Swordwhale Walking: illustration, webcomic, stories, photojourneys, videos
  • launch here
  • art & stories
    • black horses
    • Sea Ponies of Chincoteague
    • Just Animals
    • playing with water
    • Tradigital illustration
    • environmental education >
      • Christmas Magic Mural 2020
      • animal alphabet and counting murals
      • Assateague ponies
      • the salamander room
      • more touch room ocean
      • more: touch room forest
      • wetland
      • wetland art
      • greenleaf
      • reptile week murals: Nixon Park
    • just animals: photography
    • Tales of the E.L.F. >
      • That Darn Elf, a musing or two
      • cast and crew
      • I dreamed of black horses
      • fanfiction: If Wishes Were Elves...
      • Skyfire
      • Leyover and Bardic Circle
      • Following Raven
      • The Merrow's Cap >
        • Merrows Cap credits
      • Manannan's Horses
      • Fins
      • fandom >
        • Radagast's Rabbit Ride
        • the Lone Ranger >
          • LOLs and Trolls
          • but wait, there's Moore, and Silverheels
          • Hi Yo Silver
        • black panthers and night furies
        • tales of Middle Earth >
          • Mirthwood
          • Loth-LOL-ien >
            • Im-LOL-dris
            • Smirkwood
            • well, that coulda' been worse
        • Sherlocked
        • catz and doges on fandom
        • Faithful Sidekicks
    • murals
    • scribblings
    • coloring pages
  • mermaid tales
    • Gramma Swordwhale's Mermaid Blog >
      • how to mermaid
      • merfolk on the Chesapeake
      • my life as a mermaid
    • privateers and pumpkins and ponies oh my!
    • stupid gravity (the adventures of a mermaid on Eastern Neck Is.) >
      • stupid gravity credits
    • stupid gravity: the search for sea glass >
      • stupid gravity: the search for sea glass: credits
    • Stupid Gravity: Misty Cloudy Windy Stormy Augh! >
      • Misty Stormy credits
    • Stupid Gravity: the search for mermaids
    • mermaids, Moana and Maui, beached on Christmas Eve
    • horseshoe crabs forever
    • stupid gravity: hot hot hot >
      • hot hot hot credits
  • Chincoteague
    • back to the islands 2021 >
      • Ponies 2021
    • identify that pony
    • chincoteague pony art
    • Fall Roundup Oct 2019
    • Chincoteague 2019
    • pookas pumpkins and swamp ponies
    • Chincoteague Carousel
    • Chincoteague November 2018
    • the 3rd Sea Voyage of Makenuk's Fin
    • wild horses and kayaks 2017
    • wild ponies in camp
    • North Beach
    • on island time
    • saltwater cowboys
    • Chincoteague
    • Christmas by the Sea
    • island ponies
    • Ace and Unci revolt
    • beached
    • running water in between
    • Assateague Light
    • the Haunted Lagoon
  • crafty stuff
    • photo your toys >
      • how to photograph Breyers in the wild
      • Lokigator and Throg's Epic Adventure
      • Sam and Bucky's Excellent Adventure
      • Mando and Grogu
      • paint and wet snow pants
      • Legolas and Hwin, snow
      • derps (or how not to photograph Breyers and others)
      • Wonder Horse repaint
      • wild Breyers >
        • printable prints and downloads
        • water horses
        • beach Breyers
        • Lotus Legolas and Arod
        • teeny tiny Breyers
        • backyard Breyers and Schleichs
        • vintage breyers
        • Hartland Horses
        • Black Horses
      • educational display
      • Schleich and Safari Faeries
      • North beached
      • more model horses
      • beach party
      • advenatureData
      • Finding Hank
      • Otterlock and Hedgejawn >
        • Hounded in Baskerville
      • how to photograph your dragon
    • Rich Toy hobby horse rehab
    • ModPodge rules
    • paint pours
    • flour salt clay
    • chalk paint
    • rock it: paint rocks and use or lose them
    • faerie gardens >
      • more faerie gardens
      • faerie festival at Spoutwood Farm
    • sea this tutu (and make)
    • I found Dory
    • knit me a mermaid, or chicken, or Hei Hei
    • sea treasures
    • sea glass
    • sea horses
    • rehabbing horse epic fail >
      • do you wanna build a snow pony?
      • do you wanna build a sand pony?
      • Barbie horse gets a makeover
    • mermaid saddles
    • Yule Laugh, Yule Cry... >
      • a Brandywine Christmas
    • Uncle Bob's Toys >
      • Uncle Bob's Toys 2016
