I have started this new project in acrylics - it's a simple still life, with paint tubes, a gesso jar and a paint brush. Sounds simple? Well, believe me it's not.
My main problem is drawing of course - I had to completely erase my original drawing - I think I was measuring things wrong, and it looked out of proportion; lines didn't meet where they should. That's often my problem - I measure with a pencil, but I'm not precise enough, or I get confused and everything is out of kilter. It would be so much easier to take a photograph and trace, but I guess I would never learn if I continue tracing.
And I have no idea how to represent shading in acrylics - I'm going to have to go over those paint tubes again, mixing my shading colours with the base colour as I go along rather than adding a big blob of grey over pure white. It's really frustrating, but I'll get there hopefully.
For a week, I'd been looking at my base painting - with just the main colours in place, and it looked awful - the background was dull and I had great difficulty actually sitting down and starting my second layer.
At last, I'm getting to a stage where I'm actually enjoying it. I spent a bit of time on it today, and it's starting to take shape. I have a lot more work to get my shading to look natural -the paint brush is particularly difficult - there are so many reflections that my eyes get confused; and the jar of gesso is tough too - the top of a jar is an ellipse, and ellipses are my nemesis - and then the shading at the top is still a mystery to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment