PAINTING origami

A few acrylic painting tips:

Keep your brush water clean! Dirty water makes for dirty colours. It’s a good habit to get into that when you can’t see through the water anymore (it looks like cream soup) dump it out and get fresh water.
Keep the paint out of the ferrule and brushes clean
Keep a cloth handy to dry off the brush once it is cleaned. If there is water left in the brush the colours will be runny.
This stuff dries fast! Make sure to let an area dry completely before trying to paint over it again (if trying to correct a mistake). Acrylic dries from the top down and sometimes it will appear dry but when another layer is added the paint from underneath will “lift” causing a white area because the new paint is pulling up the half dry paint underneath. This also happens if an area is overworked too long before moving on.

Colour Scheme

you will be using a TRIADIC colour scheme to paint your portrait. refer to your paint experiments to select your favourite TERTIARY colour and then make a triadic scheme with the other two colours spaced equally around the colour wheel.

You can use tints and shades of those three colours

SOURCE IMAGE FOR PAINTING- select a photo from your origami creations used for the hands to eyes unit or create and photograph another origami piece

Origami painting

This will be painted on a 20x20cm piece of card.

prepare your surface by priming with gesso and doing a primer wash of either pale grey or sepia
select your colour scheme - you are to use a Triadic colour scheme. One colour for the background, one for the table and one for the origami [Tints and shades of each]
Use a large brush to paint in your background colour and tabletop colour [don't make it flat - if using purple mix the red and blue on the board to show texture and depth]
Tape a photocopy of your origami photo to the board (with transfer paper in between with graphite side facing down if using transfer paper) so it stays put while you transfer the image. lightly mark out your origami shapes and lines
Print a greyscale version of your photo to use while you paint, as a reference of where the correct values and transitions need to be. There should be smooth transitions of values and Crisp edges where the paper creases are.

Page updated

Report abuse