Oil Painting For Beginners

1. Introduction : Hi. My name is Mark Hill, and today I'm gonna be walking you through a basic oil painting class for absolute beginners. We're gonna go over everything from the materials that you'll need to get started without having to spend a fortune. Then we'll move on to some basic exercises that will help you get a little bit more familiar with how the paint behaves on a canvas and just the way of getting started. Now, this class is just supposed to be a general overview if you're just starting out for the painting, so we'll talk about brushes, paints and other materials that you may want to pick up. But I don't feel like you have to go out and buy a ton of things. My preference is tobe, actually, by as little as possible. From there, we'll move on and do some basic painting exercises that will hopefully get you comfortable just moving some paint on a canvas. A swell as using brushes. And for those of you who want to try, I do recommend a basic color palette as well as end up doing a basic color exercise. By the end of the class. The goal is just to get familiar with the materials and to get a few basic paintings done and to see whether or not oil painting is something you like. 2. Materials Brushes: All right. So before we actually start painting, we need to talk about some materials. Most obvious. Here are brushes. So, um, I'm gonna recommend a few different types to kind of just get you started with, But the whole idea of getting started when your first just gathering all your materials is to not have to spend a fortune, um, on a lot of different things. So I'm gonna just make a couple recommendations for brushes, and you can decide what you want to go ahead and invest in. Um, but I would say, you know, kind of keep it down to, like, you know, maybe a good you know, 3 to 4 brushes, you know, So don't feel like you need to buy, like, a whole a whole drawer full of brushes, toe, actually get started painting. You just need a kind of couple. Um, and I would recommend just maybe having like, a small medium, sort of a large brush just to get started. Um, now there's gonna be different hair types and things like that, so you'll have a range of brushes that are more of like this one. That was like a bristle brush and It's a little bit coarser of a hair type, Um, and these would be good for canvases that are a little say rougher or have a little bit more texture. And these brushes will grip the canvas very well, as opposed to painting on a very slick surface or very smooth like panel or anything. So on. And that's the other thing to consider is the surface that you're going to be painting on because that will then sometimes decide what kind of brushes you may or may not want to use because they all behave a little bit differently. Now, this guy right here is a natural hair brush. Um and so this is gonna be a little bit softer of a brush then, and you might use this on a smoother surface or like a smooth panel. Um, and, uh, and that's gonna take the paint a little bit better for that type of surface. And you might try, you know, some of each if you if you can. But don't feel like you have to, you know, just again by a ton of stuff. So there's gonna be different kinds of shapes to the brushes. Um, like This is a filbert Ah, shape here and you'll see different, like Scott of squared off round round shape brushes. Um and ah, and those I'd maybe recommend sticking to fill Burt's and maybe like a couple rounds and those air kind of good brush types to just get started with. You'll see other various shapes, like a fan brush or, ah, flat brush, Um, and just so modern and those air good toe have for other reasons. But if you're just starting out, I would recommend just getting a couple of different Phil Burt's and then maybe some rounds . Um, Now you see these brushes here that also have, like, a short handle, and you'll see other brushes that have a long handle as well. Um, try both. Some people prefer painting with a short handle on, and I personally find those are good for, like, doing detailed kind of work. The long handles air better if you're painting more from a distance away from your canvas. Did you get a better reaction in terms of the spring of the brush? But again, it just depends on how your painting and, um, and the kind of work that you're doing. Some people have a preference, and so there's no harm in trying both And just see what? See what feels better for you before I get. You know, before you go buy a ton of brushes. And if you go to the store and you're kind of confused about, you know, the names or anything, don't worry about it. All the brushes will. They'll tell you what they are on the on the actual handle. So again, just kind of stick with a couple Phil Burt's and then maybe a couple of rounds, maybe try some of the different hair types. Um, but for the most part again, you try and keep this simple. Um, you know, get one or two brushes, you know of different lengths or sizes and then maybe some smaller ones, just for either some detail work or to do some initial drawing on the panel or your surface that you're working on. But other than that again, don't don't go by, um, you know, 50 different brushes just to start with because it's very unnecessary. Um, so, um, for the most part again, I can you know, I could spend, you know, several several minutes talking about the different types of brushes and hairs and whatnot . But, um, but just get, you know, again, just get a couple to get started. And more importantly, we want to spend most of our time actually painting and moving the brush on the canvas, so that's gonna be that for brushes. 