Last Saturday, we had our first Paint Night in over a year and a half.
When I heard we could do in-person programming again, I knew I had to find some paint brushes, dust off the easels, and make sure the paints had not dried up during the pandemic.
I chose an easy and adaptable painting project for our first post-pandemic paint night: a tropical sunset. This painting features a gradient background and a silhouette foreground with white highlights.
I use a gradient background in a lot of our Paint Night projects. For this look, you paint quickly, with a big brush, and blend the colors directly on the canvas board as you go.
The next step is to wait for the background paint to dry. It doesn’t take long, as we use acrylic paint.
Then, you can add your island and your palm trees and birds with black paint. Don’t like palm trees? Go off-book and paint your own scene.
When the black paint is dry, you add the white highlights.
And that’s it! You have a finished painting!
I think of this painting as our beginner class. It’s easy to adapt to any kind of theme and has some very popular techniques. It’s a great place to start to learn how to use acrylics.
I look forward to building on the techniques in Tropical Sunset in future in-person Paint Nights! See you then!
-Liz Strauss, Teen/Outreach Services Manager