Acrylics

Still Life — Another Study

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The still life of fruit is yet another study from Patti Mollica’s book How to Paint Fast, Loose and Bold: Simple Techniques for Expressive Painting.

As far as my efforts in copying still life demonstrations from various painting teachers, this is one of my better ones in my opinion. I’m most pleased with the dark red (purple) cherry.

That said, all the stems I painted are sloppy — I need to practice painting thin lines. And the brushwork on the red apple is awful. The paint choices as well could be improved — the red is so transparent you can see through to the raw sienna underpainting, and my charcoal pencil outline. Sigh.

Glazed Apple in Acrylics

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I wish I had taken a photo of this red apple before I applied a glaze of Naphthol Red (PR112) and Satin Glazing medium, but I didn’t. It was inspired by Patti Mollica’s How to Paint Fast, Loose and Bold: Simple Techniques for Expressive Painting (also mentioned in yesterday’s post).

This was painted on 5×5″ gesso board.

Studies from Patti Mollica’s Book

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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.

Big Shapes Seascape – Start

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Kevin MacPherson, in his book Fill Your Oil Paintings with Light & Color suggests beginner painters get into the groove of thinking first of big shapes (whether for landscapes, still life or figure studies) and then mapping out those big shapes first before getting into the smaller shapes & detail.

I found out about Kevin MacPherson when I signed up as a Patreon for PaintCoach (aka Chris Fornataro); Chris teaches the same thing in his tutorials on Patreon and videos on YouTube.

MacPherson even suggests doing 100 of these “starts” (the big shapes) as I did below, based on one of the PaintCoach tutorials.

Pear Study

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Nothing special about the results of this study, which I found on Patreon… I used a glaze of yellow and satin glazing medium on top of the brightest side of the pear. Might as well use some of the features of acrylic painting.

Autumn Tree from #PAINTCOACH Patreon

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This Autumn Tree exercise was from a PaintCoach post on Patreon. I did it on a 6×6 linen panel in acrylic. Getting the colors even close to correct was a beat-down. I’m discovering I prefer liquid or soft-body acrylics to the heavy-body, at least when I’m trying to imitate painting in oils!

One photo is of the work-in-progress; the other is the “I’m done with this!” version.

I’m most satisfied with the sky. If I were to paint this again, I’d use much less yellow in the tree, and make shorter and less uniform brush strokes.

Redo of “50 Small Paintings”: Mountain Landscape

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My original 5×5 painting of a mountain landscape, based on Mark Nelson’s “Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 Small Paintings: Pick up the skills * Put on the paint * Hang up your art” did not adequately reflect, in my opinion, atmospheric perspective. The mountain was unrealistically brown, the snow was unrealistically white, and the sky unrealistically blue!

So, I’ve tried again. The new version, obviously, is on the left. This was a 6×6 canvas, also painted in acrylics. It’s marginally better.

However, I think if I were to paint it yet a third time (!), I’d leave out the rocks in the foreground, instead adding a path through the meadow to the trees. I’d also work on my brushwork for both the mountain and the snowcap, and would add shadowed shapes to better indicate the form of the mountainside.

Avocado Still Life: #PAINTCOACH Patreon

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I’m a Patreon subscriber to PaintCoach’s account, and one of the still life project is to do an avocado. This work is done in acrylic. I’m happiest with the whole avocado. As for the yellowish flesh of the avocado half, I painted it thickly with a palette knife, and later applied a satin glaze mixed with yellow paint.