31 May 2013Mont Marte Blog
Paint

Create a koi pond acrylic painting

How To Paint A Koi PondStep 1: Creating the under painting One of the things about this project is to create a sense of depth. To convey this, give the canvas a coat of Cadmium yellow. Let this coat thoroughly dry and lay a coat of Yellow Metallic silver Series Acrylic over the entire surface. Use the 75 mm Taklon brush to lay on these colours. Step 2: Glazing the top coat Once the under painting is dry, cover the entire canvas with a layer of gloss medium, let this dry. Then create a mix from I part Phthalo Blue to 4 parts Gloss medium. Paint this over the canvas thinning it out as we move the canvas, let this dry and repeat this with another coat. Step 3: Creating the stencils Print out the last page of this PDF and carefully cut out each Koi with a hobby knife. The size of the fish print will depend on the size of the canvas being painted. Once you have the Koi cut out, put them aside because we will need these later to use as templates to create the shadows cast from our fish. Step 4: Undercoating the fish Create a mix from 1 part Acrylic Medium Gloss to 1 part Chinese White. Gently paint this mixture over the stencil with a 25 mm Mont Marte foam roller. Start from the bottom and work your way up the canvas. Feel free to flip the stencil over if you want a fish swimming in the other direction. Step 6: Stencil placement A word about the placement of each fish. A large part of this painting working is that the fish must appear to have a natural flow. This can be achieved by one not placing the fish in a balanced formation. Try to make the placement ‘unsymmetrical’. Feel free to use more fish or less fish on your project.


Step 5: Starting the fish If you refer to the PDF you will notice there is 6 different types. It is up to the artist to decide to put what fish where. Whatever type of Koi you choose to use, the steps are the same in their creation. Baring this in mind lay down the base colour. In this case yellow. Step 6: Building up the colour Over the yellow lay in a thin coat of Orange. Let the underlying yellow coat show through. This adds more of a sense of depth to the colour. You can mix some Acrylic medium in to the Orange to make it more translucent. That way the yellow will really show through. Step 7: Creating a sense of volume In this step we need to create a sense of volume. To do this use a darker colour but in the same family on the shadow side, and a lighter colour on the opposing side. In this case because the body colour is Orange I use Red on the dark side and yellow on the light side. Step 8: Adding the highlights Now our fish has shape we can reinforce this even more by placing in White areas. These areas are called highlights and it occurs when the light reflects off the high points of the subject. Areas along the backbone and edge of the fins. Step 9: Adding shadow The next step is to refine the shape with hard shadow. Mix a spot of Black with some Gloss medium and glaze it over side of the fish so the side opposing the light source. Step 10: Detailing I little white spots and flecks of colour here and there to add interest. Well done. Well I hope you enjoy this project and....... Step 6: Stencil placement A word about the placement of each fish. A large part of this painting working is that the fish must appear to have a natural flow. This can be achieved by one not placing the fish in a balanced formation. Try to make the placement ‘unsymmetrical’. Feel free to use more fish or less fish on your project.

Material List

  • Acrylic Medium Premium - Gloss 135ml (4.6oz)
  • Studio Foam Roller Discovery 25mm
  • Gallery Series Brush Set Acrylic 4pce

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