3. Materials Paints: Okay, so it's faras oil pains. Go. We're going to try and keep this fairly simple and limited on gets really more just about for someone that's getting started. You don't want to go out and buy, you know 20 you know, colors or anything like that because it's just not necessary. Toe learn how to use oil paint. Um, So what I'd recommend everyone do is just go out and really to get the full painting experience, you can get by with, literally just black and white. Um, you know, so to understand how paint behaves and how they mix together on and things like that, you really don't need to have more colors on your palate. You can learn everything that you need to buy just these two colors. And, um, you know, you can definitely go and if you want, you know, by some other colors. But if you really want to just keep this is inexpensive as possible than by all means. I recommend just sticking with black and white. Um, now, brand isn't terribly important when it comes to the paint in, um, in the notes all have a, uh, a couple of recommendations as faras brands to look for because of you know, the quality to price ratio is generally very high with those brands. But again, you know, for the most part, um, you know, stick with these two colors and you'll have pretty much everything you need. And so for just specifics were basically going to be sticking to titanium white and ivory black. Um, those airfare the fairly universal uhm you know, white and black colors that you can see. You'll see some other colors, like either zinc white or mars black or some other kinds of different colors in the same vein. Um, but for our sake, we want to stick to just these two. Um, so just titanium and then ivory Black. Now another option, just in case. You know, some of you want to get fancy. Um, there is this other color called Van Dyke brown, which is very similar to an ivory black on, and that it's very dark out of the tube, but it will make more of a neutral gray. Where is the Ivory? Black is gonna make more of a cold gray when you mix it with white. Um though both kind of achieve the same range. It's really just kind of a personal preference, but I actually do enjoy the way the white mixes with the Van Dyke Brown a little bit more. But in the demonstration, I'll be using Ivory Black just sees. That's what most people should probably dio, but just something else to consider on and on its own. Van Dyke Brown is actually a very beautiful color that's also very inexpensive. So something else to consider a Z, you pick up a couple of tubes of paint. So for those of you who are looking to do a little bit of color painting, um, I'm gonna recommend a basic limited palate. Um, now it's just gonna be a handful of color, so not nothing, you know, too expensive. But outside of our black and white were essentially just gonna add a yellow or red in a blue to our palette. So and pretty much with this, you can get everything you need. So this is just gonna be a yellow Oakar here, Which is this the general earth Yellow. It's coming nice and warm out of the tube, and it's a very versatile color, and you can mix you know beautiful flesh tones with this color are other earth colors a swell a some nice greens with the black, and I find myself using this color a lot is a very sort of, Ah, go to yellow. So I recommend having this just in general. The next color is gonna be this ultra marine blue, Um, and this is kind of another sort of go to in the blue color sort of family. There's some other blues that are available that can be very versatile as well, but they can be a little bit more expensive. And where's ultra Marine is a good standard blue that can mix well with a lot of other things to get, like your purples and and things of that nature. And it's easy to tempt with white, and you can get a nice full range of blue colors from it. Now, as far as the Reds go, I have two different reds here, Um, and they're very similar to each other, and I would say depending on you know what's available to you at an art stores you know either or will be sufficient. So one is Terra Rosa and the other is Venetian red. Um, and they're essentially the same pigment overall, but the Venetian red is a little bit cooler of a color than the Terra Rosa. So out of the to the Terra Rosa is gonna be a warmer sort of color of a red than the Venetian. So either of those two will be fine to get started and again in terms of if you were using them to mix, you know, a purple or, you know, flesh tones with the white and the yellow, like they would make beautiful flesh tones that would kind of cover a very sort of broad range of mixtures. So, um, and again, being earth colors, they're fairly inexpensive. So I really like these sort of set of colors, Um, in general, as a basic starter palette. Obviously, you can expand beyond this. But, um, if you wanted to kind of start doing some basic color painting, this would be more than enough, and you wouldn't have to spend a whole lot of money. So that's pretty much what will end with for the color palette, and we will start painting 4. Materials Canvas: So the last thing we need to talk about before we actually begin painting is we need to talk about our surface. So this is basically gonna come down to canvas and canvas types and basically, how they're prepared. But I'm not going to spend, you know, a whole lot of time talking about the various kinds because I could easily bore you for an hour about all the finite details of canvases and how they're primed and how they're woven and things like that. But for someone who's just starting out, I want to keep it fairly straightforward and simple and just kind of talk about two options which are going to be your most cost effective. Um, So, um, you know, there's a bunch of other materials out there that you could look for, but I'm gonna keep it down to just these two. So the 1st 1 in which I'm gonna recommend for everyone to just start with is just a basic, um, canvas panel. So these air basically just canvases that are glued to a piece of cardboard. Um, you confined him in just about every single art store, and they'll come and, you know, individual they'll come in packs and they're very inexpensive. So I never feel guilty about, uh, you know, if I mess up a painting or anything like that, um, you know Oh, well, it's just a canvas panel. Um, now that said, because of their, um, you know, being in expensive is it the most high quality canvas? To be honest, it's not really it's generally okay, But for the sake of practicing and doing these exercises for this class, it's going to be more than sufficient. Um, and I actually find him, you know, for, you know, for the most part, they can actually be pretty useful If you're just looking to do really simple studies and nothing terribly detailed or finished for that matter, canvas panels are a great option to just move some pain around in practice. Now, the other option is going to be just loose canvas, and this could work in a couple different ways. So, um, some art stores, depending on where you're located, may have a scrap been where you can just find little loose pieces of canvas like this. And the benefit of that is that you can get them for a very reduced cost, and you can also maybe have the option of trying different kinds of canvases altogether. So some might be more