Acrylic Class

For my birthday, my wife had gifted me an acrylic painting class at Michael's.  I had been commenting that I had been seeing a lot of plein aire painters using acrylic and that was never a class that I had taken in college. I think one of the things that has held me back was the cost, but as I looked into it more, the paint can be about the same cost as watercolor paint.  Of course that doesn't say much because prices vary SO much depending on the brand and quality of paint.  I'm still in the "cheap as you can get" stage, but the class recommended a basic starter kit including a couple of canvas boards, a brush, a palette knife, and 4 tubes of paint for around $25 (I forget if that was the price before or after the 40% off coupon at Michael's).  

The class was was on a Saturday morning and focused on painting a landscape.  I wasn't sure what to expect, having never been to a Michael's class or any painting class. The teacher had a specific paintings that she had created for us to copy.  The students got to choose which one since some of the students had come before and had already painted some of them (returning students is a good sign she's a good teacher!).  Since there were only 4-5 students in the class, the teacher was able to give each of us individual instruction and steps to work on as she walked around to the others. She walked me through each layer of the painting starting with the evergreens in the back, through the details of shadows and even the cardinal.  Luckily, she shared her plethra of paint colors because it would have been quite the challenge matching her coloring with the primary colors I had!  

The interesting thing about acrylic painting is the layering of colors to create depth, and if there is too much of one color then you add more of another. The white trees in the foreground don't have to be planned out because the paint will go right over it. There is no fear of "mistakes" because you just paint over it! This is much more forgiving than watercolor, but it does have a different effect than the watercolor process.  I'll have to consider using this for plein aire painting, but copying someone's painting is a lot different than copying nature.  And having the artist right next to me giving me pointers is always nice, too!  God just isn't as good at giving pointer's when you're copying his artwork!