Category: Acrylic Painting

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Acrylic Painting Art theory Other Art Blogs I Read Painting

Practice with Acrylics: Blending and soft edges

Acrylic-blending Acrylic-watercolor

Acrylic on gessoed canvas and watercolor paper (R)
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(I know this isn’t much to look at, but it’s what I did with my art time today — practiced making soft edges using dry brush, blending with wet-in-wet and other techniques, and painting watercolor-style washes using acrylics thinned down with water and “Acrylic Flow Release.” It’s harder (but not impossible) to make the kinds of beautiful soft edges and blends that can be done easily in oil paints (these samples are neither beautiful nor soft as I’d like, but that’s what practice is for). I was surprised how easy it was to make clean flat washes using acrylics as watercolors.

I’ve just started reading “Carlson’s Guide to Landscape Painting,” originally published in 1929. Even though he’s incredibly opinionated and assumes all artists are men, I’m finding his observations to be really interesting and often astute and applicable today. Here’s a few tidbits from the first chapter, “How to Approach Painting:”

“The art of painting, properly speaking, cannot be taught, and therefore cannot be learned. I believe about art, as I believe about music or architecture, that the only way to study is to practice; and that any good teacher can point out certain intellectual or technical “makings,” certain helps that will give a fulcrum to the lever of practice.”

“No one can teach ‘art.’ No one can give a singer a glorious voice, but granting the voice, and emotional sensibility, a teacher can teach a man to sing…”

“A snapshot is a correct rendition of physical fact…but the camera does not have an idea about the objects reflected upon its lens. It does not ‘feel’ anything, and will render one thing as well as another. This ‘idea,’ or thrill is the unteachable part of all art.”

“The beginner in painting begins by copying nature in all literalness, leaving nothing out and putting nothing in; he makes it look like the place or person or thing. By and by he will learn to omit the superfluous and to grasp the essentials and arrange them into a more power and significant whole. And it is wonderful to know that these ‘essentials’ will be essentials to him only (and herein lies the secret of orginality). Another man will choose another group of essentials out of the same fountain of inspiration.”

These hit home for me, especially the last one. Do you find them interesting? annoying? inspiring? helpful?

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Acrylic Painting Painting Plants

Devil’s Tongue (aka Snake Palm) again

Devils Tongue Again

Acrylic on mat board, 27 x 13″
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I hadn’t posted anything for a couple of days because I’ve been working on this painting instead of daily sketches. I was determined to finish and post it today, and did, even though the photo isn’t great. I worked from a watercolor I did on site, and a bunch of photos I took of this odd stinky plant on a walk a few weeks ago. I did some sketches for composition, trying to make sense out of all the crazy foliage happening in the photo and to decide what to emphasize, eliminate or move. I did a couple of small value studies too. Then I just had at it, working very loosely in acrylics. To check values, I set my camera to black and white and took a picture. I could immediately see I need more light areas and where. I painted in layers, using thickened and thinned paint in many layers and glazes.

My main goal with this painting was to experiment with trying to make acrylics work like oils (except without the toxic solvents, lengthy clean-up and slow drying time). There was a ton of learning that went on as I worked on it.

I’ve done a lot of reading on acrylics, much of it contradictory or out-of-date information but finally found an excellent new book called “Acrylic Revolution” by a Golden Acrylics (the brand I’m using) working artist named Nancy Reyner. It’s the book on acrylics I’d been hoping for. Detailed up to date information about how to properly work with the various mediums and paints to do whatever you could dream of doing and more. It’s a great book and tomorrow I’m going to experiment with some of the techniques in it to try to better understand how to do some of the blending techniques and ways to get soft edges, to be able to work more like oils.

Update: This is a Dragon Arum plant (Dracunculus vulgaris), not as named in the title of the post.

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Acrylic Painting Flower Art Painting Plants

Cactus Flower Again

Cactus Flower Again

Acrylic on canvas, 12 x 16″
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I started this painting a couple weeks ago and posted it in progress here and also did a watercolor from the photo here. Originally I was going to block in the shapes and colors in acrylic and then paint the final layer in oils but enjoyed working with the acrylics and stuck with them. I think it’s finished, though it might benefit from some cleaning up and touching up here and there.

