How I Paint An Acrylic Painting That Sells!

Hi everybody. I am back in Ontario from my trip to Kelowna where I taught a class. You'll see that in the last video. And I am back and I've got to get some stuff done. I have to get square foot show paintings done. Now that we're doing them every month, I've got to keep it at the foreground of my mind and get those worked on. But I wanted to show you right away, I've come home and I've cleaned out my stay wet palette, which is this awesome palette that I use. Different people have different ways of doing a stay wet. Some people use 9 by 13 pans and put, you know, an old piece of felt, an old sweater in the bottom, keep it wet. But it's this special paper. It's the stay wet paper that I like so much. So here is, you know, here's the tray. I've washed out the foam. Now some people say that this gets really kind of stinky for them. I don't find that because I use up my paint so fast and I wash it so often. But I use, always use dish soap to really soap it up and clean it. You might even want to spritz it with alcohol. If you're having a problem with bacteria or smell, but it's this special paper. It's the stay wet paper. And look at how beautiful this is. I'm going to put this down. Look how beautiful this is. This is a washed piece of paper. This is so strong. I can use it again. I can flip it, use the back like I can use it over and over and over again. It's such a strong piece of paper. And that's what I'm going to be doing next is getting my palette ready. And I'm going to be working on projects in the studio. So come on along. It's going to be a great day. It's been, it's, it's been four days of, I've been watching my grandchildren and haven't been able to get out here. And they went off to school today and it's my first day back in the studio. And I feel alive. Do you have that when you get back in your studio? All right, come on. So you saw me clear a whole bunch of space. I left it a little bit disheveled. So now I've got to get these 12 by 12s primed. So I'm priming them with a cadmium yellow, not cadmium yellow, a cadmium red hue by Windsor and Newton paint. And I simply wash that on, guys. I use a big floppy wet brush and I water down that paint and I do the tops and the edges and get them prepped for some paintings. So today I'm going to work on a few 12 by 12s with you and get some of those color blocked. So the canvases are prepped and now I have to get my palette ready. So today I started with the scooping out of paint versus using all my tubes. So I'm going to be using all my little buckets and scooping out paint and getting my palette ready. As you know, this is my least favorite job. I find it a little boring, a little monotonous. And I have no rhyme or reason while I'm doing it. It's whatever color comes up next, I put on my palette. I don't have a little system or anything like that. But you just gotta get the parts that aren't your favorite done in the studio. But I do love the result of getting my palette ready. And yeah, it's really always wonderful to start some paintings with fresh new paint. So let me finish filling up my palette and we'll get on to painting. I use a combo of heavy body golden paint and Windsor and Newton paint, Liquitex paint, and a few Amsterdam colors. And you'll see that I've got everything there in my Ikea drawers. I've got two drawers full of all the silverware dividers. And I do try to keep the drawers organized by color, but that gets mixed up sometimes too. And it is an awesome system that I use. It's the narrow or the shallow drawers by Ikea. The first 12 by 12 that I'll be working on today, I had already pre-color blocked the complete image before I left for Kelowna, before I left on my little trip. So here I've come back to a painting and I've got to re-familiarize myself with it. And I've got to do the crisping up and that layer, that finishing layer. So I thought I would work on this first before I do the next little painting, which is a fully color blocked from the red. So stay tuned through this finishing of this painting into the next painting. And I think you'll find that it's really interesting to see how I color block. I'm still trying to figure out this videoing, guys. I know my arm is kind of in the way, but as my arm goes away, you see kind of what I'm doing. So I've color blocked the complete painting. How I started it was with the trees at the bottom, the foreground in this one. And then I started filling in the mid-ground and around the trees and the sky was color blocked last. So now what I'm doing is I'm coming in and I'm adding the lights because I find acrylic darkens as it dries. So I'm adding in the lights and I'm kind of squinting at my original. And I'm figuring out how I'm going to crisp it up, push those mountains back a little bit and make the snow shine and the foreground pop forward, things like that. My Square Foot Show for this month, for February 2025, if you're watching this later than that, the show is already over. But