Tuscan Landscape – Acrylic Painting Tutorial By Julie Shoemaker

About Julie

I am a self taught artist who has been painting and interested in art all my life. My favorite medium is acrylic due to its versatility. One of my favorite things to do is teach painting to other people. I currently teach classes and we couldn’t have more fun if we tried. It’s just so gratifying to see the excitement on student’s faces when they see what they can accomplish with a little instruction and effort. When your ready to forget the theory and produce the art, visit http://www.IamPainting.org. Learn Painting Techniques and create your own remarkable portraits or landscapes.

Tuscan Landscape – Acrylic Painting Tutorial By Julie Shoemaker

Use whichever brush you feel comfortable with. I usually use a flat bristle brush for most of my work. And remember there is no right or wrong way to paint! If your painting doesn’t turn out like mine – then congratulations! You created a unique one of a kind painting.

Sky – First wet the sky area or top half of canvas with white gesso.

Then with a little yellow and a touch of orange added to the same brush, start at bottom of the sky area and work your way up. Use long horizontal strokes. Take the strokes right off the canvas while blending the yellows and orange into the white gesso as you work upward. Gently blend right up towards the top of canvas. Wipe the brush off with a paper towel.

Now add a touch of ultramarine blue and purple to the brush and start at the top of the canvas and work your way downward in the same fashion as you did the yellows.

The bottom part of the painting is under painted with any earth tone colors. Nothing fancy here!

Use sky colors (a mixture of white blue and purple) and paint in furthest hills – mountains. Notice how these hills show very little detail and are very soft looking.

Darken the mountain (sky) color and paint in next layer of hills. You want to make sure that you let some of the previous mountains show. Keep the tops interesting with some variations.

Add some earth tone to the very distant hills. You can use browns, tan, etc. Keep it dull though. Just add white to dull paint color. These are in the center of painting.

Add some hunter green and start dabbing or scrubbing in the bushes. This should be a dull green.

Landscapes typically get darker and more vivid as you work forward.

Lay in the foreground hills. (you will do the one the left first) Make this one lighter to look like sunlight is hitting it.

To do this start on the left of the painting and pull the paint brush into the center of the painting. Notice the slope of this hill. If you want you could add some rows of green for a field of crops look. (see next picture)

Now darken the mixture and add the hill on the right. Darken it with browns or tans. Too much green will make your picture look unnatural. This hill will be painted the same way but starting on the right side of the painting pulling the paint into the painting and overlapping the previous hill. Continue painting until the entire canvas is covered.

Don’t over blend! Let variations of color show.

Now start adding the tall trees.
If you are using a flat bristle brush, hold it on the side and dab on the paint in the shape of the tree.

In the background they will be duller – or lighter. The ones in the foreground are hunter green. Add purple to the paint to darken the side that will be in shadow.

Add some tree shadows to the ground.

Add one more foreground hill in the very front. The more layers – the more depth your painting will have

Add touches of reds or oranges for flowers, and some tiny shadows if you want to. Highlight the trees. (use yellow or light green and dab in brightness on the sun side of the trees)

You could easily be finished with your painting now, and let the dramatic tall tree shadows be the focus.

Or…Add some houses. Just draw in simple house shapes paint in the shapes with “dirty white “ and red for roofs. For shadows on the house, darken the roof color under the eaves. Dry brush in some white for highlights on the roof. Add a touch of orange for lights in the houses.

Add birds – Birds are just little v’s – Practice first and keep then dainty! and sign your painting….

Acrylic Painting Demonstration by Faith Puleston

About Faith

I was born and raised in Wales UK and studied at the Royal Academy of Music, London. I came to Germany to pursue an operatic career as a mezzo soprano and sang over 100 opera roles, including title roles such as Carmen, Joan of Arc and Oktavian in Der Rosenkavalier. Other professional occupations have include voice teacher, chorus director, language teacher and writer.

I have been writing stories plays and poetry, making music and painting for as long as I can remember. Most of my early poetry has been lost. Serious dedication to painting followed from the year 2000 to fill in the spiritual vacuum left from no longer working in the theatre. The empty canvas is like a stage. It’s up to the performer to give it life and light!

