How to Paint Cat - Painting Demonstration by Richard Ancheta

Richard Ancheta first began to paint at the age of 12 years old and took painting lessons with well known Filipino artist and illustrators. His devotion and vision as an artist are promising. He studied Multimedia Design at Montreal International Academy of Design. Richard works in various mediums: oil, acrylic, watercolor, pastel and charcoal. His works have been featured in newspapers, magazines and books. He boasts 20 years of experience in painting, illustration, advertising and graphic work.

How to Paint a Cat Easy Oil Painting Techniques Painting Demonstration by Richard Ancheta April 5, 2008
These are the three photographs of a Siamese Cat name Siegfried and the owner asked me to paint an original oil portrait – a birthday gift that will last forever. Good reference photographs are important to capture the likeness of the model. Let’s begin the challenge!

1

Sketching: Sketching is the backbone of the painting, failing to be precise in this stage will suffer retouching again and again in the following stages. Precision in the early stage will merit all the trouble of minimizing the errors, the draftsmanship of the subject. The tone values will be rendered and will forecast the result of your painting when seen in black and white. I use an ordinary HB pencil in outlining the drawing and add tones to where you will drop the values of the next coloring stage. After the sketch is completed, I lightly spray with fixative to protect the pencil from smudging.

2
The Ground Color :Glaze the whole canvas with the subject’s middle tone. As the cat has a pale yellow ochre (acrylic), it dries quickly. Again, it protects the drawings from smudging and eliminates the brightness of canvas. It helps also to close the pores of the canvas in which sometimes you will leave small dots of whites.

3

Blocking and Blacks: Oil painting begins. I start painting the darks by mixing burnt umber and vermilion and cobalt blue. With this three-color combination, softer blacks are created, rather than using solid ivory blacks that create unevenness and holes on the canvas. However, solid ivory blacks give depth when used in the pupils of eyes. Blocking determines the weight composition of the lowest value.

4
Painting the Background:Anticipation of color contrast is also important and forecasting that in the end of the painting session the colors will be harmonized and let the main subject stands out. I choose hot colors for backgrounds and balance them with harmony cool colors of blue-greens, repeating the colors from the pillow.

5
Color Balance :The value of color plays the mode of the whole painting. It gives expression. Hot colors focus the eyes; and to balance the breathing, cool colors minimize their intensity. • Hot colors: red, orange and yellow. • Cool colors: blue and green

6
Color Blending : I prepare to blend the backgrounds by using a fan brush. For more softer and subtle effects, eliminate intricacy of brush strokes that steal attention from the overall impact.

7
Tone Gradation: Tone gradation is a technique that I use in my paintings because it classically and smoothly divides the transition of values. It simply defines, as from dark to light gradation.

8
Painting Upside Down: Why invert the painting? Removing the picture image from your eyes allows greater concentration and eliminates developing a series of tones starting from the highest value, the white. Inverting and/or rotating the canvas make strokes easy, allowing for texture and fur directions.

9

Detailing: The logic of using brushes is also important. Using big, broad brushes at the start immediately covers the large canvas space. Shifting to medium and very small brushes allows for organizing and improving the speed of your painting process. In this stage, I demonstrate the trick of flattening my round brush to create a chisel mode for my brushstrokes in order to create very tiny lines for fur texture. Continuous glazing of colors gives more depth; and overlapping colors one on top of the colors gives more dimension as you approach the satisfaction of declaring the painting finished.

10
Final Stage :My final stage is visualizing subject volumes and impact of highlights. Add some touches; redefine shade and shadows. Let the painting dry, then varnish repeatedly until achieving the desired luminosity. Don’t forget to sign your painting.

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Learn How to Oil Paint - Tips & Techniques From a Master Painter

If you want to learn how to oil paint and not sure how to begin, then the following article will prove to be quite helpful in your pursuit to become a good painter.

Before you read on, you will have to try and forget everything you ever learned about oil painting and look at your painting from a new perspective. A recent art class I attended, taught by a master painter, has completely changed the way I approach oil painting and has opened up many new creative doors for me. I hope it will do the same for you.

START WITH A CONCEPT

Up until just recently, I was a very frustrated oil painter. I have 10 or so incomplete paintings collecting dust in the corner of my small studio. I would attempt to complete these 10 or so paintings over and over again, until finally I had to take a step back and try and understand what I was doing wrong.

