Pls critique my acrylic painting

>>7632653 (OP)
it looks like a bad underpainting. do 2 more layers and report back.

>>7632656
Does this means add more high lights and shadows ??

>>7632653 (OP)
Looks good saving the coast part. It doesn't work at all. I wouldn't know how to fix that.

>>7632653 (OP)
Make the water bluer, use a smaller brush to add details to what I’m assuming is a sand dune, define the shapes better and focus on water highlights
The values look similar, try taking a photo every one in a while and making it black and white to check the values. Good luck

I was about to post my acrylic work since I thought this was some type of Acrylic General but now, I realize this is just one self-absorbed prick who wants his own thread and get all the spotlight for himself.

OP here
Ok I just whipped this up in the past hour
Pls critique it

>>7632708
My paint and brush just doesnt fucken work to make small details IDK what im doing wrong
Basically the paint is too watery OR the brush tip is too fat.

>>7632741
Here is the reference haha
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tBEOM09bQw

>>7632653 (OP)

needs depth and contrast. darkening the water on the horizon and the shadows under the shrubs would work. the water could also use more ripples as you seem to be trying to imply motion with the sea foam.

>>7632653 (OP)
Lrn2perspective

>>7632836
Contrast and saturation is something i suck with, can see mine >>7632741 vs the reference >>7632746
Think i rely too much on white to brighten and black to darken

Yo, just keep painting, keep going until you fuck it up and then go again, cant handle detail ? Go bigger, paint is strange cheap consistency ? Add some things to it . Experiment, play, get mad, get sad, love it, hate it, enjoy it . Just keep going.

Good luck !

>>7632741
A simple critique, but your clouds here look like a splash of water - they need to be softened up a bit, or something.

>>7633130
I follow every tutorial on clouds and i can't for the life of me get it working.
Basically the "paradox" is
>background of sky must be a bit wet so you can blend the cloud and create soft edges
>when i apply white paint, it blends into the background which means the highlights turn really dull and mushy
Every video i watch simultaneously creates a puffy looking cloud but also with sharp highlights
>>7633140
OMG if i could paint a person that would complete it

>>7633308
OR the cloud just ends up looking like a blob or worse, like a mountain floating in the sky.
I can't get the wispy, puffy effect

>>7633112
>Go bigger,
Thats exactly what i did lol, I bought a 24x36 inch canvas
>paint is a strange cheap consistency
I'm buying from liquitex which i heard is pretty reliable.
There's got to be something wrong in my technique.
The problem is like one cheap part, either the brush, paint, or canvas, and boom you can't replicate anything you see on youtube.
Not trying to excuse lack of skill, just being real.

>>7633312
how much paint are u using and what brush? Also with acrylics I guess u need to use something to keep it thick while also make it fluid.
>>7633308
the figure doesnt have to be detailed.

>>7633387
So should I use some sort of medium?
I also guess i need to wait for the background sky to dry, but not completely. This way bright white paint can be applied without mushiness, but also some soft edges can be created

>>7633399
probably. but i never use acrylics so not sure. Shouldnt it be easier to create a range of tonal values for the clouds and apply those?

>>7633387
Are these clouds convincing? If not, what is the problem with them?
The bottom clouds are supposed to appear farther away. I suppose i should have a lighter color near the horizon for the sky.
I'm not sure if i chose the right colors. The cloud shouldn't just be grayscale, but it also shouldnt be the same color as the sky.

>>7633497
Here is the reference

>>7633497
And although clouds don't have a defined shape, I'm not sure if the shape is convincing.

>>7633497
I think my clouds need a sort of flat bottom

>>7633497
probably you need to define the clouds closer to us a bit more and also amke the udnerside dark while the ones further back can appear a bit more vague. u could make the clouds a little warmer by adding a tiny amount of red-yellow-brown with the white. Check paintings of ancient (sea)battles with dramatic clouds. Or for example this guy:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_van_Ruisdael. Also clouds by John constable.

