The next project in Mark Daniel Nelson’s book “Little Ways to Learn Acrylics: 50 Small painting projects to get you started” was 'Applying a simple glaze: Bread and butter’.
My first attempt at drawing the piece of toast was inaccurate so I decided to do it in pencil first and then paint over it. How hard could a simple square with a bubble on top be? After adding all the layers it certainly proved difficult to do; it didn’t resemble the example in the book, but it looked good enough.
All my painting teachers say that mixing primary colours makes paintings look better and more cohesive, but it’s nice to use paint out of the tube because it makes fixing mistakes easier. I might try this one again after I’ve done all 50 from the book…watch this space.
If you’re doing these exercises too, I’d like to know how you’re getting on, please leave a comment or e-mail me.
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.
