Journal of My Oil Painting Techniques

Today I went to meet my friend Jessica for lunch and did a quick acrylic painting of her at her dance studio. I saw her stretching on the mat and asked her if she would be able to hold that and she did. Since I was focused on working so fast I wasn’t able to take photos of the process.

It was great how Jessica was able to keep a smile through the whole sitting. She kind of had a natural smiley face. It’s rare to see a smiley portrait painting because most sitters cannot hold smiles. I think that is part of the reason why Mona Lisa makes such a great portrait because she is smiling and Da Vinci really captured the personality of the sitter. But personally I still dont think Mona Lisa is that great of a painting.

For this acrylic painting, I took a big brush and first did a wash with the burnt umber, kind of like doing a monochrome painting. I like laying it in with tones using the large brush instead of drawing the lay-ins with a pencil or a charcoal because with the large brush you can block in the values very fast, which is great for people who kind of draw with values.

I think humans see values first in nature, and it is a good practice to draw with the values and become sensitive to it.

After the lay-in was quickly established, I started to add the flesh tones of the face, chest, the arms and the lower leg to the feet, then went back to the face and worked mostly on that.

It was hard to render with acrylics because they dry very fast, and even if you put down a mark with correct value, it darkens as it dries. Definitely not my favorite media, but I had ran out of the titanium white oil paint and had to settle with doing an acrylics painting. I feel like I will continue experimenting with different medias even though the title of my blog is oil painting techniques.

But I have seen a lot of acrylic artists who do some great works. Acrylics have not been around for too long so nobody really knows how archival it is either.

After I felt I worked on the face enough to move on with this acrylic painting, I blocked in the whole clothing with the even tone of black. I didn’t actually use the black paint but mixed burnt umber and ultramarine blue to make the darkest dark. I never use black paint but always mix dark complementing colors to produce the darkest darks. Some artists complain that it does not get dark enough but I never felt the need to go any darker.

Then I blocked in the background of this acrylic painting with the blue of the mat, using cereaulean blue and ultramarine blue mixed with white. I treated it with washes instead of thick paints as I would with oil paints. Even though you CAN paint thick impastos with acrylics, I don’t think the media is really meant for painting so thick but more with a cream-like even consistency. I have tried painting very thick with the acrylics and I felt it became a bit too plasticky since they are made of plastic.

I think acrylic is great for practicing purposes for students because since you cannot blend or render, it forces you to mix up the correct tones and colors in between marks to have them blend together. I think this forces one to think more about the scientific aspects of paint mixing and be more methodical with the layering procedure.

Advantage of acrylic painting is that you can achieve complete colors in a single sitting, whereas with oils, I usually would need several sittings to get the colors completely right since thick wet paints prevents me from adding new layer of paint on top without having it being mixed with the wet previous layer. Also with acrylics, you can even do the glazing technique in the first sitting.

Acrylic is also a very forgiving media as you can keep painting over and over on top of any mistakes you make. All layers of paint will be new and fresh. Just need to avoid painting TOO thick as it will create plasticky textures.

This acrylic painting was an interesting experience because I did it fast in one sitting but I don’t know whether I should call it alla-prima because alla-prima refers to wet on wet oil painting techniques, but besides being wet on wet, I did use the same direct painting approach.

I wish i could have worked a lot more on this acrylic painting, define the hands,feet etc. but we were getting too hungry and had to call it a wrap.

But I am pretty happy how this acrylic painting came out. I am happy for its fresh spontaneous sketchy quality.