>>7633547
dunno if it needs to be flat but making the bottom dark helps I think.
Idk all the different types of clouds though

>>7633547

>>7632653 (OP)

Hey OP, I want to comment because I began my acrylics on canvas journey about a year and a half ago and see myself in your work. I think I'm somewhere in the beg-int region, maybe, on a good day.

1. Perspective, as others have mentioned. Just aligning everything correctly is half the work needed to make something look good and correct. I improved by drawing on thin, bleed-proof designer type paper with B pencils and then retracing and redrawing on a new sheet with lighter/HB/H pencils, potentially over several copies until I really got a feel for things. Also learned to draw people this way.

2. Acrylics on canvas isn't just acrylics *on* canvas. I feel the medium is best when it is rough, heavy, or layered. If you have some cash to spare I can genuinely recommend you buy bigger, if not big, canvases (pre-framed or raw cloth, I've done both) and really go physically hard at it over many layers. Some thin, some thick. Some wet (yes, really wet, work it in), some straight from the tube. Potentially use brushes from the hardware store to work it in and go over it a thousand times. The attached pic is maybe just 20cm across but it was done in 4 or 5 sessions iirc. Learn to use the transparency of wet acrylics and the opacity of tube acrylics. And if you can let the canvas give the piece texture, then you can make nice things.

>>7633754
Thanks for the advice. Yes i have LOADS of money which is why i am getting into this hobby. I've heard exactly what you said, like acrylics is all about constant layering, whereas oil is about being extremely particular with how one paint sits on top of another.

Currently I'm trying to make sure I have the right materials. I'm also kind of lazy with maintaining good brushes with the clean up process so I end up just buying new ones every now and then.

I'm not cheap but sometimes I just don't know what to buy. Like paint, canvases, brushes, etc.

I do see on youtube people making similar acrylic paint art in <15 mins, on a similar sized canvas though. I want to get to that level. Feel like if i get a big canvas and paint bigger, i'm kind of cheating.

Is there any fundamental difference between painting close up still life versus landscapes? I'm more interested in landscapes, and based on what I've seen, yes color, value, etc. is all important, but there's more of a "formula" to it. For example I've seen online that people don't look for exact shapes in clouds or leaves and paint the values accordingly, there's just one or two brush strokes to do that will get the desired effect.

>>7633754
Also any examples of recent art, want to see how you turned out LOL

>>7633923
Is this how you interact with people irl also or being a dipshit is just an internet persona

>>7633786
Your point about acrylics vs oil seems about right, but you can also treat acrylics more like oil with heavy, thick strokes straight from the tube and mixing colors on the canvas, though I don't do that much. I prefer keeping each "group" of colors (depending on what I'm painting blahblahblah) in a little tin can with a lid that I can seal off and re-access and mix as needed. (I use Amsterdam standard 250ml acrylics).

I think you should keep in mind about what you're doing: are you looking to improve your abilities to create good pieces in the future? are you exploring what you enjoy making? are you trying to create solid pieces now? My last year and a half was specifically focused on making pieces I liked in the moment but not for show or sale, but to improve my ability and move on. Looking back, I hate some of my old pieces and I think that's a good sign. I'm investing the money and materials in myself with my explorations over different canvas sizes and subject matters. If you're trying to make specific good pieces, don't be afraid to go over them again and again. Acrylics can be very opaque and you can totally redo a whole area of a painting. My biggest breakthrough was to not be afraid of "ruining" something. Progress is a forward process. You can only move forward by moving. Keep moving.

In the attached pic, I went over the back layer maybe five times. The front grass was mooostly in one sitting. Just for reference. If I were to redo it now, I'd take more time with the front grass to give it more granularity as it feels too blotchy and heavy relative to the finer background.

>>7633928
ooo le epic anonymous board user wants to put others down and be an ass. fuck off.

