Acrylic Painting

My inspiration for my acrylic painting came from Katsushika Hokusai's "The Great Wave off Kanagawa", known simply as "The Great Wave". Hokusai was a painter during Japan's Edo period, around A.D. 1831. This painting is perhaps the most famous of all Hokusai's woodblock paintings. The painting features snow-clad mountains in the background, with a large wave as the main focus.

In class, we looked at different acrylic painting techniques: Sponging, Impasto, Palette-knife painting, Scraping, Scumbling, Masking, Glazing, Sgraffito, and Texturing. In my acrylic painting, I used sponging, impasto, palette knife painting, and scumbling. I first painted the background behind the wave using a lighter purple-bluish shade, then used a combination of impasto and palette knife painting to achieve the appearance I was going for. The impasto technique helped emphasize certain areas on the wave, while the palette knife technique helped me achieve the ridges on the wave. I used scumbling with white paint over the blue to act as the splashes of water. I used sponging on the bottom of the painting, with the darker shade of blue. This helped achieve a gradient-type look and gave the wave a sense of depth and movement. I started off painting the background, then used white paint to texturize the wave. The next class, after the paint had dried, I used a sponge to paint a thin layer of a variety of blues onto the wave. My challenges were using scumbling to act as the water splashes, as it could look out of place if placed in a strange spot on the painting. My successes were using the different techniques in my piece, and completing it in the end. In the end, I was happy with the result.