Ways to Learn Acrylics... Painting Project No. 3

'Little Ways to Learn Acrylics: 50 small painting projects to get you started’ by Mark Daniel Nelson is a great way to practice painting with acrylics.

System 3

Of the first three projects, this colour mixing pasture scene was my least favourite. Getting the lines clean when dark colours met lighter colours was really difficult. The hues weren’t very inspiring either, but for some reason I painted a second version.

Atelier

The Atelier Interactive paints are meant to stay wet longer and to enable the painter more time blending.  There was a visible difference between the two paintings. The first painting (in System 3 acrylics) needed three layers of paint before it looked finished. With the Atelier only one coat was applied and although a second layer would have made it look better… I lost interest.

This post isn’t very encouraging; for archival purposes I felt it necessary to post it. Sorry, dreary day, sombre mood.

Ways to Learn Acrylics… Painting Project No. 2

The second project from ‘Little Ways to Learn Acrylics…’ is about applying coloured paint depicting a sunset. The first time I did the project was on 8”x8” canvas paper and it was so nice I decided to do another.

The second painting was on acrylic paper, size 10” x 10”; I wanted to compare canvas with paper and see what a larger study would look like. The 8”x8” canvas was the better; the acrylic paper didn’t blend as well and the larger size didn’t look as nice. The sunset on acrylic paper was only one layer and if a second layer was put on it probably would look a little nicer.

The assignment instructions were to dry each layer before putting the next layer on, it was easier for me to blend if I kept the previous layer wet.   It was a good exercise and the finished painting was pretty.