Beginner Guide to Oil Painting Part 3: Intensity

1. Introduction: E Thanks for joining me. My name is Adele McFarland while and I'm a visual artist and educator from Nova Scotia, Canada. My practice is an artist explores the natural world in relationship to the human psyche. I have experience teaching many different levels of visual art from the middle school level through to university, and I currently teach intro to color at ST Francis Xavier University. So this class is thief Final class in a three part series that has been my beginner guide two oil painting where we're exploring the characteristics of oil paint through learning about color theory in this class, we are going to be looking at what's called intensity or saturation. This is where we get into some really complicated and more challenging color mixing where in the last cops we looked at value, so we were really focusing on understanding gradations from light to dark. In this class, we are going to be focusing on the idea of bright to dull, so I'm gonna take you through how we can take the really bright, saturated, intense colors that come from our tubes and through color mixing transformed them into colors that we observe in the natural world. So the videos in this costs are going to cover understanding complementary colors. So going back to the color wheel and looking at the importance of opposites, we are going to do some intensity scales or neutral scales where we learn how Teoh Teik are really bright colors and transform the mention neutral colors We are going Teoh, look at categorizing neutral colors into temperatures. I'm going to teach you methods for identifying colors. So if you're observing color in a still life or observing color in a photographic reference , how Teoh accurately view and understand the color that you're seeing. And our assignment is going to be a still life of a brown paper bag on a colored background , again, working with that right Teoh dull relationship. So stick with me. And in the next video, I'm gonna talk to you about the materials that were going todo 2. Materials: in this video, we're going to be talking about materials to start off. You're going to need a surface to work on. I am working on a piece of treated paper on a board. This is an arches oil paper. So it comes already pre treated and ready to work on with oils. However, you can use paper that you've painted over and acrylic medium. Jess. Oh, even white latex paint is fine. Basically, you just have to coat the surface that you're going to be painting on with a barrier so that your oil doesn't soak into it. So when you work with oil paint, your surface has to be treated. You can use a piece of plywood or Masonite board. Or if you have access to an art supply store, where you can purchase a struck canvas or campus paper. Something of that nature. Basically, you're just going to need something to work on. If you are really new to oil painting and you've never treated a surface before, or you're not really sure what to work with and you need a little bit extra. One of the first classes I ever did was on non toxic oil painting methods and one of the videos in that class. I do just so aboard to show you how that's done. So if you've never done it or you need to treat aboard than you can go back and check that out, you're going to need a pencil, the sharpener, an eraser, a ruler, a red, a blue and a yellow oil pains along with some white, a jar of either walnut oil or linseed oil or paint solvent to wash your brushes. And you were also going to need a jar of oil or oil. Medium Teoh. Add into your paint theory. Red I'm using today is a Eliza Rin Crimson for yellow. I'm using a Hansa yellow light, and for blue, I'm using an ultra marine blue. You can use any red, blue or yellow that you lights, and my white is a titanium white. You're going to need a palette knife, a pallet to work on. I work on a glass palette I recommend if you're going to be doing any amount of oil painting at all. Teoh. Get yourself a glass palette there. Fairly inexpensive. Any glad any place that makes windows or windshield glass. We'll cut you piece of glass. You can ask them to swipe the edges for you so that not sharp. And I think this one is about five millimeters, which is a good thickness to work on. If you don't have a glass palette, you can really use anything literally. Putting Saran wrap over something or actually, wax paper is a really good alternative to. So if you have some of that, that's great. You just need a flat surface that you can mix your paint on. I would also like to know that for this activity you can absolutely use a water mix herbal oil. And if that's the case, then you're not gonna be using a dirty and clean jar system with oil. But you will be doing a dirty and clean jar system with water, so make sure that you have one jar ready with water in it to clean your brushes and one jar ready. That is the water that will be adding in little bits to your paint, so you're going to need some brushes to work with. I have a variety here. Brushes to some are a natural ha bristle brush, and some are a synthetic brush. I think it's nice to have a combination when you're starting out so that you can kind of figure out what you like best. You're definitely gonna find that you will favor some sizes and shapes over others. I really like using a flat or filbert synthetic brush. A filbert has kind of a curved edge on the top, and the flat has a flat edge. On the top of both are a little bit longer. In the bristle, brights are a more of a shorter bristle brush and rounds are completely round on the top. So find one of those, so it's like completely right on the top. You need some brushes, Teoh. You're also going to need some paper towel and a nice cotton paint. Rags is nice work for are still life. Today you're going to need a piece of colored construction paper. Any color is fine, probably something brighter today for this activity, and you're also going to need a paper bag, so I have a little tiny paper bag. But you can. The standard size paper bag is fine, too. You're going to need a pair of scissors. Lastly, if you have it Ah, color real one that you've made yourself, or even just a pre made one that you pick up somewhere or or even just Google color wheel and bring one up 12 step color Real would be great. This is the color wheel that we completed in the first class in the Siri's. So be using that. And the other thing that we're going to be looking at is are warm and cool categories from the first class in the series of videos. But if you didn't do that class and you don't have these, that's totally fine all along. However, we're definitely gonna want, ah, color, real reference to work from for this class. All right, so that's all the materials that you're going to need. Stick with me, and then the next video, we're going to be talking about complementary colors 3. Complementary Colors: So this class is all about saturation and intensity. And what do I mean by those words? And why do we use both of those words? Well, saturation and intensity kind of mean the same thing. What I'm talking about is how bright or dull color is. So the intensity level, or the saturation of the color, is how bright or dull it iss. So if a color is highly saturated or described as an intense color, then it is going to be typically a color that straight out of the tube. For example, this yellow if I were to use this yellow straight from the tube than it would be its highest saturation level. As soon as you start to mix anything with this yellow, it will start to lose its saturation, especially if you're big sing white or black or its opposite color. So the same with this Eliza ring crimson straight out of the tube. It's at its highest saturation or its highest intensity level when we start to mix other colors with it. When we start to play around with how light or dark, then we're going to start to play around with its intensity level how bright it iss All the activities that we're gonna be doing today are really gonna center around exploring that range from really high intensity, bright colors into more neutral colors. When you're looking at a color wheel, you're looking at pretty high intensity colors. And as I said earlier, we can change the intensity level of a color simply by adding white to it so that by adding white here we take our red to sort of a pink color. It makes it a little less intense, though that pink is still very, very bright. The same here with a sprite orange. We had some white to it. It's gonna take that really bright intensity level down. If you had black to a color, the same thing is gonna happen. But another way to alter how bright your colors are is by mixing colors opposite. And this is where it gets really interesting, though a color wheel no only shows us a lot of information about how to mix certain colors . Say if I mix my red my yellow together, I'm gonna get these oranges. If I'm mixing my red and my blues, I'm gonna get these violets and blues and yellows, you're going to get your greens. It's a really great tool for understanding how to mix a lot of different bright colors. But it's also a really amazing tool to guide you in how to mix all of the neutral colors. So I'm talking about all of the colors that we see in the world that aren't as bright as thes rain bows, spectral colors that we see in a color wheel. Most of the colors that we observe in the world, their intensity levels