Will Kemp, Fishing Boat at St Michael’s Mount, 10 x 8 inches, Acrylic on Board

Morning class,

After posting photos from my recent trip to St Michael’s Mount, the most popular request was to create a painting tutorial of the little blue boat. So here it is, a new free step-by-step acrylic lesson!

Grab a brew, maybe a biscuit or two (now the weather’s turning a bit more autumnal I’ve got a piece of particularly good ginger cake from the local farmers market) and let’s get painting, I really hope you enjoy it.

Downloading the reference photograph

You can download the photo below as a reference image, print it out, and follow along.

You can download a larger version of the image here. 
(The size of the image is 1:1 to the size I painted, 10 x 8 inches)

Materials you will need:

• 10 x 8 inch (25.4 x 20cm) canvas or board

Paints

I use a mix of Golden and Winsor & Newton Paints, these were the ones I used for the demo, but they could be interchanged between other brands and still work well.

Heavy Body Paints from Golden

• Titanium White
• Ultramarine Blue
• Yellow Ochre
• Raw Umber
• Burnt Umber
• Green Gold
• Phthalo Blue (Green Shade)

Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic

• Naphthol Red Light
• Phthalo Blue (Red Shade)

Brushes

Round Synthetic – Rosemary & Co, Series 344. Designer Golden Synthetic, size 4

• Filbert – Isabey Isacryl size 6
• Small Round Synthetic – Rosemary & Co Designer series 344 size 4
• Round Synthetic – Princeton, Aspen 9000R, size 4 

Mediums/extra tools

0.8mm Daler Rowney mixed-media paint marker filled with sepia high flow acrylic from Golden Paints.

• F & W Daler Rowney mixed-media paint marker
• Tear-off palette
• Palette Knife

How do you choose a colour palette for your painting?

Before I begin selecting my paints for any painting, I ask myself, what can I see?

What colour palette is going to be most helpful for this scene? What’s the feel I’m going for and what colours do I like?

Importantly what colours don’t I need? Am I going to paint impasto or in glazes? Do I want an opaque or transparent pigment? And if using oil paints, what’s the drying time of those pigments?

I work my way around the scene, scanning for colours. If you look at our reference photo, you can see a warm muted yellow at the bottom, so I’d ask myself, are there any brighter yellows than this in the subject? Not really, so a Yellow Ochre for this piece would work well.

Now my eye has jumped to the warmth on the front of the boat, I’m going to need a red so I’m going for a Naphthol Red Light (a Cadmium Red would also work fine).

Then I’ve also got cool tones, specifically the blues.

Within the boat, you can see a turquoise blue, so I’ll use Phthalo Blue (Green Shade) for that, in the reflected light, it’s slightly warmer, so I’m selecting Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) and for the warmer shadow under the boat, Ultramarine Blue.

For the dark areas, I can mix Burnt Umber with Ultramarine Blue to create a black.

There’s almost a vivid transparent yellow-green for the green areas so that you could use a bright lemon yellow, but I’m going to use some Green Gold to give that lovely glow.

Step #1. Coloured Ground & Drawing Out

Line drawing using a high flow sepia acrylic within a mixed media pen

How do you paint sand without using yellow?

Our perception of what colour sand is is largely based on memories. Golden and bathed in sunlight, but when you look at the sand in our image, it’s a very muted colour, and that’s even with dappled sunlight over it.

Mixing a muted sand colour will feel greyer than you think it should be, but this will help with our approach to the rest of the colours in the painting. I want something that goes towards a cool hue because I can add warmer glazes in the later stages of the painting so I’ve chosen a mix of Titanium White and a small amount of Raw Umber.

Slightly dilute it with a few drops of water to move more smoothly and is easier to apply. Brush it over the whole canvas using a decorators brush or a flat synthetic brush, making sure it covers the canvas opaquely yet isn’t too thick. I don’t want to make it thick because I still want to be able to draw on top of it. Also, you don’t want to lose too much of the canvas texture.

If it isn’t flowing smoothly, dip the tip of your brush into a bit of water and continue applying, and if you do apply it too heavily, you can use the edge of your palette knife to scrape the paint off.

Okay, now we’re just going to leave that to dry before drawing out.

Drawing the s-curve

Look for the underlying s-curve made by the seaweed and ropes

I’ve drawn out using an acrylic marker.

It’s a mixed-media marker from Daler Rowney, with a really fine 0.8mm tip which makes a lovely line. What I like most is you can choose whatever medium you want to go into the empty marker. I’m using a high flow acrylic from Golden paints in a Sepia, designed originally for airbrushing, it’s already been thinned by the manufacturer.

So the drawing is actually pretty simple.

The main objects are the curve of rocks in the foreground which helps to frame the view and gives us that sense of depth from the boat. Then just a slight indication at the top where the seaweed is coming in, and also the shape of the ropes on the sand so you have this nice diagonal S-curve that sweeps through the composition.

