Exploring Oil Painting for the Serious Beginner

1. Welcome: Hello friends, welcome to exploring oil painting for the serious beginner. My name is Diane. I've been teaching art for about 18 years and I love teaching and I love making my own art. I hope to help you along your journey towards your own joy in that as well. Today we are going to be copying a photo of an egg resting comfortably on a soft red cloth. And we're going to end up with a painting that looks something like this. It's just an exercise in mixing and creating textures and doing all these things to kind of replicate what ever it is you want to replicate. So although it is very realistic looking, it's also meant for the complete beginner and possibly for someone who's tried oil before but gotten frustrated with it and just want some hacks are some tips and tools to have more of a feeling of success with your painting. So today's specifically what we're gonna be learning is how to do an underpainting and oil. First layer, we're also going to be layering over that first layer. Later on. We're going to learn how to mix colors to match colors in a realistic reference. How to manage your palate space for cleanliness and control so that you don't end up getting frustrated. How to mix enough paint for the area you want to paint. How to apply the paint for different textures, how to create different shadows and highlights. We're going to also talk about the names of different shadows and highlights as they fall when a three-dimensional object. And we're going to talk about how to layer oil paint for richness and texture. I hope you're ready to get started. Just FYI, this class is divided into two sections. The first section is going to be the underpainting and it's divided that way because oil needs time to dry. So after we've done our underpainting, we have to put it aside for several days, possibly a week, possibly more. If you live in a very cold, wet environment, it will take longer to drive. And if you live in a warm and dry place or if you have a warm and dry place that the paint can try. It just depends. So be prepared to do only part of the class today and then put it aside for several days and finished with that said, I hope you are ready to get going. I sure am. So grab your cup of tea or your coffee or whatever it is that floats your boat Lightyear space and create your setting for joy, happiness, and success. And let's get. 2. Materials: In this section, I'm just going to walk you through the materials you will need, which you can also find a list of these materials, downloadable and principal. Principal, you're going to need a table or a well-lit surface and area that you don't mind getting paint on or that's covered with paper or cloth to protect it. You will need your reference photo print, printed out on photo paper preferably because the colors pop more if you print it on shiny photo paper, then if you use copy paper. But if you only have copy paper, that's fine too. You will need a five by seven or similar size canvas. You will need a pencil and eraser and a pallet, something to mix your paints on. This is a palette. You can buy these at any art store. They just have disposable sheets so you can mix all your paints on one sheet. Then when you're done, throw it away or you can have a wooden pallet or a glass palette. I've, I've even seen metal palettes. Just whatever you are happy and comfortable with is fine. You'll need a variety of brushes. For this class, I will be using a half-inch filbert, so it's about half inch wide and a filbert describes the shape of the brush, which is flat, but it's rounded at the tip. And then also a three-eighths inch or similar filbert, half-inch. Filbert, I really liked filbert for this class in particular, because they're very versatile. And then a small brush, something pointy. This is called a round brush because it's the base of it is round, but it's got a nice fine point to it. This is a size one. This is fine or you can even get a smaller one just for tiny details. You will also need a pallet knife for mixing paints. I use a metal one. You can use a metal 12 or you can use a plastic one. Either is fine. If your paints are all used or old, you will probably need a set of pliers to be able to open them if they've frozen shut. You will need a little tin or something to pour your medium into. So this is specifically made for oil painting. It's super old and it's just crusted with medium. But you can also use a bottle cap or a Dixie cup, or you can even just pour your medium directly onto your palette. So that's optional, it's not necessary. You will need some sort of medium. I have solvent free fluid, which is safflower alkyd painting medium. And I liked this one because it's not toxic. It doesn't have any toxic fumes or has low odor. So it's safer to use, but you can also use liquid, which is pretty highly toxic but extremely effective. I really like liquid, but I don't use it for the toxicity reason. You could use drying oil. There's actually a bunch of mediums, but just have an oil to be able to mix with your paints as you need to. And we'll talk about it as we go. You'll need a cloth for wiping your brushes off on. You'll need some turpentine or something to clean your brushes. This is a special jar. It's called the silicone oil jar, that has a coil inside for agitating the paint off of the bristles into the turpentine. This is my preferred thing to clean my brushes with, but you can also just have a jar with a lid. You'll need paint. So a good starter set of colors for oil painters is not limited to this, but it's really good to have these. It's absolutely necessary to have a white, yellow, red, and a blue. The three primary colors and a white are pretty non negotiable. So titanium white is a great all around white to use. I have cadmium yellow, yellow, pale, which is a really good sort of standard yellow is just a really bright, vibrant yellow vermilion hue. And I want to emphasize hue because humans, it's not a pure pigment or color. Actually, I'm not sure if I'm using that word right. But what I mean is it's less toxic. So if you're buying colors that do not say who, they're gonna be more expensive. They're going to be more vibrant and beautiful, but they're also more toxic. So I prefer to use because they're slightly less toxic and they're only slightly different, in my opinion, if you talk to a purist, they will definitely disagree with me. But the toxicity is important to me, so I stick with hues. You will need ultramarine blue. For this class. You will also need Alizarin, crimson, and viridian green. Those are not necessary necessarily to have in an introductory oil kit, but they're really very handy. I like to have them to others that you will probably need, but don't need for this class are Thaler blue and burnt sienna. Then this is optional for this class, but highly recommended because I love it. It's called Permanent Rose. And it's really going to help your background reds to pop in a very vibrant and lovely way. So that is all the materials we need. And with that, let's get on to the class. 