Acrylic Painting Tips & Articles
Acrylic Painting
By Stephanie Pui-Mun Law (stephlaw@shadowscapes.com)
The skin tone in the portrait on the right was done by making a light undercoat of Lots of naples yellow, a touch of Cadmium Red, Titanium White, and Burnt Umber. I then added highlights with white, thinning it slightly to let it blend into the more fleshy tones of the undercoat, and made light glazes of red, browns and yellows to create the shading acros the face and to model the contours of the features. The background was a pale green undercoat with many glazes on top.
In general, an underpainting lays in very roughly the color values and tints that you want your overall painting to have. An underpainting can set the mood of an entire painting in a very subtle way, because it affects the tones of the colors put on top. Combining glazes on top of an underpainting can give you some very powerful effects, and give life to your picture.
Color TIP:
Tube Black vs. Mixed "Black"
Black is such a...neutral color. It expresses nothing but, well, blackness. It does not convey any emotion, but simply flattens a picture. Shadows are never pure black. Shadows are full of various shades and subtle hues.
So what can you do if you don't want to use black? An alternative is to mix some Burnt Umber with Ultramarine Blue. If you use more blue, your "black" will be a colder black. If you use more burnt umber, it will look warmer. It still has the darkness of black (see the example image below) but it leaves the viewer with an impression rather than emptiness.
("Warm" colors are red, orange, yellow, and "cool" colors are green blue, and purple. In general. This is a very good scheme to follow to create the type of mood you want).
The "black and white" painting below was done using no tube black at all.
So there you have it, a taste of the tools and techniques for painting with acrylics, as well as some tips for tricks that I have learned over the years from experience and from teachers. I haven't told you how you should or what you should paint...only the tools to let you come to your own stylistic decisions. If you are new to acrylics, I hope I haven't scared you away, and that this advice proves helpful. If you are an oldtime acrylic painter here to pick my brain of any useful tidbits, I hope you found some, and if you have any advice of your own to give to me, it's always welcome.