Bob Davies Acrylic Painting Videos

Here are several good acrylic painting videos by Bob Davies. There are more of his videos on BobDavies88's Channel on YouTube. He also has tips and tutorials on a variety of media on his website how-to-draw-and-paint. A related website idrawandpaint.com has a community for sharing your artwork, getting critiques, and meeting other amateur artists.

Dutch Still Life Painter

I have been working on my apple still life and decided to look up apple still lifes. I found this website by a Dutch painter, Jos van Riswick. I love the simplicity of these still lifes. They show that a lot can be done with a few bowls and a few fruits or vegetables.

Mimi Sammis Video

This is a video about the joy of creating. It is an excerpt form a PBS art series, "Love to Paint with Mimi."

Watercolor Assignment -- Emil Nolde

These paintings were done for the "Emil Nolde" assignment in the watercolor course I took last fall. Some of Nolde's watercolor paintings were done on small pieces of slightly absorbent Japanese rice paper using very watery premixed paints. We looked at his paintings in the book Emil Nolde: Unpainted Pictures and then tried to create something similar.

I bought two different kinds of Japanese printmaking paper at Utrecht, also known as "rice paper" although it is not made of rice. The large sheets of paper were torn into quarters — the paper tears very nicely when it is folded and the crease is moistened with water. The bright colored paint was applied by pouring or with an eyedropper. This was done very experimentally. After I saw something I liked in the blotches of paint, I used black paint for the lines.

The top painting was based on a sunrise photo taken from my bedroom window. It was done on "Okawara Student" which was not really absorbent enough. The bottom painting was done on "Hosho" paper which is more absorbent and worked much better. For this I started with some random blotches but planned to make a face of some sort. The composition reminded me of a flower garden, so that is what it became.

When I was looking for information on Emil Nolde today, I found an interesting artist blog, Color Sweet Tooth blog, which has a post showing an example of watercolor progressions somewhat similar to what I was doing.

The Art of Kimmo Pälikkö

Kimmo Pälikkö is a Finnish artist. I discovered him when I saw a postcard of one of his paintings of lighthouses on the Wild Postcards blog (Note: my other blog is about postcards http://www.postcardy.blogspot.com/). Many of Pälikkö's paintings have been reproduced on postcards. According to Pälikkö's website "By 2009, over 1300 postcard motifs of his paintings have been produced and over 85 million postcards of his works have been printed."

There are many examples of his artwork online that can be viewed and/or purchased. What I especially liked about about his website are his books on watercolor painting techniques that can be read online in English.

Value & Color Watercolor Exercise

This is an exercise I did in my watercolor class recently. In the classroom, a slide of an unknown painting was displayed upside down and very blurry.

First, watercolor paper was soaked in water and placed on a nonabsorbent board. Only three paint colors were used: ultramarine blue, bright red, and bright yellow. These three colors were mixed to obtain other colors. The various values were obtained by using more or less water with the paint. It was also possible to partially remove or "lift out" an area of color with a clean wet brush.

The procedure was to copy the composition, colors, and values which were displayed on the projection screen. As we worked the focus was increased, and the paper dried gradually. As you can see from the blurry images below, it was impossible to tell what we were painting until nearly the end. As the screen image changed, modifications were made in our paintings until finally a clear image was displayed.

The painting is Water Pitcher by Vermeer--I found a copy at the Web Museum that I am using here. The original painting and my watercolor "copy" are displayed at the bottom of this post.

Watercolor Painting

I am taking a watercolor painting course this fall that meets on Tuesday and Thursday, so I won't be able to attend the acrylic painting class. It seems harder to get started in watercolor than in acrylic.

Here is a watercolor painting website that looks very good for learning watercolor painting.

Acrylic Color Mixing & Glazing

These are several interesting and useful articles I found on the Golden Paints website:

Color Mixing Guide has important color information and mixing exercises.

Clean Color Mixing compares inorganic and inorganic pigments and the effect of matting agents on color.

Golden Acrylic Glazing Liquid describes many ways of using acrylic glazing liquid.

Landscape Composition Rules

I am taking a Photo Composition and Design course this summer, and I was given a link to a list of Photo Composition Articles. I found one article on the list that is actually about painting — Landscape Composition Rules by Johannes Vloothuis.

Since I am currently working on a landscape painting based on one of my photographs, I found this article very interesting and useful. I discovered a couple things in my painting that I should probably change. I recommend this article for anyone interested in painting a landscape. As the author states: "Rules are made to be broken, in which case you should at least know what rule you are breaking and why and not err due to insufficient knowledge."

Van Gogh's Brushstrokes

I have been trying to imitate Van Gogh's brushstrokes on a couple of paintings and have not been getting satisfactory results. I took my camera to the MIA recently and took some closeups of a couple of my favorite paintings, including Olive Trees by Vincent Van Gogh. Although the light in the galleries does not seem very bright, I was able to get some useable pictures without a flash or tripod. By useable, I mean good enough to study on my computer, not good enough to print. It is also possible to view many paintings closeup using the zoom feature on the MIA website.