Striped Field in Acrylic | Jo Lillywhite

Jo Lillywhite is well known for painting vibrant acrylic landscape paintings with a strong sense of depth and perspective.

Materials

• Surface:
• Loxley canvas 18×24 inches
  
  
• Paint & Colour:
• Amsterdam Expert Series Acrylic:
• Sap Green
• Pyrrole Red
• Cadmium Orange
• Phthalo Turquoise Blue
• Titanium White
• Oxide Black
  
  
• Amsterdam Standard Series Acrylic:
• Primary Yellow
  
  
• Brushes:
• SAA Flat brush size 20
• SAA Filbert brush size 20
• Angular (1/2 inch)
• Liquitex paddle brush 2-inch
  
  
• Glazing medium:
• Winsor & Newton Matt Medium
  
  
• Plus:
• Stabilo Carbothello pastel pencil
• Ruler
• Palette knife
• old bank card

Shop Amsterdam Acrylic

Step 1

Start by simplifying the reference photo down to the sky, the trees on the horizon line and the stripes of the foreground. You don’t need to keep every detail from the photo. The emphasis of this painting is the vertical stripes, so we want to maximise the space for these.

Step 2

A good rule of thumb is to use the rule of thirds, but allow for some flexibility if it enhances the finished result. This technique divides the canvas into a grid of nine squares by drawing a grid of two horizontal lines and two vertical lines. The focal points should be along the intersections of these lines. The focal point of this painting is on the horizon, where the lines converge in the distance on the right-hand side. The stripes lead the viewer’s eye up from the bottom of the painting to the distant horizon, which is visually appealing and accentuates depth and perspective. Using a pastel pencil and a long ruler, draw out the grid on the canvas. Divide the width of the canvas by three and mark in the vertical lines. Now, do the horizontal lines. Draw in a line one-third from the bottom of the canvas. For the top line, measure where a third would be from the top of the canvas and make some small marks. Draw a line about an inch above that.

TIP

• Use a pastel pencil for your sketch. Pastel will blend into the paint more easily than graphite marks, which will grey the paint. You can erase pastel pencil by wetting some kitchen towel if you want to play around with your composition

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Step 3

At this stage, it’s useful to sketch out a few lines of perspective for the stripes. This painting uses a single vanishing point on the horizon, where the focal point is. All the lines radiate out from that one spot. The stripes are wider at the bottom of the painting than at the top, which gives the depth. Draw a few stripes in with the pastel pencil and check that the sketch reads well.