My Painting Process: A Creative Journey – Part 1

This series of posts will be an experiment of sorts. I will be documenting my painting process on a painting for a piece of art that I submitted to an art contest back in 2013. I consider myself only a competent painter and will try to improve my painting technique whenever I can. Competitions like the one I’m submitting to are usually a good measuring stick of my progress as an artist.

Before I Begin The Painting Process

In the beginning, was an idea. The rules are wide-open as far as content and media are concerned. But this contest is being held by Southwest Art Magazine. What type of entries do you think their judges will pick? If we take a look at last year’s winners, we’ll notice that none of the pieces are particularly radical. Most of the themes are pretty common for what you’d find in any mainstream art magazine. No porno-hot chicks barely covered in armor, wielding a sword. I consider the styles photo-realistic or edging close to photo-realism. So if you’re paying attention, you’ll have a pretty clear idea as to what type of art to submit. That means I’ll have to play to my audience or in this case, my judges. (There’s money on the line dammit!)

So how about kittens? And who doesn’t love kittens? (Unless you’re a heartless soul who also hates puppies…) And ever since my mother was duped into running a cat farm, I’ve had the good fortune of building up a good library of kitten photos. I had four candidates that might appeal to my targets. The trouble is deciding which will work. They all look good. (Or so far.)

Turning Painting Ideas Into Thumbnails

My next task was to sketch out thumbnails of each of the photos in pencil. I had to keep in mind my target size and ensure that the roughs were in proportion. The nice thing about roughs is that you get your ideas down on paper quickly. We all have numerous great ideas vaguely floating around in our minds, but not all of those ideas are worth using. Getting it all down on paper helps us quickly find and eliminate the failures, and focus on the ones with potential.

You’ll notice my roughs employ the image transfer technique I covered in Yes, You Too Can Draw. Before I toss an idea aside, I want to be pretty accurate in my roughs. Quickly getting the correct proportions down requires a good eye. So it’s not easy to do. Little tricks like image transferring help to smooth things over. (Especially if you’re doing this while on the road.) In PhotoShop, I created a grid on top of each photo and made prints of them. That eliminates the need for a ruler when creating my thumbnails.

My Subject: Kitten in the Pot

After studying my results, I chose to go with the photo of the kitten sitting in a flower pot. I believe that this was a gut decision. Plus it plays well with the Rule of Thirds.

Transferring Pencils to Canvas

The media that I chose is acrylic paint on a sheet of Daler-Rowney Acrylic Pad. [Amazon] The paper in the acrylic pad tries to simulate a primed canvas that’s not too textured. For the most part, it holds up well to the standard application of acrylic paint as well as washes. It also does pretty well against heavy erasing. Amazingly it aptly accepted the H2 lead in my mechanical pencil. On any other support, the H2 lead would be barely visible.

With my mechanical pencil and a steel ruler, I create a fresh transfer grid. Then I grab my printout of the original photo with the grid overlay, and little by little drew my picture.

By the time I was done, I noticed some distortions in my pencils. The big one is that the head is oddly shaped and possibly too big. I scanned my pencils and stitched the halves together (It’s slightly bigger than my scanner) together in PhotoShop using the Photomerge feature. I flip the scan horizontally in Photoshop to better spot errors. Image menu >> Image Rotation >> Flip Canvas Horizontally

I created a new layer at the top of the stack. On this layer, I’ll mark out my corrections in red. Once I’m satisfied with the changes I’ll need to make, I’ll make a new printout.  The new printout acts as my guide. Then I directly make the changes in pencil.

Acrylic Painting Tips

Thoughts on Acrylic Paint

I honestly don’t have a favorite brand of acrylic paint. In the past, I have had a habit of buying Winsor and Newton or Liquitex. I’ve also purchased and used cheaper brands. The only real difference between the brand names and the cheaper acrylics is that most cheaper acrylics use chemically created pigments. Brand names will use pigments that are found in nature. (That makes the paint more expensive.) The only time someone like Liquitex will use chemically produced pigment are either in their consumer lines of paint or if the pigment is naturally toxic. If you’re just starting out, there’s nothing wrong with saving some money and buying the cheap stuff. I wouldn’t expect any of the garbage that I’ve produced in the past to end up in a museum any time soon. Neither should you.

