IN THIS VIDEO I paint a 16″ x 20″ acrylic painting using thick strokes of broken color. I also allow the paint to dry at certain points and “oil up” with a water based retarder gel. I have experimnted with a similar technique in the past but using the retarder gel is vastly superior to using the acrylic medium I used previously. Be sure to finish the painting with a generous coat of acrylic medium. This will ensure that all the layers will cross link (bind) and create a strong, non-delaminating surface.
I hope you enjoy this technique. Please let me know your results in the comments section.
82 Thick Acrylic 2 of 2
IN THIS VIDEO I finish up my painting that is painted with thick, multihued acrylic strokes. I failed to elaborate the scratching technique but it is clearly visible in the closing frames of the video. Let me know if you would like me to elaborate on the sgraffito technique.
Overall I was somewhat surprised how well the experiment went. Here are a few things to remember when painting with thick acrylic:
Be sure to seal the canvas with acrylic medium. An absorbent ground will make your paint dry too fast.
Use plenty of paint in your palette box (and keep your piles of paint on well saturated paper towels).
Use plenty of paint on your brush and on your canvas. Thick applications dry slow.
Keep paint loosely mixed. Over mixing creates drab, lack-luster strokes. Multihued strokes vibrate with intensity and resemble the scintillating colors of nature.
Remember that glazing and scumbling reduce the vitality of broken color, so use those techniques wisely.
83 Kickstarter THICK PAINT Project
I WANTED TO EXPAND AND ADD to the ideas I advance on this blog and thought making an iBook would be an ideal format. I decided sponsorship from Kickstarter.com would be a possible way to acheive that goal. Check out the project at Kickstarter.
84 About that Hat
I REALLY APPRECIATE all the people who sent links to find a replacement for my old, worn out chapeau. I really thought I would find a replacement. But although several were close none were exactly the type I was looking for. But I decided I needed to award the painting regardless and I hope you will agree that the best recipient was the one person who offered to make me the beret from scratch.
So congratulations to Alison T. of St. Louis, Missouri and thanks for your generosity! And thanks to everyone for making such a valiant effort to find that hat.
85 The Painting Journey
THERE ARE A LOT OF MYTHS surrounding the creation of art. These myths do little to help students of painting find their way forward. To clarify the process I thought I would share my experience learning to paint. It is pretty mundane which I believe should come as a relief to most.
86 Acrylic Field Painting Kit
IF YOU NEED an inexpensive solution to painting outdoors with acrylic I demonstrate how I made my pochade box (a miniature outdoor painting kit). I hope you find it as useful as I do.
87 Acrylic En Plein Air
IN THIS VIDEO I paint a small acrylic in half an hour. The paint started to dry at about 20 minutes in. Next time I want to be sure to seal the canvas with acrylic medium. I might also add a bit of Golden acrylics slow dry acrylic piant to my mixtures.
88 Nine Value Grayscale
I USE THIS grayscale in the field and in the studio. If you use it outdoors be sure that the light on the grayscale is the same as the light on your palette when you are matching colors on your palette. When you are matching to the landscape be sure the light on the grayscale is the same as the light on the scene before you.
89 Aspects of color
ADJUSTING COLOR can be tricky but if you understand three aspects of color; hue, value, and saturation, it can make things a bit easier.
90 Advanced Plein Air Acrylic
I USED ACRYLIC retarding gel as an “oiling up” medium in the studio with great success. So I wanted to try it in the field.The results were similar even though the heat and wind did cause the gel to dry quicker. It still worked very well and I can easily see that a very sophisticated plein air technique could evolve from this method of painting. One word of caution though, be sure to varnish the finished painting with a thick application of acrylic varnish. Otherwise the layers won’t properly cross link and you may have problems with de-lamination (the layers won’t properly adhere to each other).
91 More about Advanced Plein Air Acrylic
It was a lot of fun oiling up the acrylic painting in the field. I thought it might be useful if I cited a few benefits and drawbacks of this technique. One thing I probably didn’t emphasize enough in the video was that I had to wait for the acrylics to dry before I added the retarding gel. It was a warm day so that wasn’t a huge problem but it did seem to break my flow a bit. I had a chair to sit in and would critique the painting with my wife Debra while I waited for the paint to dry. So it was pleasant but it was a different pace from an oil plein air session.
