Autumn Still Life in Acrylic Paints - Pumpkins, Candle, & Leaves!

1. Hello!: Hi there. I'm Laura Urging, and I'm an artist from Lonoke, Texas, and I'll be your instructor for this course. We are going to be painting an autumn still life using acrylic paints. We're going to be focusing on pumpkins, a candle, and an assortment of leaves and berries. This course is for anyone who wants to improve their acrylic techniques and paint a still life. I've chosen comforting, cozy, autumy subjects for our project, and I've also used a really warm but somewhat simple color palette. So there's not a ton of color mixing. We're going to be focusing more on techniques. Be focusing on two ways to paint leaves, the first of which is working on a dark black background where we leave the leaves blank initially and then paint over them in a later phase. The next type of leaf we'll work on is the same variety of leaf, but painting on an already painted foreground. You'll be painting on top of color. The next thing we'll be working on is creating a three dimensional form from the pumpkins. We'll be using colors, shadows and highlights and little details to give them a more realistic appearance. The last thing that we're going to work on is creating a light source within so we'll have a candle, and we'll use that light to create highlights and shadows. So I hope you'll join me. See you soon in the first lesson. 2. Supplies: Supplies. Supplies for this project are relatively straightforward. You'll need a pencil and eraser for the initial sketches. You need acrylic paint. I have a variety and pretty much anything you have on hand will be fine. We use a range from black, white, red, yellow, orange, and shades of brown. Feel free to experiment and not use the exact same colors I'm using in this project. If you want to make the pumpkin more of a greenish, bluish color, for example, that's fine. If you want to make it a deeper orange, that works too. We use a variety of brushes that vary from the smallest number zero brush to a larger 1 " flat brush. Again, experiment with what you have on hand. The canvas in this project is 20 by 16, but anything in that aspect ratio will be fine. You need a palette, water, and paper towels. Optionally, you can also use a blow dryer to speed up drying time between each step. In the next video, we'll get started on the initial sketch. 3. Sketch: Now we're going to begin the sketching portion. First, we're going to establish a horizontal line for the table. Then we're going to sketch in a large flat oval for the larger pumpkin, and then a smaller rounder one. Here's a pro tip. Fill up all of the canvas area, try to make the images and the individual elements large. One beginning mistake I see is people try to crowd all of the elements into a tight beginner spot in the center. So try to really make it fill up. Alright, we're going to go for an oval shape for the base of the plate and a round finger loop. Follow the rest of this sketch to get the general overall shape for the candlestick, and then a tall rectangular shape for the candle at the top, draw in a flame and connect it with a wick. Next, we're going to work on a stem, and then horizontal, excuse me, vertically curved lines for the ribbing of the pumpkin. You can make your stem as interesting as you want. I like to give it a little curve. These ribs really help add dimension to the pumpkin when we start shading later on. I like to add a little variety to the stem to match up at the top of the rib, as well. Now I'm going to sketch in a branch and start on the leaves. They're a vaguely almond shape with a slight curve. They end with a tip, and they're located every other spot on the branch. They're not directly across from each other. Go a little ways and draw a leaf and then go a little farther and draw a leaf. Make the stems get narrower toward the end of the branch. We're also going to add on little berries in a moment. They're going to be vaguely round, slightly oval shapes, and they're connected by a very thin stem. A lot of this will be obliterated when we do the black outline, but you can frequently still see a little bit of the sketch leftover enough to help you as a guide. Now we're going to refine the candlestick and just add some swoops and dips in there. Next, we're going to start painting the background, so it's time to get out your paints. 