smoother. Portrait grade. Some more, you know, textured landscape type canvas. But it's nice toe. Have an option. If your art store has that, they may also just sell it loose by itself. And you can just, maybe by, like, half a yard. Um, and that would be a great option as well. And what I would end up doing with this is, is even rather than stretching it out onto stretcher bars or anything like that, I would actually just tape it to a board, you know, So just have the loose piece of canvas, lay it flat and then tape it down to a board so that you can paint on it and you're ready to go. Um, and I would leave it at that, so because if you're gonna buy stretched canvas, you're gonna pay more automatically just by the fact that it's pretty stretched its on wooden bar. So there's more material costs involved, but for just doing exercises and again, just moving paint around, getting a loose scrap of canvas and just taping it or mounting it to something that's gonna be a great option. And I'd recommend people do that if they don't want to do panels or again just want to try different kinds of canvas materials. That would be a great option. So again I'll go back and just say that you know, your your canvas panels are gonna be your best option. But definitely if you're curious, explore the different types of materials that are out there. But to just get started and to keep things, you know, within the budget, let's just start with a basic canvas panel and go from there. 5. Materials Solvents: So as we're painting, we need something to clean our rushes to. Um, you know, if we're gonna mix a new color, we need to clean out the old color on and then also to at the end of the day when we're painting, is we need to be able to rinse out all the paint from our brushes so that we can clean them properly. So this is where, um, odorless mineral spirits or turpentine will come into play. Um, and one thing I'll say is that there's a couple there's different kind of, you know, mineral spirits that you confined. You can easily get some at, like a hardware store. Um and, uh, it'll be a little bit less expensive. I've always been a fan of this gams all by gambling. A zai found that even the hardware store odorless mineral spirits, um, still had a faint smell to me. So you can try that and see how that goes. But if not, I recommend this stuff. Um, have used it for several years. I've never had a problem with it. And even though it does say odorless, I'd still recommend for safety practice, you know, have good ventilation while you're painting, so keep a window open or several if you can. If not, that's not a possibility. At least keep a fan going while you're painting just so that you're not breathing in the fumes. So even though they don't smell doesn't mean that they're not there. Um, so the other thing Teoh also consider is something to put it in. So, um, you can kind of get these little glass cilic oils at most art stores. And essentially, it's just a jar with a spring in it, and the spring will kind of help clean your brushes. You rub it into it, and I like these just for simplicity sake. You can get metal ones that you would see a lot of outdoor painters use, but you can use them in the studio to obviously, and those come in different sizes. You're gonna pay a significant premium to have one of the metal containers, whereas these little glass cilic oils are fairly inexpensive around like five or $6. So obviously they are glass. So be depending on where it's sitting on your you know, painting table. Do be careful with that, but you'll need something to put it in. Now the other option to consider depending on your studio space and, um, just preference is some people may want to have a completely nontoxic environment. And so that's where this walnut oil can come into play. So you can use this as a brush cleaner to get rid of the paint. If you're gonna be switching colors or anything like that, and then as well as at the end of the day when you're done painting this will clean out your brushes just the same. So on a lot of bars, air doing this. Do you know, depending on if you have pets or small Children or anything like that, you may just want to keep any sort of toxic materials or chemicals out of your studio space , so this would be a great option as well. To consider the walnut oil is gonna be a little bit more expensive than odorless mineral spirits. But for the safety component of that, that might be a more viable option for you. So regardless of which one you choose, both will work eso pick up one or the other or both, and give them a shot 6. Painting basic set up: So before we get painting, I wanted to just take a moment to talk about where we're going to set everything up. So I have this little shadow box that I made. Um, and I have basically a light that's gonna face downward towards thes still lifes that we're gonna put in here. Um and so you basically just needs something to set you're objects or still lifes on. So whether it's a table or anything like that and ideally, you just want to be able to either light them with artificial light of some kind like a lamp. Or better is if you have the option is to maybe get near a window and have the natural light, like the actual still lifes, if possible. But everyone's setups gonna be a little bit different, depending on the studio space. So, um, you know, artificial lights sometimes could be a little bit easier. Um, so also, what we're gonna use is, or at least I am is just like a basic drop cloth, and you can goto a fabric store and just get, you know, a couple of yards of fabric just to create different colored backgrounds. Um, so I have, like a black and gray here, and I'll just go ahead and clamp them up to the shadow box. And, uh, and basically just used that as a background color. Essentially. So the other thing, too, is, um is if you don't have a, uh you know, um, you know anywhere to put him or you want to make a makeshift shadow box, you can go ahead and actually just get a cardboard box, um, and cut it open and then drape the clause in there as well. And that's another great option. If you're looking Teoh, just some toe actually put some place to put your, uh, objects in. In that way, you maybe have a little bit more control over the lighting and the way it's kind of hitting to make some nice shadows. So but that's pretty much it, for the most part. So you don't really need anything complicated to get things going and to start painting. And the last thing as far as, um, setups