The reason I lost interest and was unable to complete these paintings, was because I did not have a concept in mind before I started. I would start haphazardly painting without a clear vision of what I really wanted to accomplish with my oil painting.

Concepts are methods for solving problems in a painting. I bet you never saw painting as being a series of problems. Neither did I , but this way of thinking really does make learning how to oil paint more interesting.

What do you want your painting to be about?

Instead of thinking: “My painting is about trees in a field”, start thinking in terms of , “My painting is about the light that falls on the trees in a field”.

When you have a blueprint or roadmap in mind before you start painting, there is no room for diversion. You must stick to your plan.

MASTER YOUR BRUSH

A very important aspect of oil painting is learning how to control your brush. Without good brush control and technique, your effectiveness as a painter is truly limited.

Make sure you have the best possible brushes you can afford. While it is possible to save money on paint and canvas, one should never work with cheap brushes. In my experience, cheaper brushes are simply not worth it. The biggest issue with cheap brushes is with the hairs falling off and becoming embedded in your painting. It is quite annoying.

One of the biggest mistakes artists make, myself included, is not reloading the paint brush enough. I am not sure if this is an act of laziness or fear of wasting paint. Whatever the reason may be, make sure you always have enough paint on your brush so that there is always a layer of paint between your brush and the canvas. Do not try and scrub the paint into the canvas. Paint your strokes and leave them be. Don’t over work your brushstrokes.

MASSING

One great way to get the main ideas of an oil painting down is with a technique called Massing. Massing is about seeing your subject as a whole and not concentrating on all of the fine details.

For instance, lets say you subject is a pineapple. Instead of trying to get down all the various textures and details on your pineapple, think in terms of “planes” of light and shadow.

Add in those planes first and then later on you can put in all of your finer details.

COLOR

Nothing in my opinion, can confuse a painter more, then working with color. I know one of my weaknesses in the beginning was working with too many colors in the same painting which resulted in a muddy nightmare.

I never really took the time to understand how colors interact with one another.

Here are some great tips to keep in mind while working with color in your paintings:

- If you add white to another color, it will make that color cooler and more opaque.

- Instead of adding white to a color to make it brighter, try adding more color instead.

- Don’t be afraid to use black. Many teachers recommend staying away from black, but I beg to differ. Did you know you can get some very nice greens by mixing ivory black with certain blues and yellows?

Artist Spotlite - Interview With Karin Wells

I love the dignity and grand style of classical realism. My work reflects the deep influence of the Old Masters in both method, style and use of light.

THE INTERVIEW

Q - What medium or mediums do you work with?

A - I enjoy working with traditional oil paint on linen canvas. The Old Masters take my breath away and when I look at what they have done with this traditional medium, it gives me endless inspiration to learn more.

Q - How long have you been an artist? How did you get started?

A - I guess that there are two answers. First – the short one: I was probably born with the heart and soul of an artist. It has always been what I have wanted…whether I knew it or not.

Secondly, the long answer is a newspaper article by Joni Hullinghorst, reprinted from the Keene Sentinel on 10/17/03 below:

Challenging the odds: Wells settles the ‘nature vs. nurture’ debate “What do you expect? She’s an artist.”

Those were the words Karin Wells’ parents used to dismiss the annual hand-drawn Christmas card from a mentally ill neighbor.

“I never wanted to be an artist,” says Wells, “because in my mind that would have been like wanting to be a streetwalker.”

It’s hard to imagine that a person whose background was otherwise devoid of art could create the extraordinary portraits and landscapes that come out of her Peterborough studio. Her father was a no-nonsense engineer and her mother was a teacher who, when Wells finally ended up in art school, told everyone that her daughter was in secretarial school.

Still, she drew constantly. She disliked school, so she used for her textbooks as drawing paper. “I wrecked many school books,” she confesses.

After high school, Wells tried nursing school but dropped out and ended up drifting from job to job in Rockport, Massachusetts. For fun she would sit on the end of Bearskin Neck and draw tourists on a tablet of writing paper. To her surprise, the tourists happily paid $5 for what she considered mere doodles.

Those $5 doodles earned the enmity of another artist trying to sell legitimate charcoal portraits for $20. Though she doesn’t know for sure, she suspects he reported her. However it happened, one day a cop grabbed her and read her the riot act for working on public property without a license.

“You artists are all alike!” she remembers him yelling at her.

It should have been a traumatic event. Instead it was a spiritual awakening.

