Nature paintings with acrylics -Jackie Garner - Wildlife Artist

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Wildlife art gallery - acrylics page

The majority of my wildlife art involves painting with acrylics. Acrylics are my first choice for my paintings when I’m in the studio, though I tend to use watercolours and pencil for sketching nature outdoors as the equipment is much more portable. Painting with acrylics enables the wildlife artist to use different techniques, from thick textures to thin glazes.

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Home to Roost Prints available

Stubble and Snipe Original £960	Hold your mouse over the small pictures for a larger version

Sunlight & Shadow Prints available	Avocet Prints available	Ringed Plover Original £580	Heading Home Prints available
Painting with acrylics - techniques Acrylics are versatile, vibrant and robust, and as they are water-based there are no smelly solvents involved. The quick drying time and permanence of acrylics means I can paint over the underlying layers to modify areas of my wildlife pictures. I prefer Liquitex Heavy Body paints as they are thick enough to give texture but can be thinned down for glazes. I use synthetic, square-edged brushes for most of my acrylic paintings, though I’m starting to use filbert-shaped brushes to give more variety of brush marks. When painting with acrylics my choice of colours varies from one painting to another, but I usually keep to a limited palette of six or seven colours.

The Eye of the Beholder

Sika Encounter Original £1,900	Hold your mouse over the small pictures for a larger version

Golden-ringed Dragonfly Original £770	Carolina Wood Duck Original £460 Cards available	Dyptich: Winter Visitors (Fieldfares and Redwings) Original £880 the pair	Gull-billed Tern Original £360 Cards available
I often start an acrylic painting in a really abstract way, by covering a primed board with paint using painting knife, sponge, fingers and (just occasionally) brushes. Then I add in the species and continually refine the image until I’m happy with it. I much prefer this “evolution” method as there’s more creative decision making involved, more freedom and hopefully a more interesting result. Several paintings in my wildlife art gallery used this method – Stubble and Snipe, Flitting Through, Winter Visitors, Little Crake, Sika Encounter, Sunlight and Shadow – mostly the paintings that explore the species’ relationship with their habitat. You can see how a wildlife painting in acrylics evolves on my blog post http://garnerwildlifeart.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/sunlight-and-shadow/

Little Crake

Flitting Through Prints available	Hold your mouse over the small pictures for a larger version

Slimbridge Smew Cards available	Mandarin Duck Cards available	Purple Gallinule	Red Kite Original £780 Prints available

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Painting with acrylics - techniques