Acrylic Painting Lesson 10: Mixing tints and shades

The goal of the tenth lesson is to practice mixing tints and shades to give dimensional effect. Tints are when white is added. Shades are when black is added.

Hooray for painting 10! I took more pictures of this painting in progress so you can watch it blossom.

Do you feel like giving it a try? Join my painting challenge using the book Learn to Paint in Acrylics with 50 Small Paintings and let me know how it goes!

Subject Matter for Tints and Shades

The book used a red poppy, but we grow the orange kind. I had taken a photo in our garden in May, knowing that this painting was coming up.

Orange poppy blooming in our sunny garden in May

I did more than tints and shades. I also added red and yellow to vary the hue. I also used a smaller brush than the book, my favorite #5 round. I started like book in making an outline then aimed for the middle ground orange areas with cadmium orange hue paint. I added some cadmium red hue and did darker areas and then added some mars black paint for the darkest.

Then I mixed some titanium white, cadmium yellow, and cadmium orange for highlights. I needed to add more white for more contrast. The hardest thing for me was making the bold highlights because I like to blend. I did not do the final glaze step in the book. It was not necessary here due to my tendency to over-blend.

I hated the plain off white background in the book. I needed something more like my photo, but I did not want to waste time on individual blades of grass. I borrowed from my watercolor knowledge again, making a dark hazy background to highlight the main subject.

10 of 50 - Orange poppy 6/19/2018

Status: Not for sale yet

Overall, I am pleased with how it turned out. I expected it to take 1 hour like most of these little paintings, but with a few interruptions from the annoying observer (age 5) and taking progress photos, it ended up more like 2 hours. A late lunch again, why does this seem to happen when I paint?

On a personal level, I am still struggling with time management with the 5 year old wildcard. The reason I found time to paint today was that she was too cranky to do an activity together.

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