I’m trying roses now, using a reference photo from PaintCoach’s Patreon site. This is the background done, on a 11×14 canvas.
Work in Progress: Pink & White Roses (Patreon Paintcoach)
Online Class
Negative Spaces Study: Complete
Here is the completed work. The orange I left untouched from the initial wash of color, adding alizarin crimson and yellow for the brighter and darker parts of the leaves.
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!
Red Tulips: Color Mixing Class from Will Kemp
The other online classes I bought included a color mixing class from Will Kemp, a British artist who works with oil and acrylics.
These tulips were done on 7×10 watercolor paper. The finished work is on the right, but appears too blue. The true color of the table and the vase are on the left.
Red Poppies: Adventures in Acrylic
The next-up item in the Marla Baggetta Adventures in Acrylic course was these red poppies. She suggested we use fluorescent orange spray paint for our background; instead, I used my perinone orange paint by Chroma Atelier Interactive, which I find wildly fluorescent!
Using the reference photo, I drew the poppies in pencil over the painted canvas, and then watched her video, closed up my laptop, and did my best from-memory version. At the very end, you use a white gel pen to outline as you see fit; here, I reviewed the image of her final work, and then just winged it.
This was fun!
Avocado: From “Adventures in Acrylic”
Next-up in Marla Baggetta’s Adventures in Acrylic was painting an avocado. This was on a 6×6 Ampersand gessoboard. I watched her video then shut down my laptop, and just worked off the reference photo. Here are some in-progress photos.
I used a yellow ochre glaze, and then drew out the shapes with my Liquitex burnt umber paint marker. There are excessive striations with the yellow ochre because I was using the liquid/soft body version and then mixing it with water. (That’s a mistake!) The watering-down really only makes sense (to me) when using full-body paint.
Glazed Pear: Round 3
This is the last pear I did — I’m sick of pears for the moment! — and this was done on slippy-slidey gessoboard. (I’m almost done with my stash of that stuff and am in no hurry to buy more.) In this one, I did the final yellow glaze only on the pear itself, and before I added the highlight.
Funny thing, after all this pear painting, I was at the grocery store today, and for the first time I really noticed all the pears in the produce section; each type has its own shape. I think of this shape as somewhat close to a “classic” pear, but that’s really the Bosc pear. Some are short and squat more like gourds or squash.
Glazed Pear: Round 2
This is work from the Marla Baggetta class I mentioned the other day. These pears were done after I watched the video provided, so they’re closer to how she did it, but not entirely. I took a series of in-progress photos; sometimes we’re glazing, sometimes we’re painting. The very bottom photo at the end is the final result; everything skews yellow because a yellow glaze was the last step.
I’m not entirely sold on the layering and layering of glazes; seems like a lot of extra work. It seems to me to make more sense when using pastels than when using acrylics,
This was done on an 8×8 canvas.
