Small Works

Cloud Challenge #1 – Acrylic University

| cathmary1030

The other day I was on Instagram, and something came up in my feed about Acrylic University, an art site I wasn’t aware of until that moment. I checked it out and signed up for an 8-week “Cloud Challenge” class taught by Dianna Shyne. This painting was done today in that class.

  1. I had fun!
  2. Clouds are more difficult to paint than they seem.
  3. I really do not like phthalo blue as a color — it’s much too intense, and much too much of a greenish blue.
  4. The “black” in this painting is a chromatic black — ultramarine blue, phthalo blue, Anthraquinone Red (marketed as alizarin crimson) and the merest touch of cad yellow hue.

Overall, I like the colors, but this looks more like a stained-glass abstract than puffy clouds. 

Snowman!

| cathmary1030

This snowman (painted on an 8×8 canvas) was inspired in part by snowmen done in pastel by Karen Margulis. It’s been warmer than normal here for December, but we might actually have a freeze tomorrow. No sign of snow, though. (Sigh.) So I thought painting a snowman would put me in a winter mood.

I’m not sure if you can tell, but the (viewer’s) right side of the snowman is a gray-white, while the (viewer’s) left side of the snowman is a sky blue-white mix.

The other colors are Pyrrole Red (straight from the tube), Yellow Ochre (mixed with the red for the carrot stick nose), Sap Green and Mars Black (straight from the tube) and the lavender background is a dash of Dioxazine Purple with Titanium White.

Online Class “Terrific Trees” : Pine tree

| cathmary1030

Over Black Friday, I bought access to a handful of online classes at Kara Bullock Art. One was the “Terrific Trees” class by Kim VanDerHoek.

I ‘m working on painting pine trees, so I can make some Christmas cards on a Christmas tree theme. The tree on the left was painted on a 6×6 canvas panel, and is based on Kim’s class (a follow-along).

The tree on the right was painted on a 8×8 black stretched canvas. The shadow of the tree is unpainted; I’m just using the black of the canvas.

More Portrait Practice in Acrylics.. After Hashim Akib

| cathmary1030

As with the work done in this earlier post, I did another follow-along/demo portrait from Hashim Akib’s book Painting Portraits in Acrylic. I bought some student-grade acrylics (Amsterdam brand) since this is merely practice. The background was toned in a Quinacridone Rose (PV 19) as directed, but I drew out the figure using willow charcoal. As for the skin colors, again I followed along mostly: the primary skin colors are burnt sienna, orange (PO 73) and yellow ochre (PY 42).

I painted the folds on the scarf using a palette knife; I did not go back and add touches of a pinkish yellow white representing sparkles reflecting the light on the scarf. Maybe later.

Her lips should be pinker and darker; the top of the scarf away from her head should be darker and bluer.

Portrait Practice — Painting the Asaro (Variant) Head

| cathmary1030

My last few works — a portrait and a “portrait” of the Asaro head — have been in the cartoon realm, so I’m skipping posting those for now!

Instead, I found a video on YouTube that walks you through drawing the “Loomis Head” and converting it (for lack of a better term) to a planar head (what the artist calls the “memorized Asaro head”). After watching that, I drew the planar head on my 8×10 canvas with willow charcoal.

What I discovered in my failed attempt at painting the Asaro head is that the color Ivory Black is fairly transparent, and doesn’t cover well. I ended up going to Michael’s and bought some Mars Black from Liquitex Basics. It’s student grade compared to the artist grade Ivory Black, but wow, what a difference!

Anyway, here’s the Asaro head done; sage green for the background.

Below is a copy of the reference photo I used to paint, as well as a close-up of my value changes. In some cases like the upper lip, the value change is too abrupt, while in other cases there’s not enough of a value change. I’ll have to keep practicing.