[pixtur]

Hello,

Yesterday was I had my first experience with acryl-colors. Normally I only �paint� with photoshop and wacom. But I know that I have serious problems with colors and shapes. Many �seniors� at sijun mentioned that painting digitally would be much easier if you came from traditional painting. So I wanted to give it a try.

Those first hours were a quiet frustrating experience. And I don�t mean the absence of multiple undo

I have some questions about handling the colours. If someone has a moment, I would appreciate any comments, tips or suggestions.

btw: I tried to search the forums about this, but I only got results not older than 3 months. Maybe the search-function doesn�t work like expected?

1. How many colors?
For starters I bought the primary colors (blue, yellow, red) and black and white. Now I am reading a book about acryl-painting in which they suggest using about 12 different colors (sienna, etc.) Is it possible, to make some realistic looking stuff only with the primaries?

2. How to mix colours?
I use a small palette to mix the colors, but when I am satisfied with the new color it�s either not enough or far too much. So after a few minutes my palette is filled all over with muddy-gray-rest-mixture. Is this normal? Should a clean the palette and brush more often? Should I use different brushes for mixing and painting, to keep the colors clean?

3. How to mix the same color, if you need to extend a shape?
I started by copying some photo-references. Not to mention my �normal� struggling with shape and value I was not even able of filling a larger area with a homogenous color. In photoshop I would fill a selection or use huge soft brushes, but here I am struck. I remember those huge background-paintings spooge did for a BP-advertising. I wonder if (and how) you could do the same thing with acryl-colors...

4. How to blend colors
The next problem is that I don�t have any solution for is blending large areas like the value and color of the sky ranging from dark blue to a bright, desaturated blue above the horizon.

5. Should I liquify the paint?
...or should I use them right out of the tube? It seems that it�s more easy to handle, if they are more liquid...

6. Are there some lessons?
Should I start with some more fundamental basics like painting color-circles and ramps? Or should I paint one topic over and over again? Or maybe do only 30-minute-sketches...
What are the lessons you learn at school?


Here are my tests... Any comments welcome.

tom

(Sorry for my bad English.)




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[Ian Jones]

You mention that you find them easier to manipulate when liquified, which is a common technique and I would do the same aswell. Have you ever tried Gouache? I have used both acrylics and watercolours and have found that gouache has neither of the pitfalls of either medium. Gouache is not too transparent, like watercolour, but its not too opaque and fast drying like acrylics. Gouche can be reworked and blended very easily with the addition of more water. I found the paint for me!

There are advantages to acrylics however. I remember Spooge saying that even though he found acrylics irritating because of the fast drying he goes on to mention that it molded his technique into a very precise 'now or never' value decision. Due to the nature of the medium he was forced to lay down accurate values first time. Interesting to see where he came from and how his process has been affected. There's a lesson beyond the actual medium there... but I'd be going off topic.

When you are working a gradient, I always find it easiest to lay down a larger amount of your lighter colour / value than the darker one. Simply because of the nature of pigment, even amounts of black and white certainly won't give you middle grey! Work carefully at the edge of the transition, lightly pulliing more and more of the darker colour / value into the lighter one until you get the correct transition. By doing this you only draw small amounts instead of dunking your brush into thick dark paint and ending up trying to get the damn stuff off and ruining your gradient. The thing you need to be careful of is not to jump your brush over a large range of the gradient, because then you'll be taking a hard opposite into just the area you shouldn't. All in all though, it probably just comes down to practice.

Maybe try doing a colour wheel, lots of art teachers seem to make students do this, partly for the very reason of familiarising them with the way the paint acutally behaves. You can do the same with speed paintings or as you have started already I geuss..

Get more colours if you can. Yes sienna and other 'natural' colours can be quite useful.

"How to mix the same color, if you need to extend a shape?"

I never did really solve this problem myself. I always just reworked or tired to blend as much as possible. Gouache is easier for doing this.

I'm not really a traditional painter (nor digital either! ) but I hope that helps.

[egerie]

quick tips:
1. I always use primary colours for grays and blacks (if needed be) but have an affection for sienna and burnt earth as well as ochre.
You can manage to have any colour you want with the primaries. Taking any other colour/tone is just a shortcut.

2. Practice.. I usually take a large palette or a lunchroom tray (In college they replaced the plastic ones with disposable styrofoams because they were tired to see them disapear lol). The palette you're using is good too, but you need to clean it really well when you're done.
You could try mixing your colours with a palette knife. it might help keep your brushes clean if you have difficulty with that.
Generally, put your light colour down and then work up the darker colour you want to mix it with.
Remember it's substractive synthetisis and each time to mix a colour it removes a bit of light reflected by the medium thus making it darker in tonality.

3. after some time of practice you'll be able to replicate a mix of colours you did before and foresee how lighter it'll be when it dries.
Other than that.. the only thing you could do if you want to keep a mix of paint which you want to keep and have some leftovers is to put a sheet of food wrap on top of your palette, make sure there's no air bubble anywhere and keep your palette in the freezer/fridge.

4./5. a LARGE brush. Work quickly before the paint dries in energic strokes. You might want to lay the most important / saturated / light colours first in the background and work on top of that, still with the large brush.
You can make gradual variations by "glacis" which consists of diluting the paint and make it translucent to various degrees. You can either use a matte acrylic medium or shiny acrylic medium or even water. The only downside of using water as a diluant is that it causes the paint to be slightly foggy.. hard to explain.
You can even find 'retardants' in order for your paint not to dry as fast as acrylic usually does.
So once you found which way you want to dilute your paint, put a bit of it on your brush (like water), add your paint and work layers upon layers if you want to be subtle, always with the large brush and fast so you can mix everything while it's still wet.

