Tips for working on a colored ground:

Acrylic painting techniques & ways to fix mistakes

How to make light colors look vibrant:
Light colors on darker grounds--especially translucent light colors--can look dull. Yellows can look green against a blue because the layers optically mix. Here is one way to counteract this effect.

1. Paint the part you want to be a bright color in white.                          

   

   ***Notice that some of the white was painted thickly (towards the bottom) while the white brushstrokes near the top are thinly drybrushed on. The opacity of your white brushstrokes will affect what kind of result you get when glazing.)

   
   

   

   Close-up view of the differences in opacity

   
   
2. Let that dry. Then paint over with your light, bright color. You can even get neon yellow effects this way.                                    

If you decide you don't want it that bright, you can always glaze over with another color. In this case, I mixed cerulean blue with a soft gel gloss so the paint dries translucent and has a slight texture to it. I layered this over the lower half of the purple shape. I made a similar, textured glaze of red to go over the red and yellow parts of the composition. 

What did the glazes do?

The red glaze helped unify the red shapes, changing the neon yellow parts into orange. The blue glaze helped enrich the color of the purple shapes, making it more vibrant and varying the hue from top to bottom. Notice that I did not glaze over the top part of the purple shape with blue--that would have turned the yellow brushstrokes into a dull green. I also purposefully did not glaze over the thin yellow lines that cut across the composition. They retained their brightness without overpowering other colors.

How else can you use a mix of soft gel gloss and acrylic paint?

You can see the shiny, raised brushstrokes made with the same mix of soft gel gloss and paint that made the blue glaze. The difference is in how thickly it was applied and not smoothed out.

How to paint "wet-on-dry" masked shapes

A DIY Acrylic painting tutorial

Photos and paintings are by Kirsten Elizabeth Gilmore. All rights reserved.

In the last tutorial, I showed you how to drybrush over blue painter's tape to create a visually textured shape with a clean, straight edge. This tutorial uses the same method, but with thick, wet paint.

Here is a close-up view of a recent painting (work-in-progress).
Notice the crisp lines, even in areas with highly-textured surfaces.

Bonus material:  Fixing crooked edges

This tutorial will also show you how to "over-paint" to correct a dried, uneven paint line or edge. Everyone makes mistakes, from time to time, while painting. This simple technique can help you tremendously.

Materials:

• Blue painter's tape for delicate surfaces
• Acrylic paint ("thick body" or thickened with a gel medium.) Note that Galeria brand's "soft body" acrylics are actually a consistency between "thick body" and "soft body", so they will work for this demo without anything added to them.
• Palette an artist's plastic palette works or a plastic lid, cleaned and recycled from a food container or baker's parchment (used as a disposable palette) Parchment should be taped to the table.
• Flat brush (preferably nylon)
• water tub
• paper towel
• airtight plastic container (for stay-wet, paint storage)
• surface to paint on This could be a fully-dried painting or a painting with a dried base coat or, you could do this on a pre-primed, white hardboard or canvas.
• palette knife for mixing paint

Procedure:

1. Make sure your surface is fully dry before you begin.
2. Decide where you want your line or shape. 
3. Mask around that area with blue painter's tape. If you want a line, mask on either side of the line to determine its width. Press hard at the edges to ensure the tape is secured well with no wrinkles.          

   

   Notice how The top line I am masking is to make a correction to a wobbly line.

4. Load your brush half-way up the bristles with a thick glob of paint. Then, paint inside the shape.                               
5. To make a patterned line, brush different colors over the masked shape (as in the photo below.)                                                    
6. Before you lift the tape, plan where you are going to put it. It will have wet paint all over it. While working, I sometimes have a plastic disposable grocery bag nearby for wet trash. The trouble is that the tape sticks to the bag opening and can create a mess. So, I keep a clean, plastic lid from a food container to "stick" the tape to. You could do the same with a paper towel laid on the table.
7. When you remove the tape, you should get a clean edge to your shape.

How I use this technique in my own paintings:

Here are more views of my 24"X36" painting-in-progress that uses this technique:

Closeup-view of the heavy texture and clean edge.

