Acrylic Painting Process

In illustration class we're working on illustrated books of poetry. I chose the poem Annabel Lee by Edgar Allan Poe, read it here, and I chose to use acrylic paint to tell the story. It's 12 spreads long, and I have documented my progress during the first one to show you how I approach projects like this one. (The images aren't great quality, but it will give you the idea.)

This is the text that will go in this spread:

It was many and many a year ago,

   In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;

After deciding on my size, 8" by 6" pages / 6" by 16" spreads, I cut my paper, making sure to leave an extra 1/4" on all sides for a bleed so that when I scan the images in and crop them, I can be sure that there is paint all the way to the edges.

Then comes the paint!

Step 1

I paint a base coat in solid colours. This will be a seaside panel so I roughed out where the sky, water and hillside will go.

Step 2

I add lighter green paint to the hills in the foreground, this time using different shades to mimic grass and give it depth.

Step 3

I add several shades of blue to the sky, paint clouds and add texture to the hillside to show the ridges and where the sunlight will hit the various valleys. I even add some smaller landmasses emerging from the water along the coast.

Step 4

I paint the water a darker blue and add waves that become more apparent closer to shore.




Step 5

Now that the landscape is done, it's time to add in the extra bits. This is going to be "the kingdom by the sea." So, I paint a light, rough base coat of where I want it to go.

Step 6

Then I add rough outlines with grey paint so I know what's going to be what in this beige mass of buildings.

Step 7

The buildings, walls and towers get filled in. I added shading in areas to give it more dimension.

Step 8

I make some minor adjustments to correct things (the biggest tower was a bit crooked), then add trees and other foliage to help it blend into the surroundings more.

Step 9

Now for the two children. I add another light base coat where I want them. You can see where I had originally placed them...more to the right, but I realized it was too close to the edge of the page. That's the nice thing about acrylic, it's easy to fix mistakes.

Step 10

I add basic colours to the kids and finalize how their bodies are positioned.

Step 11

More detail is added, like shading to their clothes, hair and limbs. But you can still see on the right side where I had them sitting originally. I'll fix that in the next step.

Step 12

I finalize their clothes then add the grass to the foreground, blending the kids into the scene.

Then it's done! The only thing I did after painting was add some more highlights to the trees around the castle with pencil crayon, and some texture to the walls of the castle. Then I scanned it and cropped it to size. All it's missing is the text, which will sit in the sky, just to the right of the center-fold.

This first spread is one of the most detailed, and took me upwards of seven hours to complete - mind you I'm not the fastest painter. I'm fairly happy with how it turned out. There's more I could have done, but I ran out of time and had to move on to the rest. Here's hoping that I can keep up my momentum!