From the Artist: I wanted to reduce the subject to a series of circles and used a glazing technique almost entirely. My recent attempts at glazing had not been to great but I
feel this one turned out okay. I used a background of ultramarine blue with a glaze of cadmium yellow followed by bright aqua green on the top third and a small amount of cobalt blue on the bottom third. I used a deep violet glaze for my impressions of the octopus. I am happy with the results. Looking forward to your comments.
From the Painting Guide: I definitely think you're getting the feel for glazing now, for just how transparent the paint needs to be, so that the color is built up slowly through all the layers of glaze, and so that it has the potential to 'show through'. Which is exactly what you've done with your octopus, giving its body much for of a jelly feeling, rather than the solid feeling an opaque color would've produced.
Things to Consider When Looking at This Painting:
Mixing Colors by Glazing: Glazing is something that takes a little practice to get working, but the colors you can build up are worth it; glazing produces a richness and depth of color that's hard to beat. Look at the green-blue at the top of this painting; you can't get that when opaque colors are applied on top of one another.
The Next Step: What I would do as the next step on the journey to explore glazing would be to glaze a tiny bit of shadow onto the bottom edge of the octopus, as if the sun were shining through the water and creating a little bit of shadow on its body. The color used needs to darken the violet, so I'd use either a green (the complementar color approach) or start with a red and then possibly add a blue on top of that (red plus blue producing a purple, of course).
See Also:
• What is Glazing?
• Top 7 Tips for Painting Glazes
• Step-by-Step Demo: Painting Glazes with Acrylics
• Opaque and Transparent Colors: How to Test
From the Painting Guide: I definitely think you're getting the feel for glazing now, for just how transparent the paint needs to be, so that the color is built up slowly through all the layers of glaze, and so that it has the potential to 'show through'. Which is exactly what you've done with your octopus, giving its body much for of a jelly feeling, rather than the solid feeling an opaque color would've produced.
Things to Consider When Looking at This Painting:
Mixing Colors by Glazing: Glazing is something that takes a little practice to get working, but the colors you can build up are worth it; glazing produces a richness and depth of color that's hard to beat. Look at the green-blue at the top of this painting; you can't get that when opaque colors are applied on top of one another.
The Next Step: What I would do as the next step on the journey to explore glazing would be to glaze a tiny bit of shadow onto the bottom edge of the octopus, as if the sun were shining through the water and creating a little bit of shadow on its body. The color used needs to darken the violet, so I'd use either a green (the complementar color approach) or start with a red and then possibly add a blue on top of that (red plus blue producing a purple, of course).
See Also:
• What is Glazing?
• Top 7 Tips for Painting Glazes
• Step-by-Step Demo: Painting Glazes with Acrylics
• Opaque and Transparent Colors: How to Test