are are different. They're not as bright. Their dollar and there are many different levels of high intensity colors to low intensity colors, so bright sell. So if I take a look at my color wheel and I start off, let's say we'll start with red reds. Opposite color is green, and when we look at these opposite colors, another one is, you know, yellows. Opposite color is violet and blues opposite color is orange, and then we even get thes. Tertiary mixture is where we have a red orange that is opposite a blue green. What's interesting about that is that the red and the green again are opposite, and the blue and the orange again are opposite. So even in the use tertiary mixtures like the red violet being opposite the yellow green, the violent and the yellow are opposite the green and the red, or opposite again. So you're creating these what are called complimentary color mixtures, so complementary colors are colors that are opposite each other on the color wheel. They oppose each other, but they also complement each other. So they belong together and taken do some really interesting things. For example, if I were to put red and green beside each other, they would make each other brighter if I were to mix my red and my green together, they will make each other dollar, and it's the same for all the complementary colors on the color wheel. So if you mix violet and yellow together, you're going to get a neutral brown color. If you mix your blue and your orange together, the same thing is gonna happen. You might get more of, uh, cooler mixture, depending on how much blue is in that orange and blue mixture to the same with the red and green. If there's gonna be more green in it, it will be a little bit cooler. If there's more red, it might be a little bit more warm brown, but some really interesting things start to happen when we mix these complementary colors together of these opposite colors together. Complementary colors had also create harmony in a painting. So the next time you are looking at a work of art, think about the color that you're seeing. Try to see if you can notice if the artist has used a complementary color scheme. Complementary color schemes are very popular. It's interesting, but you will also see complementary color pairings in nature as well. So that whole idea of offices attract is really true when it comes to color. So start paying attention to the world around you, the color combinations that you're seeing. And I bet that you'll notice that complementary colors come up in art and in fashion and in the natural world. So these combinations of opposites are really interesting component dio creating balance and harmony in your works. So in the next video, we're going to start mixing together these complementary colors, and we're gonna see what happens 4. Intensity Scales: So in this video, we're going to be making a grid on our paper so that we can explore mixing are complementary colors together to get some neutral colors. What I would like you to do is make a seven by 12 grid working with a one inch square so you can grab your ruler and your pencil. And what I'm gonna do is actually do a little half an inch on each side of my paper, and I'm gonna measure the top in the bottom. So my square sort of start in, uh, just in from my paper and I'm gonna measure on both sides. So 12 squares vertically and horizontally. I want there to be seven squares. And so now you should have a grid that is seven squares across and 12 squares down. Hopefully, the surface that you're working on allows for such a great if you have to make the great a little bit smaller. That's fine to whatever works. So now I'm going to label my complementary color mixtures, and I'm gonna start off here with red. So I'm gonna put an r and then on the other end, I'm gonna put and G for green, red and green always come back to your color wheel. If you need to reference, though, to find those opposite colors the next row. I want you to leave because we're gonna be doing a neutral scale here, working with the neutral colors that we discover in our complimentary color mixtures. And we're gonna be adding white to those neutral colors to create a gradation toe. Leave one row for that and then we're going to put a why for yellow and a B at the other end for violent. And then leave another row blank and you are going Teoh put a B for blue and a O for orange . So these are all of our primary to secondary complementary color mixtures, usually a row blank here and then you're going Teoh, start with the tertiary complementary color mixtures. So we are going to have our red, orange and blue green. So I'm gonna put an R O and A B G and then leave one blank, and then I'm going to have my yellow orange mixing with my blue violet. So why, Oh, for yellow, orange and the the for blue violet. Leave this one blank and then our last complementary color mixture is going to be our yellow green and are red violets. So we're gonna put why G and R v my rent, maybe yellow and my blue. I want you to take your brush and just dip it in your clean jar just to kind of get the brush coated with oil. And I want you to grab a little bit of your Eliza Rin crimson or whatever read that you are using for this particular activity. I'm just sort of mixing in the oil that was on my brush into paint. So I have a nice consistency to work with, and I'm going Teoh a red square in that first square on my grid. For this, you don't have to completely fill your grade with the Red Square. I probably did for this one a little bit too much because oil paint because it doesn't drive right away, it will start to interact with each other if the sections touch. So if you make your square of color a little bit smaller than that square you drew, then that will help prevent a lot of the touching between the colors. And I'm gonna get another brush. I'm gonna be working with multiple brushes here for this particular activity so that I don't have to do a lot of brush washing until the end thing. I get my palette knife and I'm going to mix a green. So I want to take some of my yellow and some of my blue. So in this situation, I really want to make sure that my green that I mix is very much a green that is in between the yellow and the blue. It's not too blue. And it's not too yo and I'm gonna take that green and I'm gonna put a swatch at the very end of my grid. Now I'm going, Teoh, get into mixing the used to together I'm going to start off with mixing my green into my red. I'm just gonna take some of my red here, put it over here, and I just want to take a tiny bit of my green and added into any more. Go to doctor sooner. Too much green. Too soon because I really want to see a subtle change. So just a tiny bit of green in that first square off of your pure red, and what you should start to see is that right away the bread is going to be a little bit darker. But also it should start to become less vibrant, so less bright. If I add in a little bit more green, let's see what happens. And we're getting something that's darker but also color that's starting to look less like a red and more like a brown for my next square. I really want to get a between red and green so that the color doesn't look red and it doesn't look green. So it's really what we're gonna call a neutral colors, and I can kind of compare it to my last color to make sure so my center square here should be completely neutral, and it's going to look very brown. So now I'm going to start adding red into green to see how the bread effects degree. So here I'm going to just take a very tiny amount of the red, and I'm gonna added into that green that I mixed up. Let's take a look at what that's gonna look like so again, it's looking a little bit darker, and it's also looking less saturated, less rights more dull on a little bit more earthy. But just get This is what we're going for. So now I'm going Teoh Teik some more red. One more step here. So this is a green. That's a very, very neutral green, Very dark again, only getting really close to that brown that we're seeing here in the center. That sort of happened half. But it still has some green qualities and I would say almost some cooler, neutral qualities. Where is on this side? We're seeing that they are neutrals, but they're still warm. It still has a lot of the red in it. So from here, we've got this color in the center that's completely neutral. And what I want you to do is to take that neutral color and put it in this square here. And then we're gonna be adding some white to that neutral color, and we're going to do a scale from the beginning neutral color and adding more and more white to it. So we're getting a gradation as the neutral color gets lighter and that's going to start to show us some of the qualities of this neutral de saturated color and how we can use that neutral color to describe many neutral things that we see in the world. So the color could be really similar to a skin tone or the color of bark on a tree or the color, for instance, of a brown paper bag. But I want to make sure that I have enough of this neutral in between colors. I'm going to take the kind of greeny around that I have here and this we have just a small amount of red to it so I can get that color that's really tough in the centre neutral color . Take a little bit of that and I'm gonna add it here and now. What I'm going to do is to start adding a little bit of white to this neutral color very, very small amounts at a