Quick Guide to Paint Swans with Acrylic
If someone ever called you an ugly duckling, remember that you are a beautiful swan. This popular childhood tale of self-love and acceptance has endeared swans to all of us. They are absolutely graceful birds that enhance the beauty of any place they inhabit. With their glorious white wings, they look like small angels taking a swim on a lake.
Swans exude elegance and poise in everything they do. They glide across the water effortlessly, their gentle movements creating ripples that make interesting patterns in the water. They maintain their graceful movement even while pecking at grains we feed them in parks or lakes.
These beautiful creatures stand as a reminder to embrace the beauty around and within us. Simply observing them can instill a sense of peace and harmony within us.
If you love to capture all such beautiful things that you see, the mixed media sketchbooks from Menorah are your best choice. These sketchbooks are 180 GSM thick and perfect for Dry Media like Sakura Pen Art, Soft Pastels, Oil Pastel, Colour Pencils etc and Wet mediums like Acrylics, Gouache, Water Colour paintings, Tempera, Poster colour etc. Its acid free papers will keep your favourite paintings intact for a long time.
Here are the steps to recreate the swan painting by @colorpalace.art :
Materials required
Menorah mixed media sketchbook
Acrylics
Flat brush
Round brush
- With a pencil make an outline of the drawing on the mixed media sketchbook
- Paint the top of the 180 GSM sketchbook with teal acrylic paint and the bottom part with sapphire. Blend both the colours together, leaving out the outline of swans, to get a gradient
- Use Aegean blue to create small strokes that look like wave patterns on the water. Darken the area below the swan figures on the 180 GSM paper to create a reflection effect.
- For the swans, paint the body with grey colour. Highlight the feathers with white to give them a natural look.
Draw the eyes and the beak of the swans with black and red colours respectively on the 180 GSM paper sketchbook.
- To add a final touch to the Gouache painting, draw small bubbles with white on water
By engaging ourselves in the creative process of painting, we calm the mind’s incessant thoughts and develop a sense of being in the moment. This is much akin to the tranquility that we experience in the presence of nature. Enjoy this calming and serene process of painting with Menorah sketchbooks.