Video: How to Paint Backgrounds

The right background can add interest and depth to a figure painting and our expert is here to show you how in this free video art lesson on painting the human body.

Video Transcript

Hi I am David Clemen on behalf of Expert Village and today we are going to paint with acrylics the female figure. Okay now we are going to fill this background in and it seems that it is actually just black but it has a blue tone to it. Mostly the blue is on that side and this is like a dark, not a navy, well I guess you could say navy blue. I am going to use this blue here and I am going to get one of my bigger brushes and I am going to wipe the water off on my jeans because it is going to be too much water. I am going to take the blue and mix this in and I am going to go on this side first and with the style that I have been using so far I can just kind of fill this in and it can be very loose because everything else has been very loose and suggestive. Actually you can do some pretty cool things with the background and give it a lot of texture and if you just kind of bounce the brush around it will give you an interesting background anyway. This is kind of a 20's feel with velvet walls and things like that and then for the other side you can go even darker and mix in the blues sporadically and all of a sudden the painting is really starting to come to life and she is starting to come out of there as well and see when you get to this side the hair will almost disappear into the background so you don't really know where the background begins and vice versa. Okay and that's my neighbor honking his horn which is like a celebration beep because the painting is almost complete. Just be careful around the edges of your figure you don't want to get on the wrong side of that because then it will look like you just kind of painted over it and it is almost like you want to trace it. Now this side you can get a little nutty with. You don't want the background to eat up the hat either. When you get into these really tight areas just give it a slow roll and you have to kind of feel the curves of the body with the brush and then kind of blend it back in and there is your finished 1920's photo.

How to Paint Backgrounds

Comments

Related Ads

Related Articles & Videos