Create Rainy Parisian Silhouettes in an Acrylic Chiaroscuro Painting Lesson for Beginners

Hello everyone!

I am sure most of you will be interested in the process of creating the silhouette paintings, drawings and pictures. Most commonly these are very interesting and delicate paintings. Today I would like to offer you the acrylic art lesson with some canvas painting techniques. In order to create the similar painting you should have either aquarelle or gouache. And you can use any of these: the sheet of the aged paper, the cardboard, the primed fibreboard and so on. Generally there are no tight restrictions due to the kind of materials. You can use this video even as the art painting lesson for children. However you should be quite careful creating the picture and think everything long and hard.

So the idea of our today’s art lesson is the creation of the silhouette painting. You can choose any silhouette picture that is interesting exactly for you (I will give the examples in the end of this publication). And I will paint the silhouette picture named «Rain in Paris».

In order to create the silhouette painting, you need a small set of paints. Sometimes even two contrasting colors are enough: White and Black; Brown and Naples Yellow; Light Blue and Dark Blue and so on. We will create not just a simple silhouette painting, but we will try to embellish it a bit using the decorative acrylic paints. There is one more bonus of our today’s work: it is not necessary for you to know how to paint the beautiful silhouettes – here you can use the stencil sheet. This means you can simply scissor the silhouette you’ve liked out from the printed sheet of paper and then transfer the cutout of this silhouette onto the canvas and paint it in the corresponding (chosen by you) color.

If you decide to follow me, you will need:

• Naples Yellow;
• Van-Dyke Brown;
• Black;
•  White;

decorative acrylic paints:

• gold;
• bronze;
• chameleon;
• graphikte

and:

• small canvas (25х35см)
• water,
• airbrush;
•  brushes (the big brush for the background and the thin round brush No 2­3 for the details are necessary);
• crumpled cellophane;
• wiper.

  

1. I decide to create the background color which would remind of something similar to the background of the old black-and-white photo or the sheet of the aged paper. I hope you`ve liked these art painting ideas. For this purpose I have mixed White + Naples Yellow + Van-Dyke Brown, splashed up the canvas with water and covered it with this background paint with the help of the big flat paint brush.

2. Then we should place the main items of our composition on the canvas. As I`ve already said, it can be done with the help of the stencil sheet or you can draw it by yourself with the help of brushes and graphite pencil. I`ve composed rather romantic picture: the silhouettes of the trees and the houses are far away and the silhouette of the Eifel Tower is showing up clearly at the skyline; the loving couple is on the foreground; and on top of that there are the trees banding the lovers with the leafs on both sides, the raindrops and the puddles of water.

3. After we have placed these items on the canvas, we can cover them in dark paint (of black or dark brown color) with the small brush. Paint over the silhouettes of the young couple, the trees and everything that is situated at the skyline.

4. Then take the crumpled piece of cellophane, dip it into the rare (diluted with water) black paint and draw the silhouettes of many leafs on the trees touching the canvas with this unusual «brush». And if you have some new painting art ideas, do not forget to share them with us.

5. In order to create the raindrops on the asphalt under the skyline in the bottom of the painting, we make the quick brush strokes of different paints (bronze, chameleon and graphite diluted with water). You can put a bit more dark paint under the people silhouettes – it will look like the reflection on the wet asphalt. Then carefully splash up this plane with water using the airbrush and immediately sponge it with dry clean wiper.

6. Finalize the silhouettes of the people and the trees, the silhouette placed on the skyline and the Eifel Tower with black paint using the thin brush.

7. Now you will learn to paint the downpour. Create the visibility of the downpour. For this purpose we need to thin down the paints: black, graphite and bronze; we also can add the gold one. And now we will use these rare mixes. Take the big round brush (the soft synthetic one or even the squirrel brush No 10­16) and dip it into the one of the rare paints so that the brush could absorb a lot of liquid. Then press this brush down the upside of the canvas and let the runback go – rare ant transparent. Do as much runback as you want. As I have mentioned before, you can make runbacks of several transparent shades. If some of the runbacks seem extremely expressive to you, you can reduce its intensity using the wiper. And if it seems to you extremely irrelevant, you can cover it with background paint.

8. One more time finalize all the silhouettes. Do it with the dark paints using the think brushes. Also you can garnish the silhouettes adding the brush strokes of decorative paints (gold, bronze, graphite). Perhaps you will need to use the crumpled cellophane for leafs one more time.

Examples image with  silhouette:

We can finish our work at this stage. I hope this beginning painting lesson was useful for you.

I wish you good luck and new success in your creative work!