You can play around with different colors, multiple colors, and different patterns to create all sort of interesting effects.
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October 26, 2020
Love to paint?
Watched all the freebie tutorials and experimented with paints, mediums and brushes?
Ready for a new technique? This one is fun and easy!
Beginning Art Tutorial Painting with Layered Acrylics Tutorial Segment
Okay, so it’s been a couple of hours and that has pretty much dried. So, I’m going to take just a little bit of gold on a small–this is just stained it’s actually clean–s small flat pallet knife. I’m just going to put it on my pallet knife like that. Now what I’m going to do is on some of these sections that are really raised, I’m going to call out that gold by adding just a few highlights. And I would say less is more on this depending on what you personally like. I always think with doing this sort of thing, just a little goes a long way to add to the interest of the painting versus too much.
I’m just picking up a little bit from my tube. You could use the ink, you can use a soft body acrylic for this, anything that will–you wouldn’t want to use a high flow or anything like that for this level, you want something that will really adhere to the texture that you have and not flow. Okay, so I think that’s about it. That’s about all I’m going to do with this.
Now, I do want this to dry very well, so I’m going to give this several hours or overnight. And as you see in the light, the metallic picks up differently. Metallics are interesting. I’ll just give you a little side note here. Sometimes I’ll photograph a final painting and it just looks like bits of yellow or regular gold. And then when you tilt it a little in the light, then you can actually see the shimmer. So, it’s always good to post photographs of your painting if you’re selling them or just to have the photograph of the painting that you do to add to your portfolio. And take photographs in various lights and at various angles so you do get all of the depth and the texture and the metallic or other various tones of the colors that you’ve used in your artwork. So, we’re going to let this dry and then we’re going to come back and add our final glaze.
—PAINTING HAS DRIED—
All right we’re back and that has fully dried and what we’re going to do is we’re going to finish this canvas and we’re going to put a pretty final glaze on it for a sort of semi-glossy lustrous finish. So, when your canvas if fully dried, at least a day or two, this is a good time to do this. And this is a pre-varnish finish, so if you wanted to go ahead and put an archival varnish on your painting you would let this next coat of glaze dry at least for 24-48 hours and then come back and varnish.
If you are going to put a varnish on your painting, what we’re doing is we’re mixing up a satin and gloss glaze for this layer, so it’s going to have a little bit of a semi-gloss. You would then wan to use a semi-gloss or satin finish of varnish. If you used a matte varnish over that, then you could negate any of the gloss effects obviously. I’m using a small or a medium size flat brush, damp, just a little bit of water I dabbed off on a paper towel. I’m dipping into my glaze mixture here. Again, this is half and half gloss and satin glaze, acrylic glazing medium.
I’m going to get a good amount on my brush and I’m just going to start by going back and forth like this from edge to edge. And I’m working in small sections. Now what I’m doing is I’m going down the entire painting all the way off the edge like this. And I’m going to go back and touch my edges just like this because edges will often get forgotten as you kind of flick off like this. You see, I’m not quite getting the edge and you’ll find that your edges are dry after you finish your layer like this sometimes. So, you really want to go around it in a multitude of ways to make sure that you’ve got a good final coat on. Otherwise you’ll just end up doing more coats.
I’m working now from the mid-section up and I’m doing the same thing. Two different directions going around my edges to make sure that everything has been gotten. And you could go all the way down like this just to keep all those brush strokes very, very uniform. Now I’m working the top section up and down, up and down, back and forth, around the edges. Swipe the edges like this because things will go off and they will drip onto the sides and then you’ll have drips and that does not create a very professional looking piece of art when you have drips all down the sides which I sometimes do.
All right. So, that is essentially the final glazed painting. You can always go around the edges with a damp paper towel like this to catch those drips. I like to do that and then set it aside to dry for a good 48 hours. And then if you need another coat of that glaze for just a little more pop of gloss you can mix up another coat of the glaze. Or I like to just keep a jar of my glaze mixture going and mark it on top with what it is, so I always have it. Because I’ve use this quite frequently to finish off my paintings. It gives it a beautiful lustrous finish and a little bit of an extra protective layer and then I go ahead and varnish when it’s dry.
I would finish the sides of this painting off in white, personal. You could frame something like this with a thinner sided canvas if you’re working on a gallery or museum wrap, then you could finish the sides and just hang it on the wall as is.
So, this is it for this tutorial, I hope you enjoyed it. I really enjoy seeing your creations and any questions you have for any snags along the way. Please feel free to reach out and comment on this. Suggestions are always welcome. And let me know what you thought and join me for another tutorial. Thank you so much.
Step 1 – Get Your Plastic Wrap Ready
The first step is to get some plastic wraps. You can use the regular kitchen plastic wraps that we use to cover food. If you don’t have that, you can just use a regular plastic bag that you get from a grocery store.
Cut out your plastic wrap into a piece big enough to cover your painting surface and set it aside.
You definitely want to do this BEFORE that painting begins because plastic wraps can be very tricky to handle (as anyone who has fiddled with them can attest) and you don’t want to be fumbling with it as your painting is drying.
Step 2 – Apply Acrylic Paint to Paper
Next, mix up your acrylic painting using plenty of water (the water will help the paint spread smoothly over the paper). In this case, we are creating an ocean blue color using a mixture of white and blue paint.
Then quickly apply the paint over the paper to create an even wash. You want to move quickly and cover the entire paper before the paint begins to dry. It helps if you are using a big brush so you can cover a large area.