time. So I'm working with the titanium white here, and the titanium white is really gonna take over pretty quickly. And I have seven steps here that I want to go from the stark neutral color into an almost close to white, so I don't want to get to light too soon. So I've added a very small amount in and it's just changed the color just slightly, and I actually not quite enough, So I'm gonna steal just a little bit more. Let's see. Okay, So pretty subtle change, but okay. Skin still see a step. So we're gonna grab a little bit more weight and OK, so now I have this really lovely gradation from my dark neutral to my light, and we can start to see here how you can create something similar to skin tone. So if you're really interested in painting portrait, it's then this method of combining complementary colors is really gonna help get you to a place where you can mix many different variations of skin tone that are going to be a lot truer to the subject that you are observing. You will be able to play around with the temperature off thieves, neutrals, and we will get into that a little bit further in the next video. So I'm gonna go ahead and start to work on my yellow and violet mixtures may and now, moving from my vibrant yellow into a neutral color. I'm going to take very small amounts of my violet. And in the some of my favorite effects with color are adding in that violet into the yellow . If you've ever tried Teoh dark and yellow with lack, you'll notice that yellow often turns green and you can actually get some really lovely interesting greens from adding small amounts of black to your yellow. But I often find to get a darker yellow color that doesn't turn green right away. Adding, in the violent gives you this really lovely, earthier yellow, really similar to a yellow car so you can mix very, very close to a yellow okra, which is really wonderful because it shows you that all you need to mix any color is of red , yellow and blue for the most part. So let's take this a little bit further, and this is quite close to a deep oh Khoury color, which I just love. And now we want to get that in between that neutral color so it's not. It's a color that's not yellow, and it's the color that's not violent, but it's completely in between. So I'm gonna take some of my violet e think I've got it, and now I'm going to start working with the violet and I'm going to be adding in yellow into it. It's gonna mix in this bit of yellow in here to this ever already started, we might even go a little bit further. Castle Violet is such a dark color. It's gonna take a little bit more Teoh, See the change? So here we go from and this might not register as much on the camera, but we're going from really, really deep violet to basically almost a black color After adding in our yellow, I take it a little bit further here. And what will start to happen is that violent. It is gonna lighten up, become way less saturated. So we're really looking at a very dark, neutral color here. But it's just slightly lighter than this. Really, really dark. So the more yellow you add in the later this neutral violet is gonna get, we're gonna come back to this center neutral color and start adding white to it to see what are neutral. Scale is gonna look like way, way. And so now that we've completed our second neutral scale, I want you to observe. The difference is that we're seeing between our complimentary mixtures off red and green and are complementary mixtures of yellow and violet. Both create neutral colors but neutral colors with a very different quality, so we can really start to see the possibilities open up here. When it comes to just the sheer amount of color that we can mix and all of the different variations, I'm going to move on to my blue and my orange mixture. I just wanted to talk about when you were mixing your secondary colors and some things that might come up for you as you experiment with the complementary color mixing. If the orders that you're mixing has too much yellow in it, then when you mix it with your blue, it's going Teoh, interact and create more of a green neutral. When you're doing this mixing. And if you notice that the neutral colors that you're getting are turning a little bit green, then you know there's probably too much yellow in the orange that you're mixing, and the same can be said for if the mixture. If the orange is to read, then you might start to get a violet neutral color. So in order to get a really nice neutral between your blue and your orange. You really want to make sure that that's orange color that you're working with is a very orange that's not to read in its not too yellow, and the same can be said here for when you know when you're mixing your violets and your yellows together to get your neutrals. If your mixture is turning more green than you would like, it's probably because the violet that you mixed up has too much blew it. So you want a violet that is not a blue violet, but but a violent that's very in between the red and blue, and that's not necessary. And none of those mixtures are necessarily bad, and you might actually really enjoy the characteristics that you're getting through those mixtures. But just so you're aware that that is what's happening in that situation. So let's see how this turns out with the orange that I've mixed up and my blue way, way, way. - Now I'm going to move on to the tertiary mixtures. I'm going to mix up my red orange and my blue green, and with these mixtures, I really want to make sure that I get the mixture is correct so that when I get into mixing my neutrals, I have done so precisely enough that I'm going to see some subtle differences between the neutral scales on creating. So here I'm taking a bit of the orange that I had mixed up, and I'm going to add some more rent to it. My blue green. I don't want to put too much yellow in because I want my blue green to Of course, you were blue, then creative. So the more yellow add more towards green or yellow green. It's gonna be one thing that can come up in oil. Painting is talking about muddiness, so you don't want your colors, you money or be careful of money. Nous and I sort of disagree with that in that I think, oh, having an idea of how colors can get money and then knowing how to use them. So rather than money, we can say neutral. But I think if you have a really strong grass of how the colors interact, how you can tone a bright color down and how you can create neutrals with intention, I think that's gonna make your painting so much stronger. So I'm gonna go ahead and start this complimentary color mixture way, way. So go ahead, work on my neutral scale here on, and I'll actually kind of just keep going and finish off the grid. Way, way, way, - way , - way , way, - way , way, way. - Okay , uh, way. And you might wonder why even bother with all of this mixing of neutrals when you can buy neutral colors or earth tones already in a to colors like all of green and like brown yellow Oakar burnt sienna. So there are many different tubes of neutral, earthy colors that you can buy. So the short answer is that you don't necessarily have to go to all the trouble of mixing your own neutrals if you don't want to. However, I do think that knowing how to make these colors is really important, especially when you're starting out, because then you don't have to buy a lot of different colors and different paint. It's expensive, and really, the long answer to all of this is that knowing how to make your own neutrals and how to tone down your color is how to take the intensity level of your color. Sound is something that's just fundamentally, really important to understand and to have in your repertoire as a painter is something else that you could also consider is that if you were to mix up a whole bunch of gray and then use that gray and you could mix it with any color and then that that would also de saturate the color so you don't necessarily have to mix in a colors opposite to de saturated color to create a neutral. Necessarily, however, in order to be able to play around with many different options and a lot of different variety is really important. If you're using the same gray to tone down every color on your palate, then your colors are going to start to take on a uniform look. They'll all start to look like that great that you're using and similar to using a neutral color that's in a tube. Teoh add to your colors to tone them down. If that's the only thing you're doing, if it's the only thing that you're adding to every single color, then all of your colors are gonna take on the characteristic of that color that you're using, so and that's totally fine It just depends on what you are going for. But I think throwing in different ways of mixing neutrals and different ways of toning your color sound is something definitely worth trying and playing around with. So in the next video, I'm going to talk to you about how Teoh identify color better, as well as understanding temperature when working with neutrals. 