How to Mask & Drybrush 

over a colored ground

DIY acrylic painting tutorial

Why do this? Using blue painter’s tape to “mask out” sections of a painting will allow you to texture paintings with drybrushing while still getting crisp, clean edges. This tutorial extends the former one on how to test and mix colors.

Materials:

• Blue painter's tape for delicate surfaces
• acrylic paint: two different colors, each mixed into three different values:  dark, medium, and light
• plastic palette
• Flat brush (nylon or bristle)
• water tub
• plenty of paper towel (Paper towel works better than a rag for drybrushing)
• airtight plastic container (for stay-wet paint storage)

Directions: 

1. Lay some blue tape across your dried, base painted canvas.
2. Make sure the tape is long enough that it goes all the way over the side and onto the back a bit.                                      
3. Smooth it down with your finger starting on one end and continuing all the way along the tape.
4. Place dabs of one color set on the palette:  for example:  (dark violet  medium violet, and light violet)
5. How to "load" the brush for drybrushing:  Start with the darkest value. Take a very dry, flat brush and just barely dip the tip of it in the darkest paint. 
6. Find a clean part of the palette and brush back and forth over that spot, thinning out the paint. When it seems so thin you can see the brush and no globs of paint on the brush, you are ready to use this loaded brush on the canvas.
7. Lightly, lightly tickle the surface of your canvas with the brush.
8. The paint should coat the raised parts of the surface and let the colored ground show through the recessed areas.                              
9. When you are done, rinse your brush thoroughly. Then, dry it as much as you can.



In this sample, I included some "wet-on-dry" marks for variety. They are the dark patches.

10. Continue this process using the medium value paint, then the lightest value paint. 
11. Then do the same process for your second color set (dark, medium, and light red-orange in my example.)                                          
12. When you are completely done with drybrushing in both colors, do a deep clean of your brush (soap and water and ensuring nothing is stuck in the ferrule.)
13. When you finish cleaning, you are ready to remove the blue tape. Start at one end and carefully, slowly pull, trying to keep the tape  low to the surface without getting your hands full of paint. Beneath the tape will be your colored ground. The edges of the masked off shapes should be relatively smooth. For a completely smooth line, see my other tutorial on this.
14. Discard the tape. Let the painting dry.                                                                

Color Planning with Swatches:

Mixing primaries, tints, and shades

Your goal for this DIY acrylic painting tutorial is to mix, test, and choose two colors that go with your base coat color. Then, you will mix a tint and a shade of each of these colors to give your piece a range of values.

Materials:

• small strips of paper or paper pad
• pencil with eraser
• primary colors of acrylic paint
• palette knife 
• preferably diamond shape, flexible metal

Here's a photo of my favorite painting knife.

• small, flat brush of any kind
• plastic palette or baker’s parchment paper 
• The parchment acts as instant disposable palette. 
• Avoid using a paper plate—those soak up the paint too much.
• Airtight plastic container 



• with enough room for your knife to comfortably scrape the bottom (such as Rubbermaid's long, low container).

Procedure: 

1. Add small amounts of red, yellow or blue to the palette. Only mix two colors at a time. Mix thoroughly with the side of the knife, in a scooping and squishing motion until no streaks of color remain.                                 
2. When you find a color you like. Stop, and wipe off the knife.
3. Write color recipe on the back of a scrap of paper.
4. Using your flat brush, make a paint swatch on the front of that scrap on the very center of the paper strip.                                                
5. Keep making color scraps until you have found two you like that go with your base coat color and with each other.
6. Scoop up half of the mixed color you with your palette knife, and put it inside of the airtight plastic container. Close the lid tightly. 
7. Mix the other half with a dime sized dab of white. Mark the strip with this new color just to the right of the original.
8. Add more white paint until you get a significantly lighter tint of your color. Mark the strip of paper to the right of the last swatch.
9. Store this tint in your plastic tub.                                              
10. Clean your knife.
11. Scoop out the original color from your tub onto the palette.
12. Repeat the process to create shades, only this time, add a little drop of black each time. Black is potent, so you only need a small pea-sized drop at a time. 
13. Paint these color swatches to the left of your main (central) color.                           
14. Repeat steps 1-13 with two other colors mixed together.              
15. 
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
16. You should end up with two strips full of tints and shades and a recipe for each original color in the back.                   

