Eggs and Cactus Flower in Acrylic

Acrylic on canvas board, 10 x 8″
Click image, select All Sizes to enlarge

This weekend I again tried working in acrylic and oils, doing this practice still life of brown eggs in a white bowl in each medium. I wasn’t happy with the way the acrylics weren’t letting me blend and the hard edges I ended up with. The oil painting is still drying, waiting for another layer.

But then tonight, although I thought I was too tired to do anything, I got inspired to start another painting –this cactus flower–in acrylics, with a plan to do the first loose wash to block in the painting in acylics (to avoid turpentine washes with oils) and then paint over it in oils for the final layer because I prefer the gooshy slipperiness of oils and the ability to blend and have soft edges. I started the painting with acrylics, squirting in a bunch of glazing medium and using gesso instead of white paint and lo and behold I had something very much like oils, blending beautifully. Here’s the painting in progress:

Acrylic on canvas, work in progress 12 x 15″

So now I think I’ll finish it in acrylic and see how it goes. The other thing I’ve figured out with these paintings is how differently I need to approach color mixing with watercolor vs oils or acrylics. With watercolor I tend to paint in layers, striving for getting the color right on the first try but inevitably doing many layers, building up the darks and saturated colors.

Working opaquely with oils (and to some extent acrylics), especially when trying to work alla prima (completing a painting in one session as one does painting outdoors without letting the paint dry), it’s pretty critical to mix and apply the right color the first time, not diddling around with a dab of this and a dab of that. It really forces me to accurately gauge the colors and values of the colors I see or want to use, getting the dark values right first.

One more thing I learned…I discovered I’d been saying to myself, “I’ll never learn how to mix colors in oils” so every time I caught myself thinking that I changed the thought to “I can learn this!” and now I think I’m getting there.