“He called me an artist,” she says. “It was like a light bulb went off in my head.”

So when the angry cop dragged the euphoric young artist into the police station, Wells happily paid her fine—weren’t her pockets stuffed with money she’d earned as an artist?—and immediately got on a train for Boston to enroll in art school.

The light bulb may have gone off, but it didn’t illuminate much. It was September. Schools had already started, yet it never occurred to Wells that she might have a problem enrolling late, much less getting accepted at schools where people applied a year in advance. She called the MFA first. They laughed and hung up. Undaunted, she called the New England School of Art and Design.

“The secretary was at lunch,” she says, “so Mr. Cox, who ran the school, happened to answer the phone.”

Instead of laughing and hanging up on the fledgling artist, Cox invited her to the school. Naturally, he wanted to see her portfolio; naturally, Wells had no idea what a portfolio was. He told her there was an entrance exam composed of exercises, such as drawing a cereal box in perspective. Safely cushioned by her cocoon of naïveté, Wells told Cox she would be back in an hour. She went to a coffee shop and completed the entrance exam on her writing tablet. An hour later, she was back on Cox’s doorstep.

“It gets really weird here,” Wells says. “Someone had just dropped out, and by the time I got back, Mr. Cox and arranged a place for me to live, a part time job, and a partial scholarship.”

So there she was, still oblivious to the miracle she had achieved but happily enrolled in a commercial art school, despite the fact that she’d never been in a museum in her life (she burst into tears during her first visit to the MFA) and had no idea of basics, such as the fact that paint came in tubes.

One benefit of her serendipitous good fortune was the focus of a commercial art school on drawing.

“This was the era of abstract impressionism,” she says of the sixties, when the only palatable realism was an Andy Warhol soup can. “Schools like the MFA focused on art rather than craft, but I had to learn to draw. I had life drawing three hours a day, five days a week, for three years.”

Though she is a realist who counts Titian, Vermeer, Rubens and Van Dyke among her teachers, no one appreciates abstraction more than Wells. “Underlying all good art is good abstraction,” she says. “Composition starts with a good abstraction. Then you sneak into the painting and add the realism, then sneak out again.”

She graduated with honors in 1965 and went right to work as a commercial artist. She worked steadily for five or six years, then got married and had two children. Once her children were in school, Wells found a career working with brain-injured children. She didn’t think twice about abandoning her art career, didn’t fret over the loss of it for the next twenty years. Then she found herself a single parent and knew she wanted to make a living from her brush, but she had been out of commercial art for so long that she couldn’t get work. So she became a sign painter.

“I painted a truck for a friend,” she says. “It was beautiful, but I didn’t know anything about the proper paints, so when he went to pressure wash his truck, the paint washed off.”

Back to school, this time to the Butera School of Art. She finished the two-year program in less than a year and, in 1986, again graduated with honors.

“I was a sign painter’s sign painter,” she says. “They knew I could draw, so they’d subcontract to me for, say, a four-foot cheeseburger on the side of a roach coach, and they’d do the lettering.”

She met her current husband, Peter, a retired architect. But while her personal life blossomed, her professional life was failing. A recession hurt her sign-painting career, and she found no work at all after she and Peter moved to Peterborough in 1990.

Wells had always loved painting portraits; as a sign painter, she had once painted a used car dealer’s face on a blimp. She told Peter she wanted to try to make a living, estimating it would probably take her two years to get established.

In October 1992, Wells took a weekend portrait workshop at the Sharon Art Center. That workshop marked the first time in her life Wells had ever sat down to paint on a canvas. Aside from signs, she hadn’t painted or drawn in twenty years.

“I couldn’t believe what I saw coming off the end of my brush,” she says.

She continued studying with Numael Pulido, whom Wells considers the greatest painter she’s ever met, at the New England School of Classical Painting in Greenfield. Despite all the training, she still wasn’t confident enough to undertake commissions. Then an artist friend from Belgium arrived on her doorstep with a plea for Wells to help her finish 22 paintings she had committed to a European exhibition.

More serendipity: Flying back to Europe after a painting frenzy, Wells’ friend happened to be on the same plane as Susan Gibbs. For years Gibbs had been looking for someone to paint a portrait of her son. As soon as she saw Wells’ work, she knew she had found her painter. No matter how much Wells resisted, Gibbs insisted. And so six-year-old Grayson Gibbs became the first formal oil portrait she painted entirely on her own.

