A Faster Way to Improve Realistic Acrylic Painting

So, how do you improve? That's a question we're all thinking. And before I answer that, let me give you something to think about. Constraints foster creativity. Sometimes the more resources you have, the less accomplished you feel. There's no doubt that creativity is the most important human resource of all. Well, arguably it's probably water, but let's forget about that and focus on creativity. Oxygen is pretty useful too, but then this would be a different video. Without creativity, there wouldn't be any progress. The enemy of creation is the absence of limitations. Without those hurdles and without those challenges to overcome, we can't move forward. It's the same with art. Limitation is the mother of creativity, and there's no better way to improve your paintings than limiting your palette so that you can focus on what's important. Normally, I have loads of colours to choose from when I'm painting, but today I'm going to limit myself and just use six. I'm hoping that reducing the complications of mixing up the exact colours is going to help me focus more on the important things like form and values, and hopefully create a more harmonious painting. I want to try and create pieces with more meaning, more story and more life to them, which means trying to come up with new and interesting ideas, which is hard. I'm focusing more on composition at the moment, so removing the complication of colours and just using what I have available is hopefully going to help with that, but we'll see. I believe that every painting needs a solid foundation to be built from. For me, that means creating a relatively detailed underdrawing, mapping out the composition, as well as the rough lights and darks that are within the painting. There is more than one way to do this. Some people start with big, bold brush strokes and get those basic shapes blocked in, but for me, I like to have a solid idea of where I want everything to go that with a fixative so that it doesn't smudge when I start applying the paint. I'm using a Stay Wet palette from Red Grass Creative, which is going to stop my acrylic paints from drying out. And even though it's a relatively small painting, I still want to put plenty of paint on the palette. I don't want to run out and interrupt the flow of my painting. In the aim of keeping this painting simple, I'm only going to be using four brushes. I don't want to overcomplicate things, but I also want to challenge myself a little bit. I want to see what I can create with even more constraints. For me, acrylic painting is about layering, and layering takes time. It takes a lot of patience to paint realistically with acrylics, and honestly, I don't really have that patience. I want my paintings to appear instantly, and I do actually get frustrated when, unsurprisingly, that doesn't happen. So I end up getting a bit bored during the process of constantly painting and repainting layer after layer. But it's part of the process, and that process works. The way that I cope with that frustration is by taking breaks throughout the process, mainly after I complete each layer. Whether that's food related, exercise, a little bit of doom scrolling, or a nap, 10 to 15 minutes here and there help me stay on track and maintain my creative process. I'm moving on to layer two of the painting process now, and it's pretty simple really. All I'm doing is starting to refine the painting slightly more. Layer one is just a block-in, layer two starts to build on that. Realistically, I'm going to be taking three or four layers to complete this painting, so even this layer doesn't need to be perfect. Paintings like these are difficult. You've got to make choices to help the flow of the painting. Landscapes are relatively straightforward. You can keep everything quite bright and bold and colourful as it all sort of fits in one singular piece. But with paintings like this where you've got wildlife and the environment, you've got to make a choice of what is the main character of that painting. You can't have the background out-competing the subject. So I've made the decision to knock back my background to fade it out using some white glazes to try and reduce that saturation, reduce the details, so that when I come to paint the elephant, it's the elephant that really stands out. Obviously, in this painting I'm using a limited palette, and it's not a new thing to paint with only a few colours. In portraiture, you might have heard of the Zorn palette, which is a series of colours used by Anders Zorn, who was a Swedish painter. Zorn used flake white, vermilion, ivory black and yellow ochre. This was great for mixing skin tones, which made it a fantastic choice for portraiture and figure paintings. Obviously, with portraiture, it's easier to use a simple palette. However, one of the wildlife art greats, Robert Bateman, uses a limited palette in his work. He uses titanium white, yellow ochre, raw umber, Payne's grey and Prussian blue. Now, there's a few more colours there, but that gives us a little bit more colour choice when we're painting all of these beautiful things that the natural world has to offer. However, because of the variation within wildlife and nature itself, there might be occasions where you need a pop of brighter, more saturated colour. So, small amounts of cadmium red, cadmium yellow, phthalo rose, viridian green and phthalo blue are also used sparingly throughout Robert Bateman's paintings too. So, even though the majority of the paintings are completed with a limited palette, there are still some cases where that brighter pop of colour are required. Colours that you just can't make from that limited selection. So then, why use a limited palette in the first place? There's actually a couple of reasons why using a limited palette can be really good. Using a limited selection of colours means that the colours you use in the painting harmonise well with each other. It simplifies the decision making process during the painting. When you aren't thinking about what colours you're going to use, you can focus more on value, light and shadow, and the overall composition rather than getting overwhelmed by a wide range of colours. A limited palette also helps you learn colour mixing. You'd be surprised by just how vast the range of colours you can create is with a limited number of pigments. But ultimately, it helps you create a more unified and cohesive looking painting. Especially if you consistently use that colour palette in all of your work. I'm still very much exploring my colour palettes. I don't yet have a consistent set of colours that I'm 100% happy with. But for this painting, I'm using burnt umber, ultramarine, phthalo green, yellow, cadmium red hue and titanium white. One of my goals this year for improving my process is to explore different colour palettes and find one that works for me, so that I can improve the consistency between my artworks and also make it easier to focus on creating interesting compositions. I like this palette, but I don't think it's amazing. There's a few changes that I'd like to make to it, which I'm going to explore in later paintings. And I highly recommend that you do the same. Find a colour palette that works for you and play around with it. Embracing a limited palette isn't about restriction. It's about discovery. By simplifying your colours, you sharpen your skills and uncover new creative possibilities. So why not take the challenge, limit yourself, trust the process, and watch your art develop in ways that you could have never imagined. This painting, along with loads of others, are available through my website studiowildlife.com. I hope you've enjoyed the video. And as always, thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time.