else) and I will see you in class.

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.

Spring 2018 Acrylic Class

Spring 2018 Acrylic Project: Magnolia Week 3

This week we started adding some of the detail and brighter highlights to our flower and stems and it is really starting to take shape now. I should be finished with this in the next session or two but you take all the time you need to finish to your painting.

Just as I was doing last week I was using the center lavender and adding white to it to make a lighter color, I am STILL not using white, just a very, very light lavender.

With my reference photo in front of me (some of you are still not using your reference photo and it has all the information you need on it) and using my #4 flat bristle brush (it is old and looks more like a filbert with a rounded end), I start in the lightest area of a petal, such as the bump in the top petal, and blend using the dry brush technique (little paint or water on the brush and scrub it on). By lifting the brush to lighten the pressure I can control the amount of paint that comes off the brush so I can blend it into the darker parts of the petal. 

The one thing you want to be aware of is you are not going to go over all of the petal with each new layer. What we did before becomes shadow and texture so you do want to save some of those colors to give you flower a 3rd dimension. Work you way around the petals this way starting in the light area and blending them into darker areas.

The light branch color has a bit of the lavender in it plus more sienna and white to crate a brighter highlight, this color goes on the top with slightly rounded strokes. the green is sap green, yellow and a touch of white and any mud on my brush and using rounded strokes when painting. the new growth is sienna, orange and yellow.

Try to get you painting to this point by next class because we are nearing the finish line and it will come faster than you think. 

Keep painting and I will see you in class.

Spring 2018 Acrylic Class

Spring 2018 Acrylic Project: Magnolia Week 2

I probably should have thought to show this last week but since I am still using this color, it is still relevant. Even though I am starting the highlighting process, I am not going to go straight to white. There is actually very little "pure" white on the flower. 


The color in the middle is the base color for the flowers. I mixed white (gesso) with ultramarine blue and a little purple to make a soft lavender color. To make the dark color I added more blue and purple to make it lighter, I added white. I worked back and forth between these three variations of color as I added lighter areas and shadows.

Note: ALL shadows have blues and purples in them so when you are painting shadows you should add blue and/or purple to the color you are working with, it is it white, blue and purple or a cool grey will be the bulk of your painting for white so when you add the white, it will look white. If you are working from a photo remember the camera has limitations some of which are built in such as the UV filters that turn the cool shadows into shades of grey to black.

When you start doing detail you should have your photo in front of you where you can look at it often.

Look more to the shape and the value of that shape (light or dark) before you start painting. I was using my flat sable brush and the color you see above as I worked my way around the flower. There is no white on the flower yet but you can already see the dimensions coming out.
Remember to follow the direction of growth with your strokes, it will look like the veins in the petals if you do.

This is detail of the turned back petal with the other petal underneath it. I'm not sure this is correct but because it was so confusing I made as good of a guess as I could to sort that area out.

Still using the flat sable brush and rounded strokes, I started the highlighting of the branches as well.

I made a light grey using gesso, ultramarine blue and burnt sienna, same as the under painting but lighter. The shadows were just the blue and sienna with a little bit of the flower lavender to lighten it slightly, this should be a dark color.

I also added touches of green with a bit of orange or yellow and sienna alone to add texture and color variation to the branches. Near the ends of the ends where the buds are, the new growth is a reddish brown color so sienna with napthol for those parts and a mix or green (Hooker's or sap) with a touch of orange for the buds.

Another thing I did before stopping for the day was I needed to lighten some of the background so the branches would stand out from the back ground.

This time I used my flat bristle brush using the dry brush technique (very little water or paint) and used sienna, gesso, yellow green, using the side of the brush, making little circles with very little pressure on my brush, I added some lighter areas around the shadowed part of the branch near the flower but I blended it out into the existing area using less and less pressure until it faded out. I may need to do more later, but this is good for now.

This is where I stopped, try to get your painting close to this if possible, I will start getting more detail into the flower next class.

Keep painting and I will see you in class.

