Tip of the month – January 2008
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Liquid acrylics are transparent and insoluble. When working in a glazing technique, that can be good news. This fact can also be bad news when trying to lift a color or cover a mistake. Liquid acrylics colors are very saturated and they change very little in their intensity after they have dried.
THE LIGHT BEYOND was painted with Golden liquid acrylics on cold press watercolor paper. As you will see at the starting stages of the painting, the color is transparent and resembles watercolor. I use the same technical approach as I do in watercolor – wet paper and a wet into wet paint application which is then followed by a series of glazes.
Here you can see my chosen colors for the painting.
Hansa Yellow Light: Diarylide Yellow: Quinacridone/Nickel Azo Gold: Quinacridone Crimson: Phthalo Blue (red shade): Phthalo Green (blue Shade): Jenkins Green
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I started with a rough sketch in pencil for the placement of the birch trees. I masked the areas of light on the tree trunks, through the upper foliage and on the pathway. This permitted me to start the painting in a loose wet in wet technique.
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Wetting the paper, as I do in watercolor, I painted a variegated wash using the two yellows and the gold. A few drops of Phthalo Green were added into this wet wash. The gold was applied with a natural sponge into the still wet wash to start the texture. You can see that the colors are not painted evenly. With a yellow under wash, I have the option to leave the yellow as light or to leave the yellow as highlight.
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At this point, diluted crimson was added into the wet wash. If the paper starts to dry, I wait until it is fully dry and then I rewet it. I wanted to have soft edges for as long as possible. Because of the acrylic’s permanence, I worked in a technique resembling watercolor to be able to have these soft edges.
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The Phthalo Blue and the Jenkins Green were the only colors that had not been worked into the painting. These two colors would make darker values in the painting. I started working them into the upper foliage. I spattered these two colors onto the top of the paper and then sprayed them with water. With the addition of the Phthalo Blue, I had three primaries to use for making a large selection of colors, including brown and black.
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With the darker values, I had a means to create a sense of space by placing the darks beside the lights. My concept for this painting was to have the light coming through the foliage from the back. I painted a wet in wet combination of crimson, green and blue into the tree trunks varying the mixes in each trunk. More of the two greens were added into the lower foliage. You can see that I am still painting wet into wet.
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Here, I have increased the values in the tree trunks to very dark. The masking fluid is still in place on the paintings surface. I have continued working with the yellows and crimson in the areas of light and the greens and blue in the darker foliage. I continued working wet in wet with diluted colors in the areas of light and spattering on dry in the areas of dark.
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The colors became increasingly vibrant. The tree trunks were becoming a distraction because they were so dark. Most of the painting was now being done on dry paper. I was interested in creating spatial planes using light, middle and dark values.
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I removed all of the masking fluid. What a difference it made. The trunks were more like birch tree trunks. There were openings in between masses of leaves and the light patterns appeared on the pathway.
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The too bright color needed to be muted. I added acrylic white to the palette. I diluted the white and painted a wash over the entire painting. While it was still wet, I removed some of the white to allow some intense color to show in the foliage. With the green and crimson, I created a black and added a very small amount into the white on my palette. With this gray, I painted a shadow side to the trees. A yellow and white mix was added to the sky holes in the foliage.
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Darker value colors were increased which made the lights appear lighter. The shadows on the tree trunks were darkened by glazing crimson and blue over the gray. Crimson and green were applied to the lower front of the painting. Blue and green were painted into the upper left foliage.
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Once the final details had been added, I fixed the paper to a gessoed panel with acrylic medium. When everything was dry, I varnished the image with an acrylic varnish.
THE LIGHT BEYOND was ready to be framed.
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