“Susan cried and cried the first time she saw it,” Wells says. “I thought she hated it.”

On the contrary, Gibbs was so moved that the single mother quit her job, moved to Atlanta, and opened the Twinhouse Gallery. About six months ago, Wells began painting landscapes? (something she’d avoided due to an eye problem that limits her depth perception), which Gibbs sells in her Atlanta gallery. Grayson’s portrait also won the first in a long line of awards: a first prize in the 1997 American Society of Portrait Artists Portrait Arts Festival Competition in Montgomery, Alabama, where she also won Best Portfolio, and a special recognition award in the 1998 International Juried Portraits Only Competition sponsored by the Washington (DC) Society of Portrait Artists.

Today Wells is a member of the American Society of Portrait Artists, Portrait Society of America, the Portrait Society of Atlanta, and the Copley Society of Boston. Her portraits glow, not only from her jewel-like technique, but with the personality of her subjects and the personal touches she includes. In “Mother & Daughter,” for example, Wells took down the curtains in the living and dining rooms and incorporated them as drapery in the painting. The daughter is barefoot because the mother, who was in her forties when she learned she was pregnant, and for reasons of health at that time, was mistakenly encouraged to not go through with this pregnancy. Then the mother saw one very clear, tiny foot in a sonogram. How, she wondered, could anything be wrong with a little girl who had such a perfect foot?

“Mother & Daughter“ won the Richard and Mary Schroeder Portrait Award from the Copley Society of Boston in 2002. Her portrait of Zabie Nields won first place in the Portrait Society of America’s 1999 competition, and she won the People’s Choice Award during the 1997 Regional Jurors’ Choice Competition at the Thorne-Sagendorph. It’s an impressive record for someone who only started painting portraits eleven years ago.

“I love what I do,” Wells says. “I don’t just like it, I love it, I love it, I love it.”

It shows.

Q - Do you have any formal training or are you self-taught?

A - I had the great good fortune to study with Numael Pulido. And I copied the paintings of the Old Masters - they were and still are my greatest teachers.

Q - Do you have any favorite art supplies that you would like to recommend?

A - As a matter of fact, I do indeed have some favorites listed in detail on my blog:

Art Supplies I Love to Use

I list some of my studio essentials that I get from the local hardware store and even my kitchen. Also my Hughes Easel and my amazingly comfy Turtlewood Palette are all listed and pictured with details.

I add items to this section as I think of them.

You can also visit my studio, take a virtual tour and see what I’m using:

Studio Tour

Q - Do you work with any specific styles or subject matter?

A - As to style, I am heavily influenced by the Old Masters and you can see this in my work, my palette and the traditional materials I like to use.

As to subject matter, I am best known as a portrait painter. I also paint still life and sometimes landscapes.

I am always surprised that people do not know how beautiful they are. When I paint a portrait, I really work to show the beauty, personality and character or each person using all the tools I have – lighting, costume & props.

In still life, I like to portray the incredible beauty in simple objects.

I think of myself as a “Classical Idealist” rather than a “Classical Realist.”

Q - Can you recommend any books, videos or other resources that will help new artists?

A - I have a lot of books – most are the collections of the paintings and drawings of the Old Masters. I tend to not collect “How to paint books…” unless they are by someone whose work I greatly admire.

About Painting: “There is more written than is known on this subject (if you get my drift here)/” - And you can quote me on this.

Study the work you love – copy the masterworks you love - and you will be learning your lessons from the best of the best.

I learned most of what I know by copying the paintings by Vermeer. All of his lessons are hiding in plain sight – just waiting to be learned.

Most of us artists learn by seeing and doing – not reading. So if you want to get good - fast - copy and learn. Even the Old Masters copied and learned from each other!

Q - How do you get ideas to create a piece? What inspires you?

A - Hmmmm. I have more paintings in me than I have time to paint them. I carry a sketchbook or at least a pad of paper and scribble ideas.

I mostly work by commission. I like the challenge of having severe constraints, tight deadlines and all of the thorny issues of other people’s expectations. Other than the sometimes unpleasant headaches associated with this manner of working, it challenges me and forces me to find really creative solutions.

Faced with a blank canvas and the “what shall I paint today” attitude is not good for me. I like limitations.

Q - Are there any artists that have influenced you and why?

A - Vermeer. His work delights my eye, makes my heart pound and fairly takes my breath away.

Q - Do you have a website you would like to share?

