Joy of Acrylic Paint, Kindred Spirits, Florida Everglades Studio Painting

Kindred Spirits

Sold

One of the most important things to realize when working with a new medium is that it will have it's own characteristics and will not behave like any other. This is especially true of acrylic paint, since so many people come to acrylics either from watercolor or oils. While acrylic has some similar characteristics of each, it is first and most fully itself. The joy of this medium is that it can be manipulated without the constraints of either oils or watercolor. It dries very quickly, allowing you to build a painting almost like a sculpture. You can go into it again and again and carve out the painting, and add more material at any time. Soft or hard edges are easy to achieve by choosing the right brush. Bristle for soft edges and synthetic for crisper passages. There are both opaque and transparent colors, and it's OK to use them together. Acrylics are environmentally more friendly in the studio, particularly for people who are sensitive to the oil mediums. Also, if you take most of the paint off the brush with a paper towel or rag and let it dry, the paint will not every become water soluble again and leach into the environment. Solids can be strained before the water is discarded.

Acrylics are particularly effective in achieving a luminous surface like the painting above. To create the soft sky, I scumbled over the canvas again and again with an almost dry brush, leaving thin layers of color for the sky and water. As the painting progressed, the lower layers still show through in many places leaving both a glow and a vibration, and giving nice variation from the more solid qualities of the land and trees.

Florida Everglades Painting, Finishing a Painting

I’m still working on the color strategy and building the forms and will do this until they come into balance and make sense on the canvas. I won’t worry about getting an exact representation of the scene any more because I have a sense of the place. I'm not doing a portrait but will want you to know the character of the main palm before I'm through. As I work I identify with the subject(s) more and more closely, and by the time I’m done most of the forms will be as familiar to me as my family. At his point I have added lights and darks three times and there's beginning to be a sense of volume to the forms, and of light coming in. I've also added some clouds and color to the sky. I still have a way to go before I'm satisfied.

Knowing when a painting is finished is the most difficult part of the process. It's only finished when the creating artist decides it's finished! Some artists will consider a painting finished when there is still some of the canvas showing—leaving bits of white or undercoat to contribute to the whole. Some artists start in one corner and work directionally and will never again touch the laid-down bits. When the canvas is covered, they’re done. Some artists work over the canvas surface again and again struggling to bring their artistic vision into form until the canvas contains even a piece of the artist’s heart. But in the end each artist must find a combination of methods and visions that work for them, laying down the brush only when confronted with a satisfying whole.