4. Background: Background. Now we're going to start with the table. I'm going to mix up a dark brown shade of a muddy mushroom color. I'm going to mix black and yellow with a little bit of white until I've got a mushroomy warm brown color. I'm going to choose one of my larger flat brushes to start working in the background of the table. Now, I'm not aiming for perfection and smoothness here. I'm just working around those contours. I'm going to add a lot of layers to the top eventually. But with the table, I do want to cover white. I don't want any of the white of the canvas showing through, but I'm not trying to get it in there perfectly and exactly. You'll see I just obliterated a little bit of the bottom of the pumpkin. That's not quite perfect and I'll probably change it later. Once this is dry, I will probably add more of the color of the pumpkin over that bit of the table. I can refine a lot of these edges later. Next, I'm going to be going on to black. If you're going to use that same brush, make sure to wipe off the excess on your paper towel and give it a good wash in water. Sometimes you can really muddy a background color if you have color left in your brush still. Make sure you clean the brushes out really well before you use them again. Also, don't set aside a brush with acrylic on it or it can really ruin the bristles. If you're not going to be able to wash it until you're done painting, stick it in a separate cup of water just to keep that paint soft. I'm going to work around the contours of the object above the table. Just using solid black here. You can mix in other colors if you want a little more depth, but for simplicity's sake, I was going with solid black. I typically like to mix in another color to my background, but like I said, this is a shorter tutorial, so I was trying to just get going with the background, but experiment with adding other colors for a richer, warmer black or a cooler black, if you want that. Now, if you're having trouble getting I made a mistake here. See how I went into the stem. I'm taking water immediately and I'm scrubbing water on to that stem and then I'm wiping it off with a paper towel. If you get to it quickly, you can just scrub it off like that. Now, if you're having trouble getting the paint to smoothly move around the contours, add just a touch of water. Now, you don't want very liquid paint or it'll be transparent, but just a drop or two of water to your puddle of black can help it move more smoothly around these shapes. We're going to paint around the leaves now. I like to use a flat brush that's a little bit smaller, maybe half an inch or so, maybe even a little smaller than that. I like to load my brush pretty often, and then I twist my brush as I work to get excess paint on either side of it to help me smooth around the edges. As I twist it while I paint, it also helps me get into the pointed edges of the almond shapes of those leaves. Continue working in this fashion until you have all of the black background painted around the pumpkin and the leaves. I am covering over the spaces for the berries. It would be too tedious in the time we have to go over the berries. If you really want to do that, you can, but it's going to be very time consuming red is a pigment when we make red berries later, the pigment will be enough to cover the black. However, the yellow we're going to use for the leaves is relatively transparent and it's hard to get a complete coverage over a black background. I like to leave the leaf portion and the stem portions, the white of the canvas. So keep working on that. Now in the next step, you might want to blow dry in between steps just to ensure everything is nice and dry. All right. Next, we're going to be working on the color of the pumpkins and the candle. Give your brushes a good wash between this step, freshen your water and squeeze out some of the pumpkin 5. Pumpkins and Candle: It is time to paint our pumpkin selection and our candle. Start out with orange. If you have orange paint, use that. If not, mix a pile of yellow with a little bit of red. Always start with more yellow and then add red. I'm outlining my pumpkin, the larger pumpkin, avoiding the small pumpkin in front, and I'm establishing the perimeter. I'm using pretty thick paint. I'm just getting it on there quickly. We're not aiming for total details right now. We just want that basic color in there. I'm going to mix up two other colors. I'm going to mix up a lighter yellowy orange. I'm just adding more yellow to that orange. Then I'm going to mix up a darker orange that has rust tones by adding red and a tiny smidge of brown or black just to get a deeper color. At this point, I'm just trying to get more paint on that area. Add the lighter color to the upper left and top of pumpkin. This is where the candlelight will be hitting it. It doesn't need to be neat, it could be very messy at this point. Then when you mix up that darker color, we're going to concentrate on the lower right hand side, which is where the shadows would fall. It's away from the candle. We're going to have darker pieces so behind the pumpkin in the foreground, the little pumpkin, the pumpkin will be in a little bit more shadow because the pumpkin is in front of it. Go ahead and start blending those. I like to wipe my brush off occasionally on paper towel so that it's not as thick with paint and then just keep going back into those colors and gently work your brush back and forth to blend them when they still a little bit wet. All right, I'm drawing in ribs now. They're vertical, but they're not straight up and down. They always meet back toward the bottom wrapping around at the stem at the top and the bottom of the pumpkin. Then I'm using the same technique for highlights and shadows, but I'm concentrating