3. Drawing the Image on Canvas: So now that we've gone through the materials, we're ready to get started by drawing the simple image on our Canvas. So you just need your pencil, your canvas, and your reference photo for this section. If you have a five by seven Canvas, like I do, it's going to be very similar size to the image itself. It's almost exactly the same height and it's just slightly wider. So in my case, if I wanted to make the egg exactly the same size, I just have a little tiny bit of extra background, or I could enlarge the egg if I want to make it more proportional, but it's so similar, I'm not gonna do that. Depending on the size of your canvas, you can just decide what you'd like to do. You can either resize it up, size it down, make it the same size, whatever you'd like. If you've taken any of my other classes, you may have seen this measuring technique or many other artists use it as well. You can just use your pencil to determine the size of an object. So I'm going to start by just seeing how long it is using the tip of my pencil here and my thumbnail on the other side to see how big that egg is. And now that I know how big it is and I'm going to keep it the same size. I'm just going to move it over and put marks on my canvas. I'm guessing it looks like the space on the left is slightly bigger than the space on the right. So I'm just going to make marks where I think it is. If you want to check and make sure you can do that, kinda compare the sides, doesn't really matter, It's up to you. Then I'm also going to see how tall the egg is at the widest part. And it's this tall. So I'm going to make marks. Again, it looks like it's about centered in the Canvas. On the Canvas. Maybe a little more on one side or the other. Doesn't really matter. But again, you can check it if you'd like. So now that I know where the where the egg should go and I have the size that I want. I'm going to draw the shape. I want to just make it very, very round, no pointy corners anywhere. Our brains have a tendency when you see Mark's to kinda wanna connect the marks, even if you're doing it in a rounded fashion, you may end up with a pointier and then you'd like, so just keep in mind you want to make really round lines. Go even lower there, with the right side of the egg being the slightly more compressed edge than the left, because eggs do have, of course, one end that's rounder than the other. Well, maybe not all eggs do chicken eggs in this case. I got something like that. I'm just going to erase the stuff. I don't need anymore, little sketchy stuff. But I can also just paint over that fairly loose process because it's a very simple subject. I do feel like I got a little too high right there. So I'm going to cut some off. I do want the egg to be believable in shapes. So there we go with that. Then for the cloth, you can feel free to measure if you want, or you can just eyeball it. So I'm gonna see where this class starts. It's a little lower than halfway up the egg. And then it ends about here, like halfway across, about halfway between here and here. And the fold hits the egg right about there. And then I'm just going to sort of loops that starts going down, eyeball the shape. And then this next piece starts about halfway between here and here, maybe a little higher, and ends up, I'm just to the left of the egg. Actually, I could keep going with this because this line goes all the way off the edge of the page. So I'm going to do this. And there's a little fold right underneath the egg right here that doesn't quite, actually it does touch it. It's just the very dark shadow of the egg, so it almost appears there's a little space there. But it's actually touching a very dark part of the I got that. And then there's a line right here coming from the back of the egg, curving over and up. And then we have this that's called the cast shadow because the shot, the object is casting a shadow onto the colored surface. With the help of the light source. You can draw it or not, you can always just eyeball that shape with the paint. I'm going to draw mine in. Just to be a little more precise. It's going to do something like this. Go up to pretty close to the edge of the page there, edge of the canvas, and then come back to about almost halfway across the egg. These shadows are less precise, they're not as lining, so I'm going to not draw those, but you can if you want. And the top, this line right here, I'll put that in. So it's gonna go up, starting just above the rounded point of the egg and then kinda sloped down off the canvas. That looks like that's pretty good for our drawing. 4. Set-Up Palette: Alright, so now that we have our image drawn on the canvas, we're going to mix colors for our background. I'd like to start by saying, obviously we have a bright red background and a very light object. Typically it's good to work background to foreground when you're painting, but you could choose to do the object first if you want to. Paint a little bit neater. And the reason is the red is going to be very wet. Red is a very, very intense bold color. So after we paint the background, we're gonna go into the egg and try to be careful around the edges. So much read into it. But the reason I'm doing the background first, besides the traditional background to foreground way of painting is to give you some practice on being careful when you're painting in the egg against a very intense color. And also to demonstrate how this is just the first coat we're going to be doing in oils. So even you are gonna get some red into the egg. It's pretty much unavoidable, so am I. But it's okay because it's going to, if anything, lend itself to a little bit more of a reddish reflection on the egg in the finished product. But the worst-case scenario is it dries and you paint over it, which is what we're gonna do anyway. So you can choose, I'm going to start with the background. Just follow along with me if you want to do it that way. If you prefer to do the egg first, then skip ahead to Section three, the egg underpainting, do that first and then come back to the background section. So we have our oil paints. We're only going to mix or squeeze out paints that we need for the background right now. And then we'll squeeze out whatever we need for the egg when we're going to mix for the egg. For the background, you're going to need white, the titanium white. So to squeeze out the paint, unscrew your lid. And if you have a brand new tube, you're going to squeeze in the bottom. If you're like me and you're almost out, you're just going to squeeze from wherever the paint is at. Squeeze out a good quantity like about size of a quarter and wipe it onto your palette so that the top of your paint tube is flush with paint and then screw the cap back on. Or if you have plenty of space and you can choose to leave the cap off. If you have oil paints that aren't particularly oily or drippy, the white is definitely not oily and droopy. The reds and dark blues and things tend to be a little oily or so. At your discretion. You can leave the caps on during the class or you can screw them back or take leave them off. Just so you know, I did use my pliers, which I mentioned would be a good thing to have in the materials section to open these caps before I started filming so that you wouldn't have to watch me struggle to open the caps. So I loosen them. But often with older oil paints that have been used, a bunch of the caps do get worn and the threads fill up with dried paints so they do get kinda stuck on. So do you have your pair of pliers handy if that is your situation? I'm not going to pour out very much green because we're not. Green is not a dominant color here. It's the red, that's the dominant color. The green is just used to neutralize the red, gray it down, darken it. So I don't need a whole lot of that. And the ultramarine blue, sorry, I was not concentrating on telling you which colors I was squeezing out. It might be obvious since these are most of the colors in the class, but we have titanium white, Alizarin, crimson, vermilion hue, viridian green, and ultramarine blue for this next section. And notice I squeezed out a lot of the vermillion because we're going to need a lot of that for the mixing. In fact, I think I'll squeeze out a little bit more because that is the dominant color in this background. And I would like for you to mix enough color so that when we, I'm come back to this painting in a week or so or however long it takes to dry. You'll have enough of your mixed colors still wet in order to do your next coat. So now that we've set up our paints and we're all ready to go. We can move on to the mixing. 