Emerald Leaves

 

This painting is 11 by 14 inches, fluid acrylics on vellum illustration board.  In this post, I will discuss my process and technique.  

Drawing:  I always do a very tight drawing with a 2H pencil.  I usually find that the longer I spend on the line art, the easier my painting will be.  With this painting, I decided that I would not only use black ink for some of the lines, but I would also fill in large areas of black as well.  These large areas of black end up not being completely black since I will also paint on top of them with various washes.  All of the paint is transparent, so all the layers interact with each other including areas with solid black ink.  I did not ink any of the lines on the leaves since I wanted the painting to be softer around the subject.

Background First:  I always paint background to foreground and in the case of this particular painting, I painted dark to light as well.  I started with a desaturated blue green first and then worked my way to a more yellowish green.  I mixed a neutral brownish violet color for the areas that appear more brown or grey.  I like to take my background to a finished state before moving on to the subject.  A finished background will better inform you on how light or how dark you need to paint your subject.  If you paint your subject first, your eyes only have a bright white paper to compare to so any paint you put down will appear darker than it really is.  

Painting the Subject:  When I am content with my background, I start painting the subject.  For this painting, I used a desaturated yellow green to do an underpainting first.  This establishes most of the hard edges that I can see.  After I finish the underpainting, I start throwing down washes of pure color.  For this painting, I added yellow green followed by green washes of pure color.  When you throw down washes of color, it will often times flatten your painting so the next step I did was to reestablish the hard edges and to darken other areas.  I then used pure green gold around the center of the leaves to draw in the viewer more.  Overall, I feel the results were successful.