if you're watching it before, the show comes up February 13th at 8 p.m. Eastern Standard Time at squarefootshow.com. And all these little pieces will be for sale for $350 Canadian. My normal price is $600 for this size. So it's a really, really great sale. And it's a great place to find new artists as we strive to introduce new artists to collectors and collectors to new artists. So the show that's coming up is impressionistic, is impressions. So this is my impression of mountains and this scene. I'm not trying to be really super realistic. I'm not trying to put in, you know, all the little details. I have to laugh whenever I talk about being an impressionistic painter. My husband is a contractor. So there are times that, you know, I had to be pulled in to paint or something at one of his projects. And then he soon realized that I am not a house painter because my impression of a straight line is not something that he really liked when I was trying to cut in. So here I am. I'm just adding. I'm lightening up that background, which is in turn going to push it back into the distance. And like I said, I'll finish up this one and then I'll move quickly on to color blocking a full one with you for this video. I hope you enjoy. So now we're on to the next painting. I'm doing another snow scene. And here you see me getting my drawing in using my chalkboard chalk. Now, I've sped up this video, so it's going a little fast. And you're going to just see all the little stages. So I'm kind of getting in the big shapes. I'm not worrying about too much detail at this point. I do want to see kind of where I'm going. But then I'm going to be using a burgundy brush, and here we go, a burgundy paint rather than a brush, and a pointy brush to get in and solidify all the shapes. Because if I just went into the drawing after I chalked it, I might lose some of the chalk. It just might wash away. I might not know where I want to put things. So just inking it in for me solidifies and it allows me to correct anything too. So as I see it getting darker, I can correct it. So I'm really actually looking forward to doing this scene. I'm spurred on by one of my students who, in my last video of my class, did a gorgeous scene where the foreground trees were kind of in shadow and the background was in the sun. So she has inspired me. We get inspiration from all sorts of places, don't we? And the way the student did that inspired me. She had already had this reference photo, and I went, oh my gosh, I've got to work on this. So I'm working the darks. I'm pulling up, and I'm using turquoises, and blues, and some teals, and some forest greens, like some hookers green. And I'm first squinting at my image, and I'm blocking in all of those darks and those shapes. And I'm trying to create beautiful shapes, and a continuity, and kind of a little color story and balance at this point. Now, I'm really concentrating on not making every branch of that tree equal, not making every little branch that comes out equally spaced. I want them to be a variety of shapes, a variety of thicknesses. And I'm already loving what's happening with this blue snow. And so my goal, my challenge will be to get this contrast. Now, I have to tell you that what I got done in this video is a full color blocking, and I have to leave it for the day, and it will get a little darker, and I'll be able to come back tomorrow and work on the finish. So you're getting the color blocked here. You'll be able to see the finished piece at...I'll probably show it on a preview on Instagram. I'll probably actually put it on the community posts here on YouTube, and you'll be able to see that. But look, already those shapes are starting to pop, and they're just beautiful, if I do say so myself. I'm using teal and deoxazine purple to create a really beautiful periwinkle that I'm kind of seeing in there. That fluorescent pink that you see on my palette gets used. So now I'm building the middle ground of the painting and just filling in all of the trees and the shapes of the lower half of this painting. And that's how I do it. I work from the bottom up or the mid-ground, usually what I would call the mid-ground up, and I will do the sky last. So then I will work on the lake in the picture, and you can see my picture to the right on the table. And yeah, here we go. I'm starting to add a few highlights, starting to build some of that background, and we're going to get soon into the painting of the mountains. And you're going to see soon that I'm going to be starting working on that background, the snowy trees, the snowy trees and lake in the background, trying to kind of visualize that there are trees on that mountain, the rocks on that mountain, and not just put a big blanket snowy background, but to give detail and all of that. I love doing these 12 by 12s, and I was really rejuvenated after being away from my studio for probably about two weeks. I had been in Kelowna visiting my kids and my grandkids. It was wonderful to be able to