Ways to Learn Acrylics… Painting Project No. 4 & 5

In the first three projects of Mark Daniel Nelson’s book “Little Ways to Learn Acrylics: 50 Small painting projects to get you started” I didn’t use a round brush. I used either a filbert or flat in all my previous paintings, because it seemed easier. However, in these next two paintings I took the advice of the author and used a round brush. It was nice to use something different and now I’ve gained a better understanding of round brushes.

Project no. 4 ‘Simple gradations: Deep blue sea’ looked easy enough, but of course it wasn't. It took me four tries: the first wasn’t bad but the canvas wasn’t completely covered, the second time I needed to go back to a previous layer but didn’t save the colour, the third time I remembered to save a little of each colour but when the layers dried there was a visible line between layers. The final painting wasn’t perfect but after four times and a lot of wasted paint…I gave up.

In project no. 5 ‘Using the white of the canvas: Rowing boat’ it was difficult to create clean lines; possibly because the whole canvas was white. The blue for water is lighter because I used paint from project no 4 and the yellow was darker in value from the book because I liked it better. All in all it looked pretty good and now it’s my second favourite painting from the book.