Personally, I like my colours right out of the tube.

6. The best lesson is practice but as Ian Jones mentionned, a chroma wheel is a good thing to do.. You could make a wheel with primary colours, one with tones, etc.
One of the WORST exercise I had to do was actually the most useful ; a mosaic of small shapes on a canvas about 1,50 X 1,50 meter. All the touching shapes had to have a contrast with the others... It rakes your brain and makes your nerves frail but hot damn you can mix paint after going trough that ! I might re-do it since it's been a long time I painted.

Good luck tom keep at it.

[Inspector Lee]

What's been said so far is pretty right on. The only point I would disagree with is which colors you need. I've worked in acrylics for many years now, and you can't get very clean saturated colors with only three primarys. Anyone who has ever tried to mix a clean purple using Cadmium red and Thalo blue, or a clean orange using say Acra red and Hansa yellow has found this out first hand.
If you're going to work mainly with an "earthy" palette (without clean saturated colors) then you could probably get away with just the three primarys (at least for experimenting). If not, then you need to get both a warm and cool version of each of the primaries. I.E. Cadmium Red and Alizarin crimson, Ultramarine blue and Thalocyanide blue, Cadmium yellow and Hansa yellow. Then when you want a clean tertiary color, you use the two primaries closest to it. So to get a clean green, you'd use Thalo blue and Hansa yellow. A clean purple would use Ultramarine blue and Alizarin crimson, and a clean orange would require cadmium red and cadmium yellow.
So I think the bare minimum palette for working in acrylics, is those six colors plus black, white, burnt sienna and burnt umber (and maybe raw umber).
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[pixtur]

Ah, Thank you for all this information! So it's my turn to work and experiment and maybe come up with more questions after this.

Another question I am not really sure about: My colors come in bottles and they seem differently liquid. Can I liquify them a little bit by adding some water into the bottle, or will I spoil the color this way?

Ian Jones:
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Actually you are not getting "off topic" at all. Because what spooge mentioned about getting a shape and value "now or never" was the reason for my journey into traditional painting. The other reason might be that I only have one Wacom, and that�s at work. So I can do funstuff without burning my eyes on a screen.
I just learned, that I used gouache at school. (I always thought we used the cheapest stuff around which was not even worth a name.) Well - i wasn�t really good at our painting courses. I don�t want to blame them for anything. Maybe I just wasn�t interessted enought or had other problems as adolecent..
I should also try some gouache. I had a look at an older version of craig�s page, and he mentioned there, that you can�t blend gouache at all. I will probably find out for myself.
Doing a gradient by "darkening" is a very good tip. It works much better, this way. I will do some gradients for training. I started with some color-wheels, but I blended those by mixing the colors on the palette.
Btw: I find it really interessting, that if you build a color-wheel by blending the complementary colors (orange, purple and green) you get a completely different color-wheel.

egerie:
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1. I don�t really understand how "to use the primary colors for grays and blacks". Do you mix the primaries to get a gray? I already noticed that you can build all colors from the primaries but my images tend to a color-scheme close to one of the primaries.

2. A lunchroom-tray... Excellent idea. I have the feeling, that my palette seems a little bit too small, because when mixing a color I need some space and after some minutes the palette is filled all over with old color-mixtures. I will try the palette knife. Maybe I am using not enough paint...

Keeping the palette in the fridge is a very funny image. I propably will never have to do this, but you never know...

4.5/ I will have to buy some larger brushes and also some "glacis"-medium.

6. Lessons. I already understood that doing a color-wheel is a good training. I wanted to try a large one, which gets white in the middle. So I have a lot of practice at mixing and blending.

I don�t understand this "shapes"-lesson, but it sounds like a turture...

Inspector Lee:
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Good suggestion. At the moment I am using acryl-colors from a "baumarkt" (=a reseller of construction equipment?). I can�t blame the colors for any bad images. But I will go and buy the warm and cold primary-colors, burnt umber and burnt sienna. This sounds reasonible.

thank you!
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[Ian Jones]

Glad to help. Good luck and hope you have fun! Hopefully you'll find that traditional painting will help you loosen up a bit and forget about ctrl-z and all the other digital things that you know you should fix up with, because they are so easy.

"that you can�t blend gouache at all" You sure? We may just have our terminology mixed up. The packet of paints I'm reading here says 'Gouache' and it is certainly easy to blend colours with. It even says on the packet. I'm curious to see what Craig has to say...

[egerie]

pixtur: first of all.. don'T burn your eyes ! Great plan !
For the grays, if you mix the 3 primaries you would usually get a brownish colour. But if you force yourself to see the hint of colour that your mix is having - for example a brown colour that has strong yellow hues. I 'd add a bit of blue and a trace of red and keep building on top of that. If you keep countering your colours and balance your mix like this you'll eventually end up with a slightly coloured gray (that makes it more alive thant B+W mix) or even something very close to black. Magic !
Now as for the color scheme problem, try to think the exact colour you want on your canvas before any mix. Then try to mix our paint to get that exact colour. That's at least what the teachers were bashing our heads with.

Now as for paint brands ; it can change a lot from a name to another.. Once I bought some pure pigment by mistake.. AUGH ! The thing would never dry.

sorry for the bad english.. I'm rusty !