5. Mindset: Alright, so now that we've finished pouring our paints onto, or squeezing our paints onto the canvas. We're going to talk a little about mindsets, how to approach this class for success and a good time. First thing I want you to do is just take a nice deep breath. Let it out. This class is meant to relax and have fun. So even though we are going to be learning some skills and we're hopefully going to be taking away some good stuff so you can work with these new skills on other subjects. We would like for us all to have a relaxing time and have a good time with this. Let's keep that in mind. We are going to make mistakes. It's okay. There are ways to fix or change them to our liking. I'm one of those ways is to let it dry and paint over it. That's probably the easiest thing. Another way is to wipe off a mistake and repaint it. And you can wipe it off with just a little bit of turpentine on a rag, wipe it off, and then go back and paint again. That's optional. I usually recommend just letting it dry and painting over it because I feel like it's a little bit easier, but you can choose what you wanna do. In the moment. My friend, we do want to work neatly and I emphasize that in oil paint, especially because it can really influence your outcomes and your experience if it's sloppy and all over the place. So do have a clean palette knife anytime you're dipping into a pure color so that you keep those colors neat and clean. And try not to mix your colors together on the canvas. I mean, colors that aren't supposed to be mixed together. So keep them far apart, keep your files piles far apart so that they don't get mixed up. And keep your hands neat so if you get any oil paint on your hands, wipe it off right away. Wash your hands if you need to. Just to keep your whole experience less frustrating, more mellow, more fun, more peaceful. And if you're ready, I'm ready. Let's get some mixing. 6. Mixing the Light Red: Alright, so now that we have talked about mindset and we've gotten our appellate airy all set up. We can start mixing. I'm going to start with the background, and I'm going to start by just mixing up the main red IC, which is going to be the lightest color really. And I want a lot of paint because, well, for two reasons. One, I want to make sure I don't run out and I'm certainly not going to run out with this much red. But the other reason is after we're done with the original layer on this painting, we have to let it dry for several days, maybe a week, maybe a little longer depending on how wet your weather is, it might take a little bit longer to dry if you're in a cold, wet environment. We want our paint in our palette to stay wet long enough for us to do a second layer. So if you make just enough paint, it's going to dry. You have to mix your colors. It's definitely not the end of the world, but it would be better if you could have good color to work with when you come back to your meeting. So I'm going to start with that whole heaping glob of light red. And it's honestly not how I paint. I'm a little sloppier than this, but I'm going to show you the right way to do it. You want to wipe your palette knife every time you dip into a new color because it muddies up your colors. I honestly don't know many artists to paint this way, but if you want to be very efficient and neat with your paint, that's the way to do it. Your palette knife, by the way, is made to bend. So when you put the paint on your palette and if you can really wipe it and it'll bent the blade will then whether it's plastic or metal, this is the case. So to mix a color, just kinda put one color into another and then try as much as possible to keep the color on the blades tip, on the tip of the palette knife. So don't use the whole thing because what happens? First of all, it spreads around way too much and uses up all of your valuable palette real estate. And secondly, more importantly, it's messy because what happens is your finger will inevitably creep up. You get one little dot of oil paint on your finger and suddenly it's creeping up your finger. It's on your hand and oh, and you touch your face and then it's in your hair. And we want to try to avoid that. So the best way to do that is by initially just getting used to the feeling of mixing your paint with the tip of the knife as much as possible. You can figure out what's comfortable for you in terms of mixing. Maybe come at it side to side like this. Up and down, stir in a circle. You'll, you'll figure out your rhythm. But whatever method you choose, try to keep your oil paint in a smaller pile as possible so that it doesn't spread around and take up all your space. And so that when it's time to quit for the day and let it dry for a week. Your paint, the more tight the pile is, the better your chances are that the paint will stay wet. So that being said, I've mixed in my initial bit of dark red. I'm gonna wipe my palette knife and get a little bit more because I feel like it could use a little bit more richness in that red. And there's so much light red. Dark red, even though it's much darker and more dominant color, doesn't have a whole lot of effect on this giant pile of light red. You just keep adding until you feel like you've gotten the color you want. And you can look at it because it's hopefully you have your reference photo right next to you. And I feel like that's pretty good match. Now, the other reason I wanted you to have a giant pile of this local color, the main color is because we're going to use it to make the other colors also. So we need to have a little extra. 7. Mixing the Darkest Red: I'm gonna take a little bit of the medium I just mixed and then I'll just put it off to the side here. And I'm going to add a little bit more crimson. Try to follow my own rule here, white my palette knife before I get more, actually a lot more crimson because I am trying to really darken this color. And then actually, I mean, add more crimson. I may end up needing to squeeze more, but that's okay. We can always squeeze more paint. Just can't put it back in the tube. Whoops. That might be a dark enough red for now, but I'm going to add a little bit of green in order to dull it. And then a little bit of ultramarine blue because it is kind of a purply color. That looks like it's probably good enough. But let's see what the blue does. So I added just a little bit of blue. Blue is very strong compared to red. Actually. See you want less of that than you think you need usually. And it's a little bit too red still, so I'm going to add some more blue to it. And then actually I'm just pondering here, it looks like I'm sort of halfway between the absolute darkest in this. So I'm gonna go for the absolute darkest first because I feel like I'm maybe not halfway. I'm a little closer to that. So I'm going to add some more blue to get there and a little bit more viridian. Green. Yeah, that's really nice and rich and dark. One way you can also tell if the color is so dark, you can't really see what it is anymore. Just spread a little bit onto your palette and you can see it's like this nice reddish, brownish, purple E, plum color. Then you can determine whether or not it's a good match. Like if I spread that out and it looks greenish or brownish or something, I would know I needed more red. I think that's a good color for the dark. So now we can move on to the medium. 8. Mixing the Medium Red: So then I'm going to do the same thing except shouldn't see, should I? Yeah, I'm going to use the dark to make the medium. I could also as pondering, I sure I could also use some of the light, but I want to preserve that giant pile and I don't need a whole lot of dark, so I'm going to use the dark as a base for my medium anymore of the crimson to get there. So this isn't going to make it lighter, it's just going to make it redder. And I'm using a big blob because now I'm battling blues and greens which are more dominant. So I want this to be a red or purple right away. And then I'm going to add a little bit of white at a time. So as you can see from the color on the canvas, on the palette, it's a redder color than this one That's purple more purply. And that's what I wanted. So we're probably good enough to add the white. And then adding the white will really help us to figure out if the color is correct if we need to add anything else. So just a little bit of white to begin with. You can always add more. Just kinda see what a little bit of white does. That did almost nothing. So I can definitely afford to add a little bit more. That's looking closer. And I'm just going to take a sample of my palette knife and hold it up. Actually, I think I nailed it was an accident that I got there that early, but that's where we're at. So now I'm just going to try to get these into really tight piles and then we will get onto the painting. 