For your class project you can choose to create the same blue background I did and do your painting on top of that, or you could paint the blue background on top of an old or unfinished painting (as long as it's acrylic. You cannot paint acrylic on top of oils, for example.) Or you could leave your existing painting and do the mark making and reverse painting on top of it. If you decide to do this, make sure to choose a foreground color that has enough difference from what is underneath, so that your underpainting isn't lost. For example, you wouldn't want to use a color that is too close in value (darkness or lightness) to the main color of the painting underneath. If you use a realistic painting (ie not an abstract) then you may want to obscure any recognizable elements so that the eye isn't confused by the composition.

If you simply like the painting I made, and you don't have an old painting to cover up, no problem. Feel free to copy it. You can do this in an art journal to practice, and you can do it on paper or canvas board, stretched canvas, or a wood panel. You can even do it on "canvas paper" which is what I did the wall hanging above on. Canvas paper is actually the same canvas as stretched canvas without the wooden bars. I buy mine in pads at Michaels.

In the class, I demoed on Bristol Paper taped temporarily to a canvas board:

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Please be sure to post your projects in the projects section! If you use a different background, before and after pics would be amazing!

The exact supplies I used:

Strathmore Bristol Paper cut to 8"x11". If you want to mat and frame your finished product, make sure you leave a bit of the foreground color (the red) around the edges with your leaves and flowers away from the sides, and cut your paper to just slightly larger than the opening of the mat.

Acrylic Paint

Any brand will do. I used a combination of M. Graham, Artist Loft, Folk Art Multisurface craft paint, and Golden brands in the following colors:

Ultramarine Blue (background) (M. Graham)
Liquitex Gesso (background) - you can use titanium white.
Cadmium Red Light (foreground) (M. Graham - you can sub Vermillion by Liquitex Basics or Artist Loft)
Diarylide Yellow (Accents) (Golden Paints - you can sub any warm yellow like Cadmium Yellow Medium, or Indian Yellow mixed with a bit of titanium white to make it more opaque.0
Quinacridone Magenta mixed with a little white (Nova Color Paints) - sub any quin magenta with white, or any other color you like
See the bonus color theory video for the reasoning behind the colors I chose.

You may want to tape your paper, if you are using it, to a board like a canvas panel. I use painter's tape.

Mark-making Tools

You can get creative with this step. Think colored pencils, crayons, artist crayons, ink, anything, as long as acrylic paint can go over top of it. So no oil pastels for the marks on the initial layer. Oil pastels could be used on top of the foreground color in the final stages of the painting. But you could just use a fine liner brush and more acrylic paint to make your marks. I used:

regular colored pencils
watercolor pencils
china markers (wax pencils)
Caran D'Ache Neocolor II Artist Crayons

Brushes/Application Tools

The size of your flat brushes is going to depend on the size of your substrate, but in general, you can usually get away with a 1" flat brush and a 1/2" flat or angle brush to get into the little tight areas.

I use a 3/0 script liner brush for fine lines. A small round like a size 4 round can be used for embellishment as well.

OPTIONAL:

I used a Speedball 4" printing brayer on my initial blue painting.

In the bonus video, I created the same painting on my iPad in Procreate. You could do that and use that as your project as well!

Natalie Norris

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