Acrylic Paintings

by Chris Frey!
(Yes, I'm the Artist!)

The Cranes Are Flying is on my sketchbook cover.
These cranes are part of a watercolor that was on the Northlight Bookclub brochure for March.
Acrylic on gessoed cardboard (which probably isn't a great thing to do, but it's just for decoration.)

Garden Stuff is acrylic on watercolor paper. 9x12"
This is the project from the 7/13/01 art class.
The instructor set it up. I'm very proud of the accuracy of the drawing.
That's a hat hanging on the wall. (Burkhard thought it was a tunnel.)

Three Men Walking
Acrylic on Bristol Board, 9x10"
This was my art class project 7/07/01.
I had an old sketch adapted from some book or other.
This is another adaptation. The three men are still approximately in their original positions.

The technique we are using is interesting, and I'll probably stay with something very close.

Shirley Lippy, our art teacher (who is wonderful) has us paint the entire surface first with the complimentary color to the main color scheme. Then the sketch is indicated in the wet paint. This must be done very quickly, and there is no sketching with the pencil. Everything is done with the brush. Shirley says it is just as easy to draw with your brush as it is with your pencil, once you get used to it.

This was originally covered with burnt sienna. Yech. I hate that color in large doses. It's kind of the color on the center figure's coat. As you can see, I've just about painted it out.  So what I can't understand is, why paint it if I'm going to entirely paint it out again? Garden Stuff was started with Burnt Umber. The only thing it has accomplished in either case, that I can see, is to have made the painting darker than it would have been - darker than I wanted to make it.

Shirley  says it gives an added depth to your painting by making a cool painting a bit warmer, or a warm painting a bit cooler. And she has known her stuff thus far, so she's probably right. She says, do the same painting with and without, and then put them side by side, to see the difference.

The Cranes Are Flying was done on white. It's a cool painting. I have warmed the background by glazing with cadmium red and yellow ocher. The rest, I want to keep cool, and it was a lot easier to paint. Since I had more freedom, I was more able to pay attention to my picture, and I like the results much much more. But I'm a student of two weeks, at this point, so I'd better keep an open mind.