5. Temperature: So in talking about temperature, I'm going to bring back our handy color wheel here and just a czar as a reminder that there is a warm side and a cool side of the color wheel. So you're warm side of the color wheel goes from red all the way to yellow or yellow green , and you're cool. Side of the color wheel goes from green or yellow green all the way to violet or red violet . So actually red, violet and yellow, greener of those ones that Iran kind of if he saw at, like places on the color wheel. So definitely red. Violet, I see, is a warm color. But depending on how much violet is in that red violets, you know it could be definitely cool on the same with that yellow green that yellow green could read. Depending on how much yellow is in it, it could definitely be a warm color. But if it's ah, yellow green, that's a lot closer to green that it's gonna be a a cool color. So that is your warm and you're cool side of the color wheel and unease E way to sort of remember the warm and cool is how the color feels. So you know, typically, warmer colors feel warmer and cooler colors have a cool feeling. The other way is that you can remember that red is the warmest color, and violent is the coolest color. So if we were to take our color wheel and spread it out like the color spectrums I'm gonna line starting with red and ending with violet, that's one way took to consider it as well when thinking about temperature. But it's very easy to just I know that you have a warm side of the color wheel in a cool side of the color wheel, and characterizing color by temperature is very useful when we get into color mixing so we can start looking at some lighter neutrals that are left over from the grid that we did. So if I just grab from over here kind of saved those light colors from my mixtures earlier , and if I take a look at this beautiful color to me, it's definitely on the warm side. I'm gonna throw it here on the warm side. To me, it has some more red qualities. It almost has a kind of pinkie brown to it. So I know what's gonna belong on that warm side. Okay, now, this is a very gray looking neutral, and to me, it has a lot of violent in it. So I really feel like it's going to belong on the cool side. Has some blue qualities and violent qualities. It's very cool gray. This particular neutral is fairly tricky to me. It has a lot of green in it, but there's also a lot of yellow, so it could be either or. But I actually feel like it really belongs on the cool side. In this particular Mutual, definitely left over from a red green mixture, is very green. I definitely feel very cool and belongs in that cool category. Grab this one here and this one read away had some read right with it, so it's very pink, very warm. Know where that's gonna go, and this is another one. That is a little tricky, and it really could be a warm or cool. But I do feel like it's more on the warm side. That's to me. It has more yellow quality to it, maybe even a little bit of red in there just slightly more so then this neutral here, that that's very brown. So we can see right away just from taking a look at some of the neutrals left over from our activity, how we can categorize them into a warm or a cool category. Now we'd like to play around with these neutrals a little bit too kind of push them each into a space that would be considered their opposite. So take, for instance, this very green neutral. What I'd like to do with it right now is take it from a cool neutral to a warm neutral. So what I'm gonna do is actually add some yellow to it until I create much warmer, neutral color. And that's a neutral color that could be either or actually, now that I'm looking at it, it's it's very green to meet. Its really close to the yellow green, have a lot of yellow in it, but it's still really reading is green. So I feel like it could go either or if I want to take it a lot further and really bring it into a warmer neutral. I'm gonna bring some red in, and now I've got a really warm brownie red here that's reading much more warm, so it's nice to play around in this way. I'm going to continue to kind of play around with these colors to give you a sense of how we can create neutral colors that can be described by their temperature so warm and cool. And it's important for me to get that across to you because I think when we're working with neutrals, it's really important to me of the push it one way or the other. If you are trying Teoh neutralize a particular color, a particular neutral that you're working with, say that you feel it is too warm. Then you know you have to add the opposite, so a cool color to bring it back. If you have a color that is too cool and you want to warm it up so you have like a really cool grey, you want to be more of a warm gray, so you know you have to add in some warmer colors into that neutral color to bring it back to give it some warmth. So playing back and forth with this warm and cool is very useful, so let's work with another one. This particular mixture here I identified as a cool neutral and I want to warm it up. So let's try throwing in some yellow to this one and see if it warms it up a little bit more with the last one. It kind of turned it green, and so then we want to throw some red in to really get it. Get it warm. But this yellow here is really making this a nice warm beige or pray neutral colors. So let's take a look at that. See what that looks like? Definitely a lot warmer. So let's take a warm neutral and let's make it cool. So I've got this pink neutral here and I want to go with the cool colors of right away. Go with the blue. But what might happen here is that this goes violent. But actually the blue is strong enough that it just took it straight to a very blue grey. A lot of cool qualities there, and I have this more violent right here that I'm going Teoh at some yellow, too to see if I can take it from cool to warm. Yeah, and this might have gone a little too green. It might actually be pretty close to the green that we had here, which, which is a really warm, neutral green but still has a cool feeling to it. So again, if we, you know, just take a little bit of the red, maybe just a little bit more yellow. We'll see if we can't bring that into warm zone. It's really nice, so you can definitely keep playing here with your neutral color. So moving them from warm to cool and just playing around with identifying your neutrals. Sometimes it can be really difficult. Teoh. Figure out how to mix a neutral color or what particular mixture you should work with or what colors you should start with. And knowing the warm and cool can help you get to that place. So whether you start with and orange blue complementary color mixture, Teoh get up around that you want to work with, or you start with a violet and a yellow mixture to get a brand that you want to work with. Being able to identify temperature can help you push those neutrals back and forth, kind of regardless of the colors that you start with. So it's really all of a practice. It's about experimentation, and it's about knowing how those colors air gonna interact through mixing and adding in their opposites. But something I get a lot in classes that I teach is you have a student who's mixing this massive amount of color and and so say they're trying to get a brown color, and they just keep mixing, mixing. And you know it's either just always green or always looks violet, and it's just driving them crazy. And they're mixing so much off their paint. So a really easy solution to this is to take a little bit of that paint that they've been mixing and to add the opposite color. So whether it's the opposite temperature or the opposite color. So if if the color that you're mixing is to green, always add the opposite, which would be read or the opposite temperature, which would be, of course, a warmer color. So redwood work. If it is ah, violent that you if the color is too violent, of course, and you're gonna add in that warmth you want to add in that yellow. So always remember how important opposites are when you're trying to get the right color 6. Identifying Color: Okay, So in this video, we are going to talk about identifying color. We've done all of the color mixing. We know how to mix our neutrals now. So it's nice to kind of put it all into perspective and talk about why this is important and how you're gonna use it. Just as an example, if you were gonna make a painting from a photographic reference, I just have a book here. I like to keep lots of basically like coffee table books or picture books in my studio for reference a lots of photographic reference for collage for painting. So this is just an example. If we open up to this page where we see this really vibrant sunset happening here and I want Teoh, use this as a reference for a sky in my painting set so I might want t like mix up some oranges cause I can see that there's a lot of orange and yellow going on in this sky. At a glance, it looks very vibrant, but when you start to paint it, if you're using oranges that are just straight mixture off yellow and red or even orange straight into the tube, maybe you add in a little bit of black to get these areas up here and some white, but the piece might not look as realistic as you would like. It still looks almost oversaturated, too intense and sort of lacking and doesn't really match what you're seeing. So how do you really get down to identifying the color? The tricky thing about color is that it's really hard Teoh identify. And it's really hard for us to often see what's happening with color because color is all about relationships and it's all about lights. And the way that our brains work is that we really want to be able to simplify so that we can move through the world quickly. So we kind of look, we identify and then we move on. We know this guy is blue, grass is green and so on. But