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Acrylics Anonymous, Issue #129 -- Keep It Simple Silly! May 01, 2024 |
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.
Click here to go shopping!
KISS! You don’t have to do a great big complicated landscape, sweeping mountains, clouds in the distance etc. A compelling painting can be as simple as a few leaves cutting across a blue sky. Or, a seagull in a dark sky. The edge of a wing, or a whale fluke. There are no rules. Just have fun and Keep It Simple Silly! :) 
Podcast News Tia Renee makes a podcast related to everything near death experience, extraterrestrials and more! She did a recent interview with Mark you may like to check out on Youtube via the link below! Workshop News! You will usually find us planning upcoming workshops :) We are currently in the early planning stages for a workshop in Woolgoolga NSW in mid-August 2024, and Fiji is coming up in in October! There is a possibility of workshops in Canberra this year as well. Keep your eyes on your inbox or check out our workshops page for all the info! Click here for all the latest workshop info. Tax Time Is Coming For Aussies Check out our new page on how you can maximise your money this year by claiming the 100% tax deductions on artwork for your business up to $150,000. Click here for all the info! Meet The Wallers News Did you know you can organise to host a screening of Meet The Wallers for your community via Fan Force? Click here to see how it all works! Meet The Wallers is a unique documentary that follows artist Mark Waller and his family over 20 years. When Mark is diagnosed with a deadly Melanoma the fault lines in the Waller family erupt with surprising results. New on our Youtube channel Since our last AA we have released more short "Thoughts from the Easel" videos on Youtube (this time inspired by the Solomons!), as well as our full length "Coastal Pathways" impressionist beachscape tutorial you had early access to last AA. Here's the links in case you haven't seen them already! Click here for the full tutorial Coastal Pathways Click here for the short "The Aircraft" Click here for the short "Leaf Hut" Click here for the short "Home" **Meet The Wallers**
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 Reg, from Victora, Australia with his painting "Storm Coming". Thanks so much for sharing this with us Reg - an awesome, dynamic piece that has so much movement and life. Click here for more info on Reg's painting "Storm Coming"
Guillermo Galetti, also known as the Scrap Thief, is a PE teacher and Blacksmith who blends creativity and ingenuity to craft biomechanical caricatures from recycled materials. His unique pieces are renowned for their precise replication of movement sequences from various sports practices. Check out his work on Youtube here. Hannah Webb is an incredible artist and illustrator based in California. Her personal art style is defined by technique in application and dynamic color, and is blocky, pixellated, and bright. Just gorgeous. Check out her compelling work 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 once again, from our own fearless flying bean, Mark Waller :) From Mark: "Moody Surf Spot" I’ve said many times how much I love the Solomons. I also may have mentioned that sometimes looking at the light is a slightly surreal experience. It often feels as though someone has turned up the saturation. The colours can seem slightly unreal. As someone who paints, that’s like heroin. On one of the last trips, it seemed unusually hazy. My Solomon’s friend explained that that means wind is coming. They are so in tune with their environment. That haze though, changed the light and made the sunsets more subdued, but no less glorious. There’s a little headland not far from where we stay which has excellent surf, and back in Australia it’s hard not to drift back there. Lucky I can paint it. Photos and memories coalesce. The painting! I wanted this to be a very spontaneous and quick piece, and didn’t want to overwork it. Lots of subtle shifts in hue to create the illusion of haze. I dragged out an old canvas I’d already sketched something out on before, and scrubbed on the image. While obviously it needed some work, I was really happy with those broken, subdued yellows and pinks leaning into the purples. Sometimes the first step of a painting is the most satisfying (it’s all downhill after that :)).
I re-established the sky, defining the clouds and paying attention to the transition from warm to cool. It took a little while to get those purples right. (A little bit of overpainting there).
And then started defining the water a little more. The island dried a bit darker than I hoped, particularly in the area closest to the sun, so I modified that colour a little to create the impression of the sunlit haze diminishing the strength of the island.
I defined the edges of the trees, added a few coconuts poking their heads up here and there (nothing says tropics better than coconut trees).
I then started working into the reflections on the water, and because the surf is so woven through that place, for me, I spent a little bit of time getting the waves just right.
From that point on it became about the highlights on the water, and the transition of the highlights through to the shallow water in the foreground. This painting was never intended to be a saleable piece necessarily, purely a self indulgent thought experiment. That is never wasted time though, because every time you pick up the brush you learn something.
And this painting certainly taught me a lot about mood, and the illusion of haze. It also helped me rediscover that “less is more” and that you don’t have to reproduce everything. Super fun, hope you’ve enjoyed the journey with me. I sure as hell enjoyed painting it.
You can find all of Mark's good stuff through the bio link below: Mark's links all in one place! 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 Threads, 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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