[nws]The Traditional Art Thread: Let's Get Our Hands Dirty

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > [nws]The Traditional Art Thread: Let's Get Our Hands Dirty

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Placenta_Souffle posted:

http://sabenerica.deviantart.com/art/Goodbye-Mr-Fish-333320428

http://sabenerica.deviantart.com/art/The-Trixter-332501107

http://sabenerica.deviantart.com/art/Lovers-Thorn-302051579

http://sabenerica.deviantart.com/art/Refuge-207974118

These are nice, but you need to link to the images directly in your posts. Don't direct link to the DA image, please use an image hosting service such as imgur.

# ¿ Jul 4, 2013 13:31

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 23:47

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

redcheval posted:

I've been enjoying it so much I'd like to start using higher-quality paints, but I'm about to get crazy into paint mixing and I'd like to learn a little more about that. I've got the basics and have a reasonable grasp on how to successfully mix a color match, but I'm wondering if it's better to try and mix your own colors as best you can or just buy a tube of whatever color you're gunning for. Like, why mix your own teal if you can just buy a giant tube of it? Is there a good reason to lean either way? I'm assuming it's better to start with mixing your own palette, and it seems like you can get a really broad range of color this way. I'd love to hear if anyone has a particular way they like to deal with color mixing.

Learning how to mix colors isn't just about being able to get the color you wanted. It's mostly about understanding how colors shift, and about learning how to handle your materials. Learning how to mix color is like learning how to play an instrument. As you experiment with adding tiny touches of colors and seeing how it affects the overall harmony, how colors look next to each other, how much pigment you need to get a color where you want it -- as you practice these things, you become one with the medium like a skilled musician. You learn to transpose colors, appreciate the relationships between colors, and know more and more immediately how to capture the colors you see in nature.

Having a tube of a color like teal isn't wrong or bad; in fact, you can create some really cool limited palette compositions using shifted primaries. Like, for instance, take your teal, and use that as the blue. Then you could use an Indian red or burnt sienna for your red, and a light tint of raw umber for your yellow. The range of colors you'll mix from that will be awesome.

Get the book Alla Prima by Richard Schmid. One of the biggest things he emphasizes is doing extensive color grids, mixing each paint with each other and with white, until you really, REALLY know what you're dealing with.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2013 12:42

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Space.Plant posted:

Since there's no watercolor megathread, I hope this is the closest one for this.

I want to get some supplementary colors to expand my watercolor color palette. I do have the warm and cool primaries, plus burnt sienna.
The colors I have (all are Winsor&Newton artists' watercolors):

permanent rose (PV 19)

cadmium red (PR 108)

aureolin (PY 40)

lemon yellow (PY 53)

cobalt blue

french ultramarine (PB 29)

burnt sienna (PR 101)

A friend also suggested Payne's gray or indigo for a "black". Help please.

Payne's grey is great, def get some. Also you should have some burnt umber.

One thing that jumps out at me is that you don't have a cyan. Cobalt is a little bit cooler than ultramarine, but you might consider getting a phthalo cyan. The greens you get with that will be MUCH brighter. Phthalo cyan + burnt sienna = awesome purples. Be sparing with it, though, because it is really strong and tends to dominate mixes.

You don't need a tube green. Your green problems will be solved if you get a proper cyan.

# ¿ Dec 11, 2013 17:51

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

al-azad posted:

What kind of paper do you recommend for acrylics? I use heavy, rough watercolor paper for watercolors but I find when using acrylics I can't build up layers. I think it's because the paper is absorbing the paint and causing it to blend instead of layer.

This is really thirsty paper. I have about 20 seconds to do wet-in-wet before it's bone dry.

Get yourself some acrylic medium and pre-seal the paper. Acrylic medium is basically glue. It goes on white and dries clear. One of the side benefits is that you can take any paper and use medium to glue it down to a board (masonite, wood, whatever). Donato Giancola guy shows you how.

If you do it like this, most of the texture of the paper will remain intact so it'll show up if you do drybrush or things like that. The downside is that you're impregnating the whole thing with plastic, so it won't be porous at all. If you want to get the nice wet-into-wet effects that you get with watercolor, I suggest doing an underpainting in watercolor and then sealing down the paper with acrylic medium onto a support. Then you can build up your acrylics without a problem.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2014 00:07

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

al-azad posted:

I'll do some shopping tomorrow. What I'm trying to accomplish are flat, opaque washes. I can do this as an under painting but anything that goes on top will come out semi transparent or streak. I'm using good paint so it's not an issue with the binder. Bristol board works very well but again, anything that goes on top isn't opaque unless I apply it heavily but at that point it forms peaks like impasto and that's not what I want.

