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Acrylics Anonymous, Issue #120 -- Let's Get Loose! November 01, 2022 |
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! If you are receiving this because a friend has forwarded this to you, and you would like to subscribe, click here! 
Every month, we will produce a Subscribers Only "sealed section" - just keep scrolling to see it. 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.
Take 30% off all items in the Explore Store. That's downloadable tutorials, DVDs, gift vouchers and more!
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Get Dramatic! Try using dark, moody and somber backgrounds, contrasted with a brightly lit object in the foreground, for drama and massive impact Click here for a great vid on creating mood :) 
Winner Of The "Not-Waves" Competition! A massive thanks to all of you for entering our competition last month! Congratulations to awesome human Greg Couston for guessing correctly and being drawn out of the Explore hat as our winner! We will get your painting sent out to you shortly :)
Workshops in 2023 We are already in the planning stages for a new workshop in mid-February 2023 "Loosen Up!". Make sure you're signed up to our workshops mailing list so you don't miss out. These classes are small, and fill up quickly! Group Exhibition Opens Early December Our upcoming $300 and under exhibition is opening at the Lennox Arts Collective on December 2nd. Keep your eye on our socials for all the information, as we will be having a special "online only" exhibition especially for you guys before then! New Shorts on Youtube Since last time there have been more "Thoughts From The Easel" up on Youtube. Here's a few more you may not have seen yet. Click here for the short "Insignificant and Magnificent". And click here for the short clip "See if You Can". 
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 we're featuring artist Michael, Moorpark, California, USA, with their fun, summer vibing piece "Just For Fun". Thanks so much for sharing this with us Michael, we love it! Click here for more on Michael's piece "Just For Fun"
RafaelAraujo is an incredible analogue artist who works with the Golden Mean. If you're at all interested in this approach, and sacred geometry, you should definitely have a look at his stunning works. Have a look at Rafael's work here. Faith Humphrey Hill is an artist exploring the edge between traditional and technological. Follow her journey into knit prints, knit animations and beyond. Incredible stuff! Check out Faith's unusual portrait art here. 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 again, from our own Fearless Leader Mark Waller, with the journey of this loose exercise. From Mark: "We were exploring some ideas for a workshop. I wanted looseness, stormy skies, lots of movement and drama. There’s been a lot of that here lately, weather-wise, so may as well make use of it! I found an old piece of plywood, sealed it with a couple of coats of Binder Medium, and some Impasto Gel (Heavy Gel Gloss) to fill some of the lumps and bumps in the board. A coat of Free Flow Cadmium Orange gave this board a lurid glow. I wasn’t sure exactly how it would affect the finished painting but hey, this was an experiment.
I chalked in the basic elements, horizon, cliff face, a few rocks. Time to mix some paint. I used a dark mix of Dioxazine Purple, Pthalo Blue, French Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber and roughed in the darker areas of the sky, being aware of the movement and direction of the weather front.
I added White to that to create some volume here and there, leaving a small corner of light in the top left. I mixed some French Ultramarine Blue and White and filled that space to represent a tiny corner of clear(er) sky. Little glimpses of blue here and there helps to create the illusion of movement, and gave some weight to the top left corner of the picture to counterbalance the future activity in the bottom right. I mixed Dioxazine Purple and Cadmium Yellow Medium and White together and brushed in a little bit of that golden colour between the blue and the darker clouds. No idea why, just felt like I should :)
I used some of the sky colours, added a tiny bit of Pthalo Blue to cool it down a touch, and roughed in the lighter and darker areas in the water. Whatever happens in the sky, will absolutely always affect the water. I then mixed Dioxazine Purple and Burnt Umber, and roughed in the darkest areas on the cliff face, and the areas where the rocks would be wet in the foreground. I added White to that and a few touches of Cadmium Yellow Medium, and brushed in the highlights on the rocks to give me a sense of the make up of the headland.
I mixed a green using Forest Green, Cadmium Yellow Medium and a touch of Dioxazine Purple, and blocked in the grassy areas above the cliff. I stole a bit of the pale sky colour, added some White to it, and with a large ish brush started working in the suds and the waves. I ran some of this colour up the face of the cliff here and there to create the impression of a storm surge.
I mixed up a water colour using the sky colour, and adding Pthalo Blue and White, and filled in the gaps around the rocks and lumps of water in front of the whitewash areas. I then got the fan brush, and using the same colour I used for the whitewash with a little extra White added, began forming the sudsy trails left by the waves. I used the edge of the fan and let it do its own thing (to a certain extent).
I mixed up a dark mix of Pthalo Blue and Permanent Alizarine and Burnt Umber, and re-established some of the darker areas on the cliff face. The rest of the picture was a see-saw between re-establishing the whitewash, and strengthening and diminishing the colours on the cliff face. I wanted lots of movement, lots of spray. I came back with a small brush and with a little more intention created the illusion of wavelets running down rocks, highlights on the tops of waves, and detail in the flat areas between the rocks and waves.
The last things to do was add the glorious patches of light on the top of the cliff and the rock face, after intensifying the light in the top left corner of the sky. I got a little bit of the earlier green colour and added a little more Cadmium Yellow Medium to this to intensify and warm up the greens on top of the cliff. I also strategically placed flashes of that colour on the edges of the rocks where the water washed over to create the illusion of seaweeds. I used the earlier pale yellowy sky colour to add highlights down the cliff face where the light would be hitting patches of it. The very last thing to do was some dry brushing using the whitewash colour, dragging it gently up the face of the cliff to create the illusion of salt spray being thrown into the air.
Before each workshop we do some investigating to see if we can find any problem areas for participants, any areas people may struggle with, and whether the image is dynamic enough to hold people’s attention, and give them enough information so that they can walk away feeling challenged and yet, fulfilled. This one we decided was probably not right for our format at this point, but was a fun exercise nonetheless. And let’s face it, there’s no such thing as a bad day moving paint around.
If you want to see some footage of this process, you can on our recent short here." Thanks so much for sharing your process with this painting Mark. Make sure you're following Mark on his socials below for more! Follow Mark's Instagram here. Follow Mark's Facebook here. For Mark's website, follow here. We 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 stay safe and well, and don't forget to chuck some paint around! Cheers from Frankie & Mark :) For our Youtube channel, click here. To join our Youtube channel as a member for a few bucks every month (in exchange for even MORE awesome perks, click here. For our Instagram, click here. For our Website, click here. For our Facebook page, click here. For our Pinterest, click here. For our Tik Tok, click here.
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