Paintings can be seen on my website at http://www.faithpuleston.net as well as numerous other online venues such as my blogs: http://faithart2010.blogspot.com , http://faithpuleston.blogspot.com/ (the main one) and http://fapj.blogspot.com/ (extra for writing).. Enjoy your visits to my online premises, but please remember that all my output is protected by copyright.

“Geometrics” painted in acrylics over collage in August 2009

This is my first attempt at recording how a painting came to life! It wasn’t really difficult, but by next week l might have forgotten! I have lots of paintings which I must have painted in some kind of trance state since do not remember what I did and when! No I wasn’t drugged or drunk! Another omission means that I do not always know exactly when I painted something or how long it took, but mainly because I paint a lot in oils and the drying processes are fairly long. This painting was done in 5 days between 19th and 23rd August. I don’t claim either that this is a guide to abstract painting or that this painting is a work of art! But it was fun and someone might like to read about the “journey”.

After being consigned to recycling and given a good scouring, the canvas (60×80cm) was first painted all over with a thin lemon wash (no photo).

A sheet of tissue paper was painted with the three main colours chosen for the painting: lemon yellow (primary), bordeaux red (secondary) and olive green (tertiary) , then the paper was cut freely into squares and other geometric forms. The pieces of coloured paper were stuck onto the canvas. Since canvas is flexible, you can’t stick too much heavy stuff on it. Cement will eventually crumble! A thin wash of bordeaux and green was added. Sorry I forgot to switch the flash off. It was too late to rephotograph by the time I realized that.

The original three colours were used to bring out some of the design elements.

The shading was modified to provide more contrast and further design elements were added. A light red was used to lighten some of the red areas .

Details were added to various elements.

Black was introduced to give more contrasts, unify the design and unite some of the elements. Some of the elements were tidied up.

Yet another new element was added (can you spot it below?) and adjustments made using all the colours used previously. White was not used in this painting.

Finally, I anchored the floating objects by adding spidery black lines touching the edges. I painted round the edges in very dark Bordeaux and corrected one or two passive areas on the perimeter of the painting. I did not use white in this painting. I think it’s finished now!

After more consideration I made a few more alterations to the painting, mainly smoothing out some of the surfaces. The absolutely final version is shown below! Well, maybe……….

Landscape painting on Location on the Blue Ridge Parkway with Roger Bansemer

Acrylic landscape painting demonstration of a mountain scene on the Blue Ridge Parkway, North Carolina with artist Roger Bansemer. In this wonderful video, artist Roger Bansemer demonstrates his techniques for painting outdoors, plein air style, using acrylic paint.

A Direct Approach to Acrylic Painting by Greg Biolchini

Meet the Artist :

From an early age, Greg has worked to hone his craft, learning from past masters and inventing his own techniques and styles. In the process, he has built a body of work and list of awards that any painter would be proud to call his own.

With 30 solo and many juried group exhibitions to his credit, Greg Biolchini’s list of shows is testament to his solid local and growing national reputation. After winning his third national award at the National Arts Club in New York City, Greg was awarded Master Pastelist status by the Pastel Society of America. This, combined with his growing list of national honors and awards has helped further his reputation.

Greg enjoys tremendous popularity as a teacher. His workshops and demonstrations are well attended and consistently rated by attendees as superb.

Greg lives and works in Southwest Florida, with studio and teaching space on the Caloosahatchee River in North Fort Myers. He holds ongoing workshops in pastel, oil, and portraiture in his teaching studio and for art groups throughout Florida and the US (see workshop schedule).

Visit Greg’s Site:

http://www.biolchini.com/

A Direct Approach to Acrylic Painting by Greg Biolchini

Originally published by Daniel Smith Art Supply Co.

“For years I stayed away from acrylics, thinking they were certainly not a medium for a representational realist painter such as myself. They dried too fast, making it impossible for serious paint manipulation. I am very glad my curiosity finally got the best of me and I began to experiment with this wonderful, timesaving, uncomplicated medium.”

To begin, I like to prepare my own canvas. I start with a medium-textured canvas that I stretch myself on heavy-duty professional stretcher bars. I give the canvas three or four good coats of acrylic gesso, sanding between coats.

Working from my own photographs, I started my Great Blue Heron painting by drawing a center of interest with soft willow vine charcoal. Using a big stick of soft charcoal, I drew the lily pads and grass, quickly blocking in the darks and lights. The soft charcoal was well-suited for this spontaneous process—all I had to do to make changes was wipe away the charcoal with a paper towel.

