Because Patti Mollica works in acrylics, I bought her book How to Paint Fast Loose & Bold. Obviously, as a professional artist, she too focuses on values and shapes, and starting from big to small. Her book is valuable to me because I’m using acrylics.

In the book she demos one of her paintings (Stacked, 8×8), which I did on a 5×5 gesso panel, and a second time on an 8×8 canvas. She did an underpainting in burnt sienna (and generally uses Golden brand paints). I found burnt sienna (Blick heavy body) to be quite dark. For drawing the initial shapes, I used a charcoal pencil.

I’m pleased with my drawing — which you can see in my “in progress” photo — but clearly have work to do on brushwork and color mixing!

Below is the 5×5 version which I did first. The dark area in the lower right of the image is an artifact of my photography.