Expressive Brushstrokes with Acrylics Painting Loosely

In this lesson we'll loosen up a bit and create an acrylic painting with expressive brushstrokes. Hello everyone, Matt here with the virtualinstructor.com and in this video we're going to take a look at creating an acrylic painting using expressive brushstrokes. Now you might assume that if you want to create looser more expressive brushstrokes in a painting that you just need to work quickly and just use larger brushes. Well part of that is true, using a larger brush helps and timing yourself also helps as well. But if we want to create a painting that has expressive brushstroking where the brushstrokes are really the star of the show, then we actually need to slow down and think about each one of the brushstrokes that we make. So without further ado let's take a look at this demonstration. I hope you enjoy the video. We'll begin on gessoed panel. Now I've prepared this panel surface with a layer of a mixture of titanium white and burnt umber. There's a touch of yellow ochre in there as well. This will provide us with a nice neutral base in which to create the painting upon. Then using a graphite pencil we can go in and sketch the outer contours of our subject, in this case a simple pear. We don't need to worry about any of the details with this initial sketch, however you might find it beneficial to go ahead and sketch out some of the shapes of tone and value which will make the painting process a little bit easier. Now of course for this painting in particular I'm trying to concentrate on loosening up with my brushstrokes. This doesn't necessarily mean painting quicker, it just means being more deliberate with your brushstroking. This is often referred to as brush stroke economy, limiting the number of strokes that you use to create a painting while concentrating on the shapes of color and value as you add them. I'm also limiting the amount of time that I spend on this painting. I'm going to try to create this small painting, it's only five inches by seven inches, in under an hour. Once we've got our basic sketch in place we can go in with our initial application of acrylic paint. Using a larger flat brush we'll go in and start defining some of the areas of darkest value. I'll use some of the graphite lines as a guide. I'm trying to use the most deliberate brushstroke that I possibly can to fill in the space. I'm working slowly with the brushstrokes here, concentrating on the shape of value that I create. This is a mixture of burnt umber with a touch of prussian blue and yellow ochre. I'll stick with this larger brush as long as I possibly can. This of course will contribute to our time saving, but it will also allow us to be looser and more deliberate with our brushstrokes. Remember the goal of this painting is not to create a highly detailed and rendered version of the pair, but instead to create a more expressive version of the pair with deliberate and expressive brushstroking. We'll move over now to still a darker value but more in line with a mid-tone. This is yellow ochre again with a touch of burnt umber. We're applying the paint rather thickly on the surface. Now of course since the surface is smooth the brushstrokes are going to be clearly defined. This is something that we're after with a painting like this. We want the brushstrokes to be the star of the show so to speak. We'll continue working our way towards the side of the light source progressively getting lighter with our values. Again this is yellow ochre with just a touch of burnt umber. We'll carefully work around the area of highlight. Now that we've got our initial values and colors in place we can start to add a bit more depth to the color. We'll introduce a touch of cadmium red to our mixture. We'll add this color initially along the terminator line where the darker value meets the mid-tone. We'll also add an indication of a reflected highlight on the opposite side of the light source. With every brushstroke that we make we'll carefully consider its significance to the final painting. When taking this approach to a painting our brushstrokes should be deliberate and each brushstroke should have some level of significance. Now we'll go back and start to darken up the area of core shadow. Again we'll create a We can see that with this second application our shape of value is more clearly defined. We'll do the same in the area of mid-tone allowing some of the cadmium red to stay in our mixture. It's okay in fact it's encouraged to work very slowly and consider every single brushstroke that you make. While some of the brushstrokes will undoubtedly be covered up many of them will contribute to the final feeling and expressive nature of the painting. We'll add a hint of a slightly lighter value on the right side of the pair and then we'll add some indications of slightly darker value on the side of the pair that's closest to the light source. Now we'll add an additional color. This pair is yellow but it has a color relationship with some hints of green and red. We'll try to exploit this color relationship as we go through the painting. This will add to the expressive qualities of the painting, add additional interest, and make the painting pop a little bit more. Using a bit of cadmium yellow and a touch of ultramarine we'll create this green and add it primarily to the left side of the pair closest to the light source. Then we can use a bit of that cadmium yellow to start to lighten up some of the values again closest to the light source. Now that we have some of our greens in place we'll start to build up some of the reds. For this I'm going to use a mixture of burnt sienna with a of burnt umber. This will create a nice earthy red. We'll start on the bottom portion of the pair and start working our way up. We can work right along that terminator line where the darker value meets the mid-tone. We'll even pull some of the color over the top of the terminator line into some of the areas of darkest value. We'll continue to lighten up areas that are closest to the light source again adding deliberate brush strokes with thicker applications of the paint. And speaking of lighter values we're just about ready to start developing the highlight on the pair. We'll use a mixture of cadmium yellow with a touch of titanium white. We'll start with a medium light application and then we'll progressively get lighter with these applications. We'll also pull up some of this medium light mixture to the upper portion of the pair as well. For the most part we're