"Base coating" a canvas:

How to prepare a toned ground

What is base coating? "Base coating" or "basecoating" is a contemporary term used by decorative painters and folk artists. An older, more traditional painting term that means much the same thing is creating a colored "ground". "Imprimatura" is a related, traditional art term which does also mean the first layer of paint on a canvas, but, imprimatura refers to a translucent layer of paint. Basecoating typically refers to an opaque layer of paint. 

Why base coat? You can immediately get rid of the "white flecks" that paintings without a basecoat can get. Here you can see those white flecks up close:

Close-up view of early stage of a painting by artist, Sharon Furner

DIY PROJECT: Creating a rough-surfaced basecoat:

While some decorative painters seek to minimize any visible brush strokes, creating an even surface, today's demo purposefully creates a rough basecoat with raised ridges from brushstrokes. (This will become important during a future tutorial on "drybrushing" because the surface provides a texture for drybrush strokes to catch upon.) If you prefer a smooth, toned ground, I suggest you use Golden Fluid Acrylics and check out William Kemp's blog tutorial on creating an evenly-toned, acrylic ground.

Materials:

• 8"X8"X1/4" pre-primed, archival hardboard (The samples uses inexpensive panels with pre-cut dovetail slots in the back for hanging, available from DickBlick online. Or, you can prepare your own.)
• One color of acrylic paint (For the sample, I used Winsor Newton's Galleria brand)
• one medium-sized, flat-shaped nylon brush (3/4"-1.5" works well for this size panel.)
• tub of clean water
• paper towel or clean rag (for drying your brush)
• Recommended:  Plastic dropcloth cut as a tablecloth:  This can easily be re-used, since dried acrylic paint peels right off of it.

Directions:

1. Squeeze out paint in a blob about the size of a half-dollar (about 1” circle.)
2. Take out your flat brush, dip it in the water to moisten it, then dry it on your towel. (pre-moistening the bristles makes later brush cleaning easier.)
3. Hold the hardboard panel face-up, like a pizza with your non-dominant hand. I am right-handed, so I would hold the painting with my left hand.                           
4. With your dominant hand, pick up the brush and load it with paint. The paint should go only half way up the bristle.                                      
5. Start painting the edge of the panel.

• Don’t push too hard, or you’ll drop the panel! 
• Paint in short strokes straight downward.
• You will get with a ridge of paint on the top and an even layer of paint on the side.

6. Quickly, while the paint is still wet, take your brush, but NO NEW PAINT, and smooth the ridge of paint on the surface of the panel in long strokes towards the center of the panel.

7. Take a break to clean your brush. 

• (You might want to put the panel down near the edge of the table, so you can easily pick it back up again.)

8. Continue that process along each edge, turning the board carefully as you go.

9. When all the sides are painted and all ridges are smoothed, finish painting the top of the panel with long, smooth strokes. Your painting will not look perfectly uniform. That’s a good thing, since we will be using those small ridges later when layering over this base coat. 

10. Place it on the table to dry. Deep clean your brush. Dry your brush.

Challenges during this project:

• Try to avoid fingerprints in the paint surface. If you make one, quickly brush back over that area for a more natural look.
• Smooth down all ridges that occur at the edge of the surface of the painting.

For finished, original paintings made on 8"x8" hardboard panels, visit my etsy shop:
http://www.etsy.com/shop/PaintingsByKEGilmore?ref=si_shop

How to clean your brush 

when using acrylic paint

Most beginning acrylic painters kill a brush or two before they learn this simple truth:  acrylics dry fast. It is easy to ruin a brush by allowing paint to dry on the bristles or work up into the ferrule. From my experience, brushes need two degrees of cleaning:  a “rinsing clean” and a “deep clean”.

