Gold: Panning and Painting with Acrylics

Painting with acrylics is a fabulous way to just dig in and create the kind of landscape textural effects you see on a hillside.  Bold Cobalt blue paired with golden glazes make the image stand out and shine.

1.  The first step was to gesso the canvas a couple times, then the third time was done rather thick with random brushes and papers to give even more roughness.

2.  I covered the entire canvas with a pale ocher wash and let it dry. This let me see what types of texture was easily visible.

3.  Once it dried,  I chose a quinacridone azo gold for the entire surface.    It is this yellow gold that you can still see.

4.  Next was a medium tone mix of the azo gold and quinacridone burnt sienna,  I just used a paper towel to rough it up from the bottom upwards halfway.      Coming back to to the base with a shade darker tone –  (remembering that the hill shape needs to be Light on top, mid tone in the middle and Darker at the base to anchor the shape.)

5.  Burnt Umber was applied in 3-4 areas to increase the illusion of dark tone.  The paint had gotten stuck on the cap…. so I peeled it off and stuck in onto the canvas!

6.  Sky  –  I came in with quite a flat, dense solid cobalt blue for the sky.  I used a brush that had stiff bristles to give just a whisper of texture.

7.  Last was a shimmer hint,  a see through glaze of gold paint which I  rubbed into the surface of the hill… then rapidly  wiped nearly all back off.

This acrylic painting is of Hill End, NSW Australia    where my family used to go to  do some gold fossicking in the Turon River and the Sofala area.      The gold paint glaze was in direct reference to our gold fossicking (hiking) along the river just in the shadows of the hills.

In 1851 gold was first discovered at Hill End and by 1870’s the population was at 10,000. There were 28 pubs, 1 kilometre of shops along the main street and an opium den!