Acrylic Class Progress

Along with the general acrylic painting class I am taking, I also signed up for a Portrait painting workshop at the little Art Center up the street from my house. That workshop was this past Saturday and I quite enjoyed it. We drew and painted a live model. I really like that much better than painting from a photograph because you get a truer idea of the colours and lights and shadows from a live model. I didn't have enough time to finish the portrait and because this was a one-day workshop it will never be finished however, it did give me inspiration to continue trying other portraits in acrylic. I will probably paint something else over this one. When I got it home I noticed the nose was not big enough and the eyes were not the same size. If I had more time, I could have fixed those things.

In my other class, I was working on fall leaves and I did get further on those. I decided on this subject just to familiarize myself again with acrylic painting since I hadn't painted in quite a while.

Leaves blocked in with initial colours on black background

Black background was painted to resemble deck boards

Background was softened and details were added to the leaves

The photo and the unfinished painting. I 

made some subtle changes.

Finished painting

I felt I had done enough on the painting and decided to begin another one with a subject I love. I had bought some good canvas and on the instructor's suggestion, painted it black. Then I sketched my subject on to the canvas. What I learned this week was that none of the other artists free-hand drew their subjects onto their canvas. They traced them on. I have always felt that drawing was a really important part of being an fine artist so I have always practiced that. I find that if you draw your subject onto your canvas it has a more "painterly" expression and reflects the artist. The completed artwork doesn't then just become an identical copy of the photo. I like to put myself into my artwork and by doing my own drawing I feel like I accomplish that. I do that also for my art quilts and its why I always do a painting of my subject before I plan my art quilts.

This painting is inspired by one of my photos from our kayak trip this past July. Having started with a black background prompted me to start blocking in the lightest parts of the painting whereas if I had started on a white canvas, I would have started out with the darks. I kind of enjoyed doing the lights first. The dark is still only the black background of the canvas at this point.