Acrylic painting
grand marshal polycounter
Been getting into acrylic painting lately. Not very good at the moment. I've been doing some lessons with my mom, Sherry Fraser, who is a talented painter. If anybody here has tips on improving my painting, please lay it on me!!
I've been painting for a few weeks now, so I'll upload them in order.
First one was inspired by the forest fires which are getting more and more prominent.
Replies
Brushstrokes often basically describe plane changes. I don't know how deliberately you're doing this already, but to represent volume try to see the edge loops in the objects you're depicting and make your brushstrokes generally follow them, favoring loops most closely mimicking the silhouettes. You should be able to blend the paint to soften the brushwork when some area looks too busy, but if this really a concern you can use underpaitings and thumbnails to plan the brushwork as well.
And to reduce the breakage that happens when switching to a different hue or value on a single surface train your eyes to see subtler value and hue transitions. It's very hard to do but highly rewarding, because once in full control of those you can use them to connect areas of higher contrast in a way they don't accidentally read as separate shapes, working in a sort of 2-layer system (not actual paint layers, but a way of seeing things): the first layer is made of those subtle transitions, like if it were a fully diffuse material lit by area lights describing the object shape, volume and surface texture; the higher contrast second layer is the albedo coloring and the full effect of the scene lighting on the actual material, with all highlights and shadows taken into account.