Small Works

52 Mini Paintings Challenge: Week #19

| cathmary1030

This is the week 19 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. (I’ll get back to weeks 17 and 18 some other time). It’s called “Roses for Mom” and is based on a reference photo by Ann Dorsey. 6×6 canvas panel, toned in Naphthol Red.

I listened to the video of the class weeks ago — we’re already up to week 23 — and just used a grayscale printout of the photo as my reference. For the roses, the darkest red is Quinacridone Magenta, otherwise it’s just Naphthol Red with varying amounts of Titanium White.

This was a fun one to paint.

Monochromatic Man… a “Fresh Paint” lesson

| cathmary1030

Back in March, I posted about painting a vase of purple tulips, from a one-off online class by Ali Kay. I had decided I would consider joining her “Fresh Paint” membership, which from what I can tell operates more or less like Jed Dorsey’s Acrylic University.

So, the doors opened for a limited time last week, and I joined for a year. We’ll see how it goes. I like the work she posts on Instagram, and I like her subject matter — a lot of people and animal portraits, as well as flowers.

This painting is actually based off of an Unsplash photo. I struggled a bit with her process, which seemed a little bit paint-by-number to me, but I wanted to try it. Hardest for me is remembering to leave touches of the underpainting visible, as I’m used to often painting on white canvas and skipping the whole underpainting thing. Also I rarely layer to the extent she does — but perhaps I should.

She also primarily works from photographs, and transfers the key lines from the photo to the substrate so you focus on painting rather than drawing. Also, she works on gessoed wood panels, using fluid acrylics, while I’m working on canvas using heavy-body acrylics so the flow is obviously different. (It’s too hot where I live to use a lot of fluid acrylics — they dry in something like 2 minutes.)

I’d like to try doing this on a wood panel to see the effect; I might like it. But I’ve got a stash of canvas to work through first.

52 Mini Paintings Challenge: Week #16

| cathmary1030

This is the week 16 painting for Jed Dorsey’s Mini Painting Challenge at Acrylic University. It’s called “Canyon Shadows” and is based on a reference photo by Jacob Jolibois, supposedly somewhere in the Grand Canyon area. 6×6 canvas panel.

Surprisingly straightforward, although when I looked at the reference and my painting in gray scale, I had to adjust my values for the cliff at the left, and the sky just above it. As well as the distant canyon walls.

Red Onions… After Vicki McGrath

| cathmary1030

I discovered Vicki McGrath on a “Learn to Paint” podcast, and then followed her on Instagram. After my first attempt at the red onion from my Acrylic University lesson, I attempted to copy Vicki’s work, although I changed the background from green stripes to a solid mint green via phthalo green yellow shade. She paints in gouache on watercolor paper; I used acrylic on an 8×8 canvas. Her version is available as a print here.

AU: Simple Shapes… Week #4

| cathmary1030

A few weeks ago I signed up for an 8 week class at Acrylic University called “Simple Shapes” taught by Dianna Shyne. I wasn’t overly interested in painting the still lifes for the first 3 weeks, despite watching the videos and downloading the reference photos, but I did want to try painting the red onion.

This was on 6×6 acrylic paper (SoHo brand). The first time, I put too many of the colors Dianna used, and the result didn’t look much like an onion! (Hers did, mine didn’t.) So the next day I painted over what I had before, and tried again. I think the second attempt is much improved. I also used smaller brushes, especially for the onion roots.