Acrylic Study

Small transparent acrylic study of a tree:

What I learned: I'm a little rusy with acrylics, especially using them transparently, so It was a lot of re-learning. Luckily I picked it up pretty quick. 

What I did learn is that I'm still too timid when it comes to painting transparently, tending to playing it safe with lighter tones instead of darker tones. As a result I feel my painting looks washed out and lacks the rich colors of the sunset I was trying to paint.

I'm also trying to gauge how quickly acrylic dries as opposed to water color, as the two times seem to vary quite a bit, so it's hard to tell when I should be adding more paint to get a more blended or cell-shaded look.

What I did learn, or rather re-learn, is that acrylic, even in it's transparent form, blends better than water color, so you can get some nice gradient effects easier than if you tried to replicate them in water color.

Another thing I learned while drawing was that I was having trouble deciding to go with a more cartoony cell shade look for the tree or a more realistic one, and i feel my inability to choose one left the tree looking a bit...bleh...i might go back to retouch it.