12-3-05: Peaceful Horizon - plus a new painting.

I finished Peaceful Horizon several days ago....  After that, I let it sit for a while.  I look at it and see what it needs.  In the meantime I started another painting.  One of a desert rocky hillside of sandstone.  There will be a scraggly tree and some bushes, some kind of animal and maybe a person.  Not sure yet.  So far I've underpainted the hillside and began adding depth to the rocks.  I have to keep telling myself there is no hurry, that it's about enjoying learning how to do this.  It's fine if it takes a long time - like a month or three.  I'm trying things to see what accomplishes the effects I want.  Some of that, a person can learn from someone else.  Some of it I have to learn by doing.  That's what this one is about - learn by doing.

11-20-05: Peaceful Horizon - scumbling clouds

Today's painting session became a lesson in scumbling clouds.  I had painted them in before, with some layering.  But I was not satisfied.  So today I tried all kinds of consistencies in paint.  I tried holding the bristle brushes in various ways.  I tried various sized bristle brushes.  One of the problems was that when I swished some of the white for clouds over the blue sky, it would look like the canvas wasn't covered, again.  I think I need to paint a bunch more clouds to get the hang of the best way for me.  Jerry Yarnell does have good instructions on clouds, but I still have to learn better how to transpose his instruction to my brain and my hand.  I underpainted several seagulls in blue.  I need a couple more.  And I painted the tips of the person's hair so it curves under a little at the bottom edge.  It looks better.

11-19-05: Peaceful Horizon - name change from Peace - layering.

I learned more about the importance of layers relative to acrylic paintings.  So often in the past I felt like I was failing.  I'd paint something, think it was fine, look at it later and think - gees, I'm never going to get this right.  I realized that it wasn't that my painting was poor, it's just that since the paint is transparent it sometimes takes a bunch of layers to achieve the effect I'm looking for.  I knew this intellectually and on a practical level I had realized it to some extent.  Yesterday when I was painting the stitching area of the person's cutoffs, it really soaked in.

11-17-05: - Peace, natural sable brushes vs. synthetic sable brushes and a better black

For the past few days I have been working on a number of things.  The rocks are better now.  It seems using a synthetic sable brush is good for a number of things.  The tip is not as easily frayed as with the natural ones.  And a size 4, for example, is much larger in the synthetic.  So I put a small amount of paint on the tip of the synthetic sable and dabbed a little on the places that need highlighting on the rocks.  This also worked on the edge of the waves - the foamy part.  This brush also worked well when I was doing the body of the wave in modified U motions - it seems to work better because it is bendable.  I added a number of small rocks closer to the waterline and highlighted them.  They also needed a black line at the base of each one.  For black I am using almost exclusively Payne's Grey - grateful to Verna for telling me about it.  I added more grey in various shades to the sand - a swish of it below each rock as well.  I wiped out the girl's left arm.  It was in the wrong position.  After the area dried I re-added the arm and sleeve.  It still needs the right shading.  It's something I'm going to have to play with until it looks right, because none of the pictures I can find are shaded correctly for this pose.  I worked on the denim color on her shorts, and I worked on her red tee shirt.  Both aren't right yet.  By the time I stopped tonight, I was feeling good about the ability to redo an area - to play with it.  For so long I've been afraid I'd mess up the good part of a painting if I reworked an area.  Now it's feeling like more of a challenge, and I'm not nearly as hesitant to do it.

11-14-05: - Peace

Today I worked the foamy edges of my waves and the rocks.  The left side of the rocks are good now.  The right side still needs work.  The left side of the foamy edges are good.  The right side needs work.  Maybe tomorrow it will be the right side's turn.

11-13-05: - Peace

So tonight I decided I had to paint really fast.  The other writing things I was doing had taken longer than I anticipated.  I worked on the sand.  I want it to be smooth, some drier than the rest, yet it's close to the waves.  I started painting the sand with first a greyish blue mixture to simulate water sort of still on the sand.  The sand back a little is more of a golden color.  I spread them out straight in both directions.  That made the sand look like it had formed in straight lines.  So I took the hake brush while the blueish grey and golden sand was still a little wet and began making circular motions.  It worked, the one is now gradually blended into the other colors.  I'll see how it looks tomorrow when it's completely dry. But it looks like I figured out how to do it.  Next I redid the underpainting of the rock the girl is sitting on.  Even though I painted fast - i.e. didn't have much time, it still made me feel better.

