Ateliers et cours de peinture René  Milone 
Apprendre les bases ou se perfectionner en peinture et dessin

French

How to paint on video

How to paint with Cezanne

Free Art Lesson

Creativity with acrylic

During a life time, everyone of us have had this feeling, deep inside, to wish to paint without being judged or having to describe our art work.  This way is absolutely the normal way with no pre-requisites to fulfill, no choices to make. While creating our pictures, even the most  ‘creative’ ones, we have to follow a creation path until the picture is completed.
In this example, we will paint within precise limits, we will paint with method, though, we will remain very creative. These limits are: your color palette, your patience for a the step duration, your guideline to maintain, path of contact.
To begin with, we will limit our palette to 6 colors and the Titanium White (black is made from dark colors mix).
I choose, for this exercise, an acrylic paint for student, inexpensive, because we will be free to use as much as we feel.
The picked colors are : Shining Yellow, Primary Red (Magenta), Yellow Ochre, Natural Sienna, Phtalo Green, Cobalt Blue and Titanium White.

We paint on newspaper to bannish self-judgement and to be able to redo our work as many times as we want until it pleases us witn no cost concerns.
We will, then, stick the newspaper on the canvas (marouflage technique)

First, we want a nice effect from whatever will get out of our mind, so let us pick a color cast. The color wheel help us doing this strategic choice. We will use it again, in a future step, to determine our color harmony with thw complementary color.

In this exercise, we choose a warm orange color cast.

We start with putting color stains close to our color cast, randomly, on all the newspaper area.  This step cannot last more than 5 to 10 minutes.

Then, we consider our art work and we try to visualize interesting shapes, without censorship, from the many stains appearing on the newspaper sheet.  These stains will be worked with, later, into shapes that can be figurative or pure abstract art work. In this particular example, we see outstanding red stains that make us think of bird figures...But it is not yet very clear.   
We will begin to emphasize on the interesting shapes and to sharpen the colors with the intention to create a color cast harmony.
Let us choose,a complementary harmony (orange and blue) to create strong contrasts and to obtain a vivid picture with color richness.

We keep on looking for birdy shapes and we continue to display contrasting hues with darker and paler blue. The shapes appear to be different but still from a single theme: birds. Here it might be a bird flight.

In order to stress the picture cohesion and give homogeneity to it, we insert blue stains in the orange background.  We apply the same contrasting effect with darker blue around the birdy shape. We must suggest some kind of movement, so, we trace parallel white curved lines. As we well know, these lines add the impression of movement and vibration.

When the picture is well on its way and completely dry, we can go on with the ‘marouflage’ or ‘stick on the canvas’ step.  To hide the newspaper edges, we soak the newspaper sides with water and tear the newspaper. 

This step creates serrated edges.

Now, we apply a generous quantity of acrylic medium on all the 14 x 18 in canvas area.
We can, as well, cut the newspaper in many parts and create many pictures, a diptych or a even a triptych on different dimensional canvas.

We put the painted newspaper softly on the already covered with acrylic medium canvas.

We apply a new layer of acrylic medium over the painted newspaper, generously, overrunning the newspaper sheet  limits. With the help of the palette knife, track the air bubbles from the middle to the edges. It might happen that the thickness of the paint had cockled the sheet and that creases remain that will not be flatened. But, that is what will give texture and embossment to the picture. They might become an interesting part of this creation.

We keep on painting on the canvas, around and on the newspaper, overrunning the newspaper in an irregular manner, to make a seamless paper-canvas joining.

We redo the same work on the surrounding as we have done on the newspaper to have the subjects coming closer to the canvas edges.

In our example, to add more originality to our art work, I put irridescent gold, copper and white rings that will reflect light and put eye catching relief.

We can let ourselves be free to insert flakes and add ‘collages’.

Here is the resulting art work : A bird flight made from paint stains.

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