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Acrylic Trompe L’Oeil Painting
[269]

$30.00USD

$6 off 2 or more Acrylic Painting classes with coupon code PAINTING

Course Description

Trompe L'Oeil literally means to trick the eye. You've probably seen the paintings on sides of buildings and on sidewalks that look so three dimensional that you avoid stepping on them or you turn to go into a door that isn't there. The illusions are created mainly by two things, shadow and perspective. This class will give you simple lessons in both to spark your imagination into creating your own pieces. There is no limit what you can use these techniques on, paint furniture on walls, paint doors that aren't there, hallways, curtains over doorways, cabinets, children's murals or get really brave and paint murals on your walls. You can also use these techniques in simpler form in your own paintings, making certain things or areas stand out, or paint small presents or accents on furniture.

Although this course is geared toward traditional paint on canvas lessons, digital artists are welcome. Some of our students have created beautiful digital paintings from the lessons. Digital students MUST know their program, as no help other than painting technique can be given.

Photos are provided for reference, and are for suggestion only and don't have to be followed to the letter. This is all about teaching you what you want to put into your painting. You might want to add something, combine two or more photos, subtract something, or move something. Artists are basically illusionists. Don't worry about perfection; paint what you see, what you want the person looking at it to see. When you paint, put yourself into the painting. If you can put yourself into your painting, the energy will be put into the painting along with the paint you put on the canvas and the people looking at it will "feel" the painting too. Some of the most beautiful paintings are masterpieces but are "dead"; when you look at them you feel nothing. Others, maybe very simple art and yet you may be drawn to it and get a warm, fuzzy feeling when you look at it; it's all about putting the energy into the painting as you do it.

Patterns are provided for you to trace onto the painting background you wish to use. Easy to follow guidelines begin with tracing the pattern and guide you progressively through each step to the complete painting. The patterns are in pieces and depending on how your printer prints, you will probably cut a little of the white space off the sides and tape them together. The patterns are sized to either the practice pad which is 12 x 16 canvas pad and 3 18 x 24 canvas.

Online art supply:
The following are places that I deal with and have had very good results. The prices are good, service is great and shipping is fast. These are by no means the ONLY online art supply stores and neither I or LVS can guarantee any transactions with these companies.

Blick Art Materials Large selection of art supplies.

This is a 6 week, self-paced, online course. If you need additional help understanding the material presented, you can communicate with the instructor and fellow classmates. The instructor will monitor and track your progress throughout the class. LVS Online offers many wonderful learning tools to help you get the most out of your online course, including an online portfolio service that manages all your course registrations, certificate of completion option, a class discussion board to interact with your instructor and fellow classmates, free hosting account, and a student upload area.

LVS is a Corel Training Partner. LVS students may purchase Corel products at a significant savings. Follow this link for details.

LVS students are eligible to receive software and hardware at a discount. Follow this link for details.

Students are also eligible take advantage of special offers made available specifically for LVS by famous software developers such as Andromeda, AV Bros, Extensis, Harry Heim, namesuppressed, Nik Multimedia, and Ulead. Details are provided in the classinfo link found in the confirmation of registration.

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If you would like to receive more information regarding this course, click on the "Contact Us" link in the Information section and we'll try to answer any of your questions within the day.

Course Requirements

Supplies: I am providing a list of supplies that you will need. You can probably get them from your local art supply store but I will give you online links to art supply sites that I have been happy with.

What to paint on? You can use stretched canvas, canvas boards or even if you want to start out very inexpensively canvas paper pads. You will need a 12 x 16 canvas pad and 3 18 x 24 canvas.
Brushes:
- Round brushes..#3, #6, #4
- Flat with good sharp edge, #10, #6 #3
- Liner and detail brushes…one VERY fine small detail brush
- Foliage brush which is a stiff bristle brush that is round on the end. A stencil brush works well too. Other stiff bristle brushes will come in handy.
- For acrylic work, you can use natural or synthetic bristles, but the natural bristles do not hold up as well with acrylic paint.
- Sponge
- Palette knife
- Ruler
- Blending Gel
You will also need transfer (tracing paper) to put the patterns on whatever you've chosen to paint on. You can use regular carbon but it makes a horrible mess. Art stores have artist transfer paper in many colors, and you will need a dark and a light color for this class.
A cheap plastic palette is nice. You can just scrape off the dried paint but in a pinch just use some wax paper.
If you plan on keeping your artwork or hanging it you should have a varnish fixative. I personally like Grumbacher or Blair spray varnish for acrylics. It comes in matte or gloss. Both are excellent and make the colors very vibrant.

Now for paint. There is a big controversy that you must use the top quality, most expensive paint on the market. Well, that's nice but, just starting out you don't need to spend a lot of money. The cheapest paint I have found is not worth buying. It's hard to work with and the colors are not so bright and vivid. Personally, I like Folk Art (they also have artist's quality pigments), Americana, Ceramcoat. I will give you a list of the paint that I used to create these lessons. You do not need to use these exact colors. If you want to try to conserve and just want to buy one green and dilute it with white to make the medium and light colors, that's fine too, but here's what you'll need to complete these paintings.