on each rib at a time. See how at the bottom of the horizontal area, they're a little bit rounded where that rib pokes out like a little rounded section. I'm adding more middle color again, more of that central orange. Then I'm going to try to make them look a little more three dimensional by adding highlight toward the top again, where the candle would touch and shadow down toward the bottom. You can also use darker colors to increase the ridges, which makes them look more three dimensional. Now we're moving on to the candlestick. I'm mixing a light gray. Just focusing on the part that looks like a little plate or a bowl. Again, it doesn't need to be perfect. We're just trying to get some color here. Follow your sketch, add more gray. You should also mix up a lighter and darker gray. Wherever the candlestick is poking out the most, the roundest pieces on that top column, it will be lighter where it scoops back up inside and has a divot or a part that curves in, you'll paint a darker gray. Also on the bottom underneath where of the candle won't touch, those areas will be dark and you can shade those a little more to make it look more three dimensional. Now, to give even more detail, sometimes I'll use a technique where I mix up a very dark gray, it's almost black and I'll draw a line under that rim right there where the candle sits, a line in the middle, and then I'll pull down this color. I will pull down little sections like little feathery strokes just to help spread that color around evenly. Then I get a dry brush and gently go back and forth to blur those hatched lines. That way you get an even amount of color through there, then come back with a dry fluffy brush and blend. I repeat it sometimes until it's the amount of darkness I want. I'll run a little bit of a darker rim around the outside of the bowl too or the plate. I'm adding the thumb loop, an American colonial style, just a circle where you would stick your finger in to help hold the candle. I'm using the same techniques for shadows as I do for highlights. I'm adding a much lighter white and then getting a fluffier brush to blend it. Refining this shape a little and adding a shadow along the bottom of that finger or thumb loop. Just adding a little detail, a little ridge around the candle holders pace. Now I'm moving on to the pumpkin. I'm mixing white yellow, and a little bit of black. I'm aiming for a creamy grayish color. Basically, I want a white pumpkin, but nothing's really pure white. I'm starting with a mid range beige gray. I'm using some of the same color to establish the stems on both pumpkins. I'll refine them more later, but for right now, I just want to get some base color on those stems. I'm going to paint the actual wax of the candle, a very pale yellow. I'm using some of the pumpkin color I have mixed with white for the candle base, the actual stick of the candle. 6. Top Leaves and Pumpkin Details: Top leaves and pumpkin details. The first thing we're going to mix up is our leaf color. Start with yellow and brown. We're going for a tannish amber base color. Pick one of your medium flat brushes, load it up and start filling in the areas of leaves that you've already left white. Now, don't worry if you're still seeing some white or transparency differences if you run over into the black area. This is just our first coat of the leaves and we will apply more paint later. Right now we're just attempting to fill in that white leaf base. I'm actually extending the leaf a little bit. I'm extending around the outside edges and in some cases, I'm extending the point a little bit. It's very tedious to paint exactly inside that white space, so I'm just using it as a guide. I would recommend blow drying here or stepping away for a few moments so you don't smear the paint in the next step. Go ahead and paint a few leaves along the bottom as well. I touch up any other little last bit problems I see if I see any white showing through. Now we're going to mix up the branch color. I mix up brown and white and if you want, you can add a touch of black. We're just going for a color that's somewhat similar to the table color, but a little lighter and a little browner. Pick one of your smaller brushes and start from the diagonal corner and work in. Make the branch thinner as it comes into the piece of the painting. As you're trying to collect the leaves along the stem, take your brush, very thin brush and go from the branch out to the base of the leaf, so it looks like it's attached. Then repeat this on the other side. Remember, keep the branches thinner as they move away from the main part of the branch. That will help them look more realistic. I like to keep the paint a little thinner for the branches. I find that when I'm doing really fine details, a thinner paint helps keep the paint flowing rather than dragging and creating a blank spot. This will mean mixing up some paint and adding a little bit of water, not too much or it will become transparent. You have the right amount when the paint flows freely, but you can't see transparency through it. Now I'm