Day Three - The Bunny Slopes

Acrylic Painting Tutorial

In this chapter we are going to paint the bunny below with my acrylic painting techniques, from chicken scratch to completed picture. It will take the entire chapter to give you a good understanding about how to paint. Please read the entire chapter before painting, and then go through the chapter again while painting. This is the most important chapter of the entire book, please read it carefully. It will give you a solid fundamental understanding about how to paint with acrylics.

Angles And Measuring With Your Brush

Drawing with your brush is easy, just measure the angles and using your brush and the canvas as a guide. First, decide where the very top, bottom and sides are going to be of the bunny. Place little markers of paint on the canvas. This gives the bunny a definite size on the canvas, stay within that proportion. Then, hold your brush horizontally to one side of the bunny, what angle is it from the brush and the canvas? Start swaying your brush making stroking motions in that angle until you are comfortable, then draw it on the canvas.

Alternate drawing the lines from top to bottom, to left and right of the entire bunny. It is easier to create the whole bunny rather than drawing one part of it at a time. Repeat this exercise until you have drawn in all of angles of the bunny on your paper.

It is OK to slop on the paint, because White is your eraser.

Once you have completed the lines of the bunny, begin erasing the slop, and render the outline. Now before you actually paint in the bunny, you will fill in the background. Since the background is behind the bunny, it is wise to begin there. Look at the background closely. Notice the light and shade of the drapes, and which fold is the darkest and which area is the lightest. Mix a middle colored gray tone closest to what you see on your screen. Then begin filling in the shading by adding a little darker color and alternate lighter colors with the same mixture as used for the middle tone. To create depth and dynamics to a picture, a simple formula is to remember: light next to dark. Make sure a light color is always next to a dark color. Think subtle differences, high contrast of light and dark and in between those two.

Color And Its Shade And Light

When you look at an object, the first color impression is usually the correct one. Try and mix that color. It'll be your base color for the bunny. Rather than mixing a large batch of a paint color, just remember how you mixed it. That way you can always mix the color. Refer to the color chapter for reference.

Rendering

Blending with water is the easiest and most effective way to get a smooth transition. Lightly dampen your Filbert brush, add color and place on the canvas, then add the color to be blended and place next to the other color. Start blending in a zig-zag motion, then make one stroke down the center.

Detail And Finishing Up

Adding the final details to your picture, step back and view it from across the room. How do you feel about the completion? If you have any second thoughts go back to your original idea and compare. Feel free to change whatever you like, it is your painting.

When you have completed your picture, let it dry completely for at least 12 hours before framing, storing or varnishing. Acrylics actually dry to the touch after about 20 minutes, but waiting half a day is a good habit to practice, especially if you make thicker paintings. If you do not plan on displaying your art or if you want to come back to it in a week or so to see if you want to make changes, then there is no need to varnish it.

When learning how to paint light, many teachers tell you all about the science of light, photons, how the cones and rods in your eyeballs work and other scientific theories. And while that can be interesting, it also makes learning how to paint extremely complicated, when it doesn't need to be. All you really need to know is which direction the light is coming from. Where is the light coming from in your picture, top left, top light, underneath, above?

All you really need to know about painting light is which direction the light is coming from.

In this picture, the light is coming from the front of the bunny with a harsh camera flash.

A full spectrum bulb is lighting from the back of the bunny.

Natural sunlight is coming from a window on the left side of the bunny.

An incandescent full spectrum bulb is lighting the bunny from directly above.

Notice how the colors changed from picture to picture. It is the same pink bunny, just with different lights beaming down on it from different angles. Remember that when you want some interesting dynamics an ordinary subject.

Lighting The Mood

The type of light affects the color and mood of a painting. Are there more lights than one? What type of light is it? Is it a sobering blue fluorescent, a calming yellow like from a candle, heat of a noon sun or perhaps it's a cold winter's moonlight? Whatever type of light you have, it affects the objects it touches and changes the colors.

Painting The Bunny

Do your brush warm-ups before painting:

Vertical Strokes
Horizontal Strokes
Diagonal Strokes
Circles

Refer to the materials and acrylic painting tutorial in Day 1 to refresh your memory about the brush exercises.

Lay out your art materials and get ready to paint, but wait on squeezing the paints out. Remember to put the drop of soap into the rinse water. Refer to Day One to refresh your memory on how to set up your materials.

Spray the watercolor paper with the mister and wait until dry. This stretches out the paper and makes it stay flat after the painting has been completed. This step will take about 10 minutes and save you a major headache. If you neglect this step, your painting will warp! Spray the palette with water and apply the paint. Spray the paint. Don't bother with black, you won't need it for this picture.

Dip all of your brushes into the water to get them wet and ready for use. Mix a color that is a light gray. Dark enough to see, yet light enough to erase with White. I used Green, Red and White.

Use your large round brush and place a dot on the highest point of where the bunny will be in your picture. Place a dot on the lowest point of the bunny as well as the farthest left and right and lowest point on the bottom. This action will give you a proportion to work with while drawing in the bunny.

Find the angles of the buny by using your large round brush. Use your brush, the paper and the picture border as a guide to find the angles. Begin drawing in the large angles, then work your way down to the smaller angles.

Soften the edges and create the outline of the bunny with your large round brush.

Erase the excess lines with White and smooth out the bunny with your small filbert brush.

Here is the final outline of the bunny.

Begin a middle tone micture for the background and paint on the paper. I used Blue, Orange and White. Let the paitn fluctuate between more Orange and more Blue for added effects.

Use more paint than you are comfortable with, because if you thin it too much, the paint will just glide over the White creating a streaky look. Keep going until you are satisfied with the tone.

Next create a mixture of pink using Red, Green and a large amount of White paint. Begin painting the bunny. This is where it begins to look scary and a point of no return. With acrylics, you can paint right over your mistakes. I'm just laying out the foundation of the picture. The point of this part is to build the entire painting together so it looks harmonious.

Keep using the Red, White and Green until you get the variations and shading down on the bunny. Use water to thin and blend.

At this point, your palette might look as though you melted a My Little Pony on it. If your palette is unworkable, scrape it off with your palette knife and some warm water. Remember to always mix your palettes on a fresh untouched area of the palette.

As you have probably noticed, I made the angle of the ear slightly off in order to show you how to fix it. In order to fix the inaccuracy, just paint over dried paint until it looks right. Repeat until the bunny looks the way you want it to.

Keep manipulating the bunny until it stands out from the background. The point is to bring both of them up incrementally to give a feeling of unity to the painting.

Begin painting the background, after you finish the ear, to insert the bunny into the picture. Play around with the colors of your palette, like Blue, Orange and White; Purple, Yellow and White; and Indigo, Brown and White.

With Indigo and Brown will create the darkest shadows. Be careful with this mixture because if you loosen it too much with water, they will granulate. Granulation is a term for pigments pocketing into the grooves of the paper. It will make the paper look very grainy. If this happens to you, use Blue and Orange to cover it up.

Play around more with the bunny with White and various mixtures of Purple, Red, Green, and Orange.

Put the highlights on the bunny and shadows underneath to make it three to finish the painting.