After a long break of 30 years, I have embarked on an adventurous journey back to traditional painting with acrylics, and I'm thrilled to share it with you all! I've spent most of my recent years digitally painting, a process that I've grown comfortable with, and I won't deny that I've missed the 'Undo' button a few times while working on my traditional canvas! But, the challenge is what makes it exciting, isn't it? One reason I chose acrylics is due to their remarkable similarity to the painting process in Photoshop. With acrylics, I've been able to manipulate the opacity or translucency of the paint, building my art piece layer by layer, just like I would digitally. This painting, in particular, has been a dance between the background, midground, and foreground - something that digital painting has trained me well in envisioning. Another aspect that both acrylics and digital painting share is the flexibility to change brush sizes. In this work, though, I've primarily used around four different brushes, with one just to add water to the canvas. Why, you may ask? Well, my goal with this painting was to capture broad, sweeping shapes, focusing more on the larger picture rather than delving too deeply into the finer details from the get-go. I tend to stay with a medium brush size relative to the canvas size, saving the detailing for the very end.
