ACEO is an acronym for “Art Cards, Editions and Originals” and their standard size is 2-1/2 x 3-1/2 inches. I bought a packet for 10 ACEO watercolor papers by Swarthmore a few years ago, but never used them.
These I did using hard and soft pastels, just for the heck of it, as I was watching HGTV. The green palm tree is based off a Winslow Homer watercolor I have a print of. I’d like to do some using acrylics at some point.
I signed up for Marla Baggetta‘s class “Adventures in Acrylics“. The first demo she provides is treating acrylics rather like watercolors, and building up glazes of a single pear, and a group of 3 pears. So, before I watched her video demo, I did my own interpretation.
I have two pear paintings which I did side by side: one is on gessoboard (which I mostly haven’t used so far) and one is an 8×8 “super saver” cotton canvas from Dick Blick. I find the paint slips and slides more on the gessoboard; something I find irritating in my beginner-ness.
That said, on the whole, I prefer the pear I did on the gessoboard; it’s a more accurate shape. (I actually sketched the pear with an HB pencil in that version. In the other, I just painted the shape with a bit of yellow ochre paint.)
Otherwise, I did the same process and used the same colors on both substrates, finishing off with a satin gloss.
One of the benefits of membership in ArtistsNetwork is viewing certain videos. The other day I watched a video on quick studies in figure painting using acrylics taught by Craig Nelson. On this ArtistsNetwork video, Nelson does 3 different quick studies of figures: one in 20 minutes, one in 30 minutes, and one in 40 minutes.
Based on his video, I was reminded of what I read in Kevin MacPherson’s book about doing 100 “quick starts”.
I had never heard of the guy, but it turns out he posts to YouTube and teaches at Academy of Art University, and his website is here. On his website, I learned he had published at least 2 books on art, one called 60 Minutes to Better Painting. I found a used copy on Amazon, and it just arrived today. I’m excited to check it out!
I am working on one of the still life projects in the E-book I bought at Will Kemp’s Art School online. This particular painting is focused on an analogue color scheme of red (pink) and purple.
I was browsing through Pixabay and Unsplash for landscape scenes of trees on a hill, and in snow. I was inspired to do this impressionistic work. For the snow, I tinted white with purple, yellow ochre, orange and pale blue. The tree trunks are painted in yellow ochre, burnt umber, orange and purple.
Image by Jason from Pixabay Image by Mali Ancor from Pixabay
Initial Final
Work-in-progress. I am trying out “drybrushing” in this quick study.
Another artist I found and follow on YouTube and his personal site is Will Kemp, from the UK. He is classically trained, and began with painting in oils, later switching to acrylics because he was working in an area not properly ventilated for the paint thinners and solvents he had been using.
Will Kemp has multiple YouTube videos, online tutorials on his website, online classes for sale (and downloading) in acrylics, and I am finding his style as a useful enhancement to what I’m learning from Paint Coach.
I bought Kemp’s Still Life Acrylic Project E-Book, and am working through it. First up was a project that involved painting a group of clementines. Much of the focus is on setting up your colors by color mixing, which is something I need to learn about.
This was painted on an 8×8 canvas.
This is an 8×8 painting of a watermelon slice, and the palette I used.
Although I wasn’t too crazy about Mark D Nelson’s “Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 Small Paintings”, it DID get me painting. So, I picked up Volume 2, and decided to do my own version of one of his small landscape works.
Mine is painted on a 6×6 canvas, and riffs on Daniel’s effort (also shown).
BetterLateThanNeverArt 