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BREAKING NEWSAcrylic Adventures
for Watercolor Artists
Transparent to Opaque by Susan G.
One of the advantages of acrylic paint is the range of opacity from transparent to opaque. In order to explore these options, why not do a painting exercise?
Prepare your paper. Saturate a piece of watercolor paper from bottom to top. (Bottom to top, working with lots of water on a big brush from left to right, eliminates the possibility of a drip of water running down the paper from the top, causing a water streak mark.)
Once the water has soaked in, choose a bright, transparent color and apply it on the entire paper. Use this as your underpainting.
From this glowing beginning, paint your composition in a watercolor technique. Use your acrylics and begin to build your painting just as you would with a watercolor. You might even try building the painting until it has lots of darks, more than if you were doing a watercolor. The underglow will unify the painting.
Now the acrylic advantage. Certain light acrylic pigments such as whites and Naples Yellow have enough opacity to provide coverage of what lies beneath it, even when mixed with other colors. This means you can mix beautiful opaque colors and apply them on top of the previously laid down transparents. Now you are truly sculpting out your composition, working light to dark, dark to light, back and forth. Now you are truly taking charge of your acrylics.
St. Andrews Garden Memory,
by Susan Giannantonio
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Tips & Techniques page 2A forum for painting ideas. Send your tips to rbiter@maloneyarts.com marked WAS-H Tips. One image per email.
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Marsha Harris Solomon gives
Beginner-Introduction to Watercolor
Magnolia, by Marsha Harris Solomon
'Sometimes a wet-in-wet underpainting is just the thing
to pull a painting together.
I made a wash of Winsor red, Winsor yellow, and cobalt blue, painted together while wet, and let the colors run. In places they blend, and in other places they maintain integrity. After the basic wash was dry, I worked in a drawing from some magnolia trees in my neighborhood and then painted it against a warm pinkish brick wall for contrast. The original wash shows through and helps to unify the painting, as well as giving it warmth.'
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Azaleas of April, by Barbara Jeffery Clay
Analogous Colors
Used to create form or values in a painting
Barbara Jeffery Clay, AWS, NWS, SWS and TWS
The color wheel to the left shows the colors that are next to each other, these are called analogous. The analogous color can be used to create form. I have used these colors in the demo to show the use of these colors. The colors are labeled on the tulip to see the forms.
Alizarin Crimson is used at the bottom of the tulip to create a form that is farther away from the light.
Cadmium Red light is used next to make the form redder and warmer.
Vermillion is used next as our lighter red to make the tulip even warmer and more into the light.
Finally the Quinacridone gold is used as the light part of the petal of the tulip on the left side.
A lip of white paper is used at the top edge for the lightest light.
The petal on the right I have used Alizarin Crimson permanent on the outer edge to make that edge retreat or go back by using the cooler red.
Cadmium Red light is used next to the Alizarin to lighten the reds as it moves to the center of the flower.
Water was used to make a light area between the petals.
Pure colors have been used to make the colors bright and clean. The method of using the analogous colors is an easy way for the artist to create form that is not muddy by the addition of other colors or repeated applications of color. The process that goes by analogous colors instead of adding water to one color to change the values is more vibrant like the colors of nature.
Barbara Jeffery Clay.
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