Notre Dame - My Second Ever Painting Attempt, First Acrylic

I enjoyed painting with watercolors for the first time earlier this week but after watching some online videos I wanted to be more like Bob Ross so I thought I'd give acrylics a go. I purchased an inexpensive 'acrylic starters kit' that came with brushes, a palette, a plastic knife and some small samples of paper to get started with.


 I felt like using the good 'canvas pad' paper was going to be a waste for my first attempt so decided to use 'sketch pad' paper instead which has the added benefit of being a small size for me to have less area to mess up having felt like I may have bitten off more than I could chew with the mountain country scene. 

For today's exercise I thought I would try to replicate in paint one of my own photos, and one that I captured in Montreal. The great cathedral of Notre Dame which I thought had some great angles and I loved the aspect ratio, at least I liked it in the photo, I didn't like painting it much. There's also not much sky/cloud interest in this photo and I soon realized that all the small details of the building were beyond my current skill levels so I took some artistic liberty in my representation of the iconic cathedral including it's 'learning west wing'.

Even sketching this out in pencil first I somehow managed to get the perspective incorrect but I still enjoyed the experience and felt like I learned a lot including the fact that acrylic paints dry quickly and it's harder to get a fine line with paint than it is with pencil.



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