One Approach to Developing an Acrylic Painting - a progressive series

It been quite a while since I posted a progressive series on the development of an acrylic painting.

The reference is a photo I have used to create three smaller paintings in the past few years. I thought I would take a different approach and attempt a larger piece - 30x36.

 I chose to "flip" the image placing the open sky on the left. A quick placement of the larger shapes below.

I flipped and cropped the photo. Initial sketch of large shapes was done using a Montana acrylic pen black. 

Golden Liquid Quin Violet and gloss medium brushed on using wide Liquatex brush and scraped off in light areas using large rubber colour shaper. Creates a bit of a value plan in the under painting.

Redefined the large shapes using a Montana pen grey. Then wiped on Golden Liquid Magenta with water and paper towel to dampen down the light pen lines and add colour to them - see below. 

Laying in the darks - rocks, trees - pthalo blue grayed with raw umber at variable values. Tree limbs pthalo blue and iron oxide black for dark under painting. 

Adding colour and shaping to trees

T square to draw the horizon (water) line. You can also see where I picked out some of the blue on the rocks using the rubber shaper to create variation. 

Water blocked in 

Placed distant tree line and hills. Beginning to shape rocks using the lighter and warmer grass colours. Added dark values and warm reds to the tree limbs. 

Shaped trees and branches outline with high key grayed greens and blues of sky. 

See above and below the use of a mid sized rubber shaper that was used to lift off areas of the blue to expose the under painting and create variation - light/dark, warm/cool. Also placed spots of the yellow grass then used the shaper to pull out and shape impression of grasses.

More definition of grasses, tree limbs, add branches to the left side and create highlights on the rocks. Intense lighting of the studio pushes the photo. Added some spots of warm to the sky and water. 

Been an intense couple of hours. Time for coffee, get the painting off the easel and take a look at it thoughtfully for critique. 

Under cool light of a dark dull day

Warm it a bit with an incandescent light.  And, yes, that's what our living room looks like most days. 

Framed. 

Now the hard part. Consider it for a few days under different lighting conditions and decide what it needs  to reach a finish. 

New Christmas Selection

Its been a month since my last post.  Cathy and I have been in Ontario having an early Christmas with our families . Sure glad we did - we missed all the difficult weather.

Since my return I have been busy making gallery  "replacement" paintings for those that have not found a home.

So I don't have anything new to offer . I just wanted to make contact before the year's end and to share a few of my  recent acrylic paintings and to wish you and your families all the best that this season brings.

And, of course, happy painting in the New Year.

And all the best from Cathy and Santa