      • more: Uncle Bob's Crafts
      • the Adventures of Mortimer
  • adventures
    • Go Play Outside
    • Nature Deficit Disorder
    • I heart Nature
    • autumn light
    • cats
    • mushing 101 >
      • dogs on wheels >
        • Autumn Run on Wheels
      • dogsled
      • dogsledding: running on snow! >
        • Groundhog Day
      • kids and dawgs: first sled run
      • Klondike Derby
      • Sled Dogs and Pirate Ships
      • Christmas Day Run: Rail Trail
      • Horses and Huskies: when predator and prey share the trail
      • Schipperke doo dah >
        • Runnin' with the Big Dogs
        • Hobbit Husky
      • women who run with the wolves
      • Play Time
      • wubba wubba
      • New Year's Dog Day
      • Team Swordwhale
    • trains, sleddogs, and horses oh my!
    • butterscotch and sprinkles
    • horses >
      • horse reference for art
      • ponies small but mighty
      • First Horse: Saraf
      • the Wild Black Mare
      • between thunder and lightning
      • Goliath, Nevada Mustang
      • Yataalii
    • Planet Water >
      • Planet fish tank
      • planet toadpool
      • Planet Pond
      • Planet Stream
      • Planet River
      • Planet Marsh
      • Planet Ocean
      • Planet Water Bird >
        • Planet Water Bird: gulls
      • Planet turtle
      • Planet water snake
      • planet amphibian
    • kayak! >
      • blue boat home
      • kayaking 101
      • kayaking Assateague and Chincoteague
      • how to train your dragonfly
      • Chasing Raven
      • the Susquehanna River >
        • the Rock Garden >
          • return to the Rock Garden
        • Conewago Dreamin'
        • the Conejehola Flats
        • Thunderbird Island (petroglyphs on the Susquehanna)
        • to the White Lady and Beyond
      • Calvert Cliffs fossils
      • Sassafras River Lotus Paddle >
        • Return to the Sassafras
        • sassafras river 2015
        • sassafras paddle 20160814
        • Sassafras River 2017
        • Sassafras river 2018
      • Eastern Neck Island >
        • winter marsh, winter beach
        • Eastern Neck Island: under the supermoon
        • more Eastern Neck Island
      • Pinchot Park
      • Lake Marburg >
        • where are the manatees?
        • ...and the dolphins???
        • macros and SAVs
        • Lake Marburg 2018
        • how to be a kayaking Gramma
    • beached
    • dive in! (SCUBA) >
      • Gourd of the Rings
    • mid Atlantic seashells
    • longship company >
      • December sail
      • Sae Hrafn at Oakley
    • pirates and privateers >
      • Sailing 101
      • Schooner Sultana 1768
      • Capt John Smith Shallop
      • Pride of Baltimore II
      • Kalmar Nyckel
      • downrigging 2010 >
        • Chestertown autumn
        • Downrigging Weekend 2014
        • Downrigging 2015
        • Downrigging 2016
        • Downrigging 2017
        • downrigging 2018: pink tardis
        • Downrigging 2019
      • privateer weekend
    • horseshoe crabs and red knots >
      • horseshoe crab spawn 2021
      • slaughter beach
      • horseshoe crabs and semipalmated sandpipers 2019
    • surfboards and watchtowers: Cape Henlopen >
      • beached
      • Watching Whales >
        • Watching Whales...again
    • Seadogs: Newfoundland water trials
    • wind hounds
    • wild things! >
      • baltimore aquarium
      • there's a hummer in the garage...ceiling ...
      • critter cam
      • sky walking
      • leaf-fall
    • The Adventures of the Good Ship Fearaf
    • the incredibly dead blog page
  • art class
    • framing 101
    • watercolor: how to
    • sip n paints
    • acrylic painting 101
    • wildlife art class
    • Santa, You're Doomed
    • (drawing) horses 101 >
      • horse color 101
      • gaits
      • ponies in motion
      • tack
      • Draw: a horse
    • dogs and wolves
    • go ahead, draw a pirate ship
    • anthropomorphism (cartoon animals and stuff)
    • the Little Kids Page of Big Ideas
    • mural: how to >
      • Gabriel's Whale
      • stuff you need
      • drawing (mural)
      • drawing mural 2
      • painting
      • mural jungle
      • mural bat cave
      • mural cats
      • mural ocean
      • mural arctic
      • mural leaf smacking
      • watershed mural
    • crayons and colored pencils
    • palettes
  • wait wait! let me get the camera!
  • who perpetrated all this???
    • swordbroad

