Acrylics

Work-in-Progress: Copying Sargent

| cathmary1030

One of the posts on the Paint Coach Patreon page is a portrait-painting tutorial using the portrait of Henry James painted by John Singer Sargent in 1913. The tutorial walks beginning painters through the process of painting the big shapes first, and gradually moving towards smaller and smaller shapes (i.e., more detail).

Chris Fornataro (aka Paint Coach) gives the highlights of that process in a recently posted video on YouTube. A copy of Sargent’s work is on the left; a screen shot from the YouTube video is on the right.

I am not yet finished with my own attempt at copying Sargent, but decided to post my work in progress.

Clementines… From Will Kemp’s Art School

| cathmary1030

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.

Another 5×5 Mini Landscape

| cathmary1030

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).

“Small Landscape — Big Brush” from Patreon

| cathmary1030

This 6×8 painting is from a tutorial by Paint Coach on Patreon. The idea is that you use a decently large brush (say, 1/2″) so that you are focused on the basic shapes as opposed to detail.

The 6×8 canvas size felt too small to me for all the different landscape “objects” — trees near and far, a stream, a path, mountains, etc. Whew!

Worse, my photo doesn’t adequately capture the colors I see in my own painting; the path is both grayer and more purple than what is shown, even though I fiddled with tint/saturation/brightness, etc. in the Photos app.

Oh well, time to get painting the next thing.

Got Some Oils & some “OPEN” Acrylics

| cathmary1030

I’m still wanting to try oil paints, but am spooked by how thick they are — and the need to thin them without solvents. Ugh! But the colors are gorgeous! That violet is luscious; however, it took nearly a week to be touch dry.

That said, acrylics can dry so fast, so I’d also like to try Golden’s Open Acrylics to increase the working time.