Quilt Barn Pencil Drawing

 

Hello Everyone,

It has been a long time since my last blog post. Last October was the last time I posted anything, and at that time, I was working on finishing up a portrait of my Grandma and Grandpa Dillard. Since that time, I have been doing some drawings and practicing some portrait techniques. However, most of my artistic endeavors have been devoted to practicing acrylic painting and I want to share what I have been working on over the last couple of months.

I started this paining using the truck drawing that I did last summer. I really liked the look of that drawing and wanted to do it in a Fall Color Scheme. In preparing for the painting, I also decided to change the background to see if I could create a little more depth.

I started the painting by priming a 16”x20” stretched canvas with a light tan coating of acrylic paint. Then using a white charcoal pencil, I sketch in the rough layout of what I wanted to paint. Once I had a basic layout, I started with the sky and the background mountains. Now I know many may have see Bob Ross wet on wet oil painting technique on TV or online. I will let you know, painting with acrylics, it can be a lot harder to get the nice blending of colors on the canvas that you get with oils. That is because acrylics dry so fast. That is also their advantage.

For the sky and mountains, I wanted to get some blending and softening to give the feel of distance. In order to accomplish this, I did the background in one very quick setting and only spent maybe 20 minutes working on it. To get the clouds in the sky and in front of the mountains, I would use a misting spray bottle to spray water on the canvas to keep the paint moist so I could blend on the canvas and get a soft look.

Once I got the background done, I took a fan brush and a dart blue green to place the midground trees. Then working on the trees on the right side of canvas, using a liner brush I added the leaf trees above the barn. It was at the point that I decided that the perspective was wrong with the truck. It was too far in the back ground. So, I erased the truck and re-drew it bigger and a little lower on the left side of the canvas. To be honest, I erased and drew the truck about six times before I had it close to what I wanted. Yes, drawing skills are very helpful in painting.

Anyway, after getting perspective corrected with the truck, I blocked it in with paint. Then moved to adding the color of the field in the background and added a dark brownish red color in the foreground. Then moved on and colored in the barn on the right side. In looking at the color at this point of the painting, I decided that there was too much orange in the field and the color I wanted to finish the truck would blend in too much. I repainted the field with a lot more yellow. Then came back and added more details to the truck. After that I started added the grass and flowers to the foreground. For the foreground grass, I used mainly a fan brush to get the base built, then have been going back over it with a liner brush to get the details refined. That is the point I am currently at.

To finish the painting, I still need to go and adjust the color of the leaf trees on the right and continue refining the grass in the foreground. I want to see if I can bring out some more details. Anyway, I hope to have it finished in a couple of weeks. I will post pictures of it when I am done.

Hope you enjoy this painting. Please leave any comments.