Portrait Gallery: http://www.KarinWells.com

Landscape Gallery: http://www.Oilpnt.com

My Blog: http://www.KarinWells.blogspot.com

My blog is the most fun for me. Watching paint dry is so lonely and blogging is such a fun way to exercise that little used left brain of mine.

Q - Finally, do you have any last words of advice for beginner artists?

A - If you want someone to teach you how to paint – only sign up with a teacher whose work you love and admire…and who knows more than you do.

I live in rural New Hampshire and there aren’t a lot of teachers around here. So in order to learn to paint the way I wanted to, I spent two solid years copying the paintings of the Old Masters out of books. When I say two years – I mean it. I put in 40-60 hours per week, 52 weeks per year. I logged in some heavy-duty easel time.

My hairdresser told me that she needed to put in 1500 hours just to get a license to wash my hair. It is funny but I meet an awful lot of artists who aren’t willing to put in this kind of time but somehow expect a good result.

I think hard work over a long time counts more than talent, i.e., perspiration v. inspiration.

Being a full time professional artist is hard work – but I cannot think of any other work I’d rather do.

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Grab a cup of virtual coffee and stop by my Painting Studio to see what’s happening. Also come visit my Portrait & Landscape Galleries.

Oil Painting Demonstration - Painting Horses in Landscape with Figures

“Painting Horses in Landscape with Figures”

By Elin Pendleton

This painting lesson will show you how I move from an original idea, through the entire process as I paint an equine subject in my studio.

The reference photographs:

I liked the sitting position of the groom, but the light and shadow pattern on the standing figure just made me ache to paint him!

First off, I get an idea. Sometimes that comes from a photograph as this piece did, sometimes it comes as an idea in my head. For this painting I took these photographs at a horse event near San Juan Capistrano in the summertime of 2002.

And another thing about the standing figure–he was ‘way too large against the horse’s height. This was no jumping pony, but a huge warmblood. Photography will do that to a subject, and one must always be mindful of the relationships of scale.

The format required a 2:3 ratio (such as a 24 x 36 canvas) but that would be too large to ship easily to shows, so I took the 2:3 ratio down to 16 x 24…and I happen to have two frames already made up in this odd size! Next was to staple a piece of linen canvas to a board and mark out the rectangle. Usually I paint over the entire surface with a wash of oil thinned down, to prevent “holidays” (bits of canvas showing through) but just forgot. After the piece is done, I’ll trim it down and mount it on a pre-cut and primed board–I use 1/4 inch birch plywood right now. At about $18 for a 4 x 8 foot sheet, this is reasonable–more so than stretcher bars!

The colors used for this painting are the usual palette of five colors and white. I use this limited palette on location, because I can get any color I need and am not hauling around a lot of tubes.

The colors are: alizarin crimson, sap green, ultramarine blue, cadmium red light and cadmium yellow light. That plus white equal my palette.

The planning stages:

Normally I don’t do this many little plans, but I wanted you to see how I think through a plan to the finished idea and then begin to paint.

The image above shows five little sketches from a 3 x 5 sketchbook. Sizes are small because one can think and execute a sketch quickly without too much detail. The first one (upper left) is the rectangle (always show the edges of your work so you can design WITHIN the space) and the original idea of the groom and horse grazing. The little ones around the perimeter are less than one inch wide, but tell me a great deal about placement and value issues.

Number 2 in the series is working through the movement of the design–strengthened by the supporting front legs of the horse, and the backward look of the groom. There’s an “X” starting to show up, which is the strong abstract composition of this piece. It’s about design.

Number 3 is sorting through the placement of the figures in the ground, and starting to worry about eye-level lines (aka horison lines) and also the issue of size of the space around the figures.

#4 solves that issue with the placement of tree shapes, and then the brainstorm of an idea of adding something for the groom to be looking at–a girl on a horse maybe?

Then I started looking at my other photos from that day (light was the same, and direction the same) and came up with two possibles for the reason he is looking over his shoulder. I decided that the gal with the pinto and her derrierre would be a great, humorous thing for him to look at! And the title came to me then, “To Each His Own”.

So the fifth sketch lays in the eye-level line (also called a horizon line) and the position of the horse and rider.

Getting started on the canvas:

I’m heading to the canvas, now. Here you see the first drawing laid in with just gestures. No details! That’s about all I do before starting.

Placement is so important for my work, but the connection between the objects, the statement of the story in the painting, and the major shapes to be dealt with are all I’m concerned with at this point.