I was listening to a digital book from Audible.com called “Eat, Pray, Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert while I painted. It’s a sort of spiritual travelogue of her journeys to Italy, India and Bali. I actually preferred a book I listened to previously on a similar theme: “Holy Cow” by Australian, Sarah Macdonald. Both women are journalists who find themselves in India because of relationships. Gilbert is running away from a bad breakup and Macdonald is following her journalist lover to India where he is a stationed as a reporter. Both managed to get book deals to write about their travels and their spiritual seeking. Holy Cow is funny, interesting and irreverant while Eat, Pray, Love takes itself and it’s spiritual quest much more seriously.

My favorite book I’ve listened to lately was “Water for Elephants” by Sarah Gruen. More about that another time…

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Acrylic Painting Flower Art Plants Still Life

Eggs and Cactus Flower in Acrylic

Eggs-acrylic

Acrylic on canvas board, 10 x 8″
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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:

cactus-flower-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.

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Acrylic Painting Gardening Other Art Blogs I Read Outdoors/Landscape Photos

An Artful Life

I’m doing something different today, inspired by a visit to my best friend Barbara’s house today — I’m sharing some of her wonderful artwork and photos of her garden. She truly lives an artful life and every corner of her little house and garden has something to delight the eye and spirit.

Images can be enlarged by clicking them and selecting “All Sizes”

Left: Life size ceramic woman (celebrating retirement and gardening). Right: View from the front porch. Just beyond this is the lush vegetable garden.

When Barbara retired not too long ago, she completely redesigned the tiny rental cottage beside her 3-story house in North Berkeley, sold the big house, and moved into the cottage with her husband and teenage daughter. Barbara is an amazing gardener and artist.

Above: Cottage front. Barbara created this mosaic on the foundation of the cottage using broken pottery and her handmade ceramic chickens.

Left: Barbara’s mosaic studio she built herself from recycled doors, windows and other things. Right: Path in her garden

Two pretty corners in the garden. Left: A ceramic gardening woman holding a carrot and a tall mosaic garden mirror.

Left: Whimsical ceramic whistles in Barbara’s sunny kitchen and a graceful ceramic woman in the hallway window. She started by making ceramic whistles and then learned how to make Ocarinas. I wonder if the female sculpture was inspired by our figure drawing sessions.

Two canvas painted “rugs” on the kitchen floor by the sink and fridge. I have rugs on my kitchen floor in those spots too, but they’re ugly things from the hardware store.

Above: Even the laundry room is artful. The detergent is hidden inside a tapestry cover.

Two of Barbara’s acrylic cactus paintings from back in the day (after she was a fabulous silversmith making exquisite silver jewelry when we first met, but before she became a teacher). During her years as a teacher she stopped painting and focused her art on quilting. Now she’s painting on her ceramics and plans to start painting on canvas again too.

I’m looking forward to some time painting in her garden. It’s about as close to heaven as you can get in Berkeley, especially when it comes with her homemade lemonade!

All art copyright 2007 by Barbara Edwards.

Categories
Acrylic Painting Art theory Flower Art

How to Overwork a Painting

I started this attempt at acrylic painting with a lovely bouquet of flowers and a plan to be free and easy, working from life but also from my imagination. I covered the canvas with a loose wash of orange and red and purple paint. Then I sketched in the flowers using a brush with thinned violet paint. Next I blocked in the colors and shapes of the flowers and the background with fairly thin paint. So far so good…nice and loose. Here’s what it looked like at that point:

Bouquet start

Acrylic on canvas, 12×16″ – I wish I stopped here

I was happy. It was free and loose and going pretty well. Then I had to go back to work, so I missed a few days. When I returned to the painting I completely forgot about my plans for loose and free. I started trying to get realistic which was dumb since I’d invented some of the flowers, there was no good directional light to model the shapes of the flowers, and they were starting to smell badly and flop over. I kept working for another couple nights anyway, trying to at least cover the canvas and finish it. Here’s how it ended…

Bouquet overworked

…because I got sick of working on it (and of the smell of the gross flowers). Now it can join the pile of “learning experience” paintings I’m accumulating as I continue to try to learn to paint with oils and acrylics.