going to work on the pumpkin. I'm mixing up a gray and I'm adding ribs. Remember, they meet up at the stem and the bottom of the pumpkin. I'm going to fill that in a little bit and blend to soften those edges. Then I'm going to mix up a brighter white color. I'm moving to a fresh brush now, and I'm keeping it pretty light, white with just a little bit of yellow and gray, but it's a pretty light color. Now I'm going to move to a dry brush, really clean that brush off, and scrub at these lines where they meet to soften those harsh edges. I also round the bottom of the pumpkin out toward the bottom of the table like that to give it a more realistic rib shape rather than just a complete circle. Keep refining it. Then I'm going to move on to darkening the ribs a little bit more with a darker gray color, a little bit of yellow and gray in the earlier light gray color. Again, dry that brush off and then use blending motions to smooth out those harsher edges. I continue until I'm happy with the three dimensionality of the pumpkin shape. Now I'm going to go back to my base orange. When I was adding highlights and shadows earlier, you'll notice it obliterated a lot of that very basic local color. The local color is just the main color of an object without lighter shadow. I'm going back in with my basic orange, a nice basketball elementary pumpkin orange and I'm putting it in the middle of the ribs. I'm also extending it up to the tops and the sides in places I think it needs it. I'm not done. I'm just always continuing to work with acrylic, the more layers you use, the more depth and complexity you add to your painting. Now I'm carefully painting around the stem of the little white pumpkin. On the right side, it seems too dark to me, but that's fine. I intentionally made it too dark, but I like to have a little bit of that deeper russet red shade showing through. So in some of those areas, I'm adding a little more water to my paint to help it be a tiny bit transparent. Sometimes that can be a positive. Now, with a deep color, I'm mixing the orange with red and a little bit of black and brown. I'm working on the ribs. Again, use the same technique we used for the little pumpkin, get a dry brush, dry it off on your paper towel or get a new one, and just make scrubbing blending motions to soften that transition where the rib dips into the pumpkin. 7. Shadows and Foreground Leaves: Shadows and foreground. I'm going to start with a shadow color of black and a smidge of white and brown. I'm aiming for the table color but very deep. Black with just a little bit of brown and white in it. Use a smaller brush, water the paint down a tiny bit and direct it to the right bottom side of the pumpkins. We're looking to put the shadow areas opposite the candle. Imagine where the candlelight is shining and put the shadows away from they would fall under the pumpkins. I come back with another brush. You can either clean off the brush you just used or use a new fresh brush to soften that line like we did in other steps of this painting. As you can see, I added a little bit more table color under the shadow. I had the shadow extending farther than I thought looked realistic, so I went ahead and added a little more table color there. All I'm using the same colors from earlier brown, white, black with a little more brown this time and I'm refining the stem. I'm going to do that on both sides. Now, where the stem attaches to the pumpkin, it grows in between the ribs where you see a rib, the stem grows into that crevice in a points like a star or something like that. Now I'm going to work on the shadow around the candle holder. It will be below it in all directions. I'm really concentrating on getting a little shadow beneath these particular leaves as well. Same technique, water the shadow paint down a little bit, use another brush. If you've extended the shadow too far, you can mix up a little more table color and blend it all together with a clean, soft brush. The reason you don't want to blend with any existing shadow color is you're just going to make a muddy mess. It'll just smear that shadow color everywhere on the table and not look very neat. That's why we clean off the brush or use a new one. Okay, I'm mixing up the leaf color again with yellow and brown. This time, I'm going heavier with the yellow. I'm starting to give more depth and complexity to the leaves. I like to use a flat brush and as I'm painting, I tend to twist my brush a little bit to get more paint off of it and give me a sharper edge. Now, I don't need to blend these perfectly at all. In fact, sometimes I like to make two puddles of color, like a brownish petal and a more yellow puddle and get a little bit of both of those colors on my brush. That way, you're mimicking some of the natural variations you find in leaf colors in nature. If a leaf is located behind the branch, remember to leave the branch there and we'll come back and touch up that branch a little bit later, but just keep overlapping the leaves. If they run off the edge of the painting, just extend the paint to the