I want to add a base color to these mountains and only these mountains. I don’t want my brush to touch anything else on the canvas. So! I want to use the Lasso Selection tool !!
Painting a semi abstract mountain painting with acrylics
December 18, 2012
This is the last of the 7 paintings I had to make for the group show coming up in February at the Cityscape Art Gallery in North Vancouver. There had to be a mountain somewhere in the picture and I had 2 lines I needed to incorporate somehow in my composition. I used mostly acrylic with a lot of layers, and a bit of gouache at the beginning.
I start by drawing a very rough outline of my landscape , placing the lines I need to incorporate in my composition
mixing acrylic and medium
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Liquitex Acrylic Mediums
and then paint an under-layer of yellow on the sky area and the valley.
I am painting a few successive semi transparent layers on the sky area with brown, blue and white. I am starting to work on the mountains with ultramarine blue, green and white
I add a bit more definition on the mountains.
Still adding layers of semi transparent acrylic ( acrylic mixed with medium)
Now I am working with the painting horizontal on a table, adding a watery mix of gouache on the sky and mountain area.
I am painting the trees in the foreground with a watery mix of acrylic and water, then I let the paint drip by placing the canvas in a vertical position.
I am painting abstract patterns for the clouds in the sky, I later will make them more subtle by taking off some of the paint with a tissue paper.
I am painting the trees trunks with a watery mix of white acrylic. I then work on the lighter trees in the foreground.
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Sandrine Pelissier
Originally from France, I have been living in North Vancouver, Canada for the past 20 years. My work has been collected and exhibited extensively in Canada and internationally. I am also part of the Art Rentals and sales program of the Vancouver Art Gallery. Many of my paintings have been published in Art books and magazines (Artist Magazine, Watercolor Artist Magazine, Acrylic Magazine, International Artist Magazine). I wrote 2 art instruction books with North Light/F+W Books. I have been writing for the last 5 years for my blog: paintingdemos.com, that has a mailing list of about 10 000 subscribers and about 20 000 visitors per month. I am an active member in the community, as a co-founder of the North Shore Art crawl, a co-founder of a weekly life drawing group, a board member of the North Vancouver Arts Council, and have been invited as a juror for public art, art grants and juried exhibitions. You can read more about my collaborations here.
Making a Document
Once I open Clip Studio Paint Pro, I make an illustration file with the dimensions of 3800 X 2500 pixels and 300 dpi
The Foreground, Middle Ground, and Background of a piece are all apart of its composition. As you may think, Foreground is what is closest to you, middle ground is a little farther away, and the background is FARTHEST away from the viewer. Objects in the Foreground of many pieces can be darker than objects in the middle and background. Objects in the Background can be seen as lighter in hue. I will be working with this mindset throughout my journey.
Making a Gradient for the Sky
I will be using the “Blue Sky” gradient tool to make a smooth looking sky in my background. This saves a lot of time for me.
Alright! this doesn’t look too bad. I am using the “Thin Gouache Brush” in most of this piece because I like to form nice opaque shapes. In the foreground I want something dark in hue to be in the way of the view of the background. In the middle ground, I want some land area with some grass. Finally, for the background, I want some Mountains. Although this is the very beginning of the piece, it is also very important because this is when we first discover what we want! Don’t worry if it looks terrible. This is the experimentation process where we place objects and colors on our canvas to plan our composition.
I Now Have A Basic Idea of what I want
After experimenting with lighting and where I want my light source to be which is on the top right over the mountains, I added tints and shadows of blues over my mountain and tints and shadows of blue and green to the grass area in the middle and foreground. I also added a tiny red headed subject to my piece so that the viewer has more information as to how big these mountains really are!
AND ! I added a big red tree growing on the side of the mountain to add another pop of color and to add a surreal fantasy aspect to my piece.
