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Great technique. I have a use for it for a picture I'm painting for a cousin. Thanks again.

Original Post: How I paint ghosts with acrylics

First......I use acrylic paint that has a lot of water in it. This allows it to "spread out and dry smooth with no texture.

Second.....a) The background is very important. I like to put down a lot of layers for the background part of the picture.....for example if I have a building in the background that is red. Ill paint it red once...they paint it over with 3 or 4 more layers of different tones of red. Why....well the background has to has to have some thickness (of paint) to create contrast with the ghost that you will paint over top pop out.

b) Put in a medium amount of black into the background... c) Paint the background items very distinctly.

Third..........a) The ghost itself. I draw the ghost overtop of the background with pencil. Use a hard pencil.....I use a #3 so as to get as little lead on the painting. And dont smear the lead with your hands as you paint....and if too much lead gets on the painting, remove it by dabbing masking tape on the canvas. Further, to prevent smearing you can cover parts of the ghost that you are not working on with a piece of paper. b) Now you outline the parts of the ghost figure very lightly with the dominate color of of each part of the ghost....for example, blue for the hat, flesh color for the face, black for the shoes, etc. Do it very lightly with a lot of water in the paint.....and don worry if you miss or just choose to leave out some lines....after all it is a ghost and every line does not need to be defined....you choose which parts of the ghost you want to emphasize.....not me....lol...

c) Now you are ready for some what I call, "smear technique"....you paint over the lines you just painted paint that has a lot of water in it....but quick before it dries....you smear the paint with your finger from the out outside of the figure toward the center of the figure. Do each part of the ghost figure in turn. Do each color in turn. This is how I shade the ghost figure. You could also do this with a brush instead of a finger.

d) Wait for the paint to dry. Erase the pencil lines from your ghost figure....and voila....there is your ghost.