Painting the Pileated Woodpecker in Acrylic (5)

Expanding Your Artistic Horizons Series

Painting Session 5
Date: 05/06/2017
Subject: Pileated Woodpecker
Medium: Acrylic on Paper
Links to Prior Sessions: Session 1 - 3, Session 4

I spent all of the time in painting session 5, working on the leaves of the tree. Like the previous painting session, I had trouble getting any of the paint to blend. So I am having trouble getting the darks and highlights in the leaves as I can in Oil.  I tried dry brushing, adding retarder along with various amounts of water to achieve the effect I wanted. Still, it did not work to my satisfaction. Because of the blending issue, I found myself painting the same leaves multiple times and ending this session not satisfied with the way the leaves look. I still did not get out to get any medium that I hope would help the blending issue. I did not have any problem with the paint beading up, so not sure what caused it in session 4. All of the issues I am having seem to be related to the drying time of Acrylics. I also decided to paint a blue sky in the background. I got it too blue, so will need to repaint, I tried during this session but got the paper too wet and the brush started to rough up the paper. In session 5, I will continue to work on the leaves and sky.