I am a Professional Associate member of the Society for All Artists (SAA) in the UK and I use their Silver synthetic watercolour brushes to do most of my acrylic work. If you wash synthetic watercolour brushes under running water and squeeze the acrylic paint from the ferrule until no colour is seen, they will last a long time (my current set lasted seven years, having been used daily). I do not generally like acrylic brushes because their bristles tend to carve into the paint, but I do use them for more textural paintings. I also use the stiffer ones for spattering. For the paintings in this book, I used synthetic watercolour brushes as follows: 5cm (2in), 2.5cm (1in), 13mm (½in) and 6mm (¼in) fl ats; 13mm (½in) and 6mm (¼in) rounds and a rigger. I also used acrylic bristle brushes: 13mm (½in) fl at and no. 10 round for spattering; and painting knives for painting rocks.
Sea & Sky in Acrylics: Techniques & Inspiration
Painting teacher Dave White introduces the simple but effective techniques that he uses to paint stunning, dramatic seascapes with beautiful and realistic skies. He demonstrates spattering, blending backgrounds, painting horizons, finger painting clouds and foam. There is expert advice on the anatomy of waves and how they rise and collapse, creating ripples, surf, foam, and spray.
In addition, clear instructions show how to paint effective reflections and beaches to improve your seascapes. The sky section shows effective techniques for painting all types of cloud, with some innovative methods such as tipping up the surface to let dilute paint run, to create cirrus clouds. Dave’s method of creating depth in sea, beach, and sky using lines projected from the vanishing point can radically improve your seascapes.
You’ll also find a section on moods and sunsets, full of beautiful, dramatic examples. Finally, three step-by-step projects show how to paint a beach panorama with a rolling wave, a spectacular sunset over a calm sea, and waves crashing on rocks.
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- Искусство
- Изобразительное искусство
Язык English
Издатель Open Road Integrated Media
Дата выпуска 10 сент. 2015 г.
ISBN 9781781264232
Связанные категории
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Sea & Sky in Acrylics – Dave White
If I want to relax in my painting, this is the subject I enjoy the most. The sea and sky create a language common to us all, wherever we are in the world. These are the things in life which make us feel infinitesimally small, while at the same time reminding us of being on holiday! The sea and sky are always moving and changing and they generate a fascination that you could take a lifetime trying to capture in painting and probably only get a step along the way.
This book shares with you what I have found on my short artistic journey so far; some of the essential elements of capturing a seascape. It seeks to provide an understanding that will allow you to create an image that is instantly recognisable as a depiction of the sea and sky. It then shows you how to get a sense of movement into these paintings.
The places I have used in the illustrations and demonstrations are those that I know, so they are local to me, and yet are potentially universal. I happen to live just up the road from where British maritime artist, Montague Dawson, created his wondrous seascapes, so we are in good company. My hope is that you will apply the learning in this book to create your own images of the locations that you know and love.
Acrylics are my medium of choice; they are versatile, healthy and quick and there is very little waste. I have used two major acrylic ranges in creating all the images: one by Dayler Rowney and one by Winsor & Newton. They illustrate the subtly different properties in various ranges of acrylics, but both are favourites of mine. I discuss the main differences so that when purchasing your acrylics, you can look for the properties you prefer.
Finally, thank you for buying this book! I hope you will enjoy and be inspired by this journey and that it will lead you to an even longer expedition into the fascinating subject of sea and sky painting. I will finish with a quote from my favourite film The Hunt for Red October, spoken by Sean Connery as the submarine captain: ‘And the sea will grant each man new hope, as sleep brings dreams of home.’ May your painting hopes be fulfilled and your artistic dreams come true!
The Sky Will Be Darkened
51 x 40.7 cm (20 x 16in)
This was a quick paint sketch of a squall approaching during what had been quite
a nice day. See pages 70–71 for the final version.
Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad, let the sea resound and all that is in it.’ Psalm 96
Materials
If you are an experienced acrylic painter, you will probably already have many materials, but if you are just starting out, the objective of the following descriptions is to save you money, so please read carefully!
Acrylic paints are available in student quality and artist quality and some are more expensive than others. My advice is to find and stick to a brand that is well supported by its manufacturer, with sufficient information about what’s in the tube or pot, so that the artist is in no doubt about the property of the paint. By ‘property’ I mean in particular whether the paint is opaque, semi-transparent or transparent, which will tell you whether it is useful for underpainting or glazing; whether the finish is matt or gloss, satin or silk; and also how much the colour changes from wet to dry.
You do not need a huge selection of colours but I would suggest, as a minimum:
• A warm and cold blue, e.g. ultramarine and phthalo or Prussian blue.
• A warm and cold red, e.g. cadmium scarlet and alizarin crimson or cadmium red deep.
• A warm and cold yellow, e.g. cadmium yellow and lemon yellow.
• Add Mars black, a large tube of titanium white, Hooker’s or phthalo green, yellow ochre and burnt sienna, and from this selection you can mix a huge number of colours with many tints and shades.
For the demonstrations in this book I used a Daler Rowney range and a box set of twelve Winsor & Newton tubes, which include most of the colours mentioned above. You will always find that you need more titanium white and hence the recommendation for a large tube. Unfortunately there is no perfect, complete set of paints (the manufacturers always leave a crucial one out) so check carefully against the list above when buying a set.
Bear in mind that paint manufacturers update their paints over time, so I have not referred to specific ranges by name, to avoid the information becoming out of date.
Tips for painting the sky with acrylics
Painting Sky and Clouds. By Don Finkeldei: Some tips and rules to paint a realistic sky and clouds.
