Session #8 - WAAH - it's over!!

Mixing PBgs + QC into TW, and a larger bristle brush plus a small detail brush, block in the sky where it meets the land masses. HINTS: block in with the large brush, then use the small brush to neatly trim where it meets the land; use lots of paint with a creamy consistency; only work a small area at a time – trying to cover too much ground at once makes the consistency of the paint too thin; use this paint application to edit/correct/improve the shapes of the land masses.  If a perfectly straight edge is needed (say, at the waterline), use masking tape on the DRY surface, then paint up to it.

 Using a “rigger”, fine lines (“calligraphy”) are used to dress up the finished look of the piece. The mixture used were green (QNAG + PGbs + ZW) and brown (QNAG + PBgs + ZW + QR) – again, paint consistency was very important! These small mixtures tend to dry up quickly so, medium must be added at times to keep them flexible enough.

Special thanks for making me feel like I was able to help you – you were a great group and I wish you all the best in your efforts to work with acrylics and hope to see you again soon.

Marilyn

Websites for colour mixing

http://www.painting-ideas-and-techniques.com/color-mixing-guide.html

http://www.passionforpaint.com/ColorMixing.html


http://timmsclasses2010.blogspot.ca/  -this blog from last year has a little bit of help for colour mixing

www.youtube.com/user/gurneyjourney/featured  this is a really interesting video on colour mixing

Session #7:

To correct the middle ground area (right above the grasses), mix a silvery grey using PBgs + QR + Yellow Ochre, then lighten with ZW. Remember that acrylics dry darker so you need to keep lightening the colour beyond what looks right when the paint is wet. This silvery grey appears on the left then, above it and on to the right, mix a muted yellowish green using QNAG + PBgs and again lightening with ZW. Notice that adding the Zinc White makes the colour become more neutral (greyed), the more ZW you add, the more neutral.

Above this section, a sandy colour was created using a lot of YO, a little QR and a lot of ZW, with just a smidge of PBgs to grey the colour. 

NOTE: This is a tricky mixture as it can easily be too dark or (like mine) a little too red etc. When trying to correct a mixture, look at which way it “leans” then add a little complement. For example, (knowing that the three PRIMARY colours are Red, Blue and Yellow) if your mixture just looks too GREEN (blue + yellow), introduce a little RED to the mixture to grey it. If it is too ORANGE, introduce a little Blue, etc.. Most important word here is a LITTLE. With practice, this gets easier, I promise. Apply this sandy colour and its slight variations horizontally in the background. Mix a light blue using Titanium White with a tiny bit of TBgs and place where the water winds in around the sand formations.

Using the same light blue, let it join into the land mass on the upper left – even though one is water and one is land, the eye joins them. Mix a light plum colour from combining PBgs + QC + ZW and, using expressive brush strokes, sweep in the lighter parts of the iris blossoms – lightening it sometimes, making it pinker or whiter other times. Revisit the sand colour by remixing from our combination of YO, a little QR and a lot of ZW, with just a smidge of PBgs to grey the colour – this time using much more white to keep it more neutral and lighter. Overpaint the original colours until it looks softer and more neutral. Make a dark grey using PBgs + QR + a little YO, then paint the small vertical shapes in the distance and the lower edge of the sandbar on the upper right. Be careful to paint around the long foreground shapes neatly.

Session #6:

A rich dark (combining Phthalo Blue green shade (PBgs), Quinacridone Red (QR) and a little Quinacridone Nickel Azo Gold(QNAG)) was scraped onto the foreground using a folded card, then a brush with just matte medium was dragged around and through it. The paint consistency mattered a lot here – creamy, but not watery, plus colour mixing was challenging (use just a little of the “power” paints like the Phthalo colours). Once this rich dark was placed, a deep rich green was used to “sweep” strokes of color in the reminder of the foreground, immediately dragging a damp brush through the shapes (to soften). Back to the rich plum colour to “card” in the flower stalks and paint in small dark patches where needed in the blossom shapes.

A blue-ish green mixture (lightened with Zinc White) is placed in the background where it joins and shapes the mass of foreground grasses. The objective here was two-fold – first, to “cool” the green colour enough that it would appear to to farther back, and, second, to punch little negative shapes at the upper edge to look like we are seeing through the foreground grasses.

 

Mixing  PBgs, QR and Titanium White, lighter pinks, mauves and plum tones were used to craft the flower forms more. Turning the subject and paper upside down can be helpful here. Some of the plum was used to roughly depict the distant land mass. Taking advantage of darker greens, some dark plum and a folded card (or, in my case a small brush and some swearing), a few sparse stalks were placed in the upper part of the painting.

A new twist this week came with the realization that a few students were using OPEN acrylics – this went a long way to explaining why things were taking so long to dry….