Day 11- Blog Along- "Acrylic Landscape Painting Tips.......and Afterthoughts"

Day 11- April 21, 2018

“Acrylic Landscape Painting Tips and.......... Afterthoughts”

Here’s a few simple yet great acrylic painting tips for depicting trees and flowers:

1. Paint an underpainting of cool colors. In this case light blue was best since some of the sky blue would peek through the trees. The other reason is that a cool under painting is best for a mostly warm colored painting and then the reverse is true as well. So if you’ll be painting lots of greens…..a warm under painting is best.

2. A great way to paint trees is with a cardboard edge……corrugated cardboard. Long edges for the trees and short edges for branches. Watch the video to see the technique in action.

3. A great way to paint lots of blossoms in bunches is with a sea sponge. Just dip it into the paint and tap all over……..going in the direction of the branches. Keep layering on the variety of color shades within the blossoms.

4. Create more vivid colors by spraying ink sprays in a few places to produce bursts of color. In my video I use vivid pinks and blues.

Some Artistic Afterthoughts....

The inspiration for this painting was a gorgeous scene of cherry blossoms outside my window. My desire was to create an abstract. Well……I tried my best but could not make it work as an abstract. 

Acrylic painting on canvas

I tried many different things and then ended up going in circles by trying the same things over again………uuugghh! So after a few hours the time came to just let it go and try another day. However, that evening I digitally manipulated it on my iPad Pro and did get the results I liked. 

I created 3 digital versions……..of which one is on the cover pic of this video. I’ll also show my acrylic painted version and the other two digital versions. ……here in the blog and which are already in the video. 

iPad digital painting version 1

iPad digital painting version 2

iPad digital painting  version 3

My next session with the acrylic painted version might go better……I’m hoping. The digital actually gave me some ideas for improving the composition. It’s great when working a creative piece in one medium helps you out in a different medium. 


Artfully Yours,

Diana