Figure 1: Center of interest is sketched in for placement in the picture plane.

Figure 2: Rough preliminary charcoal drawing.

At this stage, I am composing the preliminary drawing directly from my photographic references onto the canvas. Now, using hog bristle brushes, I removed some of the charcoal to produce the grasses in the background. For removing very dark areas of charcoal, I used erasers such as a kneaded eraser and magic rub. I did not use my fingers to remove or spread the charcoal. Fingers leave oils from your skin on the canvas, making it difficult to further manipulate the charcoal. Once I was satisfied with my charcoal drawing, I sprayed it with clear acrylic fixative. Figure 1 shows my painting at this point of completion.

Next, I began blocking in warm and cool acrylic washes over my charcoal drawing. I thinned the acrylics with water, making them transparent and allowing the charcoal drawing to show through. I used cobalt and phthalo blue for the cool, blue washes, and hansa yellow medium and deep for the warm washes. The yellows mixed with a little permanent red became orange.

Figure 3: Transparent acrylic wash over charcoal drawing.

I applied the acrylic glazes quickly with a large flat brush made especially for acrylics. I did my color mixing and thinning in a Stay-wet palette. The Stay-wet Palette was indispensable because, as the name implies, it keeps my acrylic mixes wet and workable for a very long time. For this transparent wash stage, I was able to determine where the cool and warm, darks and lights should be in my painting, based on my reference photography and a little imagination. Figure 2 shows the painting at this stage.

This acrylic wash over a rough charcoal drawing is an easy process compared to doing several separate preliminary drawings. At this early stage of my painting, I had already gotten a pretty good idea of what my finished painting would look like.

At this point, I thickened my paint, using less water than in the previous stage, and allowed it to become more opaque. I added only three additional colors to my palette: titanium white, quinacridone magenta, and violet. I used the magenta mostly in the lily pads. I began to use softer smaller brushes, the type called flats—numbers 6, 4, and 2—on the more detailed areas throughout my painting, see Figure 4.

Figure 4: Near-completion with opaque acrylic paint.

Figure 5: More details are added to the bird and highlights and shadows are more developed. Light is given a more luminous, natural feel.

A note about brushes: I always do better using a brush that is a bit bigger than would seem necessary to do the job. I have found the slightly larger brushes do a better job and are a bit faster. I use the very smallest brushes only after trying and failing with a slightly larger brush. I used the tapered edge of high quality responsive synthetic flats for the smaller, more detailed areas in this painting. I want to stress that I used the softer synthetic flats only for the finest details, and only after first blocking everything in with the larger slightly stiffer nylon brushes.

Figure 6: Lighter-colored plants and flowers are added to improve the overall composition and move the viewers eye through the painting.

Standing back and looking at the painting, I decided the background was a bit too busy and needed some additional elements to lead the viewer’s eye from place to place. I decided to add white lily flowers. The lily flowers were in some of my reference photographs but I hadn’t been sure I needed them until now. Working in the same fashion I had done for the rest of the painting, I blocked in the big, bold strokes using a slightly stiffer, larger, and more responsive brush. I then painted back over these big strokes with my slightly softer smaller brushes, for the detail. Notice that I also worked over the entire painting, adding touches of almost pure white accents to areas such as the bird and the flowers, and almost pure mars black, especially to the bird. I saved most of my darkest darks and my lightest lights for near the end of the painting. Almost like the final seasoning on food, these strong contrasting accents directed the viewer’s eye to areas of interest throughout my painting.

With these final accents, I brought this painting to completion, see Figure 4. The last step was to varnish it immediately with several coats of gloss acrylic medium.

Figure 7: Finished Great Blue Heron acrylic painting, 38″ x 53″.

I am very happy to say this preliminary drawing method done directly onto my canvas was much faster and more satisfying than having to first do a series of rough drawings to develop my composition. I have found that using transparent acrylic washes over a fixed charcoal drawing enabled me to establish my warm and cool values quickly and early on in my painting process, allowing the finishing stages of my painting to progress smoothly and quickly.

All acrylic brands and brushes are compatible with each other.

Interactive Artist Acrylic Demo

Interactive Artist Acrylic Demo

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