You might want to consider either liquid acrylic, or gouache. Liquid acrylic won't give you impasto peaks even at full concentration. Gouache is as flat as it gets. There's also Acryla Gouache, which I've never used but supposedly it's got the texture of gouache but it doesn't reactivate after it dries.

# ¿ Jan 21, 2014 19:57

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

gouache gouache gouache

# ¿ Jan 21, 2014 20:23

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

FYI you don't need to spoiler tag your NSFW images anymore. That was an insane policy from the arbitrary, despotic reign of the previous CC mod. LONG LIVE THE GLORIOUS NEW REGIME

# ¿ Jun 20, 2014 20:08

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

loving awesome

# ¿ Sep 7, 2014 18:38

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Hellbeard posted:

I really need to try gouache. Anyone know of a solid tutorial/explanation? I have a tube of white and black hth tia.

Gouache is great. You can water it down all the way to a watercolor-like opacity, but for maximum strength you want the consistency to be kind of like shampoo. It's noticeably more difficult to do smooth blending with gouache than with watercolor, so typically the painting style preferred is more "graphic," with hard edges and solid chunks of color. It's ideal for cartoony work, or for Leyendecker-esque stylized painting. Instead of layering from light to dark as you might with watercolor, with gouache you can put the darks down first and put lights over them. You can kind of go back and forth from dark to light and back, but the paint is not 100% opaque and lower layers will show through a bit.

When gouache dries, it becomes slightly lighter in value than when it was wet. Eventually you learn to predict how much shift is going to happen and compensate for it. Also, gouache can be re-activated even after it dries. This is good for fixing mistakes, but bad if you accidentally overwet something that you didn't want to change.

This is a nice gouache speedpaint video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxSloIZDkvk

# ¿ Sep 15, 2014 21:17

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Hellbeard posted:

Thanks. Should I use any particular type of paper like for Watercolor?

Heavier paper is better, because thickly-painted gouache can crack when dry. If the paper is too thin, the buckling of the dried paper can induce cracking or make it worse. But if you work moderately and don't layer the paint that thick, any paper suitable for wet media will work, even things like the heavier plain Moleskine sketchbooks.

# ¿ Sep 16, 2014 14:28

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Shnooks posted:

I didn't even think of drying time. I have oils somewhere, and I love them but they're truly a pain in the butt, especially in my tiny apartment. I'll just suck it up and get some ink.

I saw a demo a few weeks ago of monoprinting with these gelatin plates (http://www.gelliarts.com/) and slow-drying acrylic paint (Golden OPEN). It looked amazing.
Here is a video of same:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jwo0vBTG68

You don't need a press because the plate is squishy. :dance:

Chicken optional.

# ¿ Nov 30, 2014 13:43

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Crocobile posted:

Hope I didn't kill the thread. :x Here's an acrylic painting I did recently, a Lord of the Flies fanart/tribute. Finding reference for a severed pig's head was way way easier than I would have ever imagined.

loving fantastic.

# ¿ Feb 10, 2015 15:50

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Crossposting here I guess. I'm trying to get away from digital stuff for a while.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2015 00:13

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Glukeose posted:

The two head shots look like something out of a courtroom sketch, really neat. What did you use for that first still life?

Heh, good that that came across, they were actually drawn in a courtroom! The first one is charcoal on paper, the rest are pencil.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2015 14:51

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Can you talk at all about the process you used to make these?

# ¿ Mar 9, 2015 21:44

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

beats posted:

^ Nice stuff man. Where you studying? Never really ventured out of the draw threads before - lots of cool stuff in here!

Been slacking a lot lately so figured I'd go back to basics and step away from digital for a while. Forced myself to sit down this week and crank out some simple still lifes. Behold - the wonky teapot...and some onions. Exciting eh?

Really frustrating to notice such blatant drawing issues when you think you're nearly done - old habits die hard I guess. Stupidly attempted this one as well but honestly don't think I have the patience to finish it - http://i.imgur.com/7shY37f.jpg

Exciting as hell! These are terrific.

# ¿ Mar 26, 2015 14:47

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Check out Golden Open acrylics. They have a very long drying time, designed for oil working methods. You can get the base acrylics and then get some Open medium and that'll pretty much give you hours of working time. There are things like retarder medium and glazing medium, but they kind of suck compared to the Open stuff. Also don't bother with water-soluble oils, they're pretty gross.

# ¿ May 23, 2015 17:03

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

A lot of what you're saying there is brand-dependent. There's a big diversity in acrylic paint quality. A good acrylic should not change color like that. They do shrink a bit, yeah.

