Start MESSY and paint in LAYERS Acrylic Landscape Painting impressionism realism

Hello and welcome back to my studio. Today I'm going to be painting a small landscape painting on a 10 by 8 inch canvas panel in acrylics. This is going to be semi-realism. It's got a little bit of impressionism and a little bit of detailed realist style painting. But basically this video is to show you how to use acrylics and paint in layers, building the painting up bit by bit in different layers. So I hope you enjoy it, now let's get painting. So the first thing I'm going to do is to give the entire canvas a coat of acrylic gloss medium. It can be matte, it doesn't matter which, it's just to seal the pores of the canvas. And then I give it a coat of raw umber while it's wet. This is to give an imprimatura to the canvas, it's a ground on which to paint a different colour rather than white. Now with a one inch flat bristle brush I'm just going to put in, in raw umber, the basic shapes, contours and composition of this landscape which is going to be a little dark woodland area there in the background and a stream running into it or from it rather, into this darkness and then emerging into the light and being very sunlit in this area here. It's going to have stones on this side, a little rocky stony area and a little bit of shadow here from foliage and that's going to be a dark foliage area and that's going to be the woodland in the background. So once that's dry I can then go on to the colour and I'm using Payne's grey and white here just to give me a dark tone for the With a relatively smaller brush now, not quite so big because this particular style of painting is again, it's painting in layers but this time instead of painting in one whole layer, letting it dry and then doing another layer, this is going to be about painting layer upon layer in smaller areas. So these little areas I'm doing now, the darks, the shadows, I'll be painting over later on lots and lots of times. The same with all the other areas, just little areas, let them dry and then paint over them but as you're letting them dry you can be painting other areas. So you're building the painting up basically a little at a time, bit by bit. Now that bottom corner there I need to get very dark because I want to sign my name in that area but it will be a dark area anyway, the stones are going to be merging into it and now I can start putting in some bluey green colours for the background foliage. It's also an underpaint for the rest of the foliage. I can make it a little bit more green as we come into this other foliage area. Some of it's going to be in highlight, some of it's going to be in shadow. So I want some blues in there as well for shadows and that background area needs to have a bluish tint to it as well. It's background foliage separating this background woodland which I'm just putting some lights in now which are going to be highlights through the trees. Again this is one stage, one little layer, let it dry because I'll be going over later on with darker areas and it's about building it up a bit at a time, starting off very loose and messy and having fun with being messy and slowly building the painting up bit by bit into realism, well semi-realism, putting more and more detail. You can stop at any particular point and you can just have this as an impressionist style painting. So I'm just putting the highlight areas, this is where the light is going to be shining on this little stream here. It's going to have a little waterfall there in the background, just a small one and then this bottom of the riverbed will have a warmer tone. Just while that's wet there in that bottom area I'm just going to scratch my name as I usually do with my Bradall woodworking tool and like that, there we go. Now back to this riverbed, it's going to be warm because the sunlight is going to be shining through the water and glinting off the riverbed and making that area nice and warm. So I'll now start blending that edge into that foliage area by putting a mid-tone, a colour that's between the light and the dark and I'll do the same here with these stones. I'll just put in some mid-tone greys of where these stones are, very loosely, very roughly and I can add some of those colours elsewhere to harmonise the painting. So I'll put those colours in there and put these stones in more and more detail each time I'm doing this, each time I get to another layer I'm adding a little bit more detail. This time a few more highlights on these stones now and they start to look like a little stony area running into the water and you have to sort of visualise the painting before you even start. It's best to actually visualise it and see it in your mind's eye what it's going to look like. Try and get that, try and do that if you can because it helps tremendously to see the finished painting before you even start. Some more highlights of different tone now, a different colour into those stones and elsewhere. I'll have a few little dark stones as well on the riverbed there, just there. I need to warm up this riverbed, it's still not warm enough yet so I'll warm this up here with a little red, orangey type of a colour like that and I'll blend it into the other colours and add those colours elsewhere. Now with a fan bristle brush I'm just going to put in where this water is, where the highlights of this water are going to go and where the light's shining on the water now and I find a bristle fan brush is great for these random marks. I put a mid-tone in as well there just to soften it because I don't want that light everywhere so like that. Now I'm going to do the background darker once again on another layer, just making it darker and then blending it into those those foliages there just slightly in front of that woodland and what I can do is actually darken some of the rest of the foliage and while that background is wet I'll actually start blending those backgrounds, that background foliage but once I've got to get these shadows in first but it's still wet so I can start to put in, getting darker even still now with that background, now I can start blending that background foliage adding a bluey green colour, not light at all, it's only just emerging from that darkness and I can put in a lighter colour now in the riverbed because that's now dry and it starts to look a little bit lighter where the light's shining through. Not quite right yet but