You can see how important the eye-level line is, as it is low in this painting. However the horses are in scale to each other because if you’ll draw a line through the hocks of these guys, you’ll see they are both in the same plane. The viewer is about at the eye level of the groom’s backside, which was very intentional.

The painting begins with the first applications of color:

I always try to get the big shapes and the important story items laid in first. The horse and his big movement with that cooler, the groom’s head, and the horse and rider behind them.

You can also see how I sketched in the trees behind the figure and the horse, to compliment their placement and not compete with it. No trees yet, just the ouline to give me a “feel” for where they are going to be. These trees are bit players and will only provide a supporting role.

What’s important at this point is the movement of that LEANing horse grazing, that backward glance of the groom, and his mid stride position, and the horse and rider behind them.

I always start with thin darks, and linen canvas (this is primed with gesso) is just sumptuous with that thin paint! Such a feel…

The shadows under the figures are also made as a line, because this is part of the dark pattern of values that strengthens the layout.

Continuing:

Now it is time to start blocking in the middle values, and get this canvas covered, and start to pull some details into the central figures. I already see some need for changing some relationships of size, and this is easy to chisel out with the background paint making those changes… you’ll see in a while.

Here, you see I’ve blocked in the grass aound the horse’s front legs, and painted the blue color of the cooler as the underpainting for the highlights to come later. I mixed the color of the cooler that is in shadow, and painted it in, too. I added some sketchy details of what will be just above the eye-level line as well.

All this painting you see took about 15 mintues.

In the image above, you’ll see that I’ve moved from the grass up to the horse, spending about 20 minutes going from the large shapes I laid in first, to smaller shapes that define and show differences WITHIN those large shapes.

To explain further, the horse is made up of two major shapes–the dark reddish shape, which is a mixture of the alizerin and sap green, touched with cad red to warm it, and the blue cooler shape, made up of ultramarine blue and some of the alizerin on the lower side. Now my process is to go in and thickly lay on smaller shapes to give form to the horse and cooler. This is done with a minimum of fuss, and one brush mark to make the shapes. I put blue/white lighter shapes to define the folds of the cooler, purple/white shapes to define the top sides where the light goes through and bounces off the horse’s hide, and then took that cad red light and mixed it with some of the aliz. and blue to make the neck highlights and facial shapes of the horse.

I added purple white for the blaze, yet the canvas is still showing through on the nose, and on the back legs’ white area. On the near front leg, I used the background green to define the line of the leg and down to the hoof, which is just a grey mark with the brush and will need some further refining.

How do you keep from going to too much detail? My reply is to squint a lot, and stop looking for details. Squinting gives you a “hierarchy of edges” showing you which ones are important in your source material, and which ones you can toss out.

On the back rider, I also started to work on the shapes in the pinto, going from the darks of the brown parts, and laying in the light mid-values of the shadows on the horse.

Remember, I work generally from dark to light, laying in a dark abstract foundation to cement in the design of the piece. Everything is subordinate to that design, which is why (most) of my paintings are pleasant to look at and interesting to live with. I keep reiterating, it is all about design.

Detail of the horse’s cooler:

Here is a close up of the second layer of paint on the cooler.

If you recall that I said the horse was basically two shapes, you’ll then figure out that all that blue and blue-purple was done on top of those two shapes.

Look at the closeure of the cooler at the neck. See that one brush stroke that conveys the closing device? (Velcro) One brush mark. Decisive. I will do a little “edge losing” later on, but this is the “big picture ” of how those marks go down.

I feel strongly that my work is about more than the objects and their story (horse, groom, rider), but just as important is the amount and feel of the brushmarks. A “painterly” painting…

Covering the Canvas:

I quickly cover the canvas from top to bottom with the background. I put in the distant trees, keeping them both warm with some of the cadmium on the left, and blue-green elsewhere, and lighter on top of course! I use my fingers in places to blend the leaf shapes into the sky, which is a greyed mix of blue and white with the rest of the palette mess mixed in to keep the harmony going. I painted the trees first, then the sky, dipping and bouncing the brush back and forth between the two areas.

Note that near the gal getting on the horse, I made a far more interesting pattern of marks. Across the back, the rest of the trees are less contrasty, and less interesting. I want you, the viewer, to look at that lady getting on the horse, framed by the foreground horse and groom. If I made all those trees interesting to that level, you’d wander around… not good.

