Acrylic Painting 5: Learning How To Colour Over An Underpainting

Here is my fifth acrylic painting and this time I was Learning How To Colour Over An Underpainting.

I tried using a grisaille (grey monochrome) underpainting.  I then painted my colours over the top.

This seemed to work quite well as the paints I am using were transparent enough to let the underpainting show through.

I also had a go at painting “lost edges”.  These are edges that are so blurred as to be “lost”.  I love seeing them as they lend a real painterly feel to a piece of work.

I learned a few things on the way:

  1. Underpainting really does work to provide a tonal variation underneath any subsequent application of colour.
  2. Using a grisaille underpainting didn’t affect the hue of the colour being glazed over the top.  This makes colour matching a bit easier.
  3. I probably should have planned in my lost edges earlier on i.e. at the underpainting stage instead of applying then right at the end.

Anyway, here is the final result (sorry – I forgot to take some process shots):

Acrylic5Bluetit

Acrylic Painting 4: Learning How To Mix Paint With A Robin Red Breast

I was determined to learn how to get better at mixing paint so I found the following articles on the internet and read through them:

 

What I learned from these articles is that you need to think about the following when you’re trying to mix paint to match a specific a specific colour:

  1. Value
  2. Hue
  3. Saturation

Some people first try to match the value, then the hue and saturation.  Others try to match the hue first and then the value and then the saturation.

Having said all this I reckon the secret weapon to mixing paint is …

… patience.

There is no secret weapon – you just gotta keep working at it until you’ve got the colour you want.

So here’s my attempt at mixing paint …

This is the reference image:

And here’s my attempt:

HimleyRobin2 HimleyRobin3 HimleyRobin4 HimleyRobin5

I’m a bit disappointed with the lack of light and shadow on this, I feel I could have done more to describe the 3D form here.

I think for the next painting I will do an underpainting to establish the light and shadow and then glaze colour over the top.  I think the acrylic paint I’m using has enough transparency for this to work well.

Box Modelling An Anthropomorphic Rabbit In Blender

I’ve been 3D modelling an anthropomorphic rabbit for my project with John Fulton.

Here are a few process screenshots:

RabbitModel1

RabbitModel2

RabbitModel3

RabbitModel4

I learned a couple of nifty tricks in Blender doing this:

  1. Edge Slide:  This allows you to select an edge loop and slide it along the geometry without affecting the overall shape.  Here’s the Blender documentation on it:  https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/modeling/meshes/editing/edges.html
  2. Rip:  This allows you to rip a mesh along  seam, sounds easy to do but without this feature you would have to duplicate vertices and edges.  Here’s the Blender documentation for it:  https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/modeling/meshes/editing/vertices.html

My First Acrylic Painting: Rabbit In The Grass

I’ve been meaning to try my hand at painting using a traditional medium such as acrylic paint for some time now.

I finally took the plunge and whilst I’m not completely happy with the result, I did really enjoy myself!

 

RabbitInAcrylics1I started with a medium grey background and then did an initial colour block-in.

 

RabbitInAcrylics2 I then decided that my colours were completely wrong and did another colour block-in over the top.  I tried to use an impasto (thick paint) technique as this seemed like fun, and it was!

 

RabbitInAcrylics3Here I added a little more detail over the blocks of paint.

 

RabbitInAcrylics4I struggled to get the right tonal variation whilst working with variation in colour as well here but I am calling this done and moving on.  It’s so much easier working digitally since you can just set the value slider to get the right tones for the selected colour.  Here I will have to learn how to mix paint physically!