Hope in the horizon :-)
Today is my third day with acrylics. In the last two days I was pretty devastated with my painting abilities, and entertained thoughts on going back to watercolours and who can I give my acrylics to (my mom).
The thing is, I drew this mandala, which I see more as an expressive painting than a mandala, and the way I see it in my mind, is in a painting style that is acrylics, not watercolor. Plus I would like the option to go back and correct mistakes. This mandala is actually the trigger that sent me to go buy the acrylics in the first place.
This is the skeleton, drawn in ink pen on watercolour paper (I had a whole grid and sketchlines in pencil, which I erased).
By the way, if you’re interested in seeing how I make a mandala, let me know, I’ll create a post on it.
So initially I wanted to paint this mandala in acrylics, but after my initial experiments, I thought I may revert to the familiar watercolours.
This morning I decided to give it a try. I can recreate this mandala design if it doesn’t work out. So I dived in :-)
First of all, I grabbed my colored pencils, to see how to color it. I want a lot of light to flow in from the windows, and wash the women figures.
I already have a few conclusions about working with acrylics:
- Work in layers
- Mix the paint with a bit of water so it’s not so pasty, much easier to paint with the brush this way.
- My palette was nice and moist in the morning. The stay-wet palette works!
- Mix the colors in the palette, not on the paper (this is not WC!)
- Color in shapes in the general color – these are just the background layers to be revisited later.
- The palette knife is a useful tool for putting paint on the palette and for mixing – when moving from one color to another, you simply rub the knife with some paper towel or toilet paper and its clean (if not, moisten the paper towel). If I’m mixing with my brush – I either dirty the next color, or need to clean it thoroughly in water & paper towel. Wasteful of time and paint. The knife is extremely efficient.