White
Black
Light Gray
Medium Gray
Charcoal
Blues:
- Light Blue (Ceramcoat Blue Heaven) (Baby Blue)
- Medium Blue (Ceramcoat Tahiti Blue
- Dark Blue (Americana Victorian Blue)
- Ultramarine Blue
- Aqua (Ceramcoat Laguna Blue)
- Turquoise
Greens:
- Dark green (Ceramcoat Dk Foliage Green)
- Yellow Green
- Darkest Green (Black Green)
- Hooker's Green

Browns:
- Medium Brown (Americana Sable brown)
- Folk Art Butter Pecan
- Ceramcoat Spice Tan
- Terra Cotta
- Raw Umber
- Raw Sienna
- Burnt Umber
- Dark Burnt Umber
- Beige (Folk Art Linen, Folk Art Parchment)
- Darker Beige (Ceramcoat Bambi)
Yellow
Antique Gold (Ceramcoat Antique Gold)
Bright Red
Dark Red
Burnt Carmine, Americana Antique Maroon, Americana Cranberry Wine
Alizarin Crimson
Maroon (Americana Antique Maroon)
Dioxazine Purple
Lavender
Pink

There will be Zip files provided to complete many of the weekly exercises. WinZip, PKZip, Windows Compression or a similar program is required to unzip these files.

Winzip Tutorial Here
Windows Compression

Students must have a working knowledge of their operating system, especially:

How to create and name new folders
How to locate files
How to open and save files

Here are a few free tutorials available at LVS which may be helpful to you:

PC Users:

Free Windows Class
Directory Structure Tutorial

Mac Users:

Basic Computer File Systems Tutorial (Mac)

Homework must be reviewed by the instructor in order to earn a certificate. Students have the option of using either the Student Upload Area or free web hosting made available for LVS students. Details are provided in the classroom. If you prefer to use your own web space, you must know how to upload your files to a server. Free tutorials are available:

Basic HTML Page
WS_FTP
SmartFTP

These tutorials will show you how to crop and resize images that you want to place on your homework pages:

Resize Images for the Web using Irfanview, a Freeware program

*Mac* Resize Images for the Web using Goldberg 2.3, a Freeware program

All lessons are available in PDF format. Adobe Acrobat Reader is required to view/print the lessons.

Plan to devote 3 - 4 hours per week on the lesson and assignment.

Course Prerequisites

None

Course Syllabus

Lesson 1 - Stone Walls How to paint realistic stone and marble walls	Lesson 2 - Door and Drape Paneled door with drape
Lesson 3 - Niche Full painting of marble walls, recessed niche with fruit and flowers	Lesson 4 - Louvered Windows First lesson in perspective doing a pair of louvered windows and sill
Lesson 5 - Window and Beach Full painting of a lovely beach scene looking through louvered windows	Lesson 6 - Single Glass Paned Window Oriental teahouse as seen thru a single glass paned window, teaching another aspect of perspective

Course Excerpt

LESSON 1

Step 1:

Divide a piece of your practice pad paper into 4 horizontal rows.

If you were painting a wall mural, use the following to know how big to make the blocks: a block is approximately 17 x 12 inches. To figure how big to paint your blocks to fit your space, divide the length of your wall by 17 (size of your painted block's length) and the height of the wall by 12( size of your painted block's width). Round the length to the nearest half or whole, but round the height to the nearest whole number.

For our purposes, since we're practicing divide the top row into 3 equal spaces. The second row, draw a vertical line at half the width of the one above it. Use the ruler and make sure the lines are straight. After those two rows are drawn, it's easy to do the bottom rows; just come down straight with the ruler and draw the lines corresponding to the lines above.

Step 2: Taping off the blocks

The first two rows we are going to make groutless blocks, by taping off blocks. You will need to take your time because the taping has to be precise. You will tape blocks that are not near each other. If you couldn't find low tack tape, use Scotch green and make SURE that the paint is dry before you tape on painted surfaces (a hair dryer comes in really handy here).

Carefully tape along the edges of the top row, first and third block, making sure you push the edges down tightly so there is no bleed.

Paint the blocks with the light beige.

Dry each color before adding the next.

Step 3: Second Color

Dampen a corner of the sponge and squeeze it out. Pick up a little color but don't make it too heavy. Lightly streak some of the color across the light beige.

Be sure to well rinse the sponge after each use. If the paint dries on the sponge it will be ruined.

Step 4: Darkest Beige

Rinse the sponge and do the same with the darker beige, leaving the other two colors showing through.

Pull tape off and dry. If you missed any edges that show when you pull the tape, take the fine brush and carefully and lightly fill in being very careful to keep the edge straight.

Step 5: Finish blocks

Continue taping and finishing the blocks. Don't make them all the same.

Continued...

Please note: Lessons provide step-by-step instructions with detailed images.

Course Goals

The lessons start with shading and shadowing to create depth and then go on to simple one point perspective.

Course Reviews

New Class September 2008

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