go, since primarily the exercises are going to be using still life objects, you basically can use anything that you have around you. Um, I don't recommend going out and getting specific things toe actually paint. Unless you feel inclined to do so often times, it's best to just grab whatever you have lying around that way. Um, you really just It's not about sort of the subject matter as much as it is just kind of going and starting to paint and getting the hours in just painting and moving their brush around. So that's why for these exercises, I would encourage you not to overthink, um, as far as what you're actually painting, because it's almost not that important. So, you know, here I literally am just grabbing anything. So stuff that you have in the cupboard, um, you know, your artists supplies that you got or anything like that. Just look for things that have maybe interesting shapes, if you can, or have maybe different patterns that could make interesting value, um, shapes in your paintings in like in your exercises. Um, and I would encourage to look for things like that, because realistically these exercises you're not going to be spending hours and hours on a single exercise. They're meant to be kind of more on the quicker side so that you can do several of them in a row. Um, so just try not to get too caught up in exactly what you're painting. At least right now, um, as you kind of do more the exercises and maybe you decide that you want to spend a little bit more time developing a painting, Then I would say, Go ahead and you know, kind of meaty. Choose the subject matter a little more carefully. In that way, it always helps if you're interested in and what you're painting in that way, you can kind of stick with the painting over the course of several hours. But for the sake of doing the exercises for the class, literally, just grab anything in front of you and you'll see as I paint along that I literally did just that. I grabbed art supplies that grab stuff out of the covered. Just whatever I had on hand that I could set up in a range and and really focus more on the exercise in, um and what information? I'm trying to get across through that versus having unique objects to paint or anything like that. So just grab whatever is around you and ah, and more importantly, is just start painting and enjoying the process. 7. Painting basic mix: So before you get started, we need to go ahead and actually take our paint and kind of get it set up on our palate. Um, now, granted that we're just dealing with black and white here. I'm gonna go ahead and kind of space them far apart from one another, because we're essentially gonna mix just one more value in between. And that is essentially going to be the majority of the exercise. So I'm gonna use a palette knife to mix that color up. Um, and you don't have to necessarily have one. You can mix the paint with your brush, but I do find that, you know, mixing with the palate night is obviously a bit more efficient. But if you don't want to rush out and buy one, by no means have to, um, so you can use your brush to go ahead and mix a pile of paint, and it'll work just the same. But I find palette knives to be very obviously handy for stuff like that, especially as you start using color and things. So it might be a good idea to get one, but again, completely optional. The other thing, you're gonna need is just some sort of paper towels of some kind. You can use anything from the grocery store. I prefer, like, thes blue shop towels, that you can find it like a hardware store because they're a little bit more durable on absorb, You know the paint and, like your mineral spirits a little bit better. The other option would be to just take some old T shirts and you can cut them up into scraps and use those as well. And, um, depending on, you know, your old T shirt collection, you might have several that you can do that for so but anyway, you just need some kind of extra couple things just to kind of make the process of working a little bit easier and hopefully more efficient. So I'm just gonna take a little bit of white here, and we're gonna add some black and were essentially just gonna make a middle value gray. Um, so it doesn't have to, you know, we're just want something nice and in the middle not to light, not too dark. And realistically, the whole point of this exercise is about organizing values. And so you'll see as we begin painting. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna essentially isolate the values of the picture in either a something is going to be white, it's gonna be black. And if it's not one of those, then guess what it's gonna be? Gray, Um, But what you'll see this will do is it will break up the picture space, so that becomes a very simple set of values that will create an organized picture. And that's really the essence of the exercise is to create a sense of organization. And what you'll see is that by create using just three values, you can create a very understandable picture that doesn't look very detailed. But the big shapes and the value structure of the picture hold together, so we just need to mix one value essentially to do this exercise. So it's not terribly complicated once you see the color demonstration that will have a little bit more mixing involved, Um, but at least right now for the black and white pictures, it's gonna be fairly straightforward and simple. So my only recommendation at first it's just this mix a decent pile of paint for yourself. That way you have to just you can continually go back to the same pile without having to remix the value over and over again, especially if you know that you plan on painting a bit that day and you plan on may be doing several exercises. Just makes a nice pile toe work from, And that just makes the painting process a little bit more enjoyable when you don't have to remix batches of color. So that's pretty much it from here. So we're actually begin or exercise, and I'll discuss the drawing and then filling in the shapes and values as we go along. So, um, follow along and hopefully you enjoy it. 8. Painting Demo 1: so before we actually get to painting, I just wanted to show you the set up here. And what you're going to see in the demonstration is that I'm gonna simplify a lot of this down into just very basic values. So any of the small details are anything like that are gonna be eliminated. And I'm not gonna model or try and make anything look around. We're just gonna be working in large, flat