“Rinsing clean” is what you do every few minutes, while painting using the tub. The cleaner the water, the cleaner your colors, so feel free to change water often.

1. RULE #1:  Never put down your brush before rinsing it. 
• If you follow this consistently, it becomes second nature. Even if the phone rings. I rinse before answering. It only takes a second and can save your brushes.
2. Dry:  
• Keep either a rag or paper towel laid flat on the table and use that to blot off excess water. 
• If you see color come off on the towel, that means you need to rinse the brush again. Repeat until no color shows on the towel.

I highly recommend this brush tub from Loew-Cornell, available online or at  local art stores.
Notice the ridges on the bottom and the part that divides clean water from rinsing water.

“Deep clean” at the end of the session with soap and water. These are the steps for a deep clean in a classroom. (At home, you can just bring the brush tub to the edge of the sink to do this procedure.)

1.    Clean in the tub of water you already have at your table, to get the majority of  the paint off.

2.    Dump dirty water.

3.    Fill your tub half way with clean water.

4.    Bring that to your table and either use brush soap or hand soap to cover brush with soap.

·     “Brush soap” is a little pricier, but it is like a combined shampoo and conditioner. It both cleans and can be used to condition brushes. It tends to the life of the brush. So, when you start using more expensive brushes, this would be highly useful.

5.    Move the soapy brush back and forth against the bottom of your tub until the soap is off the brush.

6.    If necessary, repeat step with soap then rinse. Work the part near the ferrule (the metal that holds the hairs) with your fingers and nails if the paint is stubborn.

7.    Dump the water.

8.    Dry the brush gently and shape it.

Why should I do a deep clean, if I already rinsed it?

This deep clean may sound fussy, but it actually takes just a short time after each painting session. If I notice paint is working up into the ferrule while I am painting, I often stop painting to do a deep clean of that brush on the spot.

What about just resting the paint brush in the water?

For most brushes, just don’t. It will wreck their shape. For very large brushes (2” or larger”) I will set out a tilted, plastic “paint roller tray” from the hardware store, filled 1/2 way up with water. I rest the brushes on the gently inclined slope. That way, the bristles stay wet, but the ferrule does not sit in the water and the weight of the brush does not push on the bristles.

It looks like this:

Waiting for an idea to ripen:  

Paintings reborn from other paintings

Do you have paintings that you just can not seem to finish? I advocate putting them on display in the studio, and waiting. The idea will come, with time and a little patience.

Antonio Basso Bosch, aka Yasoy Pinter, a contemporary Spanish painter from a linkedin group I belong to called "Elite Abstract art", blogged recently about his difficult process of destroying one painting in order to use the support to create a new, quite different work. 

His painting went from this:                           to this:

Space Occupancy #20. Mixed media
on burlap canvas (130x190x3cms)

As a painter, I've had such a dramatic transformation happen several times. Perfectionism is a large reason for this:  I don't want to let paintings out of the studio until I'm satisfied. So, some paintings sit, mid-process and stare at me for a few months, and I glare back at them. Then, after an incubation of sorts, the solution becomes clear, and I start working on them again, often taking an entirely new direction. I don't see these as mistakes. I see this as a whole part of the process of making art.

Recently, this painting of mine...  

...became this:  

This painting is available from my etsy shop:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/96834487/original-acrylic-painting-realistic 

For me, the solutions were the following:

Design changes:

1. Change colors and values to support the focal point. The blue walls became a dark gray, putting the emphasis on the tulip still life and the view out of the window. 
2. Create unity through repetition.The gold in the curtains matches the gold in the picture frame and table's edge, unifying the composition. Also, the more muted blues and blue gray worked together. 

Content changes:

1. Make the flowers symbolic, but subtly so. Tulips are "tamed" indoor flowers in a vase, looking out at the wild irises by the beach. Even further "tamed" painted lupine are caged in by the golden frame, and abstract flowers on the curtains are barely even flowers anymore.
2. Use soft light through a window like in The Milkmaid by Jan Vermeer (below).

In short, some paintings need time before solutions present themselves. Like the still too orange tomato, some need to sit on the windowsill awhile and ripen.