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Acrylics Anonymous, Issue #084 -- The Bits And The Bobs
August 01, 2019


Passionate about painting with acrylics? Need a monthly fix chock full of inspiration? Need some help to take the pain out of your painting process? It's all here for you. Acrylics Anonymous. Zero elitism. Dive in.



If you enjoy Acrylics Anonymous, and you know someone who might also enjoy it, you can share by forwarding it to your friends!

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Every month, we will produce a Subscribers Only "sealed section". It could be a painting technique, a short video tip, or anything we can think of that we reckon you might enjoy.

Please let us know what you think, we love your feedback! To leave comments, contact us here.



Exclusive to you!
Some great tips on painting waves and water in low light :)




Click here for your exclusive clip!







Let's Help Our Planet!

I’m really concerned about looking after our planet, and hadn’t really thought I could reduce my impact with my choice of paintbrushes.

If you want to do the same, look for brushes that are certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC certified) 100%, made with recyled and bio-degradable materials like the Micador brushes I use.

A small step, but the longer we look after our planet, the more subject matter we’ll have to paint.







Private Sessions With Mark


Private classes with Mark are coming up in August - there is still one place available on Wednesday 28th. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from this master painter in a one-on-one environment!

Click here for all the information!



Sale! Sale! Sale!

All Mark's Limited Edition archival prints are now available at 10% off! Use the code: JUSTBECOZ

Click here for all the prints!


Every month, we choose an Artist from our forum to showcase.

You can even nominate someone if you like. (Or yourself!). To do this, check out the forum and then send us an email! It’s that easy.

This month, it's Marty Garland from Ireland, who has showed us how a loose style can create this fantastic scene titled "Shadows", with these great shadows as the focal point. Awesome job Marty!

Click here for more information about Marty's "Shadows"




Colour perception and optical illusion. I apologise in advance for exploding your brain! But check this out! Wowee!

This is truly awesome, have a look.



Michael Papadakis aka @sunscribes is a performance artist specialising in “sunlight art” - making art from a magnifying glass and mirrors, and focussing the energy into making patterns and art onto various surfaces.

Check out this fascinating art form now.




If you have a link you like, please share it with us! You can contact us to let us know. Thank you!

This is the section where you can "get your name in lights!" (well at least out there in the internet world!).

If you have works in progress you would love to show off, or finished pieces you are particularly proud of, we would love to see them!

We especially like to hear about the story behind the creation.

This month's submission comes from Mike Woning - budding Dutch artist from the cold, grey Northsea.

From Mike:

"Being a surfer, I love the sea, especially waves. They truly are a thing of beauty. I recently discovered Instagram and to my joy, found several very talented sea and ocean photographers. Hello inspiration! One of the photographers I had ‘discovered’ before my Insta revelation, is the talented Dutch photographer Ruud Zwaan aka @65things, who covers several surf sports in the Dutch North Sea and shares his photographic trophies online. It was one of his shots that inspired me to paint this wave. I asked him for permission to paint the wave and he was stoked! Nice.

Actually, being a surfer is what got me into painting. I had shaped a board a few years back, using foam from an old windsurf board. This required a ton of repair work to the foam before I could even get started with shaping (tip: don’t try this at home 😉). The result was a blotchy, ugly looking board that needed a make-over. Checking around online, I ran into several super cool videos about pimping your ride, amongst others by Fieldey.

Turning my hand to painting my home-made board, I found out that I really enjoyed decorating boards using paint markers and was pretty decent at it at that. So, I did my other 2 boards too, and a few skateboards but then I ran out of boards to paint… However, the creative seed was planted, and I picked up an actual brush and bought canvas in January 2018. Have been painting ever since. I have to admit that the Explore Acrylics/ Mark Waller vids have helped me out a ton both technique as inspiration wise. Thank you!

This image, I thought was really cool because of the perspective, the sky, the panes of water shimmering off the lip of the wave, and the glow in the water. I tried catching this in the painting.

Getting the general form and perspective with waves is relatively easy, compared to portrait painting (now THAT is hard, I recently found out). So the first sketch was put on canvas quickly and easily.



Then put in the first layer of color for a basic feel.



Skies are difficult for me. Especially if they go from yellow to blue: I struggle getting a nice gradation without going to greens. And then to put clouds in with a nice airy feel to them… ugh! I went back and forth on the sky on this one for hours without making much of a difference. During the sky process, I started putting in some of the glow of the sky that is off to the right of the image.



After the sky was reasonable enough, I started working on the foam close to the horizon, thinking I could just work my way up to the top left hand corner.



However that’s when I realized that the see-through panes of water were going to be hard. In hindsight I might have wanted to leave those lip areas blank, instead of having to work over the wave face in the background. I’m still not set on how to tackle this next time but seeing that I work a lot in glazes when doing these waves, I was struggling to get a see-through feel to the panes. Moreover, I felt I didn’t have the tools or finesse to dry brush some of the smaller details, which would have been better than the current approach, I think.

I never achieved what I was aspiring to, but this is good enough for where I am in my development as a painter (actually, I really like the look in the WIP photo below but lost that feel in later stages). Also in hindsight, I would have liked to give the lip a bit more irregularities: it’s coming down too much in one uniform sheet now.



The last step was to work on the reflections in the water itself and water droplets. Good fun, and lots of glazing. Again there is room for improvement but overall, the painting turned out pretty decent. I’m happy with it for now.



‘Early morning North Sea flapper’, 40x80cm, acrylic on canvas."

Thanks so much for sharing Mike!

If you like Mike's work and would like to see more, please check out his instagram account, right here.

For Mike's facebook page, click here.




Hope you enjoyed this issue of Acrylics Anonymous!

If you have any suggestions, comments or feedback for the ezine or our site, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Until next time, make sure you chuck some paint around!

Cheers from Frankie & Mark :)


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