Reading Time: 4 minutes
Finished painting

Method

Here is what you need:

  • Printouts of bats (see image below)
  • Chromacryl Students’ Acrylic 
    • Cool Red
    • Cool Blue
    • Warm Yellow
    • White
    • Black
    • Or your choice of Halloween colors
  • Paint Brush (medium/large size is best)
  • Canvas or Thick Paper
  • Palette (paper plate/ old piece of cardboard)
  • Scissors
  • Sticky tape
Materials needed for project.
Printout of bats.

Step One

Using Chromacryl Black and your large brush paint the entire canvas/surface black. Ensure that the surface is well covered and that no spots are showing through. Set aside to dry.

Painting the canvas with straight black.

Step Two

Using scissors carefully cut out the bats from the printout. If you don’t have a printer do your best to draw bats on paper, then cut out your drawings. This is also a great opportunity to unleash your creativity and add in other objects such as the moon, a dead tree, gravestones, etc. 

Cut out the bats from the printout.

Step Three

Once the canvas/surface is dry, arrange your cutouts in a composition you are happy with. Using sticky tape stick the cutouts in place. First create a loop with the sticky side facing outwards. This way you can stick it in place without the tape showing. 

Create a loop with the sticky tape, sticky side facing outwards.
Press the tape down flat and be sure no edges stick out.
Arrange the bats and stick them in place.

Step Four

Wash and dry your brush. With your clean bush mix together Chromacryl Cool Blue and Chromacryl Cool Red in equal quantities. This should make a dark purple color. 

Step Five

Starting at the top of your canvas apply the purple in a crisscross motion covering about a third of the canvas. NOTE: when you are painting over the cutouts ensure that your brush stroke is pulling from the paper onto the canvas – not in the direction of the canvas to the paper. This ensures that you keep crisp edges around the shapes. 

To make your painting a little more interesting alternate between slight variations of purple, some with more blue and others with more red. 

Step Six

As you get towards the middle of the canvas add in a little bit of Chromacryl White into your purples. Continue the crisscross pattern and variations of color. The lightness should be quite gradual. 

As you move into the bottom of the canvas add in even more white to your colors. There should be a lovely blend of light to dark from the bottom to the top of your artwork. 

To add in stars use the back of your paint brush with white to create dots.

Set aside to dry.

Step Seven

Once dry, remove the paper cut outs carefully. If the sticky tape has pulled off some of the black paint or the purple has bled under the cutout, touch up the bats with straight black.

Step Eight

Using Warm Yellow and a small brush, paint on little eyes and even some for your bats. If you don’t have a small brush you can use the back of the brush like you did for the stars. If you don’t like what you have done wait for it to dry then cover it with Black. Yellow is a transparent color and you may find you will need to apply a few coats to get the coverage you desire. Set aside to dry and you are finished!

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