An Acrylic Painting Walkthrough

After our session on Thursday I felt the need to do a little acrylic painting, and I've been missing landscapes lately, so I chose this image I took at Slimbridge last year.

I started by losing the white canvas by painting a layer of pale blue acrylic. The painting is 20"x16" on a canvas board. These are a nice cheap way to paint, and easy to frame, where stretched canvasses on frames tend to work better unframed.

I sketched in the idea in pencil, changing a few things in the composition, such as increasing the size of the signpost which gets lost in the original photograph. I then started the underpainting in raw umber, planning out the highlights and shadows.

It is currently at a stage where everything is in place (about two hours in), and some colour blocking has been done, but the whole thing looks like a sketch. I've probably used around five or six colours at this point, and not used any black.

I will be adding more and more details and posting again when I move onto the next stage, but here is a good place to stop, where the bones are done, but anything can happen...

I've managed a a few more hours on this, with the limited daylight available, and the sky is coming together nicely.

I've still not used any black (using violet and burnt umber for the darkest areas). I've added a mist/dust effect in the foreground to create a sense of depth and to keep the details of the shed as the focal point. This was created with a large soft dry brush, with just the minimum amount of paint.

As with most paintings, deciding when to stop will be the hardest part, but I hope to keep some of the loose, painterly (messy) parts and add in details on areas of interest. I might also knock back (dull) some areas, as it feels overly colourful at the moment.

It was hard to know when to stop with this one, but I like the lack of detail in the foreground, and that misty sunlight patch in the bottom left.