Bouquet photo

(Above) One of many useless reference photos I took but didn’t use (note how the light from above creates unpleasant shadows but no real modeling of form and no reflections in the vase).

What I learned:

  • Remember my original inspiration and stick to it (or end up with a weird hybrid creature, neither free nor realistic)
  • Take the time to get the lighting right if you want things to look three-dimensional.
  • Acrylic mediums are my friends — use them to make the paint the consistency I want because it sure isn’t right out of the tube.
  • The Stay-Wet palette will keep acrylic paint wet indefintely but will also turn it to useless colored slime. (Skip the special paper and just stick another palette inside the box atop the sponge–the paint will stay wet without absorbing water.)
  • There is no Golden Acrylic equivalents to Winsor Lemon Yellow, Alizarin Crimson, New Gamboge or Permanent Rose (mainstays of my watercolor palette) so practice mixing the colors I need with other pigments.
  • Before applying a mixed color to the canvas, test it on a piece of paper…yes you can repaint acrylics forever if you get it wrong, but why go through that?!
  • Acrylic paint dries darker because the white medium makes it look lighter until the medium dries clear…just the opposite of watercolor which dries lighter…so take that into consideration or add a little zinc white to compensate and make the color the same as it will dry.

And most important of all:

  • Lighten up, enjoy the learning process, humbling as it may be, and remember that in a year I’ll probably be much better at it (as well as a year older, so don’t rush to get there).
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Acrylic Painting Flower Art Sketchbook Pages Still Life

Scruffy Roses – Scruffy Day

Scruffy rose acrylic

Acrylic on mat board, 7 x 12″
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Scruffy rose pencil

Graphite in Aquabee sketchbook, 6×9″
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I had a hard time getting started in the studio today. I’ve been studying and reading many books on technique: oil, acrylic, monoprint, drawing…and I’m at the point of too much information and not enough practice. It’s like learning how to drive by reading books, without actually doing any driving — you might know lots of techniques and rules, but are terrified at the idea of getting behind the wheel and driving off. I started feeling paralyzed, unable to decide which medium I wanted to explore, what subject I wanted to paint, and after looking at all the fine work in the museum Friday and my books and on others blogs, was beginning to get that awful, “why bother, it’s all been done before and much better than I could ever do” sort of feeling. I also had a headache and had some annoying errands to do.

I did some organizing in the studio and then gave up and went out to do the errands and then it was dinnertime and still no painting. After dinner I finally got to my drawing table and just started sketching this scruffy, battered winter rose from my bush that still hasn’t been pruned. Then I scanned it, printed out the drawing a little bigger, and using Saral transfer paper (like carbon paper but waxless), transfered the drawing to a piece of matboard and then painted it with acrylics. I know I would have done a better job with watercolor, but it was fun experimenting and learning how to “drive” the acrylics by taking them on a little jog around the block.

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Acrylic Painting Every Day Matters Sketchbook Pages Still Life Watercolor

Soap: EDM #101

EDM 101

Acrylic in HandBook Journal 5.5 x 5.5″
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The week’s Everyday Matters challenge is to draw a bar of soap. My original idea was to line up all the different soaps in my house, from dish soap to laundry soap to bath soap and make a grid and paint them all. But by the time I did all the errands I’d been putting off, time was short. Also, I wanted to play with the fluid acrylics I’d bought last weekend and hadn’t tried yet. So I settled on one soap, one bowl and tried painting with the acrylics as if they were watercolors.

It was fun and interesting. One thing I learned is that acrylic is basically a glue and if you get any kind of crud or cat hair on the paper it will become permanently glued in place. Also you can’t erase pencil after you’ve painted with acrylic. It’s ridiculous how fast the stuff dries. I guess you have to develop a second sense about spritzing the palette all the time.

I’m ready for some big, juicy, free painting next. After all the lettering and detail in the watercolor I finished and posted yesterday I’m tired of tiny, tight painting. It’s back to work tomorrow but hopefully this weekend I can go a bit wild with paint and loosen up.