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Acrylics Anonymous, Issue #126 -- Shake off those winter blues! October 01, 2023 |
Passionate about painting with acrylics? Need a monthly fix chock full of inspiration? Need some help to take the pain out of your painting process? It's all here for you. Acrylics Anonymous. Zero elitism. Dive in. If you enjoy Acrylics Anonymous, and you know someone who might also enjoy it, you can share by forwarding it to your friends! If you are receiving this because a friend has forwarded this to you, and you would like to subscribe, click here! 
Every month, we will produce a Subscribers Only "sealed section" - just keep scrolling to see it. It could be a painting technique, a short video tip, or anything we can think of that we reckon you might enjoy. Please let us know what you think, we love your feedback! To leave comments, contact us here.
Time to change things up? With a change of season comes a change of palette. The greyer somber winter colours become brighter, cleaner, warm colours, and vice versa. Experiment with your selection of colours to see how best to represent your version of Winter and Summer - one colour can make all the difference. 
It's Not Too Late! We still have a few spots left for Mark's Fiji workshop next month! Click here for all the info!
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New on our Youtube channel Since our last AA we have released several more short "Thoughts from the Easel" videos on Youtube. Here's the links in case you haven't seen them yet! Click here for the short "Not For Me" Click here for the short "Let it be Kindness" Click here for the short "Tropical Rain" Click here for the short "Show Your Strength" Click here for the short "Coming and Going" Click here for the short "Mind Kind" **Meet The Wallers**
Every month, we choose an Artist from our
forum
to showcase. You can even nominate someone if you like. (Or yourself!). To do this, check out the forum and then send us an email! It’s that easy. This month we're featuring artist Bobby, from North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, with their painting "Aravaipa Canyon Arizona". Thanks so much for sharing this with us Bobby, awesome work. Click here for more info on Bobby's painting "Aravaipa Canyon Arizona"
Emma Kenny is a professional portrait artist and muralist based in the UK. You may have seen her controversial (but funny!) “upcycling” of ye olden day portraits with a modern fun twist. Check them out here on instagram! Let’s have more fun! You may have seen Catherine Price, science journalist and purveyor of less scrolling, more fun times. Might be worth checking out her website for some excellent strategies on implementing fun into your life to help you really live!! Find some strategies for more fun right here. If you have a link you like, please share it with us! You can contact us to let us know. Thank you! 
This is the section where you can "get your name in lights!" (well at least out there in the internet world!).If you have works in progress you would love to show off, or finished pieces you are particularly proud of, we would love to see them! We especially like to hear about the story behind the creation. This month's submission comes once again, from our own fearless leader Mark Waller :) From Mark: "This was a commission piece that had been in the “potential” column for quite a while. One of the challenges was that the customers were remote, and so seeing them face to face was unworkable. We roughed out some ideas and sent them backwards and forwards via email and text.
Initially we thought a nice bright summer sky scene would be good, but in trawling through pictures, we came through with a sunrise which looked spectacular, and was a really lovely way to counterbalance the headland.
Technology is wonderful for this sort of thing. It also became clear that the size we had agreed on probably wasn’t going to work, so we organised a bigger canvas (the canvas is 2m x 1m) and this time I blocked the picture in with a very clear idea of what we all wanted.
I started with the sky, just to establish the light, and roughed in all the big areas. The cheaper paintbrushes fell in their droves, they weren’t great for that. Scrubbing into the painting kind of wore them out. I dragged out a house paint brush for those bigger areas. It’s always a bit of a trade off - with the big paint brush, it’s great for covering big areas and large gradations, but harder to get nuance and detail in the clouds as you would with a smaller brush. I found myself sometimes having a small brush in one hand and a large brush in the other.
Once I was happy with the sky gradation and the overall effect, I began to then place the clouds, taking care to be mindful of the warm to cool process, keeping those lovely golds close to the sun, and gradually moving out through the pinks and into the purples and blues. Ultimately painting most sunrises involve this process.
I then put some shadows and highlights in the clouds. At this point I also blocked in the water and sand, and began suggesting reflections on both.
I mixed up a combination of Dioxazine Purple, Forest Green and Cadmium Yellow Medium and some Cadmium Orange and started suggesting grasses in the dunes, and the lovely casuarinas. I repeated that process in the Casuarinas a few times, adding more yellow to suggest light hitting the tips of the trees. There was a period of wrestling with the reflections in the wet sand, and moving waves around so that it all balanced nicely.
When things go well, sometimes it’s wise to be suspicious. At this point I realised that I wasn’t happy with the “curves” of the clouds, and I had to flatten the ones in the distance out - the perspective was disconcerting.
I roughed in the headland - lots of Dioxazine Purple and Cadmium Orange close to the sun, moving back out into more Forest Green away from the sun. I also re-established that light into the area close to the sun, some more colour just to get that lovely luminosity. I used a dry brush to suggest the undulations in the sand dunes using that same colour. At this point I mixed up some darker foliage colours, keeping them quite warm, and brushed in the shrubbery and more grasses. I put the highlights on the grasses, and the tendrils through the sand to form the sand dunes. I then mixed up some Permanent Alizarine and a tiny bit of Pthalo Blue, and brushed into some of the undulations in the sand dunes, a thin glaze of darker colour to suggest deeper holes in the sand dunes. From there, it was highlights on the shrubbery, a little bit of tweaking in the shadows on the headland, and we’re done. We hope you enjoyed this issue of Acrylics Anonymous! If you have any suggestions, comments or feedback for the ezine or our site, please don't hesitate to contact us. Until next time, make sure you stay safe and well, and don't forget to chuck some paint around! Cheers from Frankie & Mark :) For our Youtube channel, click here. To join our Youtube channel as a member for a few bucks every month (in exchange for even MORE awesome perks, click here. For our Instagram, click here. For our Threads, Click here. For our Website, click here. For our Facebook page, click here. For our Pinterest, click here. For our Tik Tok, click here.
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