Chromatic Black & Acrylic Painting Mediums, Markmaking, And Techniques
What happens when you try to remove half-dry paint? Does the tool & support change the effect? How can you make a color gradient using a single stroke?9-25-19
During this assignment I had trouble mixing up a chromatic black at first because I didn’t know which colors to mix together. At first I was succeeding at mixing a dark brown out of the cool red, cool blue, and warm yellow but then I was struggling to make the black, the more paint I added the more brown or purple it would get. I only achieved a level of black paint after the professor came to assist me and gave me some advice.Â
Once I achieved my black, I went to mix some of it with a medium additive, provided by the professor. I chose to use a gel like medium to mix with the black and proceeded to paint it onto the grid with everyone else’s shades of black. Once everyone painted their squares onto the canvas, we all stepped back and had a brief group discussion about what we noticed. One thing that was obvious was that not all of the black’s were a successful mix and some even came out to resemble a dark green/grey. There was also the fact that the blacks were mixed with different mediums so whether they resembled each other before being applied onto the canvas didn’t matter. The mediums caused some blacks to appear glossy while others appeared rather dull, something to consider when applying medium to paint.
Once we completed the black colors, we had to go ahead and mix the black we made with white to make a really light grey which was very difficult for me because I added a large amount of white paint to a small amount of Black paint I had prepared for this mix but no matter how much I mixed the paint, the resulting grey would be very dark compared to the required grey tone. My grey tone ended up being darker then others simply because I didn't add enough white to it.
After the Chromatic Black Assignment we were all assigned into groups of 3 in order to answer the questions assigned to our group. The questions my group was prompted to answer are as follows: What happens when you try to remove half-dry paint? Does the tool & support change the effect? How can you make a color gradient using a single stroke?
Now, for the 1st question, we tried 2 different methods of removing half-dry paint, although we did speculate more options. At 1st, we used a pallet knife when the paint was drying up and did succeed at moving a little of the paint, but there was still resistance met from the drying paint and there was scratch marks around the canvas. The 2nd attempt was done with a dry brush, however, this time the paint was even more difficult to move and nearly impossible at this point, only a few marks are noticed. Some of the methods we speculated of doing but never actually got the chance to implement were to use a wet brush on the half dried paint to see if it could be re-hydrated and using medium to see if it would affect the paint and make it usable again. There was also the thought that maybe the different types and sizes of brushes could also affect the half-dried paint.
Next we tried to determine how to make a color gradient using a single stroke. There were some ideas being thrown around for a while until we decided on 2 different approaches, the 1st approach had us place the paint on the canvas and run a brush over it, mixing the paint and making a color gradient. There were a few failed attempts at this until we learned how to angle the brushes right. The 2nd approach we took was prepping the paint on the brush so that when we painted, we could easily angle the stroke however we wanted and create the gradient at our desired location and angle. This proved to be quite successful as well and did in fact make a color gradient from a single stroke.
