Learn how to Paint with Acrylics - Adding Shadows and Highlights
Hi, I’m Mary Gallagher Stout, and today we’re here at the Lorton Workhouse and, in my studio creating a stony lion. And now we’re at the point where we are going to be putting in our shadows, so. I usually work from dark to lights, so that’s why we’re doing our shadow first. You can do it either way, but this is the way I do it, so, let’s get started. For my darkest color, I’m gonna use a mixture of Jenkin’s green and a very deep purple. I don’t like to use black, because it tends to die on the canvass, it just, it just lays flat and it doesn’t bring anything to our palette, so. That’s why in don’t use it, you’re more than welcome to use black, but I don’t. So that’s the mixture we’re using, it’s a 50 – 50 blend of jenkin’s green and deep purple, okay. So I’m gonna go in and where I see all the darks, that’s where I’m gonna put my dark. So like his nose, I’m gonna fill in his nose, his nose is very dark. So I’m filling in his nose, and that’s for all your sketch information comes in. Because if you didn’t keep your information there you wouldn’t have it to create your dimension and detail the whole it’s geometry of… no… actually. You need it to help develop the geometry, so it actually looks like a lion. Now, if you are very unhappy with the way you sketch, it’s really not a problem, because all you need to do is know how to trace things. What you can do is you can purchase a projector and project your image right on to the wall and simply trace it on your paper that you wanted on. And so you don’t even really need to sketch, but I would, I would suggest, when you’re doing something with stone that you should pick a subject that might be in stone, like a gargoyle or, or a greek goddess or something architectural. And, so I’m just gonna fill in all my darks. Okay, so I finished putting in all of the shadows of the dark tones and now we’re gonna go ahead and put in all the highlights. And don’t be afraid if it looks funny to you having the white next to the dark, because when you stand back, it makes a huge difference, and it makes the thing, you can see the recesses and things at that point. So here we are now getting ready to put our highlights in and I’m using titanium white. And we’re gonna put that right where the highlights need to go. And then you can see the pieces really jumping out once the highlights are put in. Like his big ferocious teeth, they become lot more ferocious once the highlights are put in. And don’t be afraid to make a mistake, because mistakes are usually where inspiration comes from for doing something new and interesting. So I’m gonna highlight his teeth, and anything that you felt that you loss, you can put a little highlight on. And the idea of the highlights is to show that something is in front. And to give the viewer a direction of where the light is coming from. So you need to have an orientation as to where the light is coming from, and you need to be consistent with that. Now we finished all the highlights and lowlights, we have our very ferocious lion big, giving a big, big yawn, and all we have left to do is an over glaze to kinda blend everything together and make it a cohesive one piece.