Will Kemp, Cornish Fishing Boat, Acrylic on Canvas (detail)

Last week I was lucky enough to spend a few days in South Cornwall and caught the most fantastic weather. I’d visited this stretch of coastline before and enjoyed fabulous Summer sunrises & sunsets, fresh seafood and sparkling Mediterranean colours.

Seasons can often show you new sides of a landscape and experiencing it all again in Winter was totally invigorating.

Atmospheric mist enveloped harbours, it was wilder with more dramatic changes in light, and the sombre Winter palette reminded of James Abbott McNeill Whistler’s landscape paintings.

Morning class! This week we’re in a Victorian townhouse.

I’d been visiting for afternoon tea when the play of light in the hallway caught my eye. The warm sunlight coming in from garden doors to the right cast a real glow onto the yellow wooden wall. The floral arrangement reminded me of the peonies in the Floral Still Life Painting Course, and you can start to see how compositions can be built out from one point of reference.

There was a natural blue light coming from a window in the hallway out of shot to the left, and an orange incandescent wall lamp, higher up on the right, both contributing to the warm and cool tones in the flowerheads.

This step-by-step acrylic tutorial looks at balancing different areas of light and shadow (chiaroscuro) when working on a sunlit room interior scene.

This Still Life Acrylic Project Book is a brand new, downloadable PDF E-Book designed to help you understand light and shadow and create better acrylic still life paintings.

Who’s the E-book for?

An absolute beginner to acrylics who wants to complete a simple still life painting but would like help with colour mixing recipes and drawing guides.

If you have trouble creating a realistic form within your still life’s, then you would see instant improvements through the lessons. Why? Because when you will understand how changes in light influence change in value, it can transform your paintings.

What’s included?

Throughout the e-book, I’ll guide you through 3 full-colour acrylic paintings from start to finish. I’ve broken each lesson into bite-size pieces, so you can complete each stage of the painting within a 2-hour window, something you can easily follow, even if you’ve never painted before.

• A 100-page pdf (with 3 x projects, and simple step-by-step instructions)
• Line drawings (so you can follow along even if you’re new to drawing)
• Colour swatches (that you can print out to match your paints against)
• Colour mixing recipes (so even an absolute beginner can achieve balanced harmonious mixes)
• Colour reference images (to work 1:1 with your paintings)

By the end of the book, you’ll learn how to filter your objects, look for relationships in stories, scale, size and the importance of planning a colour scheme, knowing all the same principles will apply to future more complicated arrangements.

You can read more about it here: Still Life Acrylic Project E-Book

Cheers,

Will

p.s You can also read a review of the e-book by the lovely Professor and Author Mary Tabor here: New Book by Will Kemp, Artist and Teacher Extraordinaire

Morning Class!

If you’re new to the website I’ve put together a Free PDF ‘Beginners Guide to Acrylics’ which includes a brief overview about acrylic paint, colour palettes, tools & materials as well as showing you how the different areas of the Will Kemp Art School fit together.

I introduce the principles behind my teaching, a catalogue of all the free video painting tutorials on the website and a section on how to find the perfect course for you.

If you click the link Free PDF ‘Beginners Guide to Acrylics’ you can download it and have a read-through with a brew!

NEW for 2023 – I’ve also just added 10 free images (with links to free tutorials) just sign up for the free newsletter to get the reference images.

Hope you enjoy them,

Cheers,
Will

How to glaze with acrylics

The video tutorial looks at how to glaze with acrylics using a monochrome underpainting with coloured acrylic glazes. We’ll keep the piece’s freshness by building up layers of clear transparent glazes, and all we will use are five paints and a couple of brushes to create depth and dimension in your acrylic paintings.

Acrylics are fantastic paints for teaching you glazing techniques because they dry so quickly. This week we’ll be painting a simple study of a fish, taking inspiration from objects you might see every day and transforming them into paint using acrylic glazing techniques.

I’ll be using a stay-wet palette to hold my tonal colour string mixes in, and then any leftover colours from the painting can go back in there, ready for my next piece.

Want to add depth and dimension to your paintings? Try glazing!

Glazing is a technique where you add a transparent layer of paint over an existing layer. It’s a great way to add depth and dimension to your paintings and bring out the colours or form underneath.

To glaze, you’ll need a glazing medium and a brush. Mix the glazing medium with your paint to create a transparent layer. Then, apply the glaze over your base layer, using smooth brushstrokes to spread the paint evenly. You can build up multiple layers of glaze for even more depth and richness.

Remember to let each layer dry completely before applying the next.

You can download the reference image below to work along from, so grab a brew (maybe a couple of biscuits) and let’s get painting!!…

Morning Class!

The new Floral Still Life Acrylic Painting Course is now available!

I’ve developed this course to show you how you can transfer the feeling of simplicity and light into a studio floral still life by the arrangement of colours, composition and tonal value range.

Taking classical painting techniques to build up an indirect painting in acrylics you’ll create a more contemporary still life painting that allows you to use a light modern palette and still see a good three-dimensional form.

Morning class, this week I’ve been in Mallorca soaking up the scenery and enjoying painting outside. I found this secluded tree within a lemon grove that I thought would work well as a little Plein air sketch with acrylics.

You can download a reference image below to follow along with the lesson.

Downloading the reference photograph

The photo below can be ‘right clicked’ and ‘Save image as’, so you can use it as a reference image, print it out and follow along with the video above.

You can download a larger version of the image here.

Whenever I’m sketching outside, I’m always looking for contrast and shapes that will translate well into a drawing as well as a painting…

Morning Class!

The new Venice – Light & the Landscape Impressionistic Course is now available!

I’ve developed this acrylic painting course inspired by a Venetian Sunset to help guide you through the process of moving from small-scale to large-scale acrylic paintings.

What pitfalls does an artist face when painting big?

As a student visiting the Musée de l’Orangerie in Paris,  I’d just seen Monet’s monumental Water Lily paintings and I was in awe.

The sheer scale of the pieces with thick painterly brush strokes inspired me to get back to my little studio space at home.

It was time to break out with the big canvas.

I wanted to create impressionistic landscapes and seascapes that still held the qualities of light-fall and realism that I’d seen, but maybe a little bit smaller than 40ft!

And this immersive large-scale painting experience is what many beginner artists want, it feels exciting and well….arty to create something big and expressive.

Grabbing a large decorators brush, making gestural marks on your canvas – feels invigorating, almost like a breakthrough and then…. you start to hear your inner artist voice getting overwhelmed.

You haven’t got a plan, you don’t know what the next step is so you lose you nerve…

You can read more about the course here

A Step-by-Step Video Tutorial

Morning class! This week we’re going to learn how to capture the brilliant qualities of reflections in copper, using acrylic paint.

I absolutely love how vibrant this copper pan is surrounded by the dark range. Notice how, even though the background is a dark subject, there is still a lighter tone on either side of the pan to bring it forward.

Copper makes a great subject, allowing us to work with a complementary colour palette of orange and inky blue, deep blacks and vibrant colour glazes.

So let’s get started…

Downloading the reference photograph

The photo below can be ‘right clicked’ and ‘Save image as’, so you can use it as a reference image, print it out and follow along with the video above.

You can also download a High-Resolution Image here...