9. Painting the Background Lights: So now we're ready to paint. This is very exciting. So I just grabbed my largest brush, which is about a half inch with a rounded tip. As I mentioned in the materials, It's not that important which brush you use, just pick the one you're most comfortable with. I prefer soft bristle brushes. Some people prefer harder bristles. For oil painting. Harder bristles are, I believe, more traditional, more widely used, but I like the soft ones. Just make yourself happy. Start with a lighter color. Grab a nice big brush full of that and just paint where you see the lighter colors. So that's most everywhere. The only thing you need to really be careful of here is the edge of the eggs. So as you get up to the edge of the egg, sort of wiggle your brush side to side. Make sure your brush is pointing perpendicular to the edge and just sort of stroke back and forth side to side to get it reasonably sharp. But don't worry at all if you accidentally get a little red inside of it. This is just the first layer and you're going to be covering that up nicely with the second layer after this is dry. So I am going pretty thick with my paint here, just painting it everywhere. You want to try to get rid of any little white peoples of canvas showing through. So really kinda laying it on thick and then spread it around with the edges. You can sort of overhang your brush over the edge at an angle, tilt down and brush back and forth to really get all the canvas covered up. Here. I forgot to mention I went over that part, that little shadowy part because it's so faint and light, but over here it's a little darker, so I'm going to skip over it briefly, paint thickly on the other side approximately, and then just smear the light into that area without being thorough because I'm going to come back to it with medium later. Then here I'm gonna go over the top of my cast shadow, kinda getting into it a little bit inside that pencil lines so that when I put the dark and I have something right there, two blended into go all the way up to the top with the red light, red, kinda smeared around on the side. Get those edges. Top corner, there's a little bit of dark up there, but there's so little of it. I'm just going to put that in over the top of the light run. Feel free to turn your Canvas too as you go. That's probably a little bit easier. Do everything you can to keep your hands out of the paint. You can even turn your reference because if you turn your Canvas, It's a little harder to figure out what goes where if you're trying to interpret it upside down. So do whatever is comfortable. Just filling in these spaces really thoroughly. And then down here there's a lot of light red. Goes up to the very top right in front of that egg. It didn't draw a shape for that dark part. So I'm, I just realized that went into it a little bit, but who cares will just make it a little smaller or it'll blend more or something. When we get there, we'll figure it out. I'm leaving a little crack right here for that edge of dark. And a little bit of space here for some of the medium. Purply red, I guess I'll brush a little bit of the light onto it just as a preliminary wedding process so that the medium doesn't go on full, full strength. And then I'll put a little bit of light red at the very top edge of this wrinkle here. Thicker than I think I need to though wider than I think I need to, so that the dark has something to blend into. And I'm going to turn again and keep on going with my light written. Now, my canvas is so wet, I'm using the egg to stabilize it while I do this, so it doesn't just scoot all over the place. You could also, I should mention, you can have an easel if you want. There's no reason you have to paint on a table at all. But with a small painting, an easel is really very optional with a large one, it's almost essential because it would be very awkward to paint a very large painting on a flat surface. So again, I'm leaving little spaces for the extremely dark parts, just filling in those brightest reds. And if you have any lumps or bumps of oil paint when you're done with this, just go back and wipe them off, kinda smooth them off. I'm gonna put a little bit of light red in here. Oops, I got some into the egg, no big deal in the lightest area to get that shadow to illuminate when we put the mediums. And that is good for our first layer. 10. Painting the Background Mediums: Alright, so we've got the lights done. I'm just realizing I should've put some light into this shadow for the same reason I put some here. So I'm going to grab a little bit more light. If you've washed your brush, that's fine. Just get it dirty again. I did not wash my brush. Either way. You're going to dip back into the paint. I have light on my brush as it happens because I just added some, but I also had just finished the previous section. I'm not going to rinse it because I actually want that residual light on my brush when I go into the mediums. So I'm just going to wipe most of the extra off and then dip right into the medium color. And I'm just going to work left to right now that my canvas is very wet and I'm right-handed. Pulling this way makes sense. You can do it however you want. Turn your Canvas if you feel inspired. But just start by dabbing in color where you see the mediums do not worry about blending right now or you can, It's totally up to you if you like to kind of blend as you go along. But for right now, all I'm doing is putting in big chunks of color. At the end. We'll go back and blend as we need to. Or like I said, you can do a little bit as you go, do what makes you happy. So I'm putting in some color on top here where it's a little bit darker. Just making sure to fill in all the little white dots that are showing through keeping the edge of the egg really sharp. And I will blend a little bit here just to show you how to do it. You don't want to have a lot of paint on your brush. So if you do wipe it off first, but you should have no evidence of blobs of paint. And then you just kinda go in and straddle the edge with the brush, put one-half and the medium one-half and the light. And brush up and down. For a simple edge like that, this one's a little bit harder, so I'm going to dab at it instead. And then I'm going to blend more when I get to the bottom, kinda turning my brushes, it feels intuitively necessary to do. But I'm going to leave that little edge sharp. So that's just a little bit of blending for you. I'm gonna put some over here directly into the wet paint. I used very little of the medium because I want to keep it very light right there. I guess I worked left to right at the top, but then I kinda skip the entire bottom. So I'm gonna go back over here. And I have a lot of paint on my brush now and I'm going to paint in this darker section, the cast shadow, just copying what I see. So I'm trying to keep a sharp edge there. That's why I'm pointing my brush down towards it. Keeping it sharp against the egg as much as possible. Oops, I went inside. Oh, well, then down here, a little bit of medium, right into that red that I put in there earlier. Turning my brush so I'm pointing towards the egg. I'm going to leave that for the dark. Anything that I want to be really dark, I'm just leaving white because I don't want the dark to have to compete with the medium to really show up. This is pretty much all medium, this wrinkle right here. So I'm pointing my brush towards the lighter red edge and just wiggling it down. Gets thicker as it goes to the left. A little bit of a beat of paint here. So I'm just going to go back and gently wipe it off because I don't want anything three-dimensional popping off the canvas for this painting anyway, some paintings you may choose to have sick painterly strokes popping up and that's lovely two. And then a little bit of medium down here underneath the light red. And that will be a transition into the very dark at the bottom corner here. And then right here. Big glob of it. Fill in all the white. Go up a little higher than I left space for this part. In. Oops, I made a sharp edge on the bottom there instead of the top. So I'm going to turn my brush and do the opposite there to get the top edge sharper. There we go. When that later. And then get some medium into this whole section. And that's good for the mediums. 