when we take the time to slow down and start observing really looking, then we can start to see the subtleties. And as artists, we can use what we see in the world in our work. So whether you were a representational painter or even an abstract painter, observation is so important as a visual artist. You use what you see to create things for people to look at its this visual experience that really requires a slower form of paying attention. And sometimes it also requires a few little tricks to help our eyes observed better so one way with the photographic reference to really identify the colors that you're seeing is to take a white piece of paper and punch a hole in it. So you have a hole punch. That's great. I do not. So I'm just gonna pop a hole in a piece of paper with a pencil and just fold it over. And what I've done here is create a little hole, a little window for me. Teoh. Isolate the colors that I want to look at, so this little window can help me identify colors a little bit easier. And what this does is it separates a color from all of the other colors around a certain area because we see color in relation to all of the colors around it as well. It's very complicated visual experience and in order to kind of break things down and to deconstruct what we're looking at, it's nice to have a little tool. Eventually, If you're doing a lot of painting and a lot of observation, then you won't need a tool like this. But when you're starting out, it's such an easy way to just isolate what you're seeing, and then you can mix your color and match it up. So when I look at this color here without isolating it, you know, I kind of see it. Aziz Orange seems pretty bright to me, but then, if I isolate the color, then I can identify that the color is still in that orange family. Its value is sort of in the mid range, and it's also toned down a bit. It's not as saturated as straight out of the tube orange. So when I go to mix this color, I might want to add a tiny bit of its opposite, which would be blue. And then right away you'll start to see that intensity will come down and you'll be able to mix that color Another example here, where we see almost like our most intense areas or these yellows so we can kind of the weekend, isolate that color and look at it and what we can notice is that right in the center, it might be a really small area that could be close to and out of the tube yellow, however around it, and really close to where it's discipline into the orange above. We start to see that, Yeah, you probably would want to put a tiny bit of violet into that yellow two. Tone it down just a little and above. If we look at this area up here, it actually starts to look almost a little bit violet or like a neutral. That would be a mixture of violet and yellow together. And then to be really sure. What you can do is, once you have your color mixed up on your palate, you can take your palette knife and bring it to the hole in the paper and really compare them to see Do I have that? Color is close, as as I would like. So the next time you are working with a photographic reference, consider isolating your colors with a little tool like this to help you observe them better . So if you're out in the world and you are observing a landscape or subject in real life, you can also use a white piece of paper and just roll it up into a little two on. And even though it seems a little bit silly, you can isolate your color using the tube as a little viewfinder, and that is gonna help you as well. And you can also you. If you're mixing up your color on your palate, take some of the color that you have a mix up and you can go and put up your viewfinder and you can put up your color and you can compare the color that you're looking at with the color on your palette knife. And that might seem a little excessive at first. But it is a tool that can help you in the beginning. Teoh start to observe color eventually. As I said before, you're not going to need to use the paper. You will just through practice that he able to observe the subtleties that you're seeing in the color. But hopefully that helps you, uh, let me know if it's a method that works for you. In the next video, we are going to talk about temperature 7. Assignment Part 1: for our assignment today we are going to be making a little still life of a paper bag on colored paper. And we're gonna observe this little object that we are going to put together and use what we've learned about mixing neutrals and working with intensity levels of color to complete this Still a So you should get your colored piece of paper, your paper bag, hand to pair scissors and what we're gonna dio is cold. You're colored paper and huh? Just like that. And then you're going to fold up just a little section of the colored paper. Now, depending on the size of your paper bag, you might want to fold up a little bit more. This is gonna be the ledge that the paper bag sits on. You're basically creating, like a little room space or diagram A or something like that. That kind of idea. All right, So what I did was once I folded up my little section. I then cut it in the center on that fools. And then now it should pull together just like this. And that's going to create a little space for my paper back to sit in and it's also going to create some light and shadow areas, and I'm just gonna tape it place. I'm gonna take my paper bag and I'm gonna You can take your paper bag and you can kind of do whatever you want with it. You can crush it, crumple it up. You can just have it open. You can tear it. You can do whatever you want. Basically, what I would like you to do is to create some pulls, some ridges and crushed wrinkles and some just interesting sort of dynamic things. Texture, value, stuff that's going to make this a challenging assignment for years, and depending on how much challenge you want, you can wrinkle it. You can put it into a little ball if you want to have your paper bag wrinkled or folded, however you like. You're going to set it in your little colored paper space, and you might want to just tape it down so that it stays in place where you want it. The reason why I chose the colored paper and the brown paper bag as our subject better today is because I want to work with some intense color. Some bright colors and then work with the shadows created. So this background bright color is gonna have some really interesting shadows cast because it's folded as well as the object sitting inside of it is gonna Kasam some shadows as well on the object itself, which is, the paper bag is a neutral color. So we're going to have to utilize all of the things that we've learned in this class to figure out how Teoh not only mix the neutral color of the paper bag, but to mix many different variations of the neutral color because we're going to be dealing with changes in value and working with highlights and shadows and all of that fun stuff this little still like, is going to be a challenge. But it's going Teoh help you understand a lot about levels of intensity with color and how to use primary colors to create you can take. And I'm going to set my still life just off to the side here, and I want to place it just beyond my eye line from my surface that I'm working on a really important thing when you're working on a still like when you're working for a likeness so that you were painting. Looks like the thing you were observing is that you want to put it in a place where it's very easy for you, Teoh. Observe, and you also want to place it so that you aren't changing your perspective. So when you're looking at your still like, you're always looking at it in the same direction, so I haven't placed on the little stand on. I wonder if I could. If I just move this, you can see where I have it. So it's just beyond my easel. I don't have to move anything to see it. I don't have to turn my head this way to see it. I can just glance with my eyes as I'm working, and that's really important for this. So wherever you place your still life, make sure it's in it. In a place where it's easy for you to observe and you're not changing your position or your point of view, I'm going to mix up a neutral color that has a little bit of that background color in it. So kind of a blue green, but a neutral blue green to start out, and I'm gonna do a really rough sketch with this color. However, if you are more comfortable starting with a drawing first, then that's totally fine. I would say. Don't spend too much time doing a really, really detailed drawing for this because it's just really an exercise about color and observing intensity levels and, of course, value. You don't have to go into great detail with a pencil drawing first unless you really want to, so that's totally up to you. I'm going to jump into it with paint right away because I work with oil paint without any paint solvents. The paint that I use is going to be a little bit thicker right off. So there's many different ways of starting a painting you can start with doing a really a detailed value drawing. You can start with a very loose sketch. You can start with thin down paint. If you're using paint thinner and oil paint, you can thin that paint down so it's nice and loose and do a value wash. So you're just looking at value and putting in basic detail to start. If you're working with water, mix herbal oils, then you could do exactly the same thing, except you're gonna be using water instead. And