Acrylic Painting 101

Painting in acrylics is easy. Unlike oils, you don't have the toxic stink (waterbased paints), or the Endless Drying Times (speed things up with a hairdryer set on nuclear blast).
Picture
That's one I did awhile back for the cover of this magazine devoted to gaming. The grey horse is Bazraf, who you'll see on my horses pages.

Stuff to know about acrylics...
  • I work in an arts and crafts store and people are always in the wrong aisle staring blankly at the wrong acrylics: craft paints are like house paints, they are opaque and designed to cover objects. They already contain whites and blacks and if you try to mix them to make other colors you'll end up with chalky muddy crap. Artists' acrylics are translucent and designed to play well with others, you can mix them to make lovely colors, light shines through them and your painting looks alive.
Picture
Picture
​Those two paintings (Raptor Red and wetland touch room) were actually done with whatever we found in the workroom, mostly house paint with some crafty paints and a few artist's acrylics. To avoid creating a muddy or chalky dead look, I had to be careful how I mixed colors, and the artists' paints were often the top layer. Using artists' paints on surfaces this large would be ridiculously expensive.
  • Acrylic sticks to nearly every surface. Some craft paints (enamels, multi-surface) are designed to stick to glass and metal and stuff, usually by baking or curing for three weeks. Regular acrylics are most often used on canvas board, stretched canvases, paper (over 100 pound is best), or plywood or masonite painted first.
  • You can use acrylics watered down like watercolor, or straight out of the tube (it's kind of like toothpaste).
  • Wetting your canvas under the faucet and thinning your paint then dribbling it on the canvas creates some cool watercolor effects, great for sunsets and stuff. Add salt for texture. Or cinnamon...
  • You can use brushes, sponges, palette knives, plastic dinnerware, fingers, twigs or whatever. 
  • If your brush package says "natural hair" and doesn't cost fifty bucks, run away. Those suck giant moa eggs. Cheap nylon or taklon brushes, however, are fabulous. They keep their shape, and the paint flows out of them nicely.
  • Paint in layers, dry layer one, then go on to the next layer. If you like working into wet paint, there are various fancy mediums you can use to slow the drying time of your acrylics...
  • ...or you can wet the canvas with a sponge or brush and paint your next layer into that.
  • Most canvases you buy at the craft store are already primed (painted with white, or sometimes black paint). If you want your surface a bit smoother or less capable of sucking up your paint, throw on an extra layer of really expensive gesso (fancy schmancy white paint) or get some white craft paint for a fraction of the price.
  • Start with small canvases, it's cheaper, and you'll use less paint.
  • Taking your painting all the way around the edge is called a "gallery wrap". With that edge finished, you don't need a frame. Also try edging the canvas with decorative ribbon or twigs or seashells or sand/ModPodge...
  • These circular palettes are nice, (see illustration below). Also muffin pans found at the thrift shop, old egg cartons, plastic margarine lids, fast food containers, and anything else waterproof. Skip the silly thumb-hole thingie, that's only if you want to pretend to look like some famous dead guy.
  • I hate easels. Loathe them. I use a drawing board. You can prop it on your desk/table/lap/rock/tree stump. It will hold your canvas, your taped down 100 pound paper, or anything else. You can even prop the drawing board on your easel if you insist on buying one and pretending to look like some famous dead guy. Go to a hardware store and buy a 4 foot by 8 foot piece of masonite and have them saw it up into about a dozen drawing boards of various sizes. Skip the handle holes and clippy things, all you need is a big flat surface. And masking tape. Maybe some glue dots.
  • ​Get yourself a color wheel, and keep your pallette to a minimum. You don't need 4618972341 colors. You can mix them.
the (Winsor Newton) Color Wheel
You only need 8 colors (you can get more later, if you insist). In a perfect world you'd only need three colors, you know which ones, the primaries on the color wheel; red, yellow and blue. Sadly, they don't actually exist (in the World of Paint). What does exist is:

