Acrylics

Quick Study: Rooster

| cathmary1030

I based this quick study painting on the rooster painting in Mark Daniel Nelson‘s 50 small paintings acrylic painting book.

I started out using Amsterdam Acrylic’s Turquoise Green, doing the outline using a burnt umber Liquitex paint marker. I found that for my in-progress photo I could not get the color I saw with my eyes to show up in the camera. The camera displayed a sky blue; in Adobe Photo Essentials, I was able to adjust the color to some degree, but as you can see from the below sample, I didn’t get the true color. (Not that it matters now; I painted the background a mix of Unbleached Titanium (Liquitex), Burnt Umber, and Yellow Ochre.

The true color of the background (turquoise green) was closer to this:

Quick Studies in Acrylic — Craig Nelson

| cathmary1030

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!

More Bright Yellow & Testing out Paint Markers

| cathmary1030

As noted yesterday, I had extra yellow paint, so I had painted an 8×8 canvas. I decided to test out some of the acrylic paint markers I just bought, as well as some of the new paint I bought (Amsterdam Expert — a brand I haven’t tried before).

The Amsterdam Expert paint in yellowish green was so thick that I wiped off much of it with a paper towel, hence the smear. I also used some of my alizarin crimson, and Liquitex soft body light blue.

The paint markers are cool; I first heard about them from the Still Life Acrylics e-book I bought from Will Kemp Art School. Kemp uses the paint marker as his drawing tool. (I’ve tried compressed charcoal and charcoal pencil for my drawing tool, and the charcoal smears into the paint.)