Acrylic Painting

In the beginning of January I began taking an acrylic painting class with instructor Kelley MacDonald at the Providence Art Club. One of our first exercises was to take our subject and paint it first in black and white, second in black white and one mid gray and third in black, white and all shades of gray. It is a great learning exercise to help me become familiar with my subject before I paint it in color. I had to really think about simplifying the subject into first only two values, then three and then all values and I spent several hours on the exercises. The lesson plan helped me learn more about the different values in the turtle's shell before I took into consideration all of the colors.

My finished turtle painting is on 8x8" canvas.