Are you ready to get creative? It doesn’t matter if you have never painted. If you want to paint, then just go for it. Pick up that brush despite all the mumbo jumbo coming from your mind. The truth is that you can paint a good painting easier than a bad one. Your real hurdle is finding the will to just do it.
Start with a work on paper, not canvas. Work your way up to canvas as it’s a whole different animal and experience. It’s less traumatic to botch a work on paper than canvas, and the creative process does include botching now and then. Paper makes for an easier testing ground, and is less expensive. The use of the brush is also very different on paper than on canvas. Working with a brush and the fluidity of water is a nice gentle approach to painting. It will teach you a great deal before you move on to the thicker, denser paints. I worked in both watercolor and oil in art school, but chose to work in acrylics on paper for many years after wards. I love the fluidity and flow of water in painting. I chose acrylics over watercolor because I liked the density of acrylics when mixed with water compared to the thinner watercolors.
Painting landscapes is so rewarding for many reasons. Your visual studies of nature will connect and ground you more deeply, and you bring nature’s beauty to the home. Nature has many gifts for you when you really start to “see”. It can be harder to actually see than it can be to express so you must learn to see what is before you. There are shapes flowing, different depths in perspectives, lines and colors all pointing to your composition. You must also translate all this into a feeling for your vision. It is your special feeling energy that infuses your painting with what is unique about you. Sometimes I have to sketch my visions while other times they lock in to my visual brain with crystal clarity. My best paintings come from this locked in clarity. I have seen the painting so completely that no sketch was needed, and I can hold that vision for years before it becomes a painting. The eventual art of expression requires the art of seeing.
The dynamic energy of nature is in constant motion. Soft, gentle colors over the fields can shift quickly to bold and dark shades while a sunny sky can change to a cloud filled, foreboding storm. Let your eyes and senses be drawn to what pleases you as this is your sign to what you will paint with passion. You are looking for a complex, yet simple, composition. Do not make it busy and complicated nor flat and boring. You must train your eye as you scan the horizon for the colors, shapes, motion and mood that you can feel as well as see. Your foundation for dynamic landscape acrylic paintings is in both seeing and feeling.
Sketch loosely what you have seen on a nice piece of Arches watercolor paper, smooth or rough. Use a light drawing pencil, such as a #2 Hard. Do your sketch quickly, but obtain the flow of your desired composition.You are going to create a painting, not a drawing, so detail is not important. Get the basic shapes along with the positioning of everything in relation to one another. Now put your acrylic paints on a plate, mix colors you have seen and leave some of those pure and straight from the tube. Use a fair amount of water to get the first layers on, and cover the whole paper. Then you will go back in, and start to build the image with layers of more colors. When using acrylics on paper like watercolor, you want to work from light to dark. It is easy to keep darkening colors, and harder to lighten colors that have gotten too dark. This is when colors get muddy, and you want your colors to stay pure and bold when going darker. You are wanting to create depth with purity of color. Mix white, brown or black into your colors sparingly, and only when needed for a desired effect. Listen to the colors, and let them do the talking.
Color has the most infinite possibilities in the spectrum with the mixing of colors. If you are new to mixing colors, get a color wheel to get you going. You want to become a master of color. Mixing the perfect shades requires a certain sense and sensitivity that color will teach you. The secret to brilliancy in your painting is found in the opposition of warm colors to cool colors along with bright colors and subdued colors. This juxtaposition brings colors to life. If you are wanting to create the sensation of light, it is all in the color. Become a master of color, and you will also become a master of light.
Allow your beautiful landscape acrylic paintings to be full expressions of what you see and how you live. They will become a reflection of all the beauty you have inside you, and that you are thus able to see around you.
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