11-11-05: - Peace

First today I worked on the rocks.  They looked pretty good until I overworked them.  So I started over.  I also drew in the person who is sitting with her back to me, watching the waves.  I underpainted her and realized I have more rocks than I wanted.  So I wiped part of them out and redid some of the waterline and sand.

11-10-05: - Peace

I worked on the water, adding color variations.  It's better.  Then I underpainted the rocks for the person to sit on.  I had considered a log, but they always warn you not to sit on logs at the edge of the beach.  A sneaker wave can come in, roll the log over and kill a person.  I didn't want to paint something dangerous.

11-7-05: - Peace

Today I wiped out the peaks of the waves.  They didn't look natural at all.  I started using a synthetic sable painting brush for doing the swishing of the waves.  It seems to work a little better at making the swishing movements.  The brush is more flexible.  I'll see how it goes.  I added some bluish sky color to the wet sand.  It looks better.

11-5-05: - Peace

I wiped out most of my waves and the foam on the beach.  I went back and redid the edges of the foam and the peaks with white mixed with a touch of grey.  I painted the edges with my small script brush in a jagged back and forth movement.  It's better.  And I added more blue to the grey on the wet sand.  It's a little better too, but it all still needs a lot of layering.  If I'm going to get the hang of how to do this, without just stumbling into it every time, I need to paint the ocean more often.  I will eventually get it, but I'd like to have an idea how to do it with skill.  Jerry's painting instruction for Surf's Up are too impressionistic for me to be able to see how he would detail it.  He seems into impressionism right now.  I understand he's had a lot of requests.  For me, it's still like a person has bad eyesight or no desire to finish the painting.

11-4-05: - Peace

Today as I painted the sky, the sand and the water, each area had one problem in common - the coverage of the canvas.  There were lots of places where I had a hard time getting the paint to stick.  The white was showing through in the little squares, recessed from the canvass threads.  I had to pat on the paint with the tip of the brush.  After a time I realized what I believe to be the problem.  When I put on the undercoat I did not get it thick enough.  The paint was probably too watery or I just spread it too thin.

11-02-05: - Peace

I worked more on the sky last night, after my last entry.  I'm pretty pleased with it.  Tonight I tackled the next layer of sand on the beach.  Figuring out the right colors to mix for the sand was a challenge.  At first I had more of a greyish tone.  But I wanted my dry sand to be more golden.  Yellow was not a good color to add.  Yellow ocre was better, adding it to burnt sienna, ultramarine blue and, of course, white.  In some places I added payne's gray.  The underpainting was a darker gray and some brown tones.  I have hope for the sand and the sky.  The water is hokey looking.  I mixed ultramarine blue, hookers green and white in various combinations, mostly keeping the paint in the entire water area wet, so the colors were easy to blend.  The foam along the edge of the wave does not look natural at all.  Jerry's ocean is lighter in the distance and darker up closer.  In photos the reverse is the case.  So I'm playing with that idea.  Like he says, as long as I don't leave ridges or lumps I can keep redoing it.  This is a good thing.

11-01-05: - Peace

While watching the Surf's Up tape again, I underpainted my ocean scene.  It will be quite different from Jerry's.  I don't plan to have a long dock or any surf boards.  His painting is landscape, mine is portrait.  I wanted a big sky.  I also plan to add a person sitting watching the waves.

10-31-05: Caring for paint brushes and Begin - Peace (a beach scene)

I watched the next installment on Jerry Yarnell's tape about care of brushes.  He says to keep the brushes moist in a plastic bag.  I'm wondering how you keep them from molding.  I also watched the first part of his tape called Surf's Up again, so I could see how to underpaint the ocean, sky and waves.