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Harlan's Easy Painting Course in Acrylics

Play #15: Paint from quick sketches or memory.

I often like this method better than painting from photos because you rely on artistic interpretation and your impression of what you saw. It allows for more creative freedom than slavishly copying a photo, an easy habit to fall into (I've been there).

I made this sketch with a ballpoint pen on a napkin while on a break in a college cafeteria. And here's what I came up with...

Driving home one day I noticed a beautiful, big white cloud towering over the city's horizon. I painted my impression from memory without a sketch and added the simple silhouette of skyscrapers, with almost no detail.

I can't emphasize enough: when you're starting out keep your paintings simple, simple, simple! If you try difficult subjects (and fail) you may lose confidence and interest. Also, you want to feel some visual excitement about your subject, whatever it may be. "I can't wait to paint that!" should energize your brain.

I used only the big brush in this painting. Sign-lettering experience helped me get mostly straight lines on the buildings.

Play #16: Paint symbolic illustrations.

These last five paintings each illustrate a concept. The first one is all about personal growth and fruitfulness at any age, any gender, any race. It's a painting that is very simple and basic -- a tree with a human as the trunk, an optimistic sunny dawn -- and the sky is the limit!

These kinds of paintings don't need to be "pretty" or too perfect. As in cartooning, the idea is far more important than the prettiness of the painting.

If you're in a foul mood you may want to paint a dark, brooding symbolic painting to express your frame of mind. Any idea is fair game: spirituality, romance, humor, depression, dreams, and so on.
Speaking of dreams, here's a guy snoozing inside my painting. What's he doing there? Who let him in? I tried to illustrate dream activity, REM sleep, and our creative unconscious. I kept the man simple (what else?), block-like, borrowing the idea from Picasso. I don't think he minds.

I had to include some harmless sex! This is biblical Abraham's sperm approaching Sarah's egg. Stars in the background represent God's promise to Abe: countless descendants from that one happy union of sperm and egg.

Again -- simple idea, simple painting. Henry David Thoreau said it in two words: "Simplify, simplify." Whether it's your life or acrylic painting, the 19th century philosopher was on to something.

Continue on the next page.

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All art work Copyright © Harlan Simantel
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