if you're just working with oil, paint and oil as your medium, then you can start off thicker if you like, And that's what I'm gonna be doing. So I'm going to start off with mixing up a blue green because my background is this turquoise color. I'm taking a little bit of blue, a little, very little bit of yellow to start. And then I also want to mix up my opposite color. So we're working with color intensity today, and we're gonna play around with complementary colors. So if I come back to my scales that I was doing before, If I'm working with a blue green here, then I need Teoh mix with it. A red orange I'm gonna take read and just a tiny bit of yellow where my red orange may take a little bit more yellow and it this common venture mixture is gonna be my starting point. So I'm gonna take some of my rent orange and some of my blue green, and I want a little bit more blue green to start for this beginning color that I'm going. Teoh used to sketch out my bag and start massing in some value to get this nice, really dark, neutral color. And I'm gonna just grab some of my weight and I'm gonna mix that until I get a gray to start Just something really neutral. Not from us, like, so I'm gonna just and I've got this really toned down blue green to start with. Now we say to start, because if we get into this, we might need to alter this complimentary color mixture. So I'm going to start out with working with neutrals created from this complimentary mixture. And then, as I go along, when I see areas in my paper bag that are warmer or cooler than I can add warm, warm colors such as yellow to my neutral or a cool color such as blue or green to my neutral to change that temperature, similar to what we were doing in the last video where we were playing around with temperature. I really want to encourage you to play around the temperature here, too, because, as we observe are still life depending on the light in your room, the types of shadows that you're seeing, the highlights you're gonna notice that that temperature off the paper bag, depending on if parts of it are in shadow or parts of it are catching the light from a window or from a light. You're going to notice the subtle differences and in warmth or were cool shadows. So pay attention to that and play around with how you can mix your colors to achieve that coming back. Teoh getting started here, I'm going, Teoh. I just put a little bit of oil on my brush just enough to loosen my mixture up. And I'm going to start by taking a look at my paper bag and deciding how I want my paper bag. Teoh, sit on my piece of paper. So I wanted to be nice and big because I really want to concentrate on those wrinkles and the shadows. I don't want my still like to be really small on my piece of paper. I want to give myself a lot of opportunity to work on my subject, so I'm gonna make it nice and big. I'm gonna start here on top of the paper bag. It's like this crinkly kind of texture. So I'm gonna, you know, I'm sort of thinking about that a little bit, but I know I'll be able to put that detail in more so later. I'm almost like dry brushing here, so I have a little bit of pain in my brush, and I'm just dragging it across. It's almost like it's really similar to pencil drawing. I don't want to go too crazy too fast. I want to give myself an opportunity. Teoh create some lines and some structure to work from way. And so now I have a very loose idea of my paper bag. This is just the beginning. I have. I know how big it is going to be on my paper. I've got its general structure where and seeing some larger masses of shadow and some areas of shadow in my background. And from here I am going to start massing in some of these shadowy areas first with my background, and then I'll get into the paper bag so I will be mixing up the darkest color for both my background and then for my paper bag, which will be different colors to keep it really simple. I want you to think about breaking down your image into three different values. So a darkest color, a medium color, and you're like this color. Once you have the three values blocked in, then you can continue on and add in more subtle variations of value with your colors as you go, I'm going to try to get this background color as close to my actual background color is I come. I might not be able to get it exact. You might not be able to get it exact. That's okay, but it is a good exercise to try and get that close, so the color and mixed up is really very dark. I'm gonna add some white just to see where my blue greenest and he asked. That's pretty blue at some yellow with that goes now. To check your color, you can have your color on your palate night. You can use the viewfinder that I showed you how to make in the identifying color section of these classes. Or you can hold your palette knife up and squint your eyes and look at the color you're trying to match. And if it's pretty close when you squint your eyes, like if it starts to kind of almost disappear, then you know that you have the right color. So I I'm pretty pleased with that mixture and I want to work with my dark color. So this really dark color then I started out with here Former shadow is enough. Start might at a little tiny catch. And I'm going Teoh start just massing in the darkest areas that I'm seeing with my darkest background color, which in this case isn't almost black. No, because this blue green that I'm working with in my background is so vibrant. All I have to do is work with the straight ultra marine blue and my handsome yellow to create a really dark enough mixture or my dark a shadow area. And I will add white to this color in order to get the highlighted areas. So depending on your background color, you may have to add black to the color, get a larger brush here to come around way. So we're really looking Teoh, identify the darkest areas. One way to do that is to squint at you're still like so I'm really looking for my dark of shadows at this point, and I'm just gonna squint and wherever in my background I see those dark, almost black areas. That's where I'm gonna put this way. And so now I'm gonna mix up the darkest color that I confined on my paper bag. So I'm looking for the darkest area that's in shadow. I'm going to use this neutral gray that I mixed up earlier to do my outline on. I'm gonna grab some more of this red yellow, and I'm gonna make some together in my bag. It's definitely a warm, orangey, neutral color. More yellow to this. I have this really nice dark brown. That's a great starting point. But for my darkest area in my paper bag, I actually need to have some cooler color into this brown to get the shadowy areas. I'm gonna come and grab just a bit of the blue green, just cool down and also dark in that brown of it. This color looks really perfect for my very darkest areas. Now I will work with different brushes for different parts of the painting. So for the paper bag, I'm going to be using particular brush and or brushes. I might have a couple different sizes, but with the neutral brown variations of color and then form I'm or intense blue green background. I'm gonna be using different brushes for that as well. So it's nice to kind of keep them separate, and that will keep your color cleaner. So here I am, massing in my darkest areas on the paper bag. I don't want to think too much about detail. I just want to get the really, really dark areas in again. I'm squinty that I still live, so I can really identify and capture the darkest areas that I'm seeing way way. So now I'm gonna move on to my next darkest color in my background. So I'm going to be constantly working from the background to my subject and then back to the background again. And I think it's really important. Teoh work on an entire painting in this way so that you're never constantly sticking Teoh, painting one tiny section just in the beginning. Concentrating too much on one area of the painting can cause a lot of problems later on, kind of bringing the whole piece together. So I think, especially in the beginning stages, it's nice to get as much spread out and cover as much ground as you can, especially hang attention to you those values and really concentrating on getting the value in the right place in the beginning. So I'm gonna move on to the next darkest area on my backgrounds. And so I'm gonna grab some of my blue green, really, Just working with the same blue green live here, but with a tiny, tiny bit of white in it. Not very much. I don't want to go overboard because these are shadowy areas, so I don't want them. Teoh Way , way, way. Now I just have a couple little sections here where there's just a very subtle value change from my shadows. I kind of have this double shadow thing going on. So I'm going Teoh, add those colors and before I get into the really vibrant stuff in the background, and then I'm gonna get into the paper bag more so we just want to add a little bit more white to this color that I've been working with. And as you're changing the value off your color or, you know, slightly changing the characteristics of the color, whether you want to add in more yellow or more blue always add really small amounts. So really small, incremental changes will help you get the colors that you really want and will also help you understand the pain that you're working with and how little or how much you have Teoh to get particular color certain effect way. And I'm not paying too much attention. Teoh