Finally, just some very simple shapes on the boat, putting the cast shadow in and just an indication of shapes on the interior of the boat that will be lighter whiter areas.

Step #2. Burnt umber block-in

Looking at the rock on the bottom left, there’s this warmth to the surface, so having that in first will provide us with another good base. Initially, I wash in with diluted Burnt Umber to give a warm glow underneath. Brush wise; I’m using a small round synthetic brush (size 4 Design Series from Rosemary & Co series, 344)

Then, using a mix of Ultramarine Blue and Burnt Umber I mix a lovely deep, rich, cool black. I paint that very dark tone on top of the warmth, which will help us to judge the value range within the painting. If you notice there is a little dark area around the base of the boat to indicate the shadow cast onto the sand, this will help it feel like it’s set in, grounded and give the impression of some solidity.

Once you’ve made that black mix, take a little bit to one side and add some white and a bit more Burnt Umber to get a nice grey tone. You can use this for the rocks in the foreground a little later on in the painting.

Also, there are a few tiny rocks painted in, I’m always looking for these underlying areas which might break through shapes, and these little rocks are so important to add interest to what might usually feel like a very flat surface.

Step #3. Painting warmth in the sand

Before painting the greys over the rocks, I apply a thin glaze of Yellow Ochre diluted with water.

Paint this over that entire area, just like a stain to add some warmth to the rocks in the foreground first. If you look back at the reference image, you can see underneath that grey rock bottom or left; there’s a lovely yellow warmth.

I’m using a filbert brush from Isabey Isacryl range, size 6 for this section.

Also, I wash in the back of the boat edge and the brim at the top where you’ve got warm wood, a little bit next to the right-hand side of it where the sun’s hitting it, and top left. So it’s now created this underlying pattern of dappled sunlight. If it goes on a bit too strong, you can take a paper towel and pull it back.

I take a tiny bit of the black mix and white for the foreground textured rocks to give us a range of greys and apply them thicker, with broken marks.

Okay, nice, that Yellow Ochre has really added that sunshine feel to the piece!

Step #4. Adding colour to the rocks

Now I’m layering up the colours on the rocks to add more form, using Titanium White, Yellow Ochre and a touch of Burnt Umber to darken the mix; I paint a diluted base over the Yellow Ochre and vary the intensity for the darker shadows within the rocks.

Take a tiny amount of this brown mix and add white to create a warm light for some of the highlights on the very edges of the rock.

I’m using a round brush from Princeton, the Aspen range, 6500R size 4.

These little highlights help bring that a sense of light; again, just on the top of the rock brings it to life.

Step #5. Adding reflections in the sand

For the blue, I’ve mixed Ultramarine Blue with a bit of Phthalo Blue (Red Shade) and Titanium White to create this reflective light in the foreground. I’ve also used Raw Umber so that I can knock back the blue if it becomes a bit too intense.

I’m varying the thickness of the application, depending on how much of the ground, acting as the sand, I want to show through. Here I’ve swapped back to the filbert brush.

I’m just adding a bit more white where I’ve got a sense of light coming in on the right-hand side by the boat.

Leaving elements of the ground colour showing through gives us that illusion of the sand underneath. You can add a bit of the Raw Umber to mute it down for some of the more muted blues; at the very top, with the dry brush, drag it over some of these areas to give this reflection on the sand.

Step #6. Adding our lightest light

Now we’ve got these blues in, it’s going to be handy to paint in the boat, so we can then judge all the hues together to see if we need to adjust anything. Start with pure Titanium White. Paint the very widest area on the boat, and then add a little bit of Raw Umber to darken it slightly for painting in the shadow areas indicating the seat void.

Step #7. Balancing blues

Next, I put out a tiny bit of Phthalo Blue (green shade) and mix it with Titanium White. This pigment has very high tinting strength, so you don’t need very much paint at all. Add a little bit of Raw Umber, so it’s not super intense, and you’ll get a lovely turquoise colour, perfect for the light side of the boat. Once that initial colour has been blocked in, I can lighten it or darken it, to give a bit more form to the hull of the boat.

I use Phthalo Blue (red shade) mixed with white and Burnt Umber for the shadow side, and then a bit of Ultramarine Blue and a tiny touch of Naphthol Red Light for the cast shadow made by the boat.

Step #8. Altering intensities

It felt like when the boat was painted in, and the more intense pigments were introduced, the reflection of the sky on the sand was competing with the boat a bit too much.

I wanted the boat to be the main centre of focus. So, I glazed down the areas of bright reflections with a mix of Raw Umber, a touch of Ultramarine Blue and a touch of Titanium White.

This knocks it down a bit so that it’s darker tonally.

Step #9. Painting pebbles in the sand

Now it feels like the boat is the main focus, but I’ve lost a little of the darkness around some of the actual initial drawing.