I also did some more work on the head, shoulder and cooler, front legs and hooves.

This shows how I made the background more interesting and started to seriously work on the distant pinto and rider.

The groom has some serious proportion problems as I didn’t plot his shapes and size relative to the rest of the painting, so I have to take out parts and fix the problem.

He was too long in the torso, so I just took my finger and pushed and lifted the excess paint and wiped it on a paper towel. Now I protect my hands with a barrier cream (Glove Cote, Invisible Glove–like hand lotion, but impermeable to solvents and pigment contamination. At your hardware store.)

Painting the rear end in place properly also allowed me to reshape some of his arm and shirt where it hits the pants. I also worked on his feet, and cropped his skull yet again.

Then I painted in more of his shirt, and gave him a teensy beer belly, using darker tones (always darkening with the alizerin crimson and sap green and/or the ultramarine).

I do change colors of things even when I use my own source material. If it makes the design better, it gets changed…

Ths is the finished painting.

Email Elin about this painting session here.
Order and find out information about Elin’s videos of horses here.

Be sure to check out Elin’s Lessons on Video and DVDs. Elin Pendleton’s instructional videos will show you how her positive attitude takes the”pain” out of “pain”ting!

Creative Catalyst - Art Instruction Videos

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These videos are extremely popular and well worth the small investment.

I highly recommend these videos to any beginner just starting out or to any experienced artist looking to sharpen their skills or learn different and exciting techniques.

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Learn Acrylic Painting - Painting Demo by Lorraine Vatcher

We are revisiting Lorraine Vatcher today with another beautiful acrylic painting demonstration. I do hope you enjoy. You can learn more about Lorraine by visiting her website as well as our one on one interview with her here.Lorraine is now offering art instruction classes for all who are interested. Please contact her for more details.

So many times I have heard people comment on the fact that they could always spot an oil painting because of the vibrancy of colours. These are comments as they are standing and looking at my paintings. When I tell them that these are painted in acrylics, they stand in awe. If there is no vibrancy in the colours, it is because the artist has done it that way. In my opinion, as long as they have not been muddied by over-mixing, the acrylic paint out of the tube has the same potential of striking colour as oil paint. This is a painting for medium to experienced painters, however, if you are a beginner, there is no better way to learn than to just jump in! Reflections of Pink and Green will require a good bit of time because you will have to build up the layers gradually. Each layer is fairly thin(a glaze) because the paint colour is mixed with a small bit of water to make it flow more evenly.If you would rather use flow medium, that is acceptable also. Each layer of glaze must dry before the next goes on. Much of the time, you will be working more than one area of the picture at a time because you will have to let areas dry before you put on another glaze. Have patience! It is worth the time to get this technique right.

Step 1Block in the background in shades of Payne’s Grey, Ultramarine Blue on the top two-thirds of the canvas and Burnt Umber mixed with Paynes’s Grey on the bottom two-thirds. Let this dry; it won’t take long. A

Step 2Draw the outline of the picture with chalk onto the background of the canvas. Chalk is very forgiving. You can draw and erase loads of times and as long as you don’t over-wet the surface, it will not hurt the painting underneath.

Step 3Paint Titanium White on the top petal and its reflection on the left side and paint the tulip on the right and its reflection of the tulip also with Titanium White.Then paint a layer of Permanent Rose onto these white areas. Start to colour in the form of the bottom petal and its reflection on the left( there is no white underneath right now).

Step 4As you continue to build up layers of paint, look at the form of the tulip and the reflections of the flower petals. Each petal has a highlight and shadow areas. In the shadows, blend in just a dab of Payne’s Grey. Then layer thin Permanent Rose paint on it keeping it smooth. Keep the brush strokes going in the directions that the lines of the petals follow naturally. Even the Payne’s Grey requires layering because it is partially transparent, as is Permanent Rose. The areas which will be the highlighted will have to be underpainted with Titanium White again.

Step 5Paint the ends of the loose petals with Titanium White first and then some Cadmium Yellow mixed with a hint of Sap Green. Do the same with the center bowl of the main tulip where the stamens will form. Keep glazing the petals in Permanent Rose. You will see as the process continues that the Titanium White will shine through all the glazes and you will be able to control your colour with the number of layers you use. While doing this, start laying in some Hooker’s Green on the area which will be the leaves.

