Way of Acrylic painting using techniques.

After knowledge about basics of painting, paints, brushes, other tools, sketches and dual profile painting assignment (Black and white preferably), its time to know about most used and advanced painting terms in a sequence. These terms will change your vision of observation.

To stay positive, the term “advanced” is the period when you find your own way of painting using techniques.

Let’s start with multi-colored painting, take a blank canvas and a subject. Subject could be an object or a photo. Here I am using painting of a lion created by me named as Leo.

Fig 0.3 Leo

Step 1 – Creating a ground

Never start painting over bright white non-textured background, always apply an opaque color on a blank canvas to set the tone of the painting and to decide exact color to be made. Setting a tone is also called as creating a ground.

Opaque paint on canvas does not let light through it, that means previous layer is covered below it.

Step 2 – Creating a sketch

Here sketching can be done by pencil or detail round brush.

Fig 01. Sketch using round brush.

Step 3 – Washing and Glazing

As per subject’s shades, transparent thin watery paint application (prepared diluted pigment) is applied. which allows light to penetrate through it and underneath layer of color is somewhat visible. There are two methods to apply a transparent layer of acrylic color. One way is a wash and another way is to apply a transparent layer of color is by glazing.

Wash is a very thin, watery application of single color paint. Usually used for underpaintings. Under toning can also be another reason of washing. Under painting is done to paint over and under toning is done to dulling superfluous highlighted areas.
Glazing normally does not involve water in an application rather uses certain ratio of light colors as a medium. While practicing you will get to know which colors are transparent, semi-transparent and opaque. The best paints to use for glazes are colors that have a translucent value.

The secret to glazing is patience, this can be learnt only by practicing. You can paint as normal and make your last corrections/modifications or give more depth (natural look) to your colors with one or more layers of glazing, it is also useful to blend and hide rigid edges.

Remember, most of the back ground will be painted over and, in some area, we might have to do purposefully, this technique is called color blocking. Color blocking is mainly used for edging. Edging is finishing canvas edges.

Step 4 – Blending

Time to do another layer called blending. As per subject this layer could a final background or concluding part. Gradually merging one color to flow into the other color smoothly is called blending. Blending is one of the toughest and most used technique in acrylic painting done using colors have opaque quality. This is mainly done on wet application. Timing is the main key of doing successful blending, due to the quick drying time. Open time is length of time the pigments remains wet enough for the brush to blend.

Tip: – Start with two colors and increase numbers as per practice, else you will get mud.

Fig 0.1 Describing Techniques.

Step 5 – Ultimate

Painting is believed to be finished only after glazing and detailing, which is done after curing. Curing is other then drying time where pigments get dried like a cement. Detailing can be done using oil paints also. I recommend taking a big look before you end, give a finishing touch with some final unifying glaze and detailing. This helps in amalgamating all the parts of the painting.

Tip: Work on several paintings at once so you can move from one to another while you wait for a coating to dry.

Please always remember these terms whenever your subject is in front of you.

In my next blog I will cover another tool know as knife.

Happy Paintings!

Thanks for reading 🙂

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