What I’m going to do is re-emphasise parts so that we’ve got a nice contrast.

What I do like is the cast shadow blue, which looks great. And the lightness in the background, where there’s light sneaking around the corner.

We are now adding a few small random dashes to indicate pebbles on the beach. Vary the tone of these slightly, so they don’t all feel the same.

Step #10. Adding warmth to the boat

With a bit of Naphthol Red Light, Yellow Ochre and Titanium White, mix a warm brown orange and paint around the edge of the boat; the addition of these punchy oranges suddenly make the blues look so much bluer.

I also reinforce some of the drawing and some of those darker lines around the boat.

Step #11. Refining the edges

So the last thing to do here is add that very fine rope on the front of the boat, which ties the whole composition together, grounds the scene and adds a bit more definition to it. Also, notice how the boat is more in focus than some of the more painterly marks around it.

Step #11. Adding a Green Gold glow

Then glaze over all the areas of green with the Green Gold, adding that bit of seaweed glow to the painting.

Finishing touches – Introducing dappled light

Will Kemp, Fishing Boat at St Michael’s Mount, 10 x 8 inches, Acrylic on Board

To break up the background, I brought in reflected light with these dots; I also felt the highlights on the rocks were competing too much, so I blocked them in more solidly to finish.

Really hope you enjoy it!

Cheers,

Will

Learn more about the course here 

Acrylics are a great medium. Pick up a few well-chosen materials, and after a simple set up, you can paint on almost any surface.

But.

They dry quickly. And sometimes really quickly.

If you’re new to painting, the seriousness of this small window of free-flowing acrylics begins to dawn on you, little by little.

The paints don’t seem to blend quite as well as they did when you first put them out on your palette. In fact, that expensive paint you took so long deciding on has now gone completely hard, and there’s a distinctive shift in colour.

This is not just frustrating but feels like an undisclosed complication.

You thought it was going to be getting the painting techniques right that would be difficult, not battling with the paint drying out too quickly.

So how do you stop it from happening?

Paint faster? Invest in specialist paint mediums? Use a broom rather than a brush?

Humidity

Everything revolves around evaporation.

Controlling water evaporation is the key principle to manipulating the drying time of your acrylics.

Acrylics dry by evaporation. So, the wetter the air around the acrylics, the longer they stay wet. You might be painting in a dry climate and not realise how much that affects the paints’ workability.

The drier the air, the faster the acrylics will dry.

• Wet air (around acrylics) – paints stay wetter.
• Dry air (around acrylics) – paints dry out quicker.

In my studio, I’ve got a humidity and temperature monitor. This helps to keep an eye on the water content of the space, so I can adapt my techniques if needed.

I’ve noticed when I’m painting near the coast, and there’s a higher amount of water in the atmosphere, the paints will keep working for a lot longer. If you are based in an extremely dry climate, you could introduce a humidifier into your space that will emit steam or water vapour to increase the air’s moisture levels.

Heavy Body Acrylics under ambient conditions of 70ºF/21ºC and 30% Relative Humidity in a 0.15mm brush stroke.

wet: under 5 minutes
workable:  10 minutes
touch dry: 30 minutes
locked down: 3+ days

Temperature & Air Flow

If it’s a hot summer day, you might have placed an air conditioning unit or fan next to your painting space; this will shorten the working time of the paints as airflow aids water evaporation, definitely something to consider.

Pro tip: It’s also handy to check the ambient temperature of your studio. If you drop below 9° C, it can cause issues when creating a strong paint film.

Acrylics are ideally used at room temperature, above 60° F / 16° C, and avoiding any applications below 49° F / 9° C, which is the so-called “minimum film formation” temperature (MFFT). Below that temperature acrylic paint cannot form a strong, coherent film and will be prone to failure and various drying defects, such as cracks, poor adhesion, and cloudiness – Golden Paints 

On top of your studio environment, there are a few successful ways to manipulate the drying times of acrylics by controlling evaporation. However, I don’t use them all in one painting but pick and choose whatever would work best for the style or stage of the piece I’m working on at the time.

How would you speed up the drying time?

Here’s an inversion thought experiment.

What would you do if you had to dry acrylic paint as fast as possible?

Paint in a thin layer? Warm room? Wind turbine? Sunshine? …Blow torch?

If I had to get a painting to dry as quickly as possible, I’d use a hairdryer on thin paint. High airflow, high heat, about 1 cm from the paint surface! This expels water the quickest from the paint.

And this knowledge is the secret to your success.

All we have to do is work on the opposites.

Will Kemp, A Mediterranean Washing Line, Detail, Acrylic on Board

For this week’s free step-by-step acrylic lesson, we’re returning to the gorgeous faded paintwork and quiet cobblestone streets of Corsica.

