Learn How to Paint with Chris Vidal

Fire and Water - Abstract painting

Acrylic colors used (Atelier and Matisse): 

Alizarin red, cadmium red medium, phtalo blue, ultramarine blue, Naple's yellow, cadmium yellow medium, titanium white 

Brushes:

A normal 2 inch house painting brush, brushes used to apply gesso, a painting knife

Methodology:

This was a very simple abstract I did recently on stretched canvas. I started by placing directly on the canvas ultramarine blue, alizarin and Naple's yellow. Using a 3 different brushes (one for each color) I started spreading the three colors on the canvas mainly at three distinct areas, blue at the bottom right corner, red the upper left and yellow the central to upper right corner. Carefully I started blending the colors together to create the secondaries i.e. green, purple and orange, leaving some areas of pure primary color. I left the colors to dry for couple of minutes  and then I started applying cad red, cad yellow and phtalo blue onto the previous layer using bold brush strokes and applying circling motion depending on how I was seeing the colors developing. I left untouched brush strokes that looked good to the eye or any secondary or tertiary colours that appeared by co-incidence. 

To finish off the painting I took a piece of tissue and placed it in titanium white and I applied it to some areas as a highlight. Using a painting knife I mixed blue, yellow and white and  I applied vertical strokes to the right bottom corner to look like reflections of color.