shapes. So as I'm starting out, I'm just gonna loosely sketch the still life in front of me. Now, I don't really plan on doing a detailed drawing by any means. It's really more about just getting the simple shapes down, um, and establishing where they are in relationship to one another. So, you know, if you're still not very comfortable with your drawing or don't feel too confident with it , it's really not that big of a deal for this exercise. Um, while having a understanding of drawing and perspective and things like that is always gonna help, you know, if you really are just kind of even just starting out withdrawing, don't feel Don't be afraid, Teoh. You know, draw very crudely and you'll see in the example here that the drawing that I'm doing is is not terribly complicated by any means. So because the main goal of this exercise is to really just understand value relationships , and the only way to really make a separation of those value relationships is to just have a very basic drawing. So I'm putting in the drawing fairly crudely, nothing overly technical, um, and no details whatsoever. So I just need to get something on the canvas. And that's that's really what most of this is about at this point is, I just wanna kind of establish where everything is being placed. Um, before I can actually go and start deciding what my value structure for the picture is going to be. So I'm basically just using a gray value to paint in so you could use black if you wanted to, but I kind of just like using the gray that way. Um, I just feel like it blends in better with everything. So, um and that this is again assuming you're using just black and white paint. Um, if you're using the Van Dyke Brown, just you just use the middle value to go ahead and start your drawing. So now that I have the rough drawing on the canvas, I feel comfortable enough to where I can go ahead and start filling in some values. Now, there's really no particular order that you have to go in. But I like to start with black first, because that way, in this sense, I'm starting with the background and I'm gonna work forward, um, in the painting. So I'm gonna work basically back to front for the majority of the demonstration. And just by starting with black, I feel like I'm getting the, you know, the darkest value established right from the get go. Um, and again, it doesn't. Doesn't really particularly matter is just just preference. But, um, I always just personally found to working from dark to light to be a little bit easier than working safe from light to dark. Um, and so those are just little things that you kind of pick up as you go along, but really, just gonna want to fill in everything that I see black. So I'm gonna kind of knock the values out one at a time, So I'm gonna start with black and then worked and then fill all of those black shapes in. And then I'm gonna put in the gray and feel all the gray in, and then I'll just essentially be leftover with white. Um and then I'll add that as well. So when you're working with larger portions like right here I am in the background is easier to use a larger brush, so you wouldn't want to fill in a large area with a very small brush by any means. So, depending on what brushes you have on hand, try to new try and do as much as you can with a larger brush Onley because it will actually teach you, you know, dexterity with using a bigger brush, even in tight spaces. But the nice thing about using a bigger brushes that actually gets you to think in very broad terms and you won't get really to buckle down and thinking about details with such a large brush. So still kind of just making my way through when anything that I see that has, um, you know, black like like this cast shadow or some of the labels on the on the bottle and whatnot would kind of fall into that range. But the whole point of the exercise is to try and isolate everything that's in front of you with just these three values. So and sometimes you have to sacrifice certain things that might maybe safe all in the middle. You know of values and you're making choices on. And that's kind of what a lot of this exercise is also about. So in terms of just organizing values, you're making the choice about what areas you might have to sacrifice otherwise, so that it fits within the overall structure. So with all my black field and I'm going to start putting in the gray areas and you'll see immediately as we start adding this secondary value, how things begin to separate, Um, and I'll just go and we'll see to, as I kind of start filling in the bottle with, say, the ground plane here, that those values will start bridging together and because a lot of in a lot of ways, you don't really need to have, um, a line toe. Get an idea of, you know, something coming in front of something else so on, and that's where you can start using the background and foreground to kind of your advantage to make a separation. And your I will kind of help fill in the gaps as you kind of go along and And what this will hopefully show you is that you really don't need is much information in a drawing or painting as you think you do. And you're I will actually go ahead and make those delineations for you. And, uh, by doing that, you can simplify the picture into just very basic elements. And, um, overall, what that does is it creates a sense of cohesion between the background, the you know, the foreground, middle ground theon objects themselves, and you get a no overall sense of unity that you might not have otherwise. If you were to try and put in, you know, every little last detail. So now, with all my gray just about filled in, what you'll see left over is just the white elements. So you don't have to actually use white paint if you don't want to, you can actually see the effect taking place without having to add it. Um, I, however, just like to go ahead and fill it in and What that will do is that it will allow me to clean up areas where you know if I have a little imperfection. Ah, in the drawing or anything like that, having the white paint will just allow me to clean it up and, you know, make it a little bit nicer. Um, and then also, go ahead and use the white paint. Teoh, add some highlights at the end only because everyone knows that highlights are probably the most satisfying thing of painting in general. So you is kind of wanna savor, you know, the best for last sort of a thing. But, um, I'll go ahead and just fill in the with the white paint and clean up a little bit of