Acrylic Painting Basics and Beyond: Weeks 1 and 2

In my middle school acrylic painting class, we have focused the last two weeks on building our painting skill sets. With a focus on play and experimentation, next week, students will select three of the new techniques they have learned and apply them in a final painting. This group of students has a lot of creative ideas, and I can not wait to see how they use their new skills next week. 

We started by learning about different brush strokes you could make last week. We divided our papers into six sections and experimented with water, washes with gel medium, sgraffito, impasto, double-loaded paint brush, and scumbling or dry brushing. I think these students enjoyed the opportunity to create without expectation with a bit of relaxing music in the background. 

We continued our play and experimentation in week two by learning about under paintings. If you think of a painting in layers, the underpainting is the bottom layer and sets the tone for the rest of the image. You can use it to deepen shadows, or if you paint using complementary colors (yay, color theory!), it makes the actual colors you use on top pop and shine! It also removes all of the white on your painting surface, taking the look of your painting up a notch. We took a look at how artists use under paintings for a bit of inspiration:

In this painting, the artist used a pink/red under painting to make the complementary color of green pop on her painting and to add visual interest.  In my humble little art teacherin’ opinion, under painting is game changer in leveling up your painting skill set!

We experimented with complementary color under paintings on canvas paper.  

We then experimented with modeling paste, an acrylic medium that you can add to your paint directly or apply to the canvas and then paint.  This medium thickens the paint and can add texture to your paintings.

Finally, we experimented with a variety of mixed media techniques, including adding paper, torn book and music pages, adding washes over the papers, stamps, paint pens, tissue paper, and magazine collage elements.  There are so many ways to add other medias to your paintings and the students really got creative!

With mixed media, I feel like I got the entire supply closet out for experimentation!  Messy desk = learning and experimentation.  Love it!

Now that we have filled our acrylic painting tool kit with a whole bunch of different techniques, we are going to choose three to develop into a final painting over the next two class periods.  This group is so creative, I can’t wait to see what they make!