sticking with mostly representational colors. In other words we're mainly with the colors that we see or observe from reality. Of course we're exploiting some of the color relationships by making the greens and reds a little bit stronger. But what's most important in a painting are the values. We could make this pair any color that we wanted as long as the values that we create match the subject. Now we're adding a little bit of a stronger application of cadmium red again trying to push that color relationship between the reds and greens. We'll continue doing the same thing on the bottom portion of the pair, again close to the terminator line. You'll notice we're still sticking with this larger brush. It may be tempting to switch over to a smaller brush but this might force you to start working with a more realistic style. Remember we want to keep our brush strokes loose and expressive. You'll also notice that loose doesn't necessarily mean fast as I mentioned before. It may be easy to look at a painting that uses expressive brush stroking and think that the painting was created very quickly with just quick brush strokes. But instead as you see here a painting like this is not necessarily created in a quick manner. It's really just more of a deliberate approach where you're thinking about each one of your brush strokes and considering how they're going to play in with the final piece. You can see here now that we're ready to make the highlight a bit stronger. So we'll use our mixture of cadmium yellow and titanium white, this time with just a bit more titanium white. It may be tempting to use a pure white for your highlight but that will probably make your painting appear unnatural. Instead you typically want to use a lighter version of the color of the subject. For now we'll move on to the stem of the pair and again with the larger brush we'll fill this in with a mixture of burnt umber and prussian blue. Then we'll go back to the shadow and make it a bit stronger again with another application of prussian blue and burnt umber. If we want our shadow to appear a little bit cooler we'll simply use a little bit more prussian blue. If we want it to appear a bit warmer we'll use more burnt umber. We'll go ahead and move on to the leaf that extends out from the stem and we'll just start with a mixture of ultramarine blue and a bit of cadmium yellow. This mixture is dominated by the ultramarine which makes it appear a bit darker. Here again we'll concentrate on blocking in the overall shapes of value that we see. We'll start with the darker values and then we'll progressively get a little bit lighter by adding a bit more of the cadmium yellow in the mixture. If you're having trouble locating the shapes of value it might be helpful to squint at your subject. Often when we squint our eyes the shapes of value become very clear and evident. It does take a little bit of practice getting used to this. It's easy to get overwhelmed by all the changes in value and tone that we see on a subject especially if it's a complicated subject. And since we're simplifying the shapes of value to a certain degree it's especially important to be able to locate those shapes of value. Now we'll begin pushing the value relationships on the leaf. We'll start by adding a bit of ultramarine to the areas of darkest value. The ultramarine is naturally darker in value but it's also a little bit cooler in color temperature. Then using a bit of cadmium yellow with a touch of titanium white we'll go back over the top of the lightest areas of the leaf. We want to incorporate a few of the reds up in the leaf as well so we'll use a bit of burnt sienna in areas. Now we'll start to make the lights a bit stronger again with titanium white mixed with cadmium yellow and a touch of ultramarine. As we continue to make applications in this area we'll gradually start to better understand the shapes of color and value. We'll continue working back and forth with darker applications and lighter applications. We'll also give a few indications of some of the veins and we'll finish off the stem. You'll notice that I've switched over to a smaller flat brush for this. Up to this point I've used the larger brush but this area is just too small to continue using the larger brush. We'll add a bit of highlight to the left side of the stem and we'll also use the brush into the wet paint to pull out a few lighter veins. Then we'll continue to work on making some of the areas a little bit lighter and warmer and some of the areas a little bit cooler and darker. Now we'll reincorporate some of those reds that were lost with our applications. This time it's a bit stronger with a bit of cadmium red mixed with burnt sienna. We'll continue trying to find the right shape of tone and value before moving on to the area of cast shadow. Now initially I'll add a cool gray to this location. This is a mixture of prussian blue and burnt umber with a touch of titanium white. We'll make the cast shadow slightly stronger underneath the pear by using a bit more of the burnt umber and prussian blue. Now we're ready to move on to addressing the background and for this particular painting I'm choosing to use a neutral background so that the colors of the pear will stand out a bit more. We're going to use deliberate large brush strokes here as well. I'm using a mixture of titanium white with a bit of yellow ochre and a touch of burnt umber. As we work our way around the body of the pear we'll define the edges. We can also alter the edge or the shape of the pear. In this case I want the edges to be a bit more angular so that they mimic the brush strokes that were used in the body of the pear. We'll allow some of our brush strokes to overlap the shape of the cast shadow allowing for a smoother transition from dark to light. We can also add a bit of variety in the background as well adding a bit more of our yellow ochre and burnt umber in areas and allowing the titanium white to dominate in other areas. And at this point I see that my shadow is a bit too strong once we've got our background color in place so I'll go back with a slightly lighter version of the color that we mixed before. We'll go right up to the bottom edge of the pear and then again we'll darken the value again with our mixture of prussian blue and burnt umber. And now our loose expressive painting of a pear completed in under an hour is complete. If you enjoyed this video then I know that you enjoy being a member at thevirtualinstructor.com. 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