A Study in Bark 1.

“Step one was a mess of paint mixed in to get a goopy brown base with a lot of texture forming. There was enough paint on the canvas for me to be able to take another small canvas and cover that as well with just like the excess (I’ll work on the smaller one at some point but it’s primed now).

Step two was a rough brush to get some deeper tones in a few choice places, again just for texture, this time something approximating grains.

Third step involved inventing a few techniques for myself using a calligraphy brush (!). So all the raised bits of acrylic texture got an ivory-white coat that I was absolutely not careful with. Didn’t matter because I was blending as I went. Just kept loading up the (pretty wet) c-brush with ivory and two brown tones to even it all out and blend appropriately.

Last step was a rough brush again, just to even out the blending with more grain, except this time the brush was quite wet. This is also when I went ahead and blended more ivory and lighter browns into the gappy areas to make it look more like natural bark.”

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