Morning class, last week I was struck by this image of these beautiful colourful cast shadows.

Spring sunshine was pouring through the wrought iron railings on the balcony and casting all these amazing shapes of the plant leaves onto the studio wall. I really, really liked the way they framed the rubber plant and I also liked how flat the shadows were in contrast to all the textures that I saw on the front of the aged terracotta pot.

You can be put off by painting shadows or tackling greens because they seem too complicated.

So for this lesson, I want you to think about the drawing first—a tonal underpainting and then a minimal painting on top. Spend more time on the shadows and the lights to create a painting that captures the feeling of sunlight.

I’ve put together a detailed photo step-by-step (with a few video time-lapses as well), so you can approach painting shadows and greens with ease.

Downloading the Reference Photo

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

You can also download a High-Resolution Image here.

Materials you will need:
Brushes

• Round – Princeton Aspen size 4, series 6500
• Flat – Rosemary & Co – Small Flat ‘Bright’ Golden Synthetic, Size 12, Series 302
  (I use a 2-inch decorator brush to apply a flat coloured ground before drawing the painting out)

Support

• Canvas Board 20.32 x 25.4 cm (8 x 10 inch)

Palette Knife

• RGM Classic Line, Medium size 45, Diamond-shaped, cranked (angled) handle. I use an RGM 45 for mixing the paint.

Drawing

• Uni Kuru Toga Roulette Mechanical Pencil 0.5mm HB pencil
• Faber Castell Putty Eraser
• F&W Mixed Media Paint marker, Daler Rowney, 1mm tip.

Other Materials

• Kitchen roll/paper towel
• Clean water
• Metal double dipper (you could use two small pots)
• Tear-off palette or stay-wet palette (A4 size White tear-off palette from Daler Rowney)
• Ruler or straight edge.

Paints – The Colour Palette

I’ve used a mix of Golden Heavy Body colours, Winsor & Newton Professional Acrylic (also called Artists’ Acrylic) and Old Holland artist quality acrylic colours.

• Titanium White (Golden)
• Raw Umber (Golden)
• Neutral Gray 5,6,7 (Golden)
• Cadmium Yellow Light (Golden)
• Venetian Red (Old Holland)
• Cobalt Violet Hue (Golden)
• Cobalt Blue Hue (Golden)
• Green Gold (Golden)
• (Raw Umber High Flow Acrylic for the Mixed Media Marker)

Medium

• Acrylic Glazing Liquid Gloss  (Golden Paints)

Getting a feel for the subject

Check out what power tools you can hear in the timelapse background!

I started with a sketch to see how the values worked together. I really liked the busyness of the leaves but felt I could keep the cast shadow and pattern on the wall as a simple flat value.

You can read more about the sketching materials I used here  (and there is an Urban Sketching Course that goes into more depth about plein air sketching with pens)

Step 1. – Preparing the Ground

I dilute a little N7 Neutral Grey with water and Airbrush Medium. The Airbrush Medium helps retain paint film integrity when working in thin watery layers. I apply the paint in a thin even coat using a 2-inch decorator’s brush.

The neutral pre-mixed colours by Golden are a combination of Burnt Umber, Bone Black and Titanium White if you’d like to mix your own.

Pro tip: You can read more about thinning acrylics in this article on painting surface absorption

Step 2. – Drawing Out

Kuru Toga Mechanical Pencil and Midori Ruler

For this painting, the majority of your time will be spent on the drawing and the value underpainting.

When I started this sketch, I didn’t quite realise how many angles and lines there are! The repeated pattern in the shadows is worth spending time on and will take a bit of time to get right in comparison to the central subject of the plants.

I’m using a 15cm Midori Black Aluminium Ruler to draw the angles and straight lines.  Also, I’m always looking for the shape of the cast shadows of the leaves cast onto the wall on the left-hand side.

Once the drawing is complete, I lightly rub a kneadable putty eraser over the surface to remove any excess graphite before painting on top.

Step 3. – Tonal map with an Acrylic Marker

Golden High Flow Raw Umber in a F & W Mixed Media pen with a 1mm tip

I use a mixed media marker to establish a tonal map in the drawing. This is a 1mm tip marker filled with a High Flow Acrylic paint. It enables me to draw the sharp edges on the leaves quickly and start to see how the shapes are working together.

Step 4. – Painting the Darkest Darks.

Raw Umber Heavy Body Paint, Golden Acrylics

I use a heavy body Raw Umber and a round synthetic brush from Princeton to paint in the darkest areas of the pot. This brush has a nice stiffness and allows you to paint detailed areas and block in larger passages quickly.

I’m altering the dilution by adding a touch of water to increase the flow. On areas of the reference that are warmer, I wash in the Raw Umber with a watery wash. This is an indication to remind me that those areas will have warmer colours painted on top in the later stages.

Notice how the thinner application of the Raw Umber appears  warmer in comparision to the tone mass of Raw Umber when painted thickly.

I’ve also noticed in the reference image, a solid vertical shadow in the background competing with the plants, so I’m going to use artistic license and leave that out of the painting.

Step 5. – Painting the Architectural Shadows

I switch to Neutral 5 and 6 and work between these to add in the shadow pattern on the buildings. I paint most of the lines freehand and use a straight edge to paint odd ones.

I use a straight(ish) piece of foam board to draw the architectural shadow lines.

So at the end of this stage, we have a warm base from the Raw Umber and cooler shadows from the Neutral Grays.

Step 6. – Adding the Lightest Lights

I mix a touch of Raw Umber with Titanium White to paint in the lightest areas, this mix will do most of the light block in, apart from a very small pure white area on the bottom right

Step 7. – Adding Purple Shadows

Now we can add some colour to create those fab shadows. I’m using Cobalt Violet Hue from Golden Paints. Cobalt Violet Hue can be hard to track down, so you could also use Ultramarine mixed with Quinacridone Red.

I mix some of the Cobalt Violet Hue and a touch of Cobalt Blue. This is then muted down with Titanium White and Raw Umber. Still using the round brush, I paint it over the cast shadows. I lighten the colour as it gets closer to the top of the painting.

This allows me to better judge the warmth of the terracotta pot.

Step 8. – Adding Warmth to the Pot

I’m using some Venetian Red and white, just to introduce the warm areas to the pot, and also reinforce the warmer leaves. I lighten the mix to indicate where the sunlight hits the side of the pot.

Once this was painted in, it felt a little too cool as a red and feel it needs more yellow mixed in. (A Light Red would have been a closer match than the Venetian Red)

Step 9. – Introducing Yellow

To move the colour towards orange I’ve introduced some Cadmium Yellow Light. This will do two things:

1. I’ll be able to warm up the red on the pot
2. Mixed in with the Raw Umber will create muted greens for the leaves.

You can start to see in the video above,  how the yellow enables a more harmonious orange hue and a muted green onto the leaves.

Step 10. – Judging & Refining the Greens

Building on our muted greens, I add a touch of the Cobalt Blue to make a more intense green. This is layered onto the previous colour. I’ve swapped to the flat brush and am diluting the paint with a little Glazing Liquid.

I layer up more intensity to the greens by using a little Green Gold. This is lovely transparent green, which is great for capturing that lichen feel on the front of the weathered pot. I’ve also added a warm glaze to the shadow but instantly felt it was competing too much with the pot.

The final piece

I cleaned up the cast shadow and reintroduced the purple hue, I’ve also added a few fineline highlights in the centre of the leaves. A little Green Gold glaze using glazing liquid gloss finishes off the painting.

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.

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.