Spring 2018 Acrylic Class

Spring 2018 Acrylic Project: Magnolia Week 1

This semester we will be learning about making a soft muddled background, negative space and creating the illusion of rounded tree branches.

Learning how to create a soft muddled background is very useful to any painter because many times you really do not want a busy background but you need something besides a stark white canvas. These kinds of backgrounds are good for still life, portrait even some landscapes need to have a soft out of focus background at times.

In acrylics we work from what is furthest away to what is closest. In this painting the out of focus tree branches, leaves and flowers are what is furthest away, that is where we start before we ever put a drawing on our canvas. You can paint right over acrylics so we do not need save areas like you would in watercolor or even oils, just paint all of the background.

You do need to work quickly to create this soft effect, to help keep your paints wet and to move them around the canvas, take your spray bottle and lightly spray the canvas, then, using a big brush such as a #12 flat bristle or your blending brush (we will use this brush shortly), pick up colors and start putting them on. I had my reference photo right in front of me so I could basically see where I had light and dark changes in the background and I loosely followed what I saw in the photo.

I am often ask "What colors will be be using?" to that I answer "All of them!" In the background you see above I think I used every color I had on my palette. I did use a lot of blue, bunt sienna or burnt umber for the dark areas, but I also used white (gesso), yellow, orange, red and green. Don't limit yourself when it comes to color, have all your colors out and ready to go when you start painting because you can save your paints from week to week if you store them properly, if you only put out what you think you might use, if you need something else, you won't stop to put it out, I know because I do it myself. Put out all your colors, problem solved.

Once you get the canvas covered - and it should all still be wet if you worked fast enough - get out your soft blending brush. You may want to lightly mist your canvas with water, just be sure that you work the mist in with your blending brush or you will get spots. Make sure that your blending brush is mostly dry if you have rinsed it out before using it on your painting. You will be making long crisscross strokes with your brush almost parallel to the canvas using very  little pressure as you go.

Most students use their brush too upright with too much pressure and have problems making it work for them, you just want to skim the surface of the canvas, as the late Bob Ross would say "Three hairs and some air". Mist your paint if you need to, again, remember to work it in. 

You can overwork this and end up with mud so stop when things look blurry, you are done. Let it dry then add your drawing. Because this is a dark background you can use white chalk so you can see it better, the chalk doesn't hurt anything.

Note that I have filled my canvas with the subject (see first image), I did this on purpose because it is the flower which is the most important, the branches are next, the background is just there for support. If I had made my design smaller the background, which is now the negative space, would over power what should be  the most important part of my painting and make my painting much less interesting. By breaking the negative space up into interesting shapes  with the flower and branches I use the negative space to my advantage,


Now that the background is dry and I have my drawing on I can start the process of under painting the branches and the flower.

Using my #4 flat sable brush, I mixed a gray using my ultramarine blue, burnt sienna (burnt umber will also work) and white to change the value. I used the width of the brush to make a series of slightly rounded strokes to form my branches. This as opposed to one solid brush stroke which can leave hard lines and look flat. 

You want to always follow the shape of the thing you are painting with your brush strokes, in this case rounded branches.

In the flower petals I drew lines on some of them to show the direction, and in some cases directions, of my brush strokes.

To under paint the flower I was still using my #4 flat sable brush and I mixed my ultramarine blue with a tiny touch of purple to get a lavender color and gesso to make it light for the base color. Where the petals go in towards the center of if they go behind another petal and are darker, I added just a bit more blue to darken the color right on my canvas then blended it in with the base color.

Like the branches above, I used the edge of my brush and pulled in from the petal edge to form the edge with a series of strokes, on the inside of the petal my strokes followed the curves of the petal.

Now it might seem strange to start out with this lavender color for a white flower but it needs to happen this way so you have someplace to go with your highlights. Whenever you are painting white, you should start out with some form of light blue, lavender or gray so when you start highlighting the lighter colors will look light and your subject will have shape so it doesn't look flat, there is actually very little actual white on a subject.

Try to have your painting to this point for our next class if you can, I will be finishing up the under painting for the flower and branches then start working on some detail.

Keep painting and I will see you in class.