Step 3 – Create Texture and Effect
Once you have cover the paper with paint, place the plastic wrap over the entire areas (or you could just cover a portion of the paper, if that is the effect you are going for).
Take your hand and put wrinkles in the plastic. This is what’s going to create the abstract effect and texture we are looking for.
This is the stage where you can be very creative. Play around with different patterns and shapes. You can make an ice-like pattern (like we did in the video) or an all horizontal pattern, or a circular pattern. The possibilities are endless.
Rake and Furrow: Artforum Gives Sam Gilliam Cover Treatment and Considers His Unique Approach to Abstract Painting
A FIELD OF FROSTY WHITE flecked with hues of blue, violet, green, and pink, “Foggy” (2021) by Sam Gilliam (1933-2022) graces the cover of the November 2023 edition of Artforum. Inside, an essay by Julia Bryan-Wilson explores the unique characteristics that distinguish Gilliam’s abstract paintings and connects his techniques to Black women’s labor.
Gilliam is best known for his large-scale beveled edge paintings, which fetch top prices at auction (the artist’s current record is nearly $2.2 million), and his color-soaked sculptural paintings that are unsupported by stretchers and displayed in dramatic fashion, draped across walls and suspended from ceilings.
Artforum, November 2023: SAM GILLIAM, Detail of “Foggy,” 2021 (acrylic, aluminum granules, copper chop, sawdust, flocking, encaustic, and paper collage on canvas, 96 × 96 × 4 inches. | © Sam Gilliam/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
Bryan-Wilson doesn’t focus on those works, but rather considers paintings by Gilliam that are defined by their “textural materiality.” The paintings have textured surfaces built up with layers of pigment; raked surfaces yielding parallel “rhythmic grooves”; and collage formats achieved by cutting up existing paintings and piecing the remnants together to form new compositions in the patchwork style of a quilt.
“Gilliam’s solicitation of touch in his paintings—his enfleshment of abstraction—has political ramifications that are in dialogue with Black feminist practices and are made manifest in the way the works look as well as in how they were made,” Bryan-Wilson wrote. “Though his radically supple unstretched paintings have been rightly at the center of much of the art-historical literature about Gilliam to date, this incarnated politics is also apparent in other aspects of his process, namely, his patchworked canvases and raked furrows.”
Her essay is titled “The Rake and the Furrow: The art of Sam Gilliam” and quotes curators and scholars Fred Moten, Valerie Cassel Oliver, bell hooks (1952-2021), Daonne Huff, and Sylvia Wynter.
SAM GILLIAM, Detail of “Foggy,” 2021 (acrylic, aluminum granules, copper chop, sawdust, flocking, encaustic, and paper collage on canvas, 96 × 96 × 4 inches. | © Sam Gilliam/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
BORN IN TUPELO, MISS., Gilliam lived and worked in Washington throughout most of his career. Early on, at the height of the civil rights era when Black artists were expected to produce work that was representational, political, or both, Gilliam embraced abstraction, forging his own path. In 1972, he was the first African American artist to show his work at the Venice Biennale, where he was featured in a group show organized by Walter Hopps in the American Pavilion.
Late in life, he joined Pace Gallery in 2019. “Sam Gilliam: The Last Five Years” (Sept. 15-Oct. 28, 2023) was recently on view at Pace New York. Also in New York, Pace Prints is currently presenting “Sam Gilliam: Make it Wonderful” through Nov. 18.
Bryan-Wilson is a widely published critic and professor of art history and archaeology at Columbia University, where she focuses on contemporary art and LGBTQ+ theory. She is the author of four books including “Louise Nevelson’s Sculpture: Drag, Color, Join, Face” (2023).
In the Artforum essay, Bryan-Wilson assessed Gilliam’s last paintings, made between 2020 and 2022, including the cover work, “Foggy.” The painting was presented in a 2021 exhibition at Pace Hong Kong, marking Gilliam’s debut in Asia.
“The metaphors that come to my mind when I’m in front of these paintings are partly geologic (strata, sedimentation, igneous rock formations) and partly culinary—I think of baked confections, of frosting and sprinkles, of licking and tasting,” she wrote. “The dreamy whitish-bluish Foggy, from 2021, has a gouge near its center, and underneath the edge of this slit lies a purple world of mystery.” CT
SAM GILLIAM, Installation view of “Foggy,” 2021 (acrylic, aluminum granules, copper chop, sawdust, flocking, encaustic, and paper collage on canvas, 96 × 96 × 4 inches. | © Sam Gilliam/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
FIND MORE On Oct. 26, Artforum fired its editor in chief David Velasco after the magazine published an open letter about the Israel-Hamas War with 8,000 signatures from the arts community. The Oct. 19 letter rejected violence against all citizens and called for Palestinian liberation and a cease fire in Gaza. In response to Velasco’s dismissal, staffers demanded his reinstatement and artists Nicole Eisenman and Nan Goldin said they will cease working with the magazine, which is owned by Penske Media Corporation. On the morning of Nov. 9, Velasco was still listed as editor on Artforum’s leadership page
BOOKSHELF
Newly published, “Sam Gilliam: The Last Five Years” features an essay by Lowery Stokes Sims. From 2021, “Sam Gilliam” includes an interview with the artist conducted by Hans Ulrich Obrist and contributions by Courtney Martin and Fred Moten. Earlier volumes include “Sam Gilliam: The Music of Color: 1967–1973” and “Sam Gilliam: A Retrospective.” Also consider, “Beauty Born of Struggle: The Art of Black Washington,” which is edited by Jeffrey C. Stewart and published earlier this year.
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