11. Painting the Background Darks: So now we're gonna move on to the darks. And for this I'm going to switch to a smaller brush because the dark sections are smaller. This one is probably about a quarter of an inch wide. So I'm gonna get the dark and right away just go in and fill in all of the whitespaces I've left on the mat because those are darks for sure. But also using my photo is a guide to make sure I didn't space and forget something or accidentally leave something white that should have been medium or light red. And again, just blocking in the areas, putting in big chunks of color, not concerned at all right. Now about how they blend or interact with one another, I'm just filling in the space. Because oil paint stays wet forever in a day. You don't have to manipulate it or blend it right away. You can just put it in and then go back and manipulated at your extreme leisure, which is so lovely. You may find that the dark is more transparent for oily in texture than the light in the medium. And I'm not exactly sure why, but well, it's because there's more white and the lighter colors. I'm not sure why white is more opaque. It I guess is what I'm trying to say, but it is. So anytime you have white in color, the more white content isn't a color, the more opaque your color will be. But don't worry about transparency at this point because again, this is an underpainting, so we're going to be going over it and increasing opacity as necessary later on. So you can see I'm having trouble getting the dark to show up over the medium right here because it's so wet with medium and light. That's okay. Do the best you can. The only thing you want to avoid is having big lumps of paint. Your whole painting should ideally be smooth. Even if your color can't get as dark as you want it to be, you can rectify that in the next session when we come back to this next week or whenever we come back to it, we can make it darker. Right now I'm just getting these extremely dark sections filled in and just taking a final look around to see if I missed anything. Oh yeah. Over here. I want to get some more dark kind of hugging the bottom edge of this egg. Got that? I think we're good with darks. 12. Adding White to Enhance the Lights: So now that we've got our entire canvas covered, we're actually going to do something I like to call a hack or a trick to make our reds really pop. What we're gonna do is gonna feel a little counter-intuitive, but you're going to add some white directly to the lightest parts of the red. So just have a reasonably clean brush. You don't have to rinse it in the turpentine. In fact, don't because then you'll have an oily liquidy brush and you don't want that. So just wipe off the excess paint from your larger brush that we're using earlier. Grab a little bit of white on the tip of your brush. Brush it right into the red at the lightest places. So start with a little bit. You can get a little bit more. And this is going to look super funky at first. And you're gonna be like, what are we doing and why? Because it's going to turn kind of chalky pink. But what we're doing is setting ourselves up for success next week when we come back to a dry painting. So what we're doing here is exaggerating the lightness of the red or making it much lighter than it needs to be. Because when we come back, we're going to put a very thin, oily light coat of bright, vibrant red over the top of this. And it's going to really make this pop and shine. Right now. It looks extremely dull and subdued and in my opinion, uninspiring and uninteresting, but it's a part of a larger process. So especially since this is just a practice class to get your feet wet, I asked you to trust me. And now I'm going somewhere with this. So do this in all the lighter areas of the red anywhere that it seems like I really want that to pop and I don't know if you had the same experience, but when I mixed up my light red, it's as much as I match the color as closely as I could. It did seem a little dull to me. So this is really going to help it to. And LDL. That's not a word, but I'm using it because it's fun. Only get my hand out of your way so you can see what I'm doing. I didn't miss a little shadow right there. Oh, well, it's okay. I can put that in later or skip it. I do want to try to get rid of brushstrokes, so I'm dabbing at my white very suddenly I accidentally just touched the dark. That's okay. But I just like I don't want to have any real strokes in there because those will show through the final code. So just really lightly touching the canvas so that the paint goes on as smoothly as possible. And then this red is interesting because there's a light face here. So I'm only gonna do that face and just let that read stay medium. Whereas all of these were sort of all the similar brightness. And then it's going to curve over the top. And the lightest part of this red is going to be right at the top edge of that wrinkle. Go back here and smooth this out a little bit. I'm going to wipe my brush off because I have too much paint and that's making it hard to blend. Blend the white into the light red. That is, pull this down, get a little bit more wide and put some over here. Brush that in and put some kind of on the face of this one. Little bit more there. And smoothing that out. Oh man, I forgot this wrinkle over here. Little bit on the top edge. Weights that oxidative too much. And then go back and just subtly white that in the edge. And that is good for the white. 13. Adjusting & Blending: So now we are going to go back and adjust and blend shadows that we haven't done yet, which in my case is almost all of them. Start with the big brush that I just used with the widen. Again, not cleaning it, just wiping off the excess paint. And I'm gonna go in and just pick an edge. I'm going to start here and pointing my brush from the lighter color into the darker one. I'm just going to agitate that edge. The reason you want a point into the darker color is It's okay for the light to push into the dark, but you don't want the dark to push into the light because the dark will never stop. If I were to push this dark into the light, I would just push it and push it and push it and it will just join that dark. The light will not do that. The light is not dominant, so it will just yield to the dark. On this edge. It's not as blended, so I'm just going to dab at it a little bit, soften that these reds in here. I'm just going to go in and force the red and the purple together by going in little circles. Because those are really blended inside that shadow. On the top edge here, I made this shadow way too sick. That's okay. I could fix it if I want to buy. I could try to put some light red in there to make it light again, but I'm just going to roll with it and say, hey, that's a thicker shadow. Then in the photograph and nobody will ever care or notice, least of all me. But feel free to adjust as you would like to. And notice I turn my canvas there to make it easier for me to point towards the dark. Down here. Pointing towards that dark and this edge is very subtly blended. So I'm really using the tip of the brush. Rather here I was kinda laying the brush down. Now I've got it pointed more towards the Canvas so that I can not spread it so far. Same with this edge. Dabbing at it, agitating it a little bit, but not blending too much dab at that top edge to soften that. A little bit, just wiping away areas. Wet my brush again so I can get the dark off because they'd been blending so much that now I have too much dark on the tip of my brush. Pretty happy with that. So I'm already happy with that blend. I'm going to move down to here and soften that the line between the light and the medium. And then likewise between the medium and the dark. Probably should have wiped my brush there because I got some light into the medium, but that's okay. Again, just the first layer here. I'm just going to clean this up a little bit by dabbing at it. Softening it just a little bit. Here, soften a little bit, wipe and come back and point at it from the light into the dark so that I'm really blending it. Then this edge, there seems to be a little bit of a marriage between the bottom red and the top red. So I'm actually going to break that line and smear it on purpose to get a little less definition on that shadow in that area. And then I'm going to soften the bottom edge here just by wiping side-to-side. Same on the top, pointing towards the dark. Wipe my brush. You'll probably wipe your brush