just here. So where my two different values air meeting. However, I am trying to put in as much work as I can in now so that it's easier for me later. So in little areas, I am adding in bits of detail where I've kind of drawn this shadowy background color into my darkest color a little bit to give the sense of the teeth of the bag that you can still see in that shadow. Little things like that you can you can do in this block in, so I'm doing the same thing here. I'm kind of cutting down with this color into the white area, which eventually is going to be the bag. But those little teeth so kind of giving that texture along the top, and in some of my areas I have more of an abrupt change from one value to another, and in some of them it's more of a subtle change. So in those areas, I can do a little bit of blending by drawing my brush across, But again, you're gonna have a lot of time for finishing touches later. So I focused too much on those small details just yet. Ah, uh, So I'm gonna come back into the bag and work on my next darkest value that I'm seeing on this particular value. I am seeing a lot of in kind of the center area of the bag, so I'm going to be mixing up a good amount of that color. So I'm gonna take the nice, warm brown that I mixed up earlier. And I'm gonna compare that to the color that I want to match that I'm seeing. You want to tone it down just a little with that more grey dark color, and then add just some white to lighten it up, maybe a little bit and color that I'm trying to get for this particular part of the bag. I was feeling like what I had here was a little too warm. Maybe a little too vibrant. So I added in the opposite color a bit of that blue green from this shadowy area. I just threw some of that in there, and that's toned it down a little bit. I'm gonna just grab a little bit more white because I wanted to be toned down. But I don't want it to be too dark. Really happy with that now I think I'm pretty close. I'm gonna add this in way, - way , way, structure, paper bag. Is that all of these wrinkles are these planes that are either in shadow or in light? As I'm working on the shadowy areas, I'm trying Teoh, think about those planes of shadow in terms of shape. So I'm really looking at my subject. I'm looking at the paper bag and I'm squinting, and I'm trying to define those areas of shadow on the bag as these shapes. And so really just thinking about it very abstract, Lee. Not that I'm painting a bag, but that I'm trying to capture particular shapes that I'm seeing in the shadowy areas from here. I'm going, Teoh, move onto the brightest area of my background 8. Assignment Part 2: now the tricky part. A boat, my background is that it is very vibrant, and the blue and yellow that I have, when mixed together, create a very, very dark blue green. That's because the ultra marine blue is a very, very dark color. So it actually fairly difficult to get a really vibrant blue green when using an ultra marine blue. Because the more white you add to the color, the less saturated it's gonna look. So it's difficult to get that really high vibrancy for a color like this really bright blue green that we're seeing. And I might just tip this this way so you can kind of so you can see what I'm working with here. It's a really bright blue green I would actually recommend using. This is, um, agonies blue or civilian, who would work really well, I think just for the sake of this exercise, I'm going to do the best that I can with my ultra Marine blue just to play around to see if I can really just use those three colors to complete this still light. So my blue might not end up being as vibrant as the blue green that I want, but I think it's a good exercise in playing around and working with the idea of saturation . So how can I get the most saturated, looking blue green I can with my ultra marine blue and my hands yellow? So let's see what we can mix up. So I mixed up a blue green and what I'm gonna try and do is really get the value. Correct. So I know it's gonna be It has to be quite light. So I'm gonna have to add a lot of white here, and the first thing I'm gonna do is really try and get that value. And then I'm gonna play around with adding in blue and yellow to get that brightness to get that vibrancy, your color saturation back without darkening up without hopefully darkening enough. Too much snow have the value that I want. But it's a little too, though, so I'm going. Teoh start throwing in a little bit of yellow way. So I'm going to continue to play a little bit with adding white to make sure that the color is late enough and then adding little bits of yellow to frighten it up to bring up the saturation level as well as tiny, tiny bits of blue to keep it from going to green. But I think I'm actually pretty close and just grab a little bit and take it to the psych years. I'm not really working with this. A massive amount of color. So I think Happy way , - way you can see I kind of get sucked into the detail of refining some of the shadows. And here's a number. Stop myself and get into working on the paper bag before I come back. Teoh refining some more of those shadows. Most of my dark areas are all defined. I want to jump into those mid tones those middle areas before I get into my highlight. So everywhere that is really, really light Gonna make sure that I leave some space for on gonna jump into mixing cement tones I'm gonna use the slaps color that I mixed up But I want to warm it up because everywhere that I see these mid tones, they're all live just slightly warmer. So I'm gonna add some really go along with the white way we owe way, way So at this stage things might start to look like just these blocks of color, and that's totally fine. If your paper bag starts to look abstract, that's completely OK for this assignment, especially because this is an activity that is about observation. So just take your time and observe. Don't worry. If it doesn't look exactly like what you're observing, you'll get there through practice. Right now, I want you to think about the color that you're seeing. I want you to think about everything we've been learning up until now. I am actually at this stage really enjoying how abstract my piece looks and I'm gonna keep going. So I am observing that there are some lighter areas that almost have a little bit more warmth in them that's a little bit more red. It's the light that shining, actually through the paper bag. So I'm going to try and capture that a little bit by warming up some of this mid tone color and adding it to this area, and from here, I want to get in my highlights, and then I'm actually gonna bring it back, because there now that I'm at this stage, I can see that there are some areas that I want a dark in and start to refine and add in detail. So I'm going to keep pushing forward and see where it takes me way. And now get into my lightest areas on the paper bag on. As I squint, I can see that this area here is gonna be my lightest and then I have some lighter areas down here, but they're not as light as this section where the light is hitting and I'm getting these direct highlights. At this stage, it might be a little bit confusing trying. Teoh capture all of the different value you're seeing. I think it's fun to consider it like a game or take a or a form of meditation. So if you can slow down and pay attention, toe your object and what you're seeing and compare the value that you're looking at. So when you squint and everything's really simplified, think about all of your lighter areas on, then decide which ones are the lightest. And for those highlights, if you can come up with two different tones to work with, that's great. Or you can just use one again, keeping things simple, especially when you're just starting out is perfectly fine. And the other thing is, if this all seems a little daunting to you with this crumpled paper bag and all of its different planes of value, consider just painting your bag without crumpling it up and working with that light hitting a geometric shape with only a few different planes for value. So I'm going to jump into getting some of my highlights in here. And I'm going to keep working that I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna talk a little bit about refining and blending and adding in those details before I finished Way Hair, uh, E way, - way . So now I'm going to really get into some of the subtleties off the light and shadow, and I'm gonna start blending here. I'm kind of working on this area that's inside the paper bag, which is particularly tricky because I'm finding the value on this side to be quite similar , except that the temperatures are a little bit different. The colors. Even though the value is really similar, the colors air slightly different, so this is tricky to actually get it to look like it's behind. So where is in front? It's a little bit warmer behind. I have it a little bit cooler, and I might end up adding a little bit more dark to really make it look like it is behind or inside the bag. When blending your oil paints, you can take a brush. You can move your paint around. You can take one color and kind of bring it in over another color. For example. I'll show you right here. I have the starker color below this lighter color, and I want to blend them. So I'm just gonna take a brush that doesn't have any paint on it. And it's dry and I'm just going Teoh blend were were that