beginner

Glazed Pear: Round 2

| cathmary1030

This is work from the Marla Baggetta class I mentioned the other day. These pears were done after I watched the video provided, so they’re closer to how she did it, but not entirely. I took a series of in-progress photos; sometimes we’re glazing, sometimes we’re painting. The very bottom photo at the end is the final result; everything skews yellow because a yellow glaze was the last step.

I’m not entirely sold on the layering and layering of glazes; seems like a lot of extra work. It seems to me to make more sense when using pastels than when using acrylics,

This was done on an 8×8 canvas.

My First-Ever ACEO’s

| cathmary1030

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.

Glazed Pear: Round 1

| cathmary1030

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.

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!