Ultramarine Blue: Blue jeans. Summer sky. On the reddish side of the color wheel (or purplish), mixed with alizarin crimson, you actually get purple, not Monkey Vomit Violet.

Prussian Blue: Or winsor blue. Rather oceany. On the yellowish side of the color wheel (or greenish). Mixed with yellows, you get great greens. Also, oddly, if you mix it with burnt umber or burnt sienna, you get subtle greens.

Lemon Yellow: on the blueish (or greenish) side of the color wheel. Makes yummy greens, lousy oranges. Looks like a not quite ripe banana...or...um... a lemon.

Cadmium Yellow: on the reddish (orangeish) side of the color wheel. Looks like a not quite ripe orange. Or a banana you better eat now.  

Cadmium Red, or Scarlet, or Vermillion; on the yellowish (orangeish) side of the color wheel. This is the color insurance companies charge extra for, if it's on your sports car.

Alizarin Crimson; which I always remember as “ a lizard in crimson”. On the blueish (purpley) side of the color wheel. Makes awesome purples, rich burgundies. Blood bay horses have a heavy dose of this color in their coats.

Burnt Umber; chocolate, coffee. Lives nearer the middle of the color wheel not far from alizarin's edge of the wheel, somewhat blueish/cool brown. Makes great blacks and greys when mixed with Ultramarine Blue.

Burnt Sienna: 
chestnut, the color of red hair, Irish Setters, chestnut horses. Lives nearer the center of the color wheel, not far from vermillion's part of the wheel. Rather hot/orangey brown. Makes great chestnut horses, redheads, and odd greens if mixed with Prussian Blue.

 More Stuff You Should Know!!!

  • You're learning, so whatever mistakes you make are a Learning Experience. go ahead and make them.
  • USE REFERENCE!!! Horses are not brown, the sky is not blue, apples are not red. Understand reality, google those photos, stare at youtube until you're dizzy, and go out and paint under the trees... once you understand reality you can bend it like fence wire.
  • Go ahead and cheat; if you want to get to the painting part, you could project, trace or otherwise transfer that photo to your canvas. You can learn to draw later. Spitting a photo up on a big screen TV, then tracing it, then transferring it to canvas, is the most creative way of transferring an image I've heard of yet.
  • Go outside and just throw some paint around. Sometimes you'll have a better painting if you just look at something and paint it without drawing first. Sometimes.
  • Keep scrap paper handy to test out that color you think you just mixed right...
  • Get a water container that allows you to hang your brushes in water without standing them on their heads. Standing them on their heads will give them a bad hair day...forever.
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.