Rediscovering acrylic painting

Delving back into traditional painting

You might be surprised to hear that I never painted on canvas. The last time I seriously dabbled in acrylic was back in college, 24 years ago.

I’ve decided to share my experience with you.

I’ll be attending the Montréal’s comic art festival in May and I’ve been thinking that a big picture of one the characters might create some interest and bring people to my stand.

First off was choosing the subject. Before embarking on a big project, it’s always good to review options. I took a look at the most popular illustration on my Instagram and after consideration, I chose this drawing that was made last year after the festival. It gathered a lot of positive feedback so I thought it would be a good choice. My daughter taught there was too much details. I felt that compared to others it wasn’t that much.

My first thought was to use cheap cardboard to make a really big piece of art. I tried painting a cardboard white, but it looked really cheap. If I’m going to spend a serious amount of hours on a piece, might as well get a good base.

So I went to the art store thinking I’d buy the biggest foam core or coroplast and use that. That’s when I found out that canvas was not that much more expensive, and they look a whole lot better. I chose the second biggest one. It was still pretty big and I thought I might have a better chance to sell it if it wasn’t too big.

Note that they had wood panels for a similar price. That’s an interesting option with a much smoother finish. Although I would have to give it a primer first. I might try that for a future project. I don’t specially like the texture of canvas, but sometimes it’s nice to try things.

First off, I wanted to decide on the colours. It’s much easier to edit on a computer so I redrew the art, mostly tracing it, and coloured it.

Using a grid, I reproduced the drawing on the canvas.

The canvas texture makes it really hard to apply paint. Having to go over multiple times. Yellow pigments are really annoying, until I found out that you could add some white to your yellow paint to make it thick enough to cover construction lines. Basically, you can’t have any construction lines below yellow. So try to erase as much as possible (ideally) or paint them white. You might have noticed that I changed the helmet a bit to make it face the viewer. That’s the first “big” change I did.

At this point I realized that I made another error with his arm and so I redrew it. That’s not great. Sketching on canvas is not too hard, but ideally try not to erase at all if you can. Preparation pays off. And NEVER use a white eraser. It will smudge and make the graphite penetrate the gesso. Surprisingly a soft eraser, like the grey soft ones used for charcoal, work a lot better. Quick tip on that: If yours is super dry like mine was, it can be rehydrated by massaging in with water.

I started applying the fluorescent green which had the same issue has the yellow. You need a pure white undercoat or do a first coat of the paint with some white in it. That’s a pretty cool colour and really flashes.

Somebody then made me realize the perspective was completely wrong on the engines. So I went back on the computer and made adjustments there.

Still not perfect I’m sure, but it looks better. It looked really obvious once I added the construction lines. It slipped by me since the original drawing was made directly on a bristol board, I’m usually a bit looser when I draw traditionally. I’m much stricter with myself when I work on computer. Making/erasing correction layers is so easy after all.

Here’s how it looked after the fix:

Line work added, I was thinking of using china ink. It works ok if it’s the last thing you do, but it will smudge easily if paint touches it. I’m not sure how varnish would affect this. I ended up using acrylic ink, works great. I was not looking for something opaque. If you are it might not work for you. Even if they claim it’s opaque, it’s not really opaque. Brands may vary, but Liquitex certainly aren’t opaque.

And here’s the final product. I coated the character with a matte varnish and the helmet with a high gloss varnish. It’s a lot more obvious in person. The varnish really helps bind everything together. Without it the ink shines and distracts from the art.

I also changed the color of the sword, it makes it much more outstanding. I like the match between the helmet, sword and sky.

This painting will be up for grabs at the Montreal comics art festival May 26-29. I thinking of doing a silent auction there.

Thanks for being with me on this journey, I’d be happy to answer any questions!

-Manu