To dry the painting quicker I placed the painting on the hood of our truck. Which worked well until it was time to leave. We loaded up our gear and drove off and like you might imagine I left the painting sitting on the hood. I was home and unpacked by the time I realized what I had done. Fortunately my painting site was only about a mile away so I drove back and found my painting lying face down in gravel at the side of the road. But since it was acrylic it was entirely dry and unharmed (if it had been an oil painting it would have been ruined).
In the interim between realizing I had lost my painting and finding it the painting had become in my imagination the best plein air painting I had ever done. Proof that our perceptions can often distort our judgement. I suppose you might call it the fish-that-got-away syndrome.
Brad Teare
Brad Teare
92 Thin paint
I have been so obsessed with the act of applying thick paint that I’ve forgotten to mention that nearly all of the techniques outlined in this blog are equally applicable to painting thinly.
In fact if a painter wants to simplify the painting process one of the best ways is to keep applications of paint thin. Here is how the process would work if you want to paint thinly:
Tone your canvas (I prefer a coat of value 4 Red Iron Oxide). After the tone is dry draw your composition on the canvas with a dark piment (like Transparent Red Earth) thinned with ample amounts of paint thinner such as Gamsol (I prefer Gamsol because of its low evaporation rate which makes it less toxic). This layer of watery paint acts as a monochromatic drawing or under painting. Mix up a tone to match your toned canvas and use this like an eraser, working back to the color of the toned canvas to more clearly define negative spaces. Let this layer dry.
On top of this now dry layer start painting very thinly in approximate hues. I might mix a medium like Gamblin’s Neo megilp into the paint to make it not only buttery but thin as well. It will also make the paint dry a bit faster.
I will continue to add paint into this layer even after the paint is dry. I have referred to this in previous videos as a full value, full color under painting. If I start to get a dry brush or excessively scumbly appearance I will let the layer dry and oil up the canvas. Since I want to keep the layers of paint thin it is not necessary to oil up the canvas with a thick medium (like my usual G-gel). So I would probably use just a thin layer of Neo megilp. Some people might use Windsor and Newton’s Liquin although for me this medium seems a bit too thin. But many people use it with great success.
At this stage I oil up the canvas, paint into the couch (the layer of medium), let it dry and repeat this stage as many times as I need. Since you’re building up very little texture you won’t have to scrape the canvas to get your next layer of paint flat.
As you can imagine not having to worry about a thick buildup of paint makes the process considerably easier and is recommended for those just beginning to work with oils.
But remember even if you are painting thinly you can still load your brush with broken color. If you have enough Neo megilp medium in your paint it will actually be very difficult to build up excessive texture.
Keep this process of painting thinly in mind as you design your painting career. You may find it easier to start painting thinly and gradually work toward thicker paintings as you become more experienced.
Brad Teare April 2012
93 How to paint trees
THERE IS A DANGER of representing the overly familiar as symbols rather than reality. As a time saving mechanism the brain projects a shorthand onto familiar subjects and compresses them into abbreviated clichés. The symbolic versions are difficult to counteract and the resultant drawings often reflect inward symbolism and not objective reality.
In her book Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain author Betty Edwards suggests drawing a portrait from an upside down photo. Looking at the image upside down allows the mind to see the object as if for the first time. We are freed to see familiar shapes as abstract shapes and not an amalgam of symbols disjointedly representing the the face.
The face is not the only object to suffer this unfortunate phenomenon. Any form we are overly familiar with will get the same treatment. A landscape feature I consistently misrepresent are trees. It is almost impossible for me to represent trees as having individual shape and detail. I routinely portray them as symbols uniformly dotting the landscape representing the idea of treeness.
But, just like with the face, if you can suppress the symbol imposing part of the brain you can see a tree for what it is; a complex and unique mass of lines and forms. It is the unique nature of trees that lend them their beauty. If you see such beauty but can’t represent it your painting will lack the beauty you intended.
In the studio it’s easy to turn your reference and your painting upside down. This allows your mind to find the abstract elements of both the composition and individual objects. Inverting your motif outside is a bit difficult although I have heard of artists peering between their legs to get a different perspective. A better idea is to use a prism. A prism will allow you to invert the scene before you. Turn your canvas upside down as well and paint the inverted scene. I don’t suggest painting a complete painting this way, it would be too distracting. But it is a good way to quickly correct shapes you may be compressing into boring symbols as well as a method to reinvigorate your composition.