line. Now this is the really amazing thing about oil paint is that you can do this. You can do this blending and blurring. However, I would advise against doing too much of it. So if you blend all of your edges and lines, everything will look really, really soft. But you might miss out on some really interesting brushstrokes or passageways, so I like to think of blending as something I do when I need to. But I don't wanna go overboard. Take a look at these areas of transition from one value to another. And think about where you really want to see those edges blended and and when you can leave the brush strokes with the thicker paint and texture. So I'm going to be playing around a little bit with temperature here, cooling some of these neutrals off or warming them up in some cases and adding in more highlights and doing some blending way, way, - way , way, way, way, way. Hey, uh, - way , - way , way. 9. Clean Up: When you are finished, your paper bag can take your tape off if you're working with paper. If you're I guess if you're working with us board or canvas, you won't. I have to take your day pop. You may want to wait until your paint is a little bit tacky to take the tape off, but you want to be careful not to let the paint completely dry before you remove the tape. Because once that layer of paint has set, then it could tear into the painting. When you take the tape off, so it's better to do. It's better to take the tape off. When the paint is not completely dry, it's now for clean up. You want to clean your palate up. I often save okay a lot of my oil page to use the next day. Lots of these neutral colors colors that are premixed, can be used later that you're not wasting paint. And, well, I think that the only has oil mixed in with it. If it doesn't have any dryers or towel, teen any mediums with dryers in it. It will stay good for at least a couple days. You don't start to get depending on the pigment in the paint. It'll start to get tacky some well. Some colors will start to get tacky before others, but for the most part, if you are painting pretty regularly, then you'll be able to reuse that paint the main area of my palette. I like to scrape down after every green thing to keep it nice and clean and ready. Teoh work. Now you want to get all of the paint off of your brushes, so takes a paper towel, and you just want to squeeze as much of that hate out of the brush as possible. Once all the paint is removed, you can use your jar of you know whether it's dirty paint thinner or dirty oil. Or, if you're using water, mix herbal oil than it's gonna be dirty water, either. Either way, you're going to take your brush on to wish it and the same thing you want. Teoh squeeze and pull as much pigment out of the brush is possible. So switching it around in your oil or paint thinner and then pulling as much of the pigment office you can after this stage your brushes 10 be washed with warm, soapy water. I use just a bar of ivory soap. You can use any surface that you like. There is also lots of different soaps that are available or washing your brushes that are conditioners, and they're meant for that type of thing. But I find plain ivory soap works really well. Once you have your paint rags, they should be stored in a fire safe container. So I have a metal container that has holes in the top, so let air flow through, and I keep my rides in this container so that they can dry safely. Oily rags, if left in a bundle, can combine snow that it is a risk. So it's really important. If you are working with oil paints and oily brags that you store your rags and your paper, tell that have oil on them safely and fires a container. Your oil painting itself is going to take some time to dry, so depending on the brand of oil paint that you're using on the colors that you're using, it might take a week. It could take a month. It also depends on how thick the paint is that you're using so just be aware of that with oil paints. If you're using water, mix herbal oil. Those tend Teoh. Be pretty dry in a couple days. However, if you're using regular oil paints, then that can take a lot longer. 10. Wrap Up: so eventually you're going to have to tear yourself away from your paper bag painting. I know that I had Teoh kind of stop myself from continuing Teoh work on this. I know that an assignment like this can be very challenging because of the nature of the paper bag, especially if it's crumpled. But again, I think that giving yourself a challenge is really a great idea. And with the paper bag is a subject matter. You don't have to crumple it up. If you don't want to, you can just open the bag up and look at it as a three dimensional form with a few different planes that will have light and shadow for you Teoh work with. However, if you are brave and you crumble, you wear a paper bag up and we're working with multiple planes of light and shadow. Then I really hope you get into the visual puzzle of mixing and working with all of these neutral colors for this particular assignment. I think that working with the contrast of really vibrant color along with the neutral color , to be a really great challenge if you're starting out with painting a painting like this is gonna teach you a lot about how to work with bright and dull, how to create balance and how to play around with temperature. So all of the things that we worked through in this class, something that I haven't talked to boat yet in this Siri's off classes about color and oil paint is critique or assessing your work or taking the time to look at your work in between sessions and then also afterwards. So a painting like this you can complete in one session if you want to, or you can absolutely split it up into multiple painting sessions, depending on how big you make the painting and how long you want to spend. Sometimes if you're working all at once, it can be difficult because of the blending that is gonna happen between your darks and your lights on, depending on the effect that you're going for. If you want more of a looser painting, then that is probably not gonna be an issue. If you want a very tight and precise and defined realistic image for your painting, then you might want to wait at least a day in between sections, so that you get less of that kind of mixing. As you start to explore oil paint, you will start to be more aware of the certain characteristics and effects and how you want to work with the medium. But as you're working, take the time to step back from your work and pay attention, similar to how I encourage you to look at your subject to take time to squint, to really pay attention to your subjects of it. You can start to see to really see the this subtleties of what you're looking at, breaking things down into shapes, whether they're the form of the object or just the values that you're seeing. If you can break those down into shapes and start looking at those shapes in relation to each other than that visual information is going, Teoh start to break down and you are going t o really start to see. That same method can be used when looking at your work. So take the time to look at what you're painting. Step back from your work, I would say every 20 minutes. Hop up, stretcher legs. Take a look at what you're painting. A couple different methods that you can use for looking at your work in a different way to jump back and look at it from really far away. You can take a picture of it with your phone that can sometimes help you see what you're painting in a different light. It also is a good way to make you feel a little bit better about your work, too, because sometimes when we're so close looking at a painting, we can't see how it's coming together. But if we can get up and look at it from far away or take a picture, then that can help us see our progress a little bit better. Another way that I really love is to look at the painting in and mirror. So if you can set up a mirror and look at the mirror image of your painting, that is another way to sort of check yourself to see if there's any areas that are problematic toe. Look for balance and to just give yourself a little break and time to consider your progress and and where you want the painting to go. Justus, an example of that is taking a look at my finish painting, I notice. And as I was working on it, I noticed. Okay, this is starting to look like a face, oddly enough, and sometimes this can happen where you were painting maybe goes in a direction that you are not intending it to go. But I definitely see a face in my paper bag. And actually, now that I'm looking at my subject my little still life and my painting of the paper bag, I can kind of see the fate. I can see the face in my subject as well. So strangely enough as I was painting in the beginning, I didn't notice that that was what was happening. So pay attention. Hop up. Look at your work. If you're starting to see a face or something that you weren't really intending, maybe think about how you can go about altering your painting to change that. For now. I'm going to leave this painting as is. I'm happy with it. Thank you so much for joining me in this class as well as in this entire color and oil painting. Siri's I really hope that you learned a lot and that this class encourages you. Teoh continue to explore oil paints. I can't wait to see your paper bag paintings. If you make a paper bag painting, please post it to the project page. I can't wait to see the result.