Acrylic landscape painting techniques - Lessons for beginners Part 1

Morning class, I’m Will Kemp from Will Kemp Art School and this is part one in a free
series showing you how to get started in acrylic landscape painting. We’re going to start
with this image, you can download it straight from my website and I’m going to show you
how to make this. How to get this painting from the photograph so you can do it yourself
at home. On the website I’ve got a list of all the colours you need, the brushes that
I use, but this is video is just how to get started get your drawing laid out so can create
a lovely landscape like this to have on your wall at home.
So step one in starting this landscape painting is to block out your canvas, to put a coloured
ground onto it so that you can work your paintings on top. I’ve already done that here and
you can watch a how to do it video on my how to apply a coloured ground for acrylic painting
video. Okay, the second step is to draw out the basic shapes that we’ve got here. we’re
just after the line drawing. I’m using a 3B pencil here which can be easily erased,
it won’t smudge too much yet it’s dark enough to make a mark. see how it fairly easily
makes a mark on the canvas without feeling that you have to really press into it you
know and dent the canvas. so a quick tip to make sure you get a nice
horizontal is just to use a piece of scrap paper and you line up this edge to the edge
of your canvas so it’s like a set square really. so there, line that up.
step two is to assess the tones in the picture to see where to start and where are the lightest
and dark areas. so the first thing to do is to squint your eyes at this picture. re they
squinted? Half close them just so everything slightly blurs a bit. what you’ll find this
does is it makes the dark look darker, the lights looks lighter and all these what are
called halftones kinda of disappear and what you really get to is the basic structure of
the picture and that’s what we are interested in. So for this the darkest area is this are
here of the land so that’s what I’m going to paint in to start with with the burnt umber.
All the information on the brushes that i use and how to chose a brush for acrylic painting
is on my other video or a list of other materials is on my website. So if you notice how when
I’m painting I’m resting onto the canvas which helps you give leverage and support
so you can, with the finer lines, erm it’s a lot easier to get a straighter line than
if your hovering your hand in the air trying to balance it. So once I’ve got that in
I’m now going to swap to this brush to block in that area. The paint that I’ve got on
here, because acrylics dry so quickly, you want to make sure you get that off otherwise
it will go solid on your brush and you won’t be able to use it. So I’ll dip it into some
water and then, you know, rub it into er the kitchen roll. You get through loads of kitchen
role with acrylic and then just squeeze it at the end and you see how if I put that on
there, no, nothing comes out you know it’s completely clear. that’s just with plain
water. It’s always better to have more water and change it regularly than use the same
pot, it get mucky and then what will happen that all that dirt in your water pot will
come in o your colours when your mixing and you won’t get a nice clean colour. Even
though we’re using brown it’s still goos to keep it clean it’s good professional
working habits.
okay, so now with the filbert brush. okay as simple as that. I often paint around the
edge for my paintings so I’ll paint around here. You’ll notice how i haven’t been
too heavy handed, you can still see some of this underground glowing through and that’s
really nice and I’ve left little bits where I’ve not been completely solid because I
want a bit of texture, a bit of movement in this area. So that’s a;; I do for this particular
painting with the burnt umber now I’ll put in some of the highest highlights in the brightest
are which is going to be, when we look at the picture. It’s going to be this area
here where the sun is shining through. For this I’m just going to use titanium white.
Do now with the titanium white I’m just going to block in the very brightest areas.
You see how I’m keeping it quite loose and quite watery. You’ll notice if your not
using an artist quality titanium white it won’t be as thick as this it will be a lot
more translucent. You might have to use a couple of layers. erm when your first starting
with acrylics i always recommend buying the best quality paints you can afford.
If you cant afford to go artist quality for everything, definitely try and invest in an
artist quality white because it'll have so much more opacity it'll be able to, see how
its covered over the colour underneath really easily, this will be really
beneficial in your future paintings.
There’s a slight bit of lightness down here but not as strong as the others so I’ll
just dilute it with a bit of water and just scrub it in with my finger.
So now we've got the lights and the darks, now we can back to the colours that we were
mixing before to start blocking in some of the areas of colour.