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Acrylics Anonymous, Issue #131 -- Going Bananas! September 01, 2024 |
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.
Click here for a gift card for yourself or your DAD!
Garden = Great Being in the garden, if you're lucky enough to have one is apparently very good for your health. But so is painting it! Sometimes a nice painting is right under your nose (or trowel in this case). Go outside and find some inspiration in your own garden today :) 
Colour In Your Life is Baaaack Mark has recently been filmed for the Colour In Your Life reboot with the gorgeous hostess with the mostess Sophia Stacey 🙂 We hope to have a link to the show for you soon! In the meantime, enjoy this lovely pic of Mark and Sophia on set here in beautiful Lennox Head.
Workshop News! After the success of our last workshop, we have a new Woolgoolga workshop coming up November 9th-10th "Unlock the Light" - info coming next week, join our workshops mailing list for more info here. Annnnd, Fiji is confirmed! - October 19th - 26th - there are still a few spots left if you're undecided! New on our Youtube channel Since our last AA we have released another "Thoughts from the Easel" videos on Youtube (as well as Tik Tok and Instagram/Facebook). Here's the link in case you haven't seen it already! Click here for the short video "Survival" Podcast News Mark recently appeared on Jeff Mara's Near Death Experience podcast - if you'd like to check out the interview, you can do so here on Jeff's Youtube channel: Click here to watch! **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 Millie, from Honolulu, Hawaii with their painting "My Fishscape". Thanks so much for sharing this with us Millie - such a vibrant painting and a great use of unconventional technique! Click here for more info on Millie's painting "My Fishscape"
Drew Ochwat is an abstract/graffiti artist from Sacramento, with a fascinating process. You can check out his process via his Instagram here La Maison du Pastel is the oldest pastel manufacturer in the world. Check out the process for making the incredible Roché pastel sticks on their website 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 intrepid traveller, Mark Waller :) From Mark: "Going Bananas" I have a lovely little stand of banana trees in my garden, in the chook pen. It’s really quite lovely to go down and watch the light filter through the leaves. I first started painting banana trees on a workshop in Fiji many years ago. And for some reason forgot I had my very own references growing right there. I went down to check on the chickens, and saw this wonderful light making shapes on the leaves. Well, that had to be painted, didn’t it! When I had the recent opportunity to do some filming for the Colour In Your Life “re-boot”, it was a perfect excuse to drag out my photo reference, and start something dynamic and bright for the show. I grabbed Dioxazine Purple and roughly made up some broad shapes to start establishing where I thought the leaves should go, the lines, directions. Keeping firmly in mind that all of this will be in a state of flux as we go along. Things often don’t stay where I put them.
I dished out a healthy dose of Forest Green and some White, and here and there applied those colours to just start the suggestion of the shapes of the leaves, and some slight sense of where they were in relation to me - further back or closer for example. This process took quite a while, because there is a lot happening in this picture, and I had to make some executive decisions about what was superfluous, and what to keep so that the story was told. I wanted to give a sense of chaos and disorder, and yet tie it all together with the light coming through the picture, highlighting and backlighting objects. I repeated a similar process using Burnt Umber and White to start the suggestion of dead and dying leaves.
When I was relatively happy with where everything was, I came back and started shaping the leaves. I used a fan brush for a lot of this earlier stage of the painting. When I use the fan brush and applied the paint in the direction of the ribs in the leaves, it created an impression of that lovely banana leaf structure. At this point I started to throw in some highlights that were leaning towards the Whites, with a bit of Cadmium Yellow Light and Forest Green. And for the backlit leaves I mixed Forest Green and Cadmium Yellow Medium to get that really bright pop of backlit leaf colour.
In order to link all the light sources together and create a coherent image, I mixed White and French Ultramarine Blue to create a Summer Sky colour, and reflected that sky colour on most of the leaves. This process seems quite simple, but in actual fact it’s a fundamental part of the picture - and a fundamental pain in the a** :D It requires you to pay attention to where the light is coming from - no drifting off here! This blue really does help with the illusion of dimension within the leaves. It pushes some leaves away from you, receding off into the distance, and brings others closer. It’s where the rubber hits the road. Putting structure down is one thing, but putting layers of dimension into a painting is a whole other thing.
Now it was a matter of refining the details and adding layers - a lot of backwards and forwards, pushing up the highlights, bumping up the backlit leaves, building the colour, creating nice blends and transitions within leaves etc, and moving things around to suit the eye. I also added some flashes of blue sky to help let a bit more light into the picture. I also put some strips of brighter colours into the areas at the bottom of the painting to let light into the shadows. I used Dioxazine Purple to help add some serious depth to those shadows at the bottom. Voila. I’ve gone bananas!
You can find all of Mark's good stuff through the bio link below: Mark's links all in one place! 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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