Painting experiment for a commission
Added 2020-10-20 17:50:15 +0000 UTCI have a large real media painting I’m doing of a figure in a tropical setting and I did some experiments to see how I wanted the handle the pure gradients of the sky and water.
The left one is a pale blue-white mix with a blue glaze over it. The best in terms of glowing color, but it’s so streaky, which offends my Virgo brain!!
The next is a traditional gradient where you have the dark blue on one end and the white (or in this case a pale green) On the other, and you blend in parallel strokes. This works amazingly well for oil a a slow-drying processes but with acrylic it just dries too fast. It turned out alright for this little strip but I think I’d have trouble with a whole canvas.
The next up was supposed to be white with layers of glaze over it but something very interesting happened. The gesso I was using for a white dries slower than the acrylic and kept coming up and mixing. I actually really like the look but I’m dubious about experimenting with it on a large commission. I’m better off learning the process on my own time.
The right one is a special kind of acrylic made by Atelier called “Interactive acrylic” which behaves more like gouache. With water, it stays workable and you can reactivate it with a spray bottle. This is the one that worked best for my purposes (blending in clouds will be much easier with something I can reactivate). It will also allow me to blend in parts of the background.
The only trouble was that I had cobalt but not the pthalo green shade I wanted for the beautiful tropical sky and water, so I ordered a new tube which just shipped and should be here in a few days.
