A little process

I just posted a new painting video. So I thought I would go through and kinda breakdown what exactly is happening. Watch video here.

Materials- Acrylic, water, gessoed canvas, good lighting

Before we get started let's revisit the basic steps from start to finish.
-thumbnails(if working on a commissioned job this is where you would want to do your research for ideas)
-refined sketch
-value study, color study
-photo reference for some reason people always fight this.
-final drawing using ref
-paint, paint, paint


Goals in this vid:

The drawing is down and I just started applying some paint before recording. Right now I'm trying to stick with larger brushes so that I don't get sucked into doing detailed work too early which, as fun as that can be, really slows things down and then sometimes gets covered up when it's all said and done.

Using water I mix my paint to a "melted ice cream" consistency. This is thicker than when I work on paper and to be honest I'm still trying to adjust to it. I'm started out with lighter colors and slowly darkening as I go. I have two brushes. One I use to apply paint to a section and another to brush and feather out any streaks or inconsistencies. I try not to cover too large of a section because I don't want parts starting to dry before I can feather it out. So I brush feather brush feather and work around the canvas. You can do this in larger sections or using smaller brushes do more detailed feathering. Right now I'm doing general coloring and suggesting some contours but everything is pretty soft and feathered. I plan on tightening up closer to the end.

I started with a small bowl of warm parchment colored mix. After going over the surface where needed I mixed in some reddish and yellowish colors to slightly warm up and darken the mix and continued painting. Added some more reddish colors and repeat, slowly working in darker and darker. Dark is relative since the piece in it's essence will be a mid/high key piece. That's basically where I'm at with this painting.

I'm usually worried I'll losing my drawing. I'm trying to let go of that a bit and I think it's helping. I can still see suggestions of most of the line work through the paint. At the same time losing some edges give the piece a more spontaneousness that is appealing. At one point I did take the darkened mixture and reinforced some of the line work to ensure that I didn't lose it completely. So far so good.

tips- the right brush for the right job. If your painting a large area it helps to have a large ass brush. Size does matter...or at least can be very useful at times.

Also, the concept, composition, drawing are the foundation of your work. So to have great technique and a weak concept, composition etc will only go so far. So don't neglect these important factors when creating. Hope this is helpful.