As far as oils though, they are pretty magical to work with, and there's all kind of alchemy that people have practiced over the years with mediums and glazing methods and whatnot. Oils are very "forgiving" in how malleable they stay on the canvas. However I think there is an element of romance that just comes from how they feel to work with, and not from any objective advantage they have over acrylics. Nothing feels like oil paint.

Acrylics have come a long way even just in the past 10 years, they're worth taking a fresh look at if you haven't used them in a while.

# ¿ May 25, 2015 02:04

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

A medium is anything you mix with straight up paint, so yeah, technically even turpentine can be a medium. But usually the term refers to things you mix with the paint before putting it on the canvas. That can be any number of combinations of solvents, other oils, varnish, and weird crap.

Fat over lean is pretty literal: you put the oiliest stuff (heavy impasto, straight out of tube buttery paint) on top of layers that have been thinned with solvents or other non-fat crud.

A typical process would be:
- start with a very thin scrubbed imprimatura of mostly turps with a little paint just to tone the canvas. This is almost like painting with watercolor because it's so thin. It dries really quickly, like within minutes.
- then a layer of underpainting, where the paint is thinned with turps but not as thin as the imprimatura.
- then most of your painting proper. Paint thinned a little, or extended with linseed oil, or mixed with some combination of fatty and solventy additives.
- then more opaque layers, less thinned out than previously, etc.
- final opaque highlights, straight out of the tube paint on the top.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2015 20:20

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Oftentimes that can refer to lightfastness, not waterproofness... :smith:

# ¿ Sep 5, 2015 23:47

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

dupersaurus posted:

Pelikan drawing ink is/was my go-to. Works well on everything, including clayboard.

Pelikan Tusche A forever :black101:

# ¿ Sep 7, 2015 14:26

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

It looks like Nielly works in oils, which are going to have a higher pigment density than acrylics. Pigment density is the absolute determinant of color intensity when you control for all other factors. However, I don't think it's impossible to achieve that kind of striking color with acrylics.

The other thing is that Nielly's colors can be arbitrary because she has a good handle on value. It really doesn't matter what colors you use in a graphic arrangement of values. Like for example, all of these are still recognizable as a human face etc. because the values remain correct, even though the colors are nuts:

Here is one of Nielly's paintings in B&W:

The colors don't matter -- but that's why she can get away with really outrageous colors.

# ¿ Sep 13, 2015 23:30

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Totally great stuff!

poemdexter posted:

I still have no idea how to physically blend paint on the canvas. What brush is best to use? Is there some weird trick to it? Also is there some thread for critiques? I learn something new during each piece as it is, but I'm open to any and all suggestions to get better faster.

If it's acrylic, it's hard to blend on the canvas unless you use a slow-dry medium (Golden OPEN), glazing medium or retarder medium. Otherwise you just have to work SUPER FAST! :supaburn:

# ¿ Nov 2, 2015 19:17

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Those are delightful!

# ¿ Jan 21, 2016 13:12

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

ghost crow posted:

My room has poo poo lighting but I started attending an atelier, just finished up my first bargue plate.

NICE. Which atelier are you going to? Is it ARC APPROVED(R)????

# ¿ Feb 20, 2016 16:51

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Sorry to hear you didn't sell stuff. Be patient, buyers are pretty scarce in a lot of areas. Keep showing your work and maybe make prints available as a low-cost alternative.

# ¿ Feb 27, 2016 15:28

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

That's amazing. Wow, you got a HUGE value range in there! Very very impressive.

# ¿ Mar 7, 2016 17:42

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

These are breathtaking :stare:

# ¿ Jul 13, 2016 22:53

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

Gettin' a good Basquiat vibe :feelsgood:

# ¿ Sep 6, 2016 20:10

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 23:47

neonnoodle: Mar 20, 2008; by exmarx

I'm a fan of the two-stage long lead sharpener.

https://www.amazon.com/Alvin-Pencil-Sharpener-Pointer-AS2M/dp/B0084F7I1C

It's weird but it works well for artist pencils and seems to not waste as much pencil as some others I've tried. The downside is that it has to be emptied very frequently and it doesn't have a cap or cover to keep shavings from falling back out into your bag/pencil case. All my pencil cases are super gross because of uncovered sharpeners.

This is another one that has served me well, which does have a cap:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B001E67Z16/ref=mp_s_a_1_14?ie=UTF8&qid=1475539240&sr=8-14&pi=AC_SX236_SY340_QL65&keywords=pencil+sharpener

# ¿ Oct 4, 2016 01:01

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