edge of the canvas. You can continue to paint over into the black area if you want to. It's not a problem if you extend over the leaf that is already painted. Now I'm going to add a branch at the bottom, yellow and brown and black. Remember, it gets thicker toward the base and as the branches move away, they're thinner. At the very end of the branch, I'm going to add a leaf. Now I'm going to start painting on more leaves. If your shadow color wasn't completely dry, you may get smearing here, make sure you've let your paint dry for that shadow layer or use a blow dryer to make sure it dries quickly. Again, the leaves are located in every other leaf position. They're not equal across the branches. There's a little space between where each new leaf starts. Go ahead and refine your branch a little bit. Take that branch color and make sure the leaves are connected. If there's an area where you can see 8. Berries and Final Details: Berries and final details. All right, everybody, we're almost finished. This is where we're adding in those final touches. I'm mixing up a flame color of yellow and white. I just want to make it a little more intense. I'm using a very fine brush and trying to keep it within the confines of the space I've already made for the flame. Now, I'm going to paint black around the outside edge just to define that a little bit more. I'm painting black around the outside and then smushing it around with a cleaner brush just to give a sharper background so the flame stands out more. I'm going to blow dry that. Then I'm going to mix up a new color for the berries. I'm going to be using red with a touch of brown and black. I'm going for a deep burgundy wine color. Using a flat brush, I'm going to start making small round shapes in between the leaves. I like to take my brush, place it on the canvas and spin it around in a circle to get around movement. You might practice this on a scrap piece of paper a few times, but I touch my brush with paint and then I smush it in a circle and I'm going to continue this all the way around anywhere I have branches. In nature, you would see these overlapping and hiding from behind leaves partially and things like that. But for this, I'm going for more of a pattern and an easier way to paint them for a smaller project. I'm just putting them in full circles everywhere you see them on the canvas. But if you want them to look more realistic, you'd have a few that were obscured by leaves. I'm going to add them to the branch that's in the foreground. I'm also just going to place a few on the table as if they've been knocked down and they're just randomly scattered around. Put a few at the base of the candlestick. Now I'm going back into the berries to give them a bit of a highlight. I'm taking red with just a touch of yellow and I'm going to touch it to the berries in the direction of the candle. If the candle is to the right, I put the light to the right. If the candles to the left, I put the highlight to the left. I'm going to repeat this on all the berries on the canvas. Just a small little touch of highlight will give them more depth and realism. I'm going back with my branch color and I'm now connecting all of the berries to the branch. Start at the middle of the berry on the top edge and just connect them with a very thin line. Most of the time they hang down. This fruit is called a droop, which is spelled DPE, but I think they also droop like DROP. That's how I remember droops hang. They hang from one little sliver of twig or branch that connects it to the wood. All right. This might be a good time to blow dry your canvas and clean off your brushes before we go to the next I'm adding a yellow to the center of the candle flame and then I'm going to mix up a yellow and a white and add some drips to the candle. I'm going for a slightly darker color than what I already have there. You can add a little gray to it to help it stand out more. I'm just creating a little drip pattern. I'm going to create the puddle, which is a half circle shape right under that flame. I'm going to use solid black and a very thin brush to add a wick. Now I'm going to refine that finger loop a little more by mixing up a darker gray and accentuating that shadow under the loop. I'm going back over the leaves now with a brighter golden yellow. It's yellow and white and just the tiniest bit of orange and our brown, just so it's not a day glow yellow. I'm not overblending these. I want to keep this. Oops. Again, if you make a mistake, just try to get it off with water as soon as you. Now, I'm not aiming to over blend these, but I am wanting a more intense layer on top to obliterate the foreground. On the top, remember, we left the background white before we started the leaves, but we didn't do that on the table, so we'll need a little bit thicker of paint on the leaves at the table. I'm continuing on top of all the leaves we already have with a much lighter yellow to give the impression that lights coming through hitting the edge of those leaves. Sometimes the leaves are a little bit transparent too with