a lot when you're blending because you're constantly picking up paint as you're going around the canvas. You can just keep going in this way until you are happy with all your edges. Got to do a little bit more right here. A little bit on the top of this one. And then I'm going to wipe. And in here, I know like just slap that in there, I guess I'm just gonna go back and dab at it to smooth out the surface a little bit. I'm just going to look around, see if there's anything else I want to do. This edge is bothering me a little bit. I'm going to go back and dab at that. And pretty happy with that. I'm going to leave it alone. And now we can move on to the egg. 14. Mixing Local Color: So now we're gonna move on to mixing colors for the egg. And we're going to start with the light, sort of yellowy off-white. That's the main color or the local color. For the egg. We need white obviously is our main color. We also need some cadmium yellow, pale hue. So I'm going to squeeze out a little bit of that. Put the cap back, and grab my palette knife and we'll get going. So we want a lot of this color. So I'm going to use quite a bit of white to start and press it down on the palette, wipe off and grab just a little bit of yellow. Even though yellow is not dominant, we're making an incredibly light color. So we want to start with very little. We can always add more. And that is indeed a yellowy white, but it's almost, almost just white. It's just kinda creamy white. And just looking at that, I'm getting there. It's doesn't take a lot, but it's pretty bright. So I'm going to add a tiny, tiny bit of, well, I'm probably going to add more yellow, but first I'm going to add the tiniest bit of my medium background color. The reason I'm doing that is because I want to neutralize or excuse me, dole down this yellow a little bit, so it's not quite so vibrant. And yellow being opposite purple on the color wheel is their complements. So when you add one to the other, they naturally DO one another. We want this to be mainly a yellow color, but I probably just added too much because it's a little bit more recognizable as purpley. But I did a good job of neutralizing it. Now, I just need to add a little bit more yellow to get it back to a yellowy color. And again, just the tiniest amount, you can always add more. Another thing about oil painting you'll find and you saw with the background Is that all colors kind of relate to one another in the paintings, especially when they're right next to each other. So even though that's yellow and that's purple and they don't appear to have much relationship using that purple in particular to dull this yellow will be very effective in creating believable, realistic painting because everything really does relate to one another and reflects everything next to it. And it's also convenient because I happen to have that color already mixed and I think I nailed that yellowy white. So I will move on now to the form shadow. 15. Mixing Form Shadow: So now we're going to mix the main shadow in the egg, which is kind of both the form shadow with another word for the main shadow. But it's also a reflected light, which is where the color from the surrounding area bounces off and reflects back onto the object. So we're gonna do this purply reddish color. It, even though it's much darker than this color, it's still got a good lightness to it. So I'm going to start with white. That may be a bit much actually because it's a darker color. So I'll just start with a little bit of white. I can always add more. Then I'm going to use some of my medium color again because that is a direct reflection from that color. But this time using a lot of the medium color because it's much darker than that was and it's perfectly whereas that was yellow. So with that, let's just see where we are. Wow, that was it. I actually will actually nailed that on the first try, but I don't believe I have enough to last me the next two painting sessions, so I'm going to just add more to it. So white my palette knife, I'm going to get more weight. You may find that my formulas are not exactly the same as u, e.g. if you did that and yours seems a little too doll or a little too blue or a little too red, you can just adjust it. If it seems too blue, add more red. If it seems to read, add more blue if it seems too bright, you can add a little bit of yellow to dull it down. You just kind of assess what you think the color looks like compared to that. And ask yourself which one is more, whatever, more red, more blue, more LDL. And then add whatever you need to get to where you want to go. It's a formula in that way. Remember to dull things down, just add colors opposite and you can find any color. We'll just search it on online, find a color wheel and you can see what's directly opposite and other color, purple is opposite, yellow, red is opposite green, oranges opposite blue. So any of those combinations will dull one another. And I do feel like I have enough paint and the right color. So now we will move on to the core shadow, which I'll explain in the next section. 16. Mixing Core Shadow: So now we're going to mix for the core shadow. That's the darkest part of the shadow, which it's kinda hard to tell, but it's usually right along this edge between the form shadow and the local color. In our case, it translates to this bluer shadow, which is both bluer and a little bit darker than the purply color that we just mixed. So we're going to start with the medium background color this time. I'm kinda whittling away at my pile there. So I may end up having to make more of that by the next class. But for right now we'll just use it because it's there. So that's a good darkness and definitely not that color. But the first thing I notice is that one is bluer, so I'm going to add some ultramarine blue to it. We can actually go a little darker than you think you need to hear because you're gonna be painting into lighter colors. So if you exaggerate the darkness when you paint it in, it will light naturally and it should aid you in emphasizing the shadows so it reads very realistically. That might just be right, it is way too dark. So I'm going to add a little bit of white because we don't need that much darker than what we have there. Wipe off my palette knife, get a little bit of white, something like that, makes that in. Let's see what that did. That's definitely still too dark, but I do believe that color is on par. We only need a very little bit of it. Actually, I'm gonna go a little bit grayer. It seems just a tad too bright. So I'm using my not my imagination but my eye to determine if this is a good match for that, even though it's too dark. So I'm discerning that it should be a pretty good match, even though it's too dark, we will find out for sure when we paint it in. But again, it's the first layer. So if it turns out it's too dark or too purple or whatever, we're gonna go over it again next week. So that's when we fine tune that sort of thing. I think I need a little bit more yellow. If you have too much yellow to a bluish purple like this, you'll start to notice it'll turn green because blue and purple, blue and yellow light green. So that's why I'm going very conservatively. But if I happen to make green, I would always just add a little red to neutralize it. And I feel like that's good. So there we have the core shadow color. 