the lines here. And then I will add the highlights and you'll be able to see just, you know, with a little quick, you know, small highlight. You know, you will get just a little bit of reflective quality, um, to the bottles here. And you know, it's just a nice little fun detail. Um, but that's pretty much it in a nutshell. But you see the idea of the bottles that we started with and how we simplified them down into just very basic values. But with all out that detail there, you still get an overall sense of what we were trying to convey and how the objects relate to one another and an overall structure for the picture. And that's essentially what this exercise is about is just learning how to control those elements in doing so, you know, in a very simple way, so that everything makes sense in the end. 9. Painting Demo2: all right. So, basically, like we did the first demonstration, we're going to start this one exactly the same. So I'm just gonna loosely sketch in the objects. And the only difference being with this particular demo is that obviously, I added a few more objects and, um, some slightly different shapes. So I am having to account for those kinds of things. And, you know, for example, this one. I'm kind of maybe being a little bit more careful in terms of making sure it looks, you know, is geometric. As the object is on DSO I'll put in, like, little, you know, perspective lines and stuff like that. But, um, again, regardless of what, um, you know, you're painting, you just have to get something established on the canvas. So, um, you know, loosely sketched it in, um, and just look for you know how things air relating to one another. Um, Or again, you know, if you're just working with a single object, find a good place to maybe, um, put it on the canvas so that either a, it's, you know, nicely balanced in relationship to the background and the middle ground and things like that But, um, you know, I'm still going to try and, um, it as many details as possible. So I'm not gonna be, you know, trying to be cutting in tow All the like, the labels or any details on the label. I'm just looking for just the big, simple shapes of what the objects are. And, you know, if maybe there's a very specific shadow, I'll draw a separation of that shadow. But that's really about it. So we're still thinking and just lard broad terms. So nothing too fancy at this point. Now, I will establish that particular shape there only because that's gonna be, um and I can tell, just by everything else that's gonna be my white one of my largest white values, Um, in the picture. So I'm gonna kind of establish that little shape. Um, everything else, though, kind of falls within this very middle kind of a gray range, with little hints of black here and there. So, um, I'm kind of looking at the set up, you know, initially and kind of getting an idea of where, um, you know, my values air going to separate or how I might have to get creative. So that, um as one thing is coming in front of another, how can I get those two make sense visually, with just big blocks of value? Um, so that's something else to consider. As you kind of start adding, you know, say more than one object to your set up, um, and how things are going to separate from one another and just kind of continuing along. And, you know, even though the drawing isn't terribly complicated, I want to get in as many little kind of value separations that I know are going to take place. That way, when I go to actually fill it, fill them in with paint, I know exactly where everything is going, and I don't have to sort of think about it afterwards to make those separations. So I'm still going to try and avoid detail as much as possible. Um, but I will if I have to add in a piece of information because it's going to make it easier on me. Go ahead and do that. You really just want to avoid, like, you know, almost like extraneous details. So things that don't really need to be in there because they're not going to make a clear separation or understanding of how the values are going to form together. So just keep that in mind as you're working, especially as you get more complicated. Um, with your setups and things like that, and you may decide, Teoh, you know, start and stay simple for a while and just maybe, do one or two objects. And the only point of this particular demo was to show you how to take multiple objects and still apply the same principles on and see how that works and takes place because it's all the same in the end, regardless of how complicated we choose to get. But if I thought I'd be a good idea to just see something with multiple objects in how I kind of handle that all right, So with our drawing filled in now we can start putting some paint down, and so again, I'm gonna do it the exact same way I started with the first demo and start from my background and work forward. And I'm gonna just kind of fill in all the areas of black paint that I see in that way I can kind of gradually separate the values one at a time and still using my bigger brush to kind of fill in these areas a little bit quicker and more efficiently. So, um, you know, once I get into some of the smaller shapes, I'll go ahead and, you know, pick up a smaller brush that way. Don't kind of get a little too messy, but we're gonna try and do as much as I can with the large brush. And so there's certain shadow shapes that you know I'm seeing here, that I'm kind of making choices again that, you know, you might see them differently than I dio uh, you know, um, you might say, You know, I you know, I would make this gray versus, you know, he made that black or whatever and there's really no right or wrong. To be honest, it's really just more matter of how you see things and how you decide that you want to make those separations. And again. Part of the puzzle piece is figuring out How do I get the sense of separating things? Um, from you know, one object to the next, and maybe how you know, is something sitting in front of another thing. And how do you make it look and read very clearly to a viewer so that they understand what's going on in the picture? So everyone has to make those choices, and that's really just a matter of what you decide. Works best. And, you know, sometimes you might, you know, make a not say a wrong decision, But you might make a bad decision. And, you know, maybe the picture doesn't look aske Liras. You like it, you know, And that's really part of the learning process, though, and on. And that's