Sunflower #2: Work-in-Progress

This 6×8 sunflower painting was based on an image by Couleur from Pixabay.

The green I used was one of my favorites — Chromium Oxide Green (PG 17) Liquitex Heavy Body. For the darkest green, I mixed it with Alizarin Crimson. The medium green is straight from the tube. And the lightest silvery green is Liquitex BASICS Green Gray.

This time for the sky I used Phthalo Blue from Golden Fluid, mixing it with the Golden Fluid Titanium White.

Sunflower #1

This sunflower painting was based on an image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay. For the sky, I used Utrecht Fluid Cerulean Blue and Golden Fluid Titanium White — which works better for tinting as it doesn’t get so chalky looking as the Heavy Body. My camera doesn’t quite capture the color, but it’s close.

Painted on a 6×8 canvas.

Negative Spaces Study: Adventures in Acrylic

One more study I’ve done in the Adventures in Acrylic class. I did not do the fluorescent orange spray paint, and this time, instead of using my Perinone Orange (a close substitute), I went with Liquitex’s Cad-Free Orange paint, more soothing to my eyes.

Then I did a free-hand drawing in pencil of some of the orange leaves from the reference photo provided in the class, and did some light shading of the shadow areas as I saw them.

My blue was a mix of Utrecht’s cerulean blue (fluid) and Liquitex’s soft-body Light Blue Permanent (I think it is). I used a long-handled small bright brush to paint in the negative spaces.

This is really an in-progress painting, but I’m tempted to leave it as it is and go on to something else. We’ll see!

Portrait in Blue: from Adventures in Acrylic

This is another work from Marla Baggetta’s Adventures in Acrylic class I’m taking. I have to say I’m NOT a big fan of phthalo blue, at least as a background. Especially a portrait background! That blue just shines through in an aggravating fashion! And, obviously, it affects the look of the other paint colors used. All in all, she looks greener than I had wanted her to be. Until I get portraits down well, I don’t see the purpose of using wacky colors. 🙂

Anyway, painting a portrait — though this was supposed to be “expressive” and “fun” not an absolute likeness — is one thing, drawing is another. I fiddled with the proportional divider I bought for sketching, and the drawing was pretty decent. But once I started painting over my pencil lines, the drawing went out the window. Ugh!

I AM reasonably satisfied with the facial planes and the shadows — for a first attempt.

Oh well. Tomorrow’s another day!

Glass of Wine

When professional artists and art teachers (in books and online — probably also in real life) say, yes, you’re going to do a lot of bad paintings, and just keep going…. well, this is one of those bad paintings, lol.

What I do like is that I got the yellow-white of the wine pretty good. The shadow, ugh, not so much.

Playing with Palette Knives

I bought some LUKAS CRYL Pastos Heavy Body Artist Acrylics a while back, so I thought I’d try them out. To my surprise, they weren’t more heavy-body than Liquitex or Golden. The blue and yellow didn’t make a decent green; the red and yellow didn’t make a great orange (I had to add some Liquitex Cad-Free orange).

I tried out the different colors — except for black and white — on a 6×6 canvas panel. Further below, I did an abstract of azaleas on 4×6 watercolor paper.