17. Mixing Reflected Lights: Alright, so now we're gonna move on to these reddish reflections on the bottom left area of the egg. We're going to make two colors. One that's slightly darker and one that's a little lighter, more vibrant. And we'll use our light red as the base, since that's the closest color to those. So I'm going to start by mixing the darker one. And then actually no, I'll start by mixing a lighter one because that's closer to this actual color. And then I'm going to split it and make the darker one from there. I'll start by just looking at what it looks like and it's definitely just a little bit dark. So I'm going to start by adding some white to it. That's pretty close. But I'm going to add a little bit more crimson because I feel like the quality of the red is a little bit too. Tomatoes. And I want more of a purply red, not darker, just less orangey red, more purply red. Let's see if that had any effect a little bit, but I could use a little bit more. Yeah, I think that might be it. Good. Alright, so that's our light and then we need very little of it, as I mentioned. So we're going to take some, put it over here and add a little bit of viridian green because that being the opposite of red will dull it down and make it a little bit brownish red, which is what that is. If I wanted it to actually be a greener color, I would add a lot of green. Or if I wanted it to be kind of a middle gray, I would kinda mess back-and-forth between green and red until I got gray. But what I want is a darker, reddish color. So I'm being very conservative with the green. Let's see where I am. Pretty close, just a little bit more viridian. Also, even though something may look good with your reference photo, you also want to consider how they, how the colors look together and looking at them on my palette, they're not different enough to show up against one another. So I would exaggerate the darkness of this just for that reason. And that's probably good enough. Yep. I think we're good. There. 18. Basic Underpainting for the Egg: We have our beautiful egg colors mixed up. Now we can get into the painting for the egg, I'm going to use about a three-eighths inch width because I want a slightly smaller brush than I used for the background, since my egg is smaller and my bristles are a little bit stiffer on this brush because I want to have a little bit more control. Whereas in the background I liked the looser bristles because it helped me to be a little more flowy with it. Again, choose a brush that you feel comfortable with. That's just my personal preference. So we're going to start with the light color and go from light to dark. You'll see there's a bright white highlight right here on your egg. Don't worry about that right now we'll put that in, in the final painting. For right now, just paint in the light whitish yellow that we mix starting in the middle. Because, you know, your red is extremely wet, so it's good to kind of fill in the middle with the color before you accidentally get some red on your brush to get the main color in there really? Well. And it is a very light color, so it's kind of hard to tell if you're being thorough, covering your Canvas, do the best you can. You can kinda move your head or move your painting to look around in the light and see if there's any canvas showing through. I'm gonna go, Let's see what this color just about to the edge of where the core shadow is and just make oh, I see. I accidentally got some red in there. No big deal. Just keep going. Then I'm going to slowly creep up to the edge and purposely get my brush into the red and see what a nice effect that hasn't sort of smearing the red into the yellow a little bit. Again, you have the option of painting over that later. But for right now, enjoy it. It's a lovely effect and it creates a softness to your egg. That also implies a reflection of the background into the egg. So just kinda moving side to side, allowing for the red to get in there a little bit, but definitely pointing my brush towards the dark red edge because if I went the other way, I would just be inviting that rent to smear all up inside the egg. Being mindful to cover up all the little white showing through. Oh whoops. And on the bottom of the egg there's actually this dark purple shadow. So I'm not going to paint all the way to the bottom. Leave a little white sliver there for when we want to paint that in. And for that we're just going to use the street medium color that we made for the background. And that is pretty good for now. I'm going to wipe the extra wipe off my brush, go back and touch this up a little bit. It's not even that important to do so I'm just being a little nitpicky. It's only not important because we're going to go over this again. Now, I'm going to skip to the form shadow because it's the next lightest color. And I'm not even going to wipe my brush. I already wipe my brush off so I don't have a lot of paint on it. If you have a lot of paint, white, wipe your brush off, and then grab your form shadow color and same thing just painted in where you see it starting in the middle, wiggling your brush out to the edges. And just paint about down to where the reds start and where the bluish core shadow starts up there. And then you can force the form shadow out to the edge. And again, just kinda carefully brush against the red background so that it will probably smear into the egg a little bit, but not, not a huge amount. Then I'm going to wipe the extra paint off my brush, go back here and just soften a little bit where it touches the form shadow. Then I'm going to switch to my other, my core shadow because it's purply as well as this one. That's a good next choice. Even though the darkness is similar to the red, you could choose to do the rednecks, but this is probably a more efficient use of your time because the purple is relate to each other more. So I'm kinda drawing a triangle there. And actually I'm going to skip the blending for now. I blend it a little bit here, but kinda like the background, I'm just blocking in the colors. Then I'm going to get the red. Again. I did not wash, rinse my brush at all because I like to have that residual purple on the brush so that it relates to the red brush. Threaten a little bit more right there. Wipe, get the brownish one. Brush that in, get all the way to the edge. And then lastly, the medium color on the very bottom of the egg where I left that little sliver. I'm going to turn my canvas so I can be pointing right at it. And I'm just going to paint in a little sliver of color right there. And that is good for our first layer and we're gonna get into blending it next. 19. Blending Egg Underpainting Colors: Now that we have the colors basically and we're going to blend, I am going to just use the same brush and again, just wipe it off really well and not rinsing it. If you rinse it, it does create an oily residue on the brush. And then you can get rid of it by using a little bit of soap, shampoo it, dry it off really well and reuse it as a dry brush. Or you can pick a new brush out of your kid if you happen to have one. For me though, like I said, I like to have the reflected colors that I've just previously painted on my brush. And I don't think that's necessarily a widespread belief among oil painters. But I enjoy doing it because I feel like it creates a natural relationship between all my colors. Plus I'm just the one brush girl a lot of the time. So as you've seen, we've used a total of three brushes in this class. But feel free to use more if you'd like. Anyway, enough jibber jabber. So we're gonna go ahead and blend. I'm going to point my brush towards this darker edge from the light into the dark. And I'm pretty, I'm laying my brush down pretty flat. I'm not using the tip because I want a nice soft blend there. And I'm just going to go back and forth and kind of force it to blend. And I already have too much paint on my brush, so I'm gonna go wipe it off and keep going. And really get this nice blue purple to disappear into that top edge. And it kinda disappears into the purply form, purpley red form shadow there. And then I'm just going to keep right on going down into the light red here. Wipe on this section down here. Or actually I'll come back to that, that Let's finish blending first. So now I'm going to go into the reddish color here and blend that into the lighter purple. And I'm going to turn my canvas upside down so I can blend the light purple into the dark purple. And this one I feel like I need to pull into the light purple a little bit to make them Mary Moore. And then I can blend. I didn't feel like I did that enough justice when I actually painted it in, sorted dab it up there to get it to soften, wipe the brush, and then do the same thing down here. Barely, barely touching the canvas right now, just enough to get it to soften a little bit. These colors are so delicate. Now I'm going to flip it right side up again and see how everything looks. I do feel like I need more red down there, so I'm going to wipe my brush off and just paint some in. I'm really pull that into the white area. And as it happens, I had just enough paint on my brush to where I didn't have