why you see, you know, a lot of painters before they tackle, um you know, um or finished painting or like, a larger painting or anything will do little thumbnail exercises just like these to get a sense of understanding about how the structure of the picture is gonna work. Um, so that's something to consider as well. Um, you know, as you kind of get more comfortable with painting and, you know, maybe at some point you decide you want to, you know, spend several hours on a single painting and tackle. Um, you know, some detail and, you know, modeling form and things like that. You might decide to do these little exercises before you embark on a several hour or several day or week painting. So just something to consider? All right, so now with my grey filled and I have just a little bit of white paint in this particular set up, not a whole lot now, I had a few of the highlights asses. Well, just in That will kind of help Adam. Just a maybe a few more touches of white throughout the painting. But for the most part, this particular set up was really just about adding a few more objects and still using the same process toe kind of break everything down into a value structure. Um, and hopefully that kind of comes across in the demonstration. So still try and, you know, work your way up, Teoh, you know, doing multiple objects and, you know, applying the principles. But, you know, if you're still uncomfortable, start with maybe one or two objects and just gradually build up from there. And the more you do this exercise, the more it'll start making sense, and you'll make neat little pictures by the time you're done. 10. Limited Palette discussion: all right. So if you decided that you wanted Teoh, you know, kind of play around with a limited color palette in you went out and got maybe a few extra colors on hand. I just want to spend a little bit of time talking about, um, the palate and what what we have here. So I still have my white and black with the yellow Oakar a Terra Rosa and then ultra marine blue. Um, and so that that was kind of like my recommended palette If you decided that you wanted to give it a shot, Um, if you had anything relatively close to this, you will be OK, so but this is kind of what I would choose as a basic palette. Um, and this is basically you can kind of make everything, um, with just these few colors. Obviously, there's gonna be exceptions. And, um, but for the most part, you can get most mixtures out of this. Um, and you don't have toe have like, ah, laundry list of colors. And you know, the problem with having maybe too many colors on your palate at once is that it gives you too much choice. So by stripping it down to maybe just a handful of colors. A. It will teach you how to mix colors a little bit easier because you only have so many choices. And then also to is that it only gives you, um, you know certain things to choose from, and by limiting your choice, you will then decide what you really need to do in order to fit a specific color in the painting that you're working on. Um, so I would again encouraged, starting with the limited palate. Um, if you're just starting out and then is always easy to add colors to a palette. But for now, you know, try and keep it simple and just kind of learned basic color. Mixing that way, when you do add colors, it's gonna be more out of, say, making it more convenient to have something out of the tube versus having to mix batches of color several times, which could take, you know, several minutes depending on you know what you're painting. So some things to consider. But that's kind of where I would start with So one recommendation I'm gonna make for those of you starting with color is Now you're gonna have to obviously do some mixing of some kind in order to make other colors. However, you're also gonna have to mix colors so that they can be grayed down appropriately. And now what this means basically is is that you're very seldom gonna use a color straight out of the tube. Um, you know, they're going out of the two. Most color is gonna be far too, you know, colorful to really be used effectively. So they need to be mixed and sort of grade down so they look more appropriate, toe what you're actually painting. Now, if you're just starting out with color and you really don't have any experience with mixing the stuff, my suggestion is gonna actually to be mixing a little bit of a great pile, which is what I'm doing here. And what you will want to do is you want to mix just like a batch of gray and depending on what objects you decide you're painting. You want to find the relative value of that particular you know, color that you're trying to paint and mix the appropriate gray for it. And once you have them, the gray mixed up for that. You can then add the color to it. And so, by doing that, you know, for example, if I were to add, you know, red or blue to this or whatever or the yellow I would get, hopefully a closer representation of that grade color. Um, now there's other theories out there, you know, as faras, mixing complementary colors and and things like that. And I don't really want this to become a color theory conversation. But the best way that I have seen and from what I've you know, learned and have been taught is if you really want the truest representation of a grade down color is you actually want to mix and appropriate gray and then add that color to it so that you are getting more of an approximation of that grade color, so but it also gives you just a basic starting point to go off of. So if you really don't have any idea of how to mix, um, you know the colors to get them grade properly, that's gonna be your best bet to start with. So again, not something that you really have to dio, but just something to consider and think about as you start color painting 11. Color Demo: so same as before. I'm still going to start with an initial sketch of some kind, and I'm going to stick with using my gray paint to go ahead and do my initial drawing, and you might opt to do, um, you know it in a different color. It it really doesn't particularly matter. Um, again, these early steps are really just gonna be about establishing, um, the objects on the canvas in getting a sense of where they sit in relationship to one another and maybe just getting like, a rough breakdown of where we're gonna maybe separate, um, our colors and our values and things like that. So, again, I'm dealing with the set up where I have sort of multiple objects that I have to consider