>>7634549
>are you looking to improve your abilities to create good pieces in the future?
Yes for sure. I'm not trying to make "impressionistic" art or whatever, I really want as much realism as I could reasonably hope to achieve.
>are you exploring what you enjoy making?
No I'm pretty set on wanting to paint landscapes with acrylics. Not into still life, painting people/animals, or using any other medium.
So I kind of know what skills I need to learn: clouds, trees, creating distance, light rays, shadows and highlights on landscapes, water, reflections, details like flowers, grass blades, mountains, etc. I kind of know the puzzle pieces, and each one can be improved upon.
>are you trying to create solid pieces now?
Well ideally I should practice the individual components I mention above over and, but I only have so many canvases and so much time, so I always try to create a wholistic piece of art every time.
But no, I definitely need to improve a lot more.
This guy's channel is my goal basically: https://www.youtube.com/@Joonyart/videos, this is exactly the subject that I'm into painting, the sort of resolution or detail that I want to show in my paintings, and on a canvas that's about the size that I like to paint on.
I currently paint on 8"x10" canvases, so kind of small, and I'm fine with that for now, but eventually I want to move onto larger canvases (I've ordered 16"x20" canvases, and I won't touch them for a while probably). Something I could hang up on the wall or confidently show others. My goal isn't to sell though.
>My biggest breakthrough was to not be afraid of "ruining" something.
Well I don't know if i have a good enough perception of color to be able to take an old piece, create the EXACT color palette i used maybe months ago to resume painting. If I get the blue for the sky slightly too dark, then yeah I feel like i have done nothing more than just ruined the piece, just better to start over.

>>7634905
I think you're on a good path, particularly because you're willing to invest time and material into the art, and that you know what you want.

>So I kind of know what skills I need to learn
It's a good list but you mostly mentioned "things". Keep more general skills in mind too, like perspective and composition, which I believe can be more effectively learned with pencil and paper. Don't brush off other mediums and methods, really! I hop between acrylics, pencils, and digital and learn different skills in each that I can apply to the others.

>Well I don't know if i have a good enough perception of color to be able to take an old piece, create the EXACT color palette i used maybe months ago to resume painting.
I mean also within one session. Don't be afraid to redo half the painting if something doesn't look right or you worked yourself into a corner thinking "that's good enough" along the way. (Though I varnish and then don't retouch my paintings either once they're done. I finish it, learn what I can from it, and move on.)

I'm not too sure what else I can say or help you with. I can really only give encouragement. I like what you've posted so far and can see how you're going after the Joony kind of style. Based on the two videos I watched (one with the Venetian sunset, another with a river and forest), he's VERY good with controlling his brush and paint thickness, and I'd wager he also has a test canvas off camera to test the colors and motions before trying it on the actual piece. And he's very good at perspective. It's all skills you gotta build with time.

>>7634989
I guess a more specific question i have is, how do they (every good artist on youtube) manage make a little amount of paint last so much?
Is it high quality paint or the palette?
What I mean by that is, they seem to just squeeze out a small amount of blue and white, create a really small mix, and they're somehow able to paint an entire sky with it.
The issue i'm having is that I have to keep remixing the same color over and over because i keep running out.
Basically my "palette" is a piece of parchment paper and a lot of paint just sticks to it. Is a glass palette better?

I feel like I dip my brush in paint, and I do two brush strokes and then I'm all out, but this isn't a problem for others. Maybe they also mix their paint with a gel medium to make it go farther.

>>7632659
Not OP, but I recently saw Fabian Perez
"In 2014, Perez was presented with the ATIM Masters Award as "master of the year" by the ArtTour International magazine"
And to be honest I didn't think his work was all that A level+
What I did see was the ground/Underpainting - parts of it had (for want of a better word) rhythm
Yours looks a bit flat?

>>7635287
I genuinely don't know, I've noticed that too. Maybe the expensive stuff, like Amsterdam Professional, goes further. But maybe it's video trickery with how the videos are cut and the palette they show is only part of the paint they use. The videos never show you everything. I'm certain many of the paintings are also made with photo references and pre-drawings that they don't show. The Venetian video I mentioned certainly was.