light. It gives it that nice glow you see when a leaf is backlet try not to overblend this section. For the purposes of this class, I'm leaving the canvas up and down. But if you want to turn your canvas around and upside down so you can reach the leads more easily, I do that a lot when I'm painting. Notice I've mixed an even lighter yellow here. This is that yellow we were working with before, that goldenytan yellow with more yellow and white. I'm paying special attention to the tips of the leads. I'm making sure to turn my brush when I pick up the paint to give a nice sharp edge to allow me to paint a sharp tip to that almond shaped leaf. I'm mixing up more of the white for the pumpkin. I'm going for a much more dramatic, light, whitish bone color here with white gray and a little bit of yellow, but it's mainly white. I felt like I was losing the pumpkin a little and I really wanted to stand out as though it's sitting in front of the other larger orange pumpkin. I'm just working on getting the color into those the plumped out areas that are not the ribs, the section that's extending. Then as we did before, I'm going to go get a dry or a clean brush to soften those edges so that it blends back into the recessed rib shape. Using a deeper brown, I'm going to refine the stem a little bit more. I'm carrying it down into the base of the pumpkin so that you see some grooves in the stem and where it attaches to the pumpkin. You'll see when the vines have withered and dried, they have more definition than just being smooth when they're picked. Shrivel a little bit. Make sure to put some of the lighter color on the candle side because that's where those highlights would fall and deepen the shadows on the side, away from the candlelight. Keep going until you're happy with how it stands out. I really wanted that white pumpkin stem to stand out against the black background. I think I've achieved that now. I'm moving on to details on the large orange pumpkin. I'm mixing up a variety of orange shades that match my lights, mediums, and highlights, and I'm just adding some dots and lumps. Not all pumpkins are smooth. This one is not a super warty variety of pumpkin, but it does have some little dots and texture to it, some little lumps and bumps. I'm just adding those, deepening the ribs a little bit more with more of our shadow color. Just dabbing it a little bit with a paper towel. There were a few areas I thought were a little too thick, so I just dabbed them with a paper towel. I'm also going to add some remember, you don't have to keep these consistent with the lights and shadows because they might actually be different colorations on the pumpkin when you find a pumpkin like this in real life. You don't have to have just shadowed and highlighted bumps. You can mix them up a little bit. All right. I'm going to mix a medium gray for this pumpkins texture, I'm going to give them some vertical grooves and lines. I want these to be up and down. I'm continuing to darken the ribs a little just for more realism and depth. I want to add some vertical, almost bark like sections to this pumpkin. I just wanted to have some groove so it's not perfectly smooth, like something you'd get at the store. I want it to look a little more realistic. All right. We're wrapping up just a few little more highlights around the candle. I'm going to water down some yellowish white paint, very, very thin, then almost immediately I'm going to come back on top with a slightly slightly damp brush and soften that highlight. I'm going to do it again, you can just repeat this. You can leave those lines if you want, but I'm just going for more of a glow. 9. What To Do Next: Okay, everybody. By now, you should have a pleaded still life. So what did you think? Did you like it? Are you happy with how it turned out? Do you have any questions? Please get in touch with me and let me know. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about this project. In just a moment, I'm going to show you how to share your project to the class gallery. But first, I want to ask you to please leave me a review. If you enjoyed this class, it'll help other students find it. And more than anything, it really helps me as a teacher. So please, please, please if you don't mind, if you like the class, I would really appreciate you leaving me a review. Also, let me know if there's anything you'd like me to cover in future classes. I'm always interested in what you guys would be interested in learning. So I'm about to leave you instructions on how to upload your image to the class gallery. On projects and resources within the main class screen, it looks the same for all the classes. Then click Create Project. It's that green button on the right. Then you have a few things to fill out, upload your image, then choose a title, and you can write a project description. You can add more images or a video if you want. Then in the upper right hand corner, there's the green button called publish. Click, click click it. All right, everybody, that's it for this time. I'll see you in the next class. Bye.