Wooden Footbridge

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The Old Wooden Footbridge

This is my last painting from the Fast and Fun Landscaping acrylics book. It’s got a lot going on! I started with a textured yellow background again, then blocked in the grass with a scrubby brush. The trees took shape under fan and scrubby brushes double-loaded with greens, oranges, and reds. Next I put the stream in (have you ever seen a creek that shade of blue??), with a darker stripe for the bridge shadow. I sketched the bridge in with paint, rather than pencil, filled it out with brown, and added a railing on top. I like how the lower arc came out, but not the top—it’s lopsided!

Donna Dewberry’s book also had several demos on painting a continuous scene across two, three, or even four canvasses, like a mural. They hung side-by-side or in a window-pane formation. These paintings didn’t need frames as they were just mounted on the wall. Although I didn’t do any of these projects, they gave me the idea for a painting I would soon do: my two-canvas farm scene “Autumn Pastoral.” This book sure hit the spot with my style of painting! I’d love to own it someday.

Everglades Sunrise

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Sunrise in the Everglades

The river, dark from midnight sleep,

Now mirrors lines of radiant glow,

From morning clouds of brilliant gold,

That with the rising sun’s rays flow;

While leafy palms and cypress bows

Clad in magnificent attire

The ever-widening path of glass

On which advances the ball of fire.

Writing this poem was almost as fun as painting this dynamic scene from the Everglades. I started with the sky, putting down lots of yellow and white with a palette knife. It’s very textured, and almost glows! The cypress “knees” were done with a flat brush, then smudged with white. A double-loaded fan brush did good palm and cypress trees. I also used a fan brush for that interesting lichen hanging from the branches. The water is a striking progression from navy to lemon yellow; it’s so roughly blended that it looks almost impressionistic. This is my favorite picture from the acrylic book—I love the contrast between dark and light, close-up and far away. It would be something to see this sunrise in person!

Tropical Island 2

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Adding Trees, Sand Bar, Reflections, and Waves

I love how the waves came out on the right-hand side of this painting. There’s actually a touch of brown mixed into the blue, which gives the realism of shallow waves washing over the sand bar. Those tiny flowers couldn’t have been easier—I used a scrubby brush, double-loaded it with white and pink (or yellow), and dabbled it around the greenery. (See another use of the scrubby brush here.)

Really, I could go on and on about this painting, but let me just talk about the trees yet. The book had a really cool method for palm trees. You take a fan brush and load it with dark green, then just touch it in white or yellow (this is double-loading). Starting at the center of the tree top, you draw out the brush in an arc down into the palm fronds. A few sideways strokes make some good dead leaves too. The shorter palms were done with a flat brush, but using a similar method. This tropical scene was a lot easier than it looks, thanks to the easy methods in Fast and Fun Landscaping!

Tropical Island 1

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Tropical Sky Background

That’s some wild sky, isn’t it?! This is the beginning of a tropical ocean scene. The book showed how to use a sponge to get those unique blends on the clouds, then finish up with a brush. It is really difficult to get the right touch with clouds. And the water came out with a nice feeling, even though it doesn’t quite feel tropical! You’ll see, it will all come together on the finished painting!

Birch Reflections

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Birch Trees by Water

My favorite feature in the Fast and Fun Landscaping book was its clarity: color pictures showed every stage, step-by-step, of every single project. I did at least half of the twenty paintings in the book, and learned a lot from each one. These birch trees were really interesting to paint, with the dark triangles where bark is peeling off. I painted the reflections at the same time, only a little lighter (and upside down!). Following the directions, I put a white wash on the lighter side of each trunk when they were dry. They look like they’ll jump off the picture! And those leaves are done with a fan brush again. This is a great method for painting trees—and that’s one of my toughest subjects!

Sunset Silhouettes

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Simple Sunset Painting

When I was first getting into acrylics, I picked up an excellent book at the library called Fast and Fun Landscaping with Donna Dewberry. Although I’d never watched Donna Dewberry’s TV painting show, I loved this book. It really shaped my acrylic technique, and I discovered a style I really enjoy. She uses a relatively new high-definition acrylic paint (that means it’s thicker and stands up more). I actually used cheap Wal-Mart poster paint, which didn’t have quite the same effect, but I still learned a lot.

This is the very first (and easiest) project from the book. Following the step-by-step example, I used a sponge to streak red, orange, and yellow paint across the sky, put in the sun, and added some more red clouds. The tree silhouettes are made with a fan brush. And the foreground was supposed to be applied with a palette knife and be very textured. My plastic color-mixing knife and runny black paint didn’t do quite the trick!!