we're getting there. I keep working at it until you get it, until you get it there basically. Now once that layer is completely dry I then give the entire canvas or painting a coat of retarder, acrylic retarder which slows the drying time down of the paint. So I'll put that on there with this bristle brush and I've just gone over again with those darks into that background and do these foliages subtly so that they blend into that background and I'm going to put some highlights back into those, that woodland at the back to show it looks like there's trees and the light shining through and add those colours elsewhere as well to keep that colour harmony going. These fan brushes are actually wonderful for foliage and for all sorts of things really. They're a multi-purpose brush like that. I'm going to have a shadow area here with little shadows of leaves and things on that water in a minute. At the moment I need to start putting in, well, the highlights of this foliage. Now you can see I'm using the fan brush. I'm not using it in one way at all, I'm using it and rotating it. Watch how I do it. Put the foliage in upright and then slowly turn it round and move it around and twist it and you get random foliage because nature is random so you should paint randomly. A few more of those colours into that background subtly, not a lot, and then one or two and the bluey green colour just here and there in those dark areas like that. Now I've gone to a dagger brush and putting these highlights in once again. Now that little waterfall there has got a light edge on the top so that needs to be quite bright and what I'll do is I'll drag the paint down like that and it creates that little waterfall. I will adjust that with a smaller brush later on and make it even more realistic but at the moment with the dagger brush I'm just putting in where these lights are, where the highlights are and where the sunlight's glinting off this water like that. And with the same brush I'm just going to put in a few little leaves and foliage. I'm not doing every single leaf at all, just giving the impression of leaves but it is more detail than I would usually do. A few little bluey highlights now because that's what you'll get in dark areas where there's little bits of highlight you will get a little bluey sort of a colour to it. A few more different colours now into these little stones and rocks and highlights with the same brush here. It starts to look like some of those stones are underwater and just emerging like that. A few little highlights where the stones could be just coming through the surface of the water. So now I've gone to a smaller brush and I'm putting in some dots of light, little dashes and dots where the light is really picking up on that running water there. I'm going to do this little waterfall a little bit better now so I need bright pure white just along the top edge and then a few little downward strokes and then the foam at the bottom of the waterfall there. Now I've gone to an even smaller brush now to do these tiny tiny little dots of white light. Now these could be highlights from sunlight being hitting some little bits of dust on the surface of the water or little insects but it all helps to create that illusion of water. I can do as many of these as I as I want I don't want to go too mad with it though and make them different sizes and different densities. Put one or two over there and here and there. Now I need to make this stone look like it's a little bit more underwater because at the moment it doesn't. That's better. It's got a little greyish tone to it now. I'll put one or two others here and there. Now a little grey little highlight on that one like that. A tiny little dash of light on there. There. Starts to look more like a riverbed. A stony riverbed. So I'll just keep adding these little details now and it's it's up to you basically where you want to stop but I will keep going at the moment with mine and put in some little subtle highlights now of the foliage. Twisting that brush again. Turning it round and round. There. I want that to be really nice and bright and here same but not as much and then in the front in the foreground just a couple of little touches. Just be subtle with it. Okay. Get that background just right there like that. Have some more foliage. Some more there. Now I'm going to put in with a small brush here some light little little leaves just basically highlighting and augmenting those brush marks with tiny little what could be suggested leaves and foliage. We'll have one or two in this dark area as well just where the light just seems to be picking out the edge of one or two leaves just here and there. Not by painting the entire leaf but just little dashes of light and it makes it look a little bit more realistic. Now with a rigger brush a liner brush I'm just putting in a few grass like strokes like little grasses not everywhere and only here and there just a few little strokes like that. Back to the white again and I'm just putting in some very very light highlights now the top of that waterfall and the foamy bit beneath and get that light there just right and some dashes and dots once again to augment those highlights and bring them back out. Now it looks like a river in the sunlight so I'll just keep going with these little dots and dashes until I'm I'm happy I've done enough on them. A few more like that. We'll add one or two little lighter areas in these leaves as well only one or two just to balance the whole painting. Now I'm going to use a splatter technique just splattering with wet paint now this is white paint just tiny tiny little dots of start to appear. Now I can go in with some more shadows now in this area I want to have shadows of leaves coming from a bush that's off camera so these shadows are going to be on the surface of the water. I'll just keep working at this until I've got it right. Some leaves and grasses and stalks and all sorts of things these little shadows like that a few elsewhere under that little shadow there and I'll just do one or two little more shadows and then I'm happy with that that's the painting finished. Well I hope you enjoyed watching this video and hopefully found it rewarding and entertaining. Let me know if you have any comments or questions that I may be able to help you with and I look forward to you joining me on my next painting video. So until then have a lovely day and happy painting!