After the challenging perspective in our first Starter Set Challenge ‘Warm Shadows in Corsica’ the simpler shapes and clear blue sky of ‘A Mediterranean Washing Line‘ should be plain sailing.

I particularly love the multiple wires threading your eye towards the sea in this scene and the washing strung up between the buildings brings a human presence of day-to-day life, breathing real energy into the composition.

Will Kemp, Warm Shadows in Corsica, Acrylic On Board (detail)

It’s hard to believe that city breaks, art exhibitions and museum visits were something we used to enjoy almost casually.

Here in the U.K, we’re back in another full lockdown, a cold and wet one!

I was looking through some photos from last summer’s trip to Corsica needing a bit of escapism. They instantly transported me back to the atmosphere, the colours and smells, meandering down sun-dappled side streets, ice cream in hand with the anticipation of undiscovered delights around the next corner.

Drawing and painting can be very therapeutic; so with that in mind, I’ve created a couple of acrylic step-by-step street scenes to help get us through the next few weeks.

Morning class, this week we’re going to look at how to paint fast and loose with your acrylics in this two-part apple study.
I get lots of emails from students who want to develop a more painterly impressionistic style but find when using a photo reference; they get too obsessed with the details, and the whole piece gets a bit overworked.

So in the first lesson of this two-part still life, I approach the drawing out of our apples in a bit more detail. The method I demonstrate is sometimes called ‘Envelope Drawing’ and is an approach that helps you to draw something more accurately.

In the second lesson, we approach the painting without pre-mixing the colours using our intuition and being a bit looser with our brush marks I’ve used a limited palette and simple painterly techniques with just two brushes and four colours.

Why are we drawing more accurately when we want to paint looser?

Well, it depends.

It depends on your skill level of drawing.

If you’re pretty good at drawing, then ideally you’d go straight in with your paintbrush and draw and paint at the same time, so you’re essentially drawing with your brush. That’s how you get the loosest, freshest paintings.

But if you’re a complete beginner, then spending the time getting the drawing accurate is a more failsafe way of creating a painting that looks loose but captures the subject. It gives you the confidence to paint more loosely knowing you’ve got a good structure underneath.

I paint this study with acrylics, but you could also use water-mixable oils.

So grab a brew, a couple of biscuits, and you can download a reference image below to follow along with the video.

How to paint loose with Acrylics – Part 1 – Drawing

How to paint loose with Acrylics – Part 2 – Painting

Downloading the reference photograph

The photo below can be downloaded, so you can use it as a reference image, print it out and follow along with the steps below.

You can download a larger 30 x 30 cm version of the image here.

Materials you will need:

• 30 x 30cm canvas or board or you could work on a smaller square

Paints:

I use Artist Quality acrylics but you follow along with any brand.

For the coloured ground:

• Raw Umber (Golden Paints)
• Ultramarine Blue (Golden Paints)
• Titanium White (Golden Paints)

For the painting:

• Titanium White (Golden Paints)
• Cadmium Yellow Light (Golden Paints)
• Ultramarine Blue (Golden Paints)
• Burnt Umber (Winsor & Newton)

Brushes:

• Isacryl Filbert, 6572, Size 6 (Isabey)
• Small round synthetic (any brand is fine)
• 1 1/2 inch XL Elite Monarch decorators brush (Purdy)

Extra tools

• An HB Pencil – (I use a Kuru Toga Roulette Mechanical Pencil 0.5mm Uniball)
• An Eraser – (I use a Putty Eraser by Faber Castell)
• Burnt Umber chisel nib acrylic marker (Liquitex)
• Delacroix Charcoal & Pencil fixative (Sennelier)
• Acrylic Glazing Liquid Gloss (Golden Paints)
• Palette Knife (I use a diamond shape size 45 by RGM)
• Metal dipper or small pot for mediums
• Jam Jar for water

I’m using a 30 x 30 cm cotton canvas and I toned my canvas by applying a diluted grey mix that matched the colour of the linen in the reference image.

A coloured ground helps to take away the glare of the white canvas and gives me a head start – if you want to learn more about the benefits of painting on a coloured ground see: How a prepared canvas can drastically improve your paintings

Line drawing

Here is the line reference image from the end of Part 1.

 You can download a larger 20 x 20cm image of the line drawing here:

Finished Painting

I really hope you enjoy the lesson, have a great festive week!

Cheers,

Will

Longing for the sea during lockdown, I decided to have a look through some of my old travel photos from trips around the coast.

I did a few thumbnail sketches looking at different images; I liked the diagonal composition in the first sketch. I used an Acrylic Marker by Daler Rowney (FW Marker) filled with Sepia High flow acrylic (Golden Paints).

I settled on an image looking down on some fishing boats, moored in the harbour of St Ives, Cornwall.

You can download a reference image below to follow along with this acrylic lesson, hope you enjoy it!