Well, here is a free video I made of how to set up your acrylic paint palette.
I use a Masterson paint box available wherever art supplies are sold for under $30 I believe. Make sure it comes with a sponge and you'll need to buy palette paper the same size.
Don't get me wrong, these aren't perfect paintings, but the practice was good. Here's how I know. Any practice should include working on something you need to improve on.
I always work on perspective and in getting the highlights in the right places.
On this painting I worked on the highlights on the trees and in the grass.
I changed the roof several times and the shading on it.
I also like to practice on painting rocks and trees. So I added both to this practice session.
I am pleased with the mountains and the far away trees , but I will be working on the foreground rocks and the grass in the left foreground and just beyond is not what I want, so I'll also be working there.
I had to meet a contactor at the gallery this morning so I had some time while he was working to work on the areas I was not satisfied with. You can see the difference in the foreground and midground rocks and I took out some grass and added other grass.
I am now satisfied with this practice session.
Are there things I wish looked better.
Absolutely!
But I improved on my rocks which is one of the things I love to paint and compositionally, I am happy with this effort.
These are painted on 12" x 16" canvas paper. I like the canvas paper because I don't feel like I'm wasting a stretched canvas for my practice, it is cheaper than a canvas or masonite support and it has some very good tooth to it. (The feel of the weave in the canvas). It also is very easy to store without taking up much room.
It's important to concentrate on the areas you don't think you've nailed and work on them.
It will take time and you will improve, after some frustration. For practice, don't rush, stop, stand back and look at how it's coming together and analyze why you don't like something and work on that particular part of the piece. You will feel success, even if for just a small part of a painting, and you will want to move ahead for more practice. Artists don't get good immediately. Many have tremendous talent, but they still must work on skills to improve their art. They improve as they study their work, the work of others, look deeply at lots of art, analyzing it as you go. Why do I like it? How did the artist achieve it? Why is his perspective so great and mine is off? What do I need to improve on my perspective, shading, highlighting, color mixing, brush strokes and then go and work on those parts of your work. As you work on the same thing repeatedly photograph it as you go so you can see the difference and the improvement. Never give up. All these things are what make your practice perfect.
Having perfect practice implies that the result will be perfect, but if you learn from your practice and move your work forward, you just had perfect practice.
and I think you can paint it also. I was going to teach it as a class, but I thought I'd give this a try.
I'm going to show you how I did it for free,
and then if you complete one, I'd like you to email me a photo of your finished piece to slgraves6@gmail.com and put tree limb photo in the subject box so I can show it on my blog.
I used acrylic paints on a 16" x 20" stretched canvas.
I used, the primary colors, red, blue, yellow, white and brown. I also threw in a little teal in the sky and a little dioxazine purple in the shading.
Brushes I used were bristle #12, 8, 4, Synthetic flats #12, 8, 4 and a round #4 and a script liner.
You can cut down on the brushes in the mid range sizes, but you definitely need the largest and the smallest sizes.
I did the entire background first and I used ultramarine blue, light teal and white and I started at the top with the darkest and worked to the lightest on the bottom. Work your strokes back and forth to get the paint on the canvas and then using strokes in the form of a large X to blend them.
Here is a video showing you step by step how I did it.
As you work on the branches, realize that this will take time and you will need to back up from your easel periodically to actually see how it's looking. Remember a painting is meant to be viewed at about six feet away, so you need to back up to see what you have and what you need to do.
When making shadow paint, I had three colors of brown for the tree I achieved by adding white to my brown and then adding more white to get the lightest colors. I added purple or red to the darkest color for the shading and yellow and a little white to the lightest and mid tones for the highlight colors.
Things to check are:
are the highlights coming from the same light source in the same direction.
are the shadows and shading also coming from the same direction.
Can you tell which branch is in front
Are the branches furthest away lighter with less definition
Are the branches closest to you darker in color with more definition and detail.
The birds should be facing all different directions. The birds are made with a script liner brush and one wing is very skinny and the other wing is a little fatter. This is achieved with pressure on the brush and is almost made like a check mark, and then adding a very small angled stroke to form the body. The wings being different sizes gives them more realism and life like. I used the darkest tree color and added a touch of purple to the paint to make this black.