that air coming in front of one another. But I don't want to get too caught up in any smaller details. But I will make some separations if I feel that they're necessary. So I'm still just going to kind of take my time. And, um, you know, now that I'm going to be dealing with color is I might spend a little bit more time on some of the separations that I'm looking for that we just makes it easier when I go to fill things in. I just have a clearer sense of where exactly I'm going to be placing the different colors and values and things like that. So always draw, um, as much as you feel you need to. Um So what that means is, you know, if you feel like you're gonna need some extra details because it's gonna make some sort of clarification for you or anything, put those things in. Um, you know, you don't want to put in detail for details sake, but if there's little things that are just gonna help you down the down the road as you kind of start taking the painting a little bit farther, go ahead and put him in. Um, you know, just find a balance between, you know, not too much detail, but enough so that things make sense for you, and you feel comfortable working and moving on to the next step. Okay, So still going to start the same way as we did the black and white exercises. But this time, rather than a black background, I'm gonna go a little bit more accurate toe what I'm seeing. So in this case, the background is more of kind of like a gray value. So uhm, I'm going to make a little bit of a differentiation between the background, um in gray versus the actual ground plane, which will be a little bit lighter of a gray. Just that way, I have some sort of visual separation. Um, and it's a little bit more distinct, so But I'm still going to try and just work back to front as I start adding values to the picture. So but in the case of color, I'm still trying to think about the same way we did our black and white exercises. So, um, I want to keep things within that three value range. Now there might be a little bit of deviations here and there, but for the most part in my mind, that's kind of what I'm thinking about is, I want to stay in that three value range. But the Onley piece of information that we're adding is we're adding the element of color. So as I'm going to start mixing colors, I'm still thinking in terms off those three values. But now I have to mix the colors that are going to sort of be appropriate to those same ranges. So you'll kind of see a lot of things in this particular example are all going to be in that sort of middle range, which would have been sort of like our gray value, um, in the black and white paintings. So again, there's gonna be a little bit of deviation here and there. But overall, I'm kind of thinking in that range is that I don't want to create too many big value jumps or separations or anything like that. Um, the only things that are really shifting our color. So, you know, I'll still have essentially a very dark like a darker black value. Ah, lot of middle value. Um, And then as well, I will have, you know, my white value. Um, and a couple highlights in the end. So most of the colors that you're going to see are just kind of grade variations, but they're all more or less in the same value family. And like I was saying, there's gonna be a little bit of variation, so I might go, you know, a little lighter in some areas. Then maybe what I intended to, but, um, and it might kind of fall out of that three value range. And, you know, maybe I have 1/4 value of some kind. But I'm going with the intention that I'm still within that relative range so that the problems only start occurring is once we have, you know, just values all over the place, and there's no sense of overall structure within the picture. And that's kind of where we can get ourselves into a little bit of trouble. So still keeping that in the back of my mind as I'm painting, um, and again just trying to focus on getting my colors to be within those value rangers. And that's what I would say, at least is the hard part for a lot of people toe. Understand at first when they begin painting, as they're not thinking about, um, color is value per se, and they're thinking on, like color, color, color. There's, you know, all these different, you know, variations and mixtures that you can make. But at the end of the day, it's really not as important in terms of actually the kinds of colors you're making things , but their relative values toe one another and the overall structure of the picture. Um, you know, and just for us an example as I could be using, you know, really overly chromatic colors for this particular example. And I could have a really, you know, bright, bright yellow, or like a candy, you know, color red. But as long as the values were all relative to one another and in the ballpark toe, what I'm seeing the color is actually less important. So, um, at least when you're starting out, try not to get too caught up on what colors you're actually using. But really, just focus on the values that you're representing as you're painting and and that's going to serve you very well, if you can keep that in the back of your mind and some kind of getting close to filling everything in and, um, still again, just taking my time, filling things in as I go. Um, you can see the thing. How kind of the picture is taking shape now, though, that once things are kind of getting filled in here and again, it's the same principle that we did with our black and whites. But now we just added one more element to the exercise. Um, and but you can still see It's coming out the same way as our black and white did. And we're just adding a few more things to get, you know, everything to kind of come together, um, and treat this the same as the black and white exercise, you know? So maybe start with just one object, um, as you begin, and then gradually start kind of making it a little bit more difficult, you know, for yourself. But, um, hopefully this kind of makes sense. Um, you know, seeing it was just a limited palate, and, you know, not so much detail and things like bad, but I definitely encourage you to give color a shot. Um, but you know, for a while maybe just spend ah, lot of time on the black and white and then just gradually work towards this. But hopefully these exercises kind of made sense, and you'll get something out of it. And hopefully it'll encourage you to just continue painting. And, um, just getting better and better. Thanks for watching