Creating Your Painting
Now it is time to finally create your acrylic painting! I will show you my method, step by step, so that you can use it for your creations. It's going to be fun!
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Outlining
Now you’re ready to start working on your finished illustration. Using a lightbox is a quick way to transfer the outline of your working drawing to your heavy paper.
If you don’t have a lightbox you can transfer it with the aid of a grid. Neither method is essential, but if you draw freehand you need to be confident that you don’t lose all the hard work you put into perfecting the composition. I like to paint in the principal outlines with thinned paint and a fine brush. Pencil lines can soon begin to disappear beneath the paint, so this gives a bolder outline to work from.
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Painting the Background
The background may be painted at this stage, especially if it features textures.
Making textures can get enjoyably messy, making it difficult to achieve clean edges painting the background first allows us to overlap a little, and tidy up the edges later when painting foreground objects and figures. -
Blocking In
The next stage is to use paint thinned with water to block in areas of color and establish the lighting and tonal values.
Volume and form should be given to the shapes and figures in the illustration before detailed painting begins.
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The Main Feature 1
In painting the foreground features we work up from areas of shadow, through the mid-tones and finishing off with the highlights.
This is more a general principle than a hard and fast rule
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The Main Feature 2
We finish off the lesson on the main feature.
Tasks
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Playing With Paint
Try a few of the acrylic techniques I’ve described in the resources below. You can use your sketchbook or any reasonably heavy paper. Pick an effect that will add interest and energy before starting on the background area of your illustration.
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Tracking Your Progress Practice exercise 4.1
How is your painting progressing? Take a "before" picture and share it to the forum. Have you any questions or doubts at this stage?
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Time Out! Practice exercise 4.2
Go away and do something else! How do you like to take a break? Share your best recipes, your playlists, your favorite walks, or gardening tips. Anything to clear your palette before returning for the spit and polish stage of your project.
Additional resources
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Timelapse Painting
Here are a few time-lapses and videos of paintings in progress, starting with a couple of my own. You can see how a painting can be loosely blocked in with diluted color to establish tones and colors before working up to finer detail. Enjoy!
All my own work
Lucy and George
Warrior HordeArthur Gain
Two paintings by this immensely talented Barcelona-based painter, Floki and Alla Prima Skull.James Gurney
A couple of paintings from prolific plein air painter (that’s outdoors, to you and me) and creator of Dinotopia,James Gurney. The first is of a familiar street scene from my home town of Dublin. The second shows a considerably more productive way to fill departure lounge time than buying a sticky pastry and a magazine you don’t really want.
Additional resources
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PDF
Working Sketches
Here’s a roundup of working drawings that I’ve done for a variety of projects, along with the corresponding illustrations. You will notice small variations in the finished artwork, but most of the wrinkles have already been worked out by the time the working drawing is produced.
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PDF
No Lightbox? No Problem
If you don’t have access to a lightbox, transferring your working drawing to your art paper can be done accurately by drawing a grid.
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PDF
Playing With Paint
Acrylic paint dries quickly and has excellent opacity, which makes it the ideal medium for creating interesting textures. Here are a few you can try.
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PDF
Blocking In
More on blocking in.