create with a group of artists in the Gallagher community of Kelowna. You go back to my last video, you'll be able to see that and how a class went, and that was really fun. But there's nothing like being back in your studio with all of your supplies and everything available to you, listening to, I think I was listening to Melissa Morrell about, you know, fashion. It's funny, I just have to listen to the things that I have on YouTube because I'm concentrating and looking at my painting. So I always just kind of pop my eyes up to see if they say anything interesting. I'm really trying to learn about how to dress myself, if that makes sound funny, but I'm trying to learn all sorts of things about this creative and lovely world that we live in, and fashion can be a real expression as well. And I'm trying to learn some things about body shape and form, which relate to painting. So here I'm painting the shape, the body and shape of those mountains. And you'll notice that the strokes are kind of following the contour of that mountain. As it comes down the slope and towards you, I've used my strokes to kind of follow that. And now I'm squinting. If you look at my mountain on the right, you'll see, you know, some dark horizontal lines of the rock formations, and I'm kind of squinting at that, and I'm looking at it, and I'm trying to fill in and to just indicate. And remember, it's an impressionistic show that I'm doing, so I'm trying to be even more impressionistic than normal to fit the requirements of this show. So you look, what happens is sometimes I just have to, I see something and I have to bop back and forth into the foreground. But I'm really loving how this painting is turning out. I really actually really love it with the red background. And lots of people have said, wow, you know, you should stop, stop now. But I've never actually had anybody say, stop now, I'll buy it with the red background. So I will continue to work until I fill it. But the red is a unifying color that actually pokes through the entire painting, as you'll see. And if you zoomed close into this painting, you'll see that there's lots of red showing through. And I don't worry about that. I actually think that if it had been a white canvas and the white was showing through, it would look unfinished. But with the red showing through, it kind of gives a unifying glow throughout the entire piece. Now, guys, I'm loving it. I'm loving how all the snow on the foreground trees is taking shape and building those, you know, big weighty branches that are weighed down with snow. So here I'm going to start the background. I always start the background against, so here it's mountains. If I was doing an island, it would probably be, you know, against the trees. And I fill up and out from the positive shape. I consider the sky to be kind of the negative shape, if that makes sense. But tell me if that makes sense. That's my question of the day. Do I explain things well? Just let me know if I explain things well. I would really, really appreciate that. And any feedback that you have, I would really love to hear it. So this little sped-up video, I really am enjoying this painting. Sometimes, you know, taking a break and not painting for a little while spurs on all the creative juices when I get back to it. And I really have a good time in the studio creating. Even though I don't really like to be gone a long time, it is my job. And I do have to paint for a living. So, you know, I don't have the luxury of just taking weeks and weeks off. This is what I do. So let me know if taking time away from your studio stresses you out or gives you a little bit of energy when you go back to it. And I tend to treat my painting as, you know, I treat my painting as a creative outlet, but I also treat it as a job. I get out into my studio at around 8.30 or 9 o'clock in the morning with my coffee, and I work all day. And I sometimes, you know, can finish, I finish around 3, I find 5 to 6 hours of painting to be quite invigorating. This day, however, I did these 12 by 12 color blocks, and around 2 o'clock, I had finished all that I could do on my regular painting jobs. So I spent the next three hours doing some abstract painting, and I actually got reinvigorated. My husband said, hey, it's 5 o'clock, are you coming in? And I was thrilled that I had had such a full day in the studio. And isn't this little painting just coming along so fun? So I'm finishing this video on another day because my husband was right. I had to go out. We had a dinner date. I had to come in and go and have a shower. But did you like that little painting? I can't wait. Tomorrow, I'm going to be back at it. I'm going to be finishing it, and I'll post it in the community tabs when I'm done. But if you'd give me a like and subscribe, that is really helpful. It encourages me, and it gets the video out to more people. And I hope you enjoyed this video. We'll see you in the next one. I'm coming up with ideas, and we'll talk to you again. Bye bye.