Brad Teare, April 2012
P.S.-Two right angle prisms (dove prisms) can be joined together on the long side (hypotenuse) to produce a bi-prism which flops the reversed, or mirrored image. This will allow you to see an inverted image (upside down) but not a reversed image. For more info go here.
Brad Teare, April 2012
P.S.-Two right angle prisms (dove prisms) can be joined together on the long side (hypotenuse) to produce a bi-prism which flops the reversed, or mirrored image. This will allow you to see an inverted image (upside down) but not a reversed image. For more info go here.
94 Eye vs. Camera
I WOULD PREFER TO PAINT all my paintings from life or from sketches painted from life. However, this often just isn’t possible. I often need to paint from photographs. This can lead to disastrous results unless you understand the difference between reality and photographic representation.
Photos look extremely real because they contain a profusion of visual cues that signal reality to the brain. However, they fall woefully short in many critical areas. Photographs successfully convey the scintillating vibrations of complementary color but only on a microscopic level. If you try to replicate what appears to be flat patterns of color your color is going to look lifeless. Contrast this to the nearly infinite shards of color in the original scene and you can quickly see that you need to simulate this complementary vibration if you are ever going to capture the vitality of reality.
This flattening of color is most pronounced in shadow. In most photographs shadows look like a single, flat, monochromatic shape. Copying such flatness will lead to a drab, lackluster painting. The key to using a photo in the absence of reality is having painted outside a lot or consciously observing how colors behave in the wild. With enough observation you will be able to imagine what the color should be in the shadow. The first thing you will observe is that real shadows aren’t as dark as recorded in a photo. They are usually cool in nature which gives the illusion of darkness. Most shadows are in the 3 to 4 value range (see this video for more on values), ranges that are much nearer to mid-value than you would think. The lights in a photo appear much lighter. Check the values and you will find them more in the mid-value range (from 5-7). Lights in a photo appear lighter because they are warm. Warm colors appear lighter than their actual values.
Edges are one of the most commonly misunderstood aspects of painting. You have to paint for quite a while before you understand how edges are important in a variety of ways. They help lead the eye through a painting, they help create a focal point, and they replicate the way the eye actually sees a scene. The part of the eye that has everything in focus is the fovea and it is quite small. As you scan a scene only the central part of the scene is in focus at one time. If you paint the entire scene in sharp focus you are replicating the reality of the camera which renders every edge with the same monotonous sharpness.
It is tempting to accept a photograph as a superior form of image recording. But the human eye is far superior to either the mechanics of camera or film. This is a good thing and will allow painters to prevail over technology for many years to come. The point is to maximize our native gifts by thinking deeply about color as we observe the natural world and develop our gifts accordingly.
Brad Teare, April 2012
95 Thinking outside the frame
PEOPLE OCCASIONALLY REMARK that my paintings have a rhythm they find appealing. When I consider my best paintings I agree with them. The question is; how do you find and emphasize a sense of rhythm?
About 15 years ago a fellow artist introduced me to the Reilly Method, a way of drawing devised by Frank Reilly of the New York Art students league. The method requires the artist to find connections between major forms in the figure. If you haven’t studied this method I highly recommend it. It is one of the best ways to get energy and motion into a static anatomy drawing. But what if we applied Reilly’s methods to the landscape?
One of the first things you realize is that applying this method to the landscape requires drawing outside the picture plane (See illustration below). Which means you have to do your sketch on a very large pad of paper. In the center of this page you draw the boundaries of your sketch. Then begin to tentatively form the basic composition. Try to imagine these lines extending off and circling back into the composition of the sketch. The basic idea is to find, or invent, a logical and organic connection between every major line in the composition. It’s not always possible but trying can be a very illuminating way to find harmonious lines of energy.
I don’t do this with every sketch. In fact, once you’ve done this a half-dozen times you can mentally connect the lines and there isn’t any need to draw on a huge pad. When you’re out in the field you can draw in the air and connect the lines with large swooping motions. This can give a certain grace to your strokes, help you to paint from the shoulder (which is always helpful to get large, bold shapes), and give any bystanders something to remember you by.
This broad method can be applied not only to the entire painting but to individual aspects of the landscape such as trees, mountains, and rivers, any aspect of your painting that needs a feeling of rhythm and internal harmony.
Brad Teare, April 2012
96 Getting energy in your drawings
IN THIS VIDEO I explain in more detail how the Riley Method works. Although I’m using it here in reference to the figure it is just as useful when drawing a tree or other organic object.