If you look at the sky near mid day, you’ll notice that at the zenith overhead the sky is a deep blue violet color. As the sky transitions to the horizon it becomes lighter and warmer with less color and even transitions to a very light green color. When the sun is low in the sky the color of the sun turns a bright orange red and even the sky near the horizon can be very warm with yellows, oranges and reds.
Of course, you don’t have to know why the sky has a gradient from blue overhead to a paler, warmer, more neutral color at the horizon. All you need to know is that it happens and that you absolutely need to paint it that way.
Clouds behave a lot differently than what happens in a cloudless atmosphere. Clouds contain droplets and small ice crystals that are very much larger in size than the smaller molecules in a cloudless atmosphere. They reflect pretty much all light frequencies equally. That’s why the sunlit side of clouds appear whitish. The larger and more dense the cloud, the darker the shadow underneath. That’s because most of the light can’t get through to the bottom.
Clouds can be very hard to paint for some people. Following these rules will help. Clouds are smaller in size at the horizon, they are farther away. That makes sense, right? Clouds have a sunlit side, a transition areas between sunlit and shadow, and shadow areas. Clouds don’t have defined hard edges, they simply grade softly at the edges and transition boundaries.
The sunlit side of the clouds overhead (nearer you) are more intense and whiter than the sunlit side of clouds at the horizon. The sunlit side of clouds at the horizon are less intense and warmer (pinkish). That’s because of the scattering effect in the atmosphere described above.
Shadows in clouds are generally gray but the underneath sides of clouds directly overhead can reflect a lot of bounced colors back from the earth. Shadows of clouds overhead can be quite warm due to these reflections.
Clouds aren’t just shadowy underneath. There are usually shadows on the side of a cloud, in the cloud, various places, depending where the sun is — and what angle the sun is hitting the clouds. Often, the shadows in a cloud are EXACTLY the same value and the sky behind it. The only difference is the color. A gray AT THE SAME VALUE as the sky behind the cloud. A perfect example of changing color, not value. Changing color while keeping the value the same can be a very powerful artistic effect and can greatly enhance the attractiveness of your painting. Most people put way to much value contrast in a sky and clouds. Values in a sky are much closer together than you think. Very subtle value changes. Of course, sometimes clouds can be dramatic with wide value changes. Like just before a powerful storm. If it’s like that, paint it. But, be sure that the rest of the painting supports the drama and keep your focus area in mind. A good painting has a focus area and the rest of the painting is just “supportive and diminutive” to the main focus.
When I’m driving, or just sitting around outside, I try to analyze and evaluate the values in the sky compared to the clouds both overhead and in the distance. A powerful tool to help you evaluate values in a sky: Take a digital image and convert it to gray scale in your photo editor. like photoshop. It’ll help you nail down values in a sky and understand what is going on much quicker than trial and error.
You don’t need to know why this happens (this is the physics of the sky on planet Earth). I’m not sure you want to continue — but for those of you who want to know – here it is :
The sun contains all wavelenths of light. Red, orange, yellow, green and blue are all present. Red is the longest wavelentgh. Blue is the shortest wavelength. In outer space (above the atmosphere of the earth) the sun looks intensely white because all the colors are present. it’s color additive meaning that “adding all colors together will show as white”. If the earth had no atmosphere, the sun would look white and the sky black. Light generally travels in straight lines and is only interrupted and scattered by small molecules and atoms in the atmosphere. Our atmosphere is comprised of oxygen, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, smog and pollutants.
When the light from the sun enters the atmosphere the molecules of gasses scatter the shorter wavelength blue color much easier than the longer warmer wavelengths. The gasses in the atmosphere scatter much more blue from the direct rays of the sun than the other wavelengths. It scatters throughout the sky, reflecting the blue color back to you from all over. The sun will appear warmer (yellower) than white light because the blue is removed from the direct rays looking at the sun. The atmosphere away from the sun will reflect mostly blue back to you that was scattered about – but depends on how much atmosphere the blue light has to travel through. At the zenith, the distance light travels through the atmospere is less than the distance through the atmosphere at the horizon. It just so happens that the atmospheric distance at the zenith above is just right to mostly reflect the scattered blue light back to your eyes. At the horizon, the atmoshphere distance is greater. The molecules in the atmosphere continue to re-scatter the blue light away again, making the sky at the horizon paler and warmer in relation to to the sky at the zenith.
As the sun begins to set, the light must travel further through the atmosphere before it gets to you. More of the light is reflected and scattered. As less reaches you directly, the sun appears less bright. The color of the sun itself appears to change, first to orange and then to red. This is because even more of the short wavelength blues and greens are now scattered. Only the longer wavelengths are left in the direct beam that reaches your eyes. The sky will also appear warmer at the horizon than during the middle of the day.
How to Paint Sky
The lesson here is for oils or acrylics, you can use either.
Here we learn how to paint a sky and then you may finish the painting as you wish
This exercise is an open scene; after the exercise is finished items may be placed into the landscape in silhouette form.
When doing this you will be able to place the item or items where ever they look good without covering the good bits of the background.
By cutting the silhouette out of black paper you can hold it near the painting and see how it looks in various positions before painting the image onto the painting. Do not use Black to paint your images, mix a dark color from your Blue and Crimson but be sure no White gets into the mixture.
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When you are finishing the painting of the sky, keep all your brush strokes in the one direction (across and slightly up).
It is best to use the paint straight out of the tube but if necessary a small amount of thinner may be added – do not use linseed oil when thinning your oil paint, best to use turps or kerosene to produce a creamy texture in your paint – work with a dry brush and wipe the brush clean often.
Finish the lower, brighter part of the sky before adding the darker colors into the top of the sky, we do not want the Blue on your brush to get into the lower sky. View the tutorial video to learn how to paint a sky.