Step 6When you feel that the colours you have used have acquired the richness you wish, it is time to glaze over the reflections with Payne’s Grey. Up until now you have painted the reflections with the same detail as the flower and loose petals. Glaze over the entire area below the actual leaves. Remember that the reflections will not be nearly as vivid as the actual flower and petals. If they were, they would command too much attention from the main subjects. After that layer dries, blend in another glaze although not as high as the first layer, and so on until the reflection gradually becomes darker as your sight pulls away from your subjects. Now you should show some depth in the lower section of the painting.

Step 7Paint in some horizontal lines of burnt umber mixed with a little Cadmium Yellow and Titanium White around the bottom of the vase and in between the lose petals and the flower. These lines will be the bands of sunshine on the surface of the wood and hitting the top single petal on the left, the tulip and the crystal vase.

Step 8Draw in the shapes for the crystal vase with chalk. It is simply a large, skinny X with a line going through from top to bottom, a water line, and a few arcs on the lower part of the vase.

Don’t panic at this time…It is not as hard to paint glass as you most people think!!!Step 9 Use Hooker’s Green, Sap Green, Burnt Umber, Yellow Ocher, Cadmium Yellow, and Titanium White to give shape and form to the stems. Do not fill in that area completely as one large shape. There will be long colours. Remember that glass will distort but cut crystal will distort more. Shapes will be cut off and seeming to start from nothing. So paint in some stems which will follow the normal ideas of being tubes(round in shape) and otherwise let the colours of stems follow the lines cut or molded into the glass.

Step 10Draw the outline of the vase and all the shapes inside the vase over the top of the chalk with a liner brush and very diluted Titanium White with a hint of Sap Green and a dotted line. Make it very light…you want it only for reference and to give an idea where the glass has variations of shapes. When you know it is dry, rub off the chalk. Now you have the shapes in front of you to continue.

Step 11Use Yellow Ocher with a hint of Cadmium Orange to bring up the colour of the stamens. The background will be darker with Hooker’s Green and Sap Green in toward the centre. Make certain you give the stamens a rounded look by highlighting with Titanium White and shading with a little Payne’s Grey diluted. After the shading and highlighting are done, glaze with diluted Yellow Ocher and Cadmium Orange mixed together.

Step 12In the background area of the inside of the vase(where there are no other real shapes) add a few colours surrounding the area. These will be Ultramarine Blue, Yellow Ocher, Permanent Rose, etc.. Do not make any real shapes, just a hint of colour here and there because glass always picks up the surrounding colours. Then it does not look like such a “clear” area. Do not cover all the original background colour. Continue to build up the colours of the stems, both inside and outside the vase. As well, since you are working with the greens, don’t forget the leaves of the tulip. These colours will eventually shine out of the background colour but because they were painted over the dark colour, the will not overpower the focal points in the painting. Highlight with Sap Green mixed with Cadmium Yellow and shadow with Hooker’s Green mixed with Cadmium Red. Save the pure Titanium White for the brightest light on the glass, on the left hand side. I put a sparkle on the side because that is where the light hit straight on. Although I used white on the tulip petals and on the leaves, I went over them with a small bit of Sap Green mixed with Titanium White so they would not compete with the brightness of the glass.

Step 14If you were to look directly and closely at a piece of Pinwheel crystal or any other piece of cut glass, you would be amazed at the kaleidoscope of colours that are reflecting off it. It will also splice the light into the colours of the rainbow if a strong light is shone directly through it. The lines, especially, of the crystal will pick up and reflect.. Look carefully at the painting. I have, no doubt, exaggerated the colours but I did not imagine them. It would be impossible to tell you every brush stroke I did here, however, try to duplicate by letting the colours that are in the stems, in the flowers and shades of the background follow the lines that are cut and formed in the glass. Much of this work is done with a liner brush, and there will be small dots of colours in random areas too. For the straight lines, use a liner brush and Titanium White mixed with just a hint of Sap Green, watered down so that it will be a very light streak on the glass.

Step 15In foreground, smudge some of the greens and yellows which were in the stems of the vase to form the reflections on the wooden surface. With Payne’s Grey and White mixed, use a round brush to put in the semi-rectangular forms directly under the vase.

“Reflections of Pink and Green” Acrylic, 16″x20″By Lorraine Vatcher

Congratulations if you did this painting; you do have lots of patience. If this is a new method for you, you will now know the satisfaction of learning something you will be able to apply to many of your future paintings.

This tutorial is copyright Lorraine Vatcher.