Posts Tagged: painting

New portrait delivered!

On June 12, 2018 by cherylmcalister With 0 Comments - Blog Post

The Kiss, Peggy and Bruce at Clearwater Beach, acrylic on canvas, 24" X 36"

The Kiss

I began this portrait back in December. It was delivered on June 5, 2018. My goal was to capture the love and comfortable friendship of our dear friends, Peggy and Bruce.

On the left you can see what the portrait looked like when I first began. I roughed the whole thing in as an underpainting in paynes grey. It was painted from a series of photographs that I took at Clearwater Beach, FL in the summer of 2016. I prefer to paint from life whenever possible, but most often people don't have the time or patience to sit for a portrait. Additionally, I try to reveal as much of the personality of my subjects as possible. Sometimes this means capturing them in their favorite places, as I did here. That day I took many shots of Peggy and Bruce, knowing they would be used for a portrait.

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Golden Open Acrylics

On January 9, 2017 by cherylmcalister With 0 Comments - Uncategorized

I love Golden Open Acrylics

As you can see from the above picture, I have a few paint brands mixed up in my box, but Golden is my favorite brand and their Open Acrylics are my favorite paints of all. I love them because their drying time is much slower. They feel like painting with oils.

Here are a few reasons why I love these paints:

  • The colors are beautiful.
  • They dry slowly.
  • You can use a palette knife with them if you want. I use one to move paint around on my palette or to scrape the canvas the way I would with oil paints.
  • Like all acrylics, Golden Open Acrylics don’t smell like anything, and they clean up with water.
  • You can cover your palette and the paints will still be wet the next day. They stay wet for a few days when they are covered. I use plastic wrap which sticks well to my glass palette.
  • This one is weird, but I like the caps Golden uses. They don’t get gunky and are easy to get on and off.
  • Another thing I like about Golden is their website. They have information pages and a newsletter that are excellent. Take a look at the page for Open Acrylics: https://www.goldenpaints.com/products/colors/open.

If you paint with acrylics I highly recommend Golden Open Acrylics. I painted with oils for many years, and I loved their “plasticity”, but I stopped using them because the solvents required are toxic and hard on septic systems. Golden Open Acrylics feel a lot like oils, but frankly, I like them better.

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