Flowers and more flowers! That has been my subject for as long as I can remember but my medium and style has changed over time. For many years, I loved painting in watercolor because of the easy flow of the paint and the effects of layering color. The transparency of each layer was like looking through stained glass. For me, this is so beautiful. Within the last five years, I’ve switched to acrylics and found they can be just as transparent when you use professional quality brands, like Golden. I didn’t realize that acrylic paint came in many variations of transparencies. If you look at a tube of artist quality paints, you will see a little square printed on the front. There is a solid box, a...
Thumbnail sketches are quick little drawings that help generate ideas. They are not meant to be perfectly drawn but to simply get the ideas out of your head and onto paper. These sketches should be small, gestural and general. During this process, you’re able to relax and focus on composition, deciding what to put in and what to take out. Oftentimes, when I’m trying to come up with a new painting, I will always draw out small compositions in my sketchbook. Each little drawing will have similar elements but parts placed in different areas in the picture plane, trying to create a strong arrangement. Besides using my sketchbook, I’ll also draw on my iPad using the app Procreate. Here...
Five Tips for Acrylic Painters I have always loved watercolors but twenty years ago I switched to acrylics and have learned so much about the medium since then. So, here are five tips about acrylics that I wish I had known from the very beginning. Tip 1: Acrylic paint will dry darker, the opposite of watercolor It took me a long time to figure this one out. I would get the perfect color mixture on the palette and then later the color dried way too dark in the painting. It was frustrating because then I had to add more white on top and then the painting appeared chalky or flat looking. So I took my watercolor technique of...
Avoid Painting the Same Flower Over and Over When you're painting flowers, remember to create them in different sizes, shapes and values. It is much more interesting visually and it's also more realistic looking. Our left brain sometimes wants to take over and starts telling us that the least amount of information is "good enough." For example, when I began my exploration of painting more loosely, I would find these quick tutorials on YouTube on painting roses. After attempting to create my own, all the roses appeared to be shaped like cinnamon buns where they were all facing forward, the same size and shape. Very boring stuff and very unrealistic. If you want to paint more realistic flowers remember the following tips....