Brushes To Consider When Painting In Acrylics

I have a ton of brushes. Most of the brushes I use have some type of natural hair. Sable is a good example. I do have a few synthetic brushes. They’re either nylon or some type of cheap plastic. I tend to lean more towards brushes with natural hair due to the better experience I’ve had with them. When a sable brush starts splitting apart and losing hairs, you can coerce it into behaving properly. When a synthetic brush goes to pot and starts fanning out, there’s not much you can do. My workhorse has been a Winsor and Newton University Series 233 round synthetic brush. [Amazon] It’s been a great brush so far, and I’ve yet to obliterate it. The bristles don’t keep a nice point, yet I can easily use the brush for either thin or thick applications of paint. I also used a cheap chiseled brush that I bought at Micheal’s Art and Crafts. It’s only useful for broad, sloppy washes.

Cleaning & Maintaining Your Brushes

Good maintenance (like washing your brushes after every session), can make brushes last for a very long time. So far the only soap that has been able to get most of the gunk out of my brushes has been The Master’s Brush Cleaner and Preserver. [Amazon] Even if Even though I included an affiliate link, I still swear by it. I used to do a ton of work with brush and india ink. Before the Master’s, india ink would devastate my poor sable brushes. Now I can extend their life spans to at least a year with regular use in india ink.

I have a cool little water jar that has a stainless steel coil inside. I bought it over a decade ago at Hobby Lobby. It’s manufactured by the Lion Company and they call it the Silicoil Brush Cleaning Tank. [Amazon] Even though it was originally produced for oil painters, it goes a great job cleaning off acrylic paint from brushes. The other thing I use is a spray bottle. In my case, I recycled an old hair spray bottle. But you can buy spray bottles pretty cheap and without the hassle of cleaning it out just about anywhere.  I even see them at dollar stores. The point of the spray bottle is to prevent the paint in my palettes from drying up. Acrylic paint is notorious for drying up really fast. Especially under a hot lamp.

Types Of Pallets To Use During The Painting Process

During the painting process, I use two types of palettes for two different purposes. I use a plastic palette on top of a wet paper towel (a sponge will work also) that sits inside an airtight container. I hate wasting paint. This setup preserves them for however long I want. The paint inside the plastic palette will be colors that I’ll constantly use. My other palette is a sheet of Canson Disposable Palette paper. [Amazon] (I’ve also used a Winsor and Newton version.) This palette will be used for mixing colors on the fly. The paint I use won’t last the day or even five minutes. I don’t have any emotional attachment or suffer any guilt if the paint dries up.

The Miracle of Painter’s Tape

Another thing I recommend is buying a roll of painter’s tape. [Amazon] It’s basically a “low-tack” version of masking tape. Even with long-term use, you’re less likely to tear up your paper or support. This can be purchased at any hardware store.

Painting Tips For Under Painting & Value Study

This is a tip I picked up from one of Borris Valejo’s books. [Amazon] I always start with an underpainting or value study. I don’t have the mental discipline to pick out the correct values from a color photo. Lacking a value study, I’ll oftentimes lack contrast in my paintings. Similar to Vallejo, I’ll use a mix of burn sienna and raw umber paint. Black and white will be used to modify my values. In PhotoShop, I’ll go into my Layers palette and add a Black and White Adjustment Layer to desaturate the photo and a Levels Adjustment Layer to adjust the contrast. Then I’ll drop in a Fill Color Adjustment Layer and set it to a color that’s pretty close to what I’ll be painting with. The Fill Color layer gets its mode changed to Color. When that happens, all of the values get saturated by the Fill Color. Then I make another printout.

Glaze Painting Techniques

I’m a glazer. I get my best results from layering thin, water-down sheets of color. It makes it easier to blend values in acrylic. The downside to glazing is when it’s time to scan in the final result. he light from the scanner seeps into the layers of paint, bounces off the white primer, and illuminates it like a car tail light. The result looks awful and is next to impossible to fix in PhotoShop. With this in mind, I’ve made a decision to lay in opaque layers of paint and try to use the oil technique of blending colors directly on the canvas. Like all good plans, this one goes to hell the moment I start. I suppose glazing is habitual. Plus directly matching more subtle values is easier said than done. Acrylic paint almost always dries darker than when wet. I remind myself now and then to apply opaque strokes. The scan I made doesn’t look as bad. The value study took around four days to knock out. I don’t spend 12-hour days working on it.

Until Next Time…

Here’s where we’ll pick up:

If you’ve ever spent any time painting, you’ll recognize what’s going on here. That’s right gang, it’s “the Ugly Stage”. The period of time was loaded with landmines. Plenty of opportunities to screw this up. Join me next time, as I attempt to work my way through the Ugly Stage of this painting.

Happy Painting!