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- Herausgeber: Batsford
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
A fun and accessible guide to acrylics, featuring step-by-step exercises and advice on technique to help your paintings flourish. Leading painter, teacher and writer Soraya French has distilled her art teaching into the things that matter most and can be digested in a short period of time – in just one afternoon you can start acrylic painting. Learning to paint is one of the life-long aspirations of many of us, and painting with today's acrylics paints has never been easier or more accessible. Acrylics are becoming increasingly popular, especially for beginners because of their versatility and strength of colour. Acrylics can be used thickly like oils, but they dry much more quickly, or they can be watered down to look like watercolour. The author, known for her own vibrant and colourful acrylic paintings, covers equipment and the best colours to buy and shows the different ways of using acrylic to create a range of effects with simple instruction and easy-to-follow exercises. She shows how to use acrylics to paint a range of subjects: flowers and trees, landscapes, cityscapes and people.
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Seitenzahl: 63
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020
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LearnAcrylicsQuickly
Soraya French
DEDICATION To my amazing trio Tim, Yasmin and Saasha, with all my love x
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Tina Persaud and Cathy Gosling for commissioning this book and believing in me, and Nicola Newman and Diana Vowles for their sympathetic editing. This is a great opportunity to send my thanks and gratitude to my Golden family across the pond for their support and generosity and for making the best quality artists’ materials, which are a dream to work with. To St Cuthbert’s Mill for all the years of sponsoring me with their amazing and wonderful papers. To Jason and Sandy Mackie at Global Art Supplies for their continued support with the Golden Working Artist program and endless supply of materials. To Rosemary and Symi of Rosemary and Co for making the best brushes in the world.
Contents
Introduction
CHAPTER 1
Essential equipment
CHAPTER 2
Getting to know acrylics
CHAPTER 3
Exploring colour
CHAPTER 4
Acrylic techniques and subjects
CHAPTER 5
Creativity with texture
Page 2: Searching for Crabs 56 × 45cm (22 × 18in)
Detail of abstract image.
Summer Meadow
Inks and heavy body acrylics on watercolour paper 56 × 45cm (22 × 18in)
Introduction
Acrylic paint requires no specific set of rules, so it offers artists of all levels the freedom to progress with their painting in a relaxed and enjoyable manner. The ability to correct mistakes makes it ideal for beginners, while it enables the experienced artist to push the boundaries like no other medium.
It is also by far the most versatile medium, as it can mimic watercolours in its liquid form, while in thicker consistencies it can be applied with techniques similar to those used for oil paint. However, it has characteristics that neither oils nor watercolour possess. As it dries quickly, multiple layers can be applied in quick succession and great results can be achieved in one painting session – but for those who don’t appreciate the quick-drying nature of acrylics, there are colours with extended open time.
I am delighted to be able to share my passion for this wonderful medium with you and hope that the information in this book will help you get to grips with painting in acrylics in a relatively short space of time.
Choosing your acrylic paints
My policy has always been to buy fewer colours but to go for the best-quality paints available. With water-based media such as acrylics you can mix an infinite number of secondaries, tertiaries, darks and neutrals with quite a limited palette that consists only of a warm and a cool version of each primary colour – red, yellow and blue – plus Titanium White for mixing tints with covering power. The brand you buy may depend on your budget, but in the long run it is more economical to use good-quality paints. If you opt for student-grade colours, invest in a reputable brand. Alternatively, mix top-quality paints with a soft gel to extend the colours and make working with them more economical.
Paints come in jars and tubes in a few different sizes and it is a matter of personal preference which one you choose. On here you will find a suggested basic palette.
Different types of acrylic colours
Acrylic colours come in a range of consistencies and containers.
Lilies and Anemones
This small vignette of lilies and anemones is a mixture of inks and fluid colours with a few touches of heavy body paint in a loose and free style.
Surfaces
You can paint with acrylics on a wide variety of surfaces, including acrylic and watercolour paper, canvas, panel, aluminium, mount board and more. Each affects the look and feel of the end result. The only two surfaces to avoid are shiny and greasy ones, which could result in the paints peeling later.
In general your support needs to have a certain amount of grip for acrylic paints to adhere to. Priming is optional, but you will find that the surface of raw canvas and panel becomes much nicer when primed with either gesso or acrylic medium. You will achieve a different and surprisingly interesting result with inks on primed paper or canvas. When painting on a surface such as MDF it is best to prime it to avoid the possibility of chemicals seeping into the painted surface. Experiment with a few surfaces to find what works for you.
Work on canvas and board may be framed without glass, but it’s advisable to apply two coats of varnish – either a polymer varnish to brush on or an archival spray varnish. Both are available in matte, gloss and satin finish.
1 Bockingford NOT watercolour paper 2 Saunders Waterford NOT watercolour paper 3 Textured mount board 4 Saunders Waterford HP watercolour paper 5 Smooth mount board 6 Saunders Waterford High White 7 MDF board with tinted gesso 8 Canvas 9 Plywood panel.
Snowdrops
Heavy body acrylics on canvas 20 × 20cm (8 × 8in)
Snowdrops
Inks and heavy body acrylics on watercolour paper 20 × 23cm (8 × 9in)
Brushes
A set of good-quality brushes will really help you to achieve beautiful brushstrokes. For inks you need the softness of watercolour brushes, which you can load with plenty of pigment and water to help the free flow of the ink from your brush to the surface. Conversely, heavy body colours call for the stiffness of acrylic brushes that can cope with the heavier texture of the paint. Both types are suitable for fluids or soft body colours.
The eventual shapes of your brushes will depend on the style you develop. However, there are some standard shapes that are useful to have at the outset.
• Flat brushes leave definite square-ended marks and don’t allow you to go into too much detail.
• Round brushes are useful for rounder deposits of colour and, depending on their size, for smaller details. Some artists prefer to use round brushes for washes of ink.
• Filberts leave much softer marks than square brushes because of their rounded edge.
• Rigger brushes are great for the thin lines that you can achieve best with inks and fluids.
• Wash brushes are for applying washes of colour with your inks.
• Round sables always have a fine point and load with copious amounts of inks to give you wonderful washes of colour. The inks wash out very rapidly and don’t damage your sables at all. They are too soft and fine for heavier paints, which may damage them.
Left to right: 1 25mm (1in) synthetic watercolour wash brush 2 Rigger size 2 3 Ivory short flat size 4 4 Red sable extended point 5 Pure Kolinsky sable size 7 6 Golden 25mm (1in) long handle wash brush 7 Ivory long flat 8 Rigger size 4 9 Ivory round size 6 10 Ivory long flat size 6 11 Shiraz filbert size 8.
Palettes
To combat the quick-drying nature of standard acrylic paints, stay-wet palettes are available. These have a lining and a tissue-like top layer, both of which are dampened with water – not soaked – to keep the paints workable for longer. Some artists prefer to use a porcelain palette or a sheet of glass and spray the paints periodically to keep them wet. A tear-off palette is another option, especially useful for painting outdoors and for mixing on alongside your stay-wet palette.
Open acrylics (see here) stay wet for a long time without the need for any special type of palette. However, spraying and using a stay-wet palette will extend their working time even further.
Arranging your colours on your palette