to wipe it off before it went into blending. So just started blending there. And then just kinda looking at the shape of everything. Feel like I should blend, wipe my brush off and blend the core shadow into the yellow here a little bit more. So now I'm painting in circles, are blending in circles because I'm trying to encourage the color to go into the white a little bit more here. That'll help make it look rounder. And also create a little bit of texture, which is nice because the I does have a little bit of texture on the shell. And now looking around, I'm going to wipe again, get a little bit more white and just touch up the end here. Because I feel like it got just barely pointy. I'm going to add a little bit more white. They're just surrounded out. And take another look. Let me flip side pink on my brush. Wipe that off, go back and wipe that in. And again, we will go over that next week. So I'm not going to bother trying to get that wider because I will just be fighting pink. Nobody wants to have a fight with pink. Pink always wins. I'm pretty happy with that, and I think we're good until next session. Have a good time while your paint is drying and I'll see you soon. 20. Cleaning Up For Now: I forgot to tell you how to clean up since we're going to be away from our painting for awhile. So your palette knife, you can probably just get away with wiping off. Just make sure you get the blade edges too. If you feel like you need a little bit more of a heavy-duty cleanup, you can open up your turpentine, dip it in the turpentine, and then wipe it off. That's fine to do as well. I have a coil inside this jar, which you may have to, if you have a silicon oil jar or if not, then you just dip your brush into the turpentine and rub it along the bottom of the cup. The coil is useful because it really helps agitate the bristles and get all the paint out. Once you feel like you've gotten all the paint out, just wipe it along the edge of your jar and see if any paint is still coming out. And if so, just keep on going until you can wipe it and it looks like clear fluid coming out. Do keep the cap on this whenever possible so that you're not breathing the fumes. Best to work outside actually, if possible. Dry off your brush and then you can soap it with just some regular dish soap or hand soap. You can put a little pumping your hand or in the singer in a cup or something, kinda rub the brush around in the shampoo. It just helps to condition the bristles. Their art stores also sell brush conditioning things. Shampoo, special soaps for brushes if you prefer to use that. So do that to all your brushes. And then lastly, just kinda wipe them on your towel, make sure they're nicely shaped back into the shape you want and never store them facing down because that will ruin your bristles. You can store them in a jar with the bristles pointed up or laying flat in a box or a case or something. And there'll be all ready for you the next time we are ready to gather and work on our egg painting. I hope you have a beautiful time until then. 21. Letting Your Paint Dry: Okay, so now that we've reached the end of the first part, I would like to thank you for joining me for this. Make sure you leave your painting in a place that will be undisturbed by other people in your household or by yourself. Don't leave it somewhere where someone's sleeve could accidentally brush over it and just leave it alone for several days when you feel like you're ready to take a look and see if it's dry, you can kinda tilt it in the light and see if it's shiny anywhere. Like really shiny, like wet looking shiny. And if it is just put it back down. If it's not, if it looks dry, then just barely touch it with your finger and see if any paint comes off. If it doesn't, you can be a little more aggressive kind of touch around. And if that's really drive and you can even rub it a little bit. But don't start by rubbing it because it will smear if it's wet. The point is we want it more than just dry to the touch. We want it to not be tacky at all either because of it's tacky and you brush over, the paint will tend to loosen, reinvigorate and you'll pull it off or make it more transparent when you do your next layer, make sure it's really dry, however long that takes before you approach the next section of this class. And I look forward to seeing you then whenever you're ready for it. Until then, take care and have a beautiful rest of your day. 22. Introduction to Second Egg Layer: Alright, round to welcome back with your dry egg painting. It has been exactly a week for me letting my painting dry. And it is now not only dry to the touch, but I can easily rub over it and nothing comes off on my hands. And before I did that, I tested it off camera just so you know, it wasn't quite that aggressive with testing. I definitely did a little touch test first to make sure I could do that. Anyway. I'm just showing you that to demonstrate the level of dry you wouldn't want to have. So we're going to get back into it this time. We're going to start by repainting the egg. We're gonna do our second layer on the egg first. For the reason I talked about in the first part of the painting where we did the background first, the red got into the white a little bit here. It would be okay if that happened because it does act as a lovely reflection, but just in the interests of being very accurate to the photo, we're going to do the egg first so that the edge can stay very sharp and white. So the first thing you wanna do is make sure your paints are still invigorated. Just use your palette knife and kind of poke around at them. They, some of them will have formed a skin, some may not have this one doesn't have much of a scan and it's very wet. Whoops, I got some pink on my palette knife when I did that. And keep just wiping your palette knife between colors so you don't contaminate one color with the next. Obviously, my pink was very wet, so I don't need to open that up. The purple has formed a skin, so I'm going to pierce the skin and just kinda dig around in there and peel it back so I can reveal the good paint. You want to do this because you don't want the skin to mix into the paint whenever possible. So if you just start poking around at it, you're gonna get little bits of the skin in there which will get on your canvas and then you have a lumpy Canvas so you want to try to avoid that. So I'm just opening up all my previous colors. Will do the background ones as well. Just piercing a single hole and peeling everything, peeling the skin back a little bit. Okay, Now we are prepared to paint. And before we actually get into the painting part, I'm just going to talk you through what we're gonna do and then we will pick up the brush. So we're going to start just like we did the first layer. We're going to start with a light. We're going to paint the white, whitish off white first. And then we're gonna go into the shadows putting the pink and neck, since that's the next darkest color. And then the purple, brown and red in no particular order. Anywhere you see any sort of transparency on your Canvas. Just emphasize those areas with the paint. Paint a little bit thicker if you need to kinda figure it out as you go and anything you need to reshape, e.g. I'm going to need to sharpen up my edge here. And it looks like my core shadow, even though it doesn't matter for the final painting because it looks perfectly fine. In the photograph. It's leaning a little bit more to the right and I made mine going more straight up. So I'm going to take this opportunity to make it lean a little bit more to the right. So anything you see like that that you want to adjust or change, you can take this opportunity to do. We are going to get into that in the next section as we begin repainting our egg with the second layer. 23. Painting the Second Egg Layer: So now we can get started with the painting. If by any chance you ran out of colors, by the way, feel free to pause the video, go back, remixed those colors. You can certainly re-watch the color mixing section of this class if you want to walk through it again or you can just do it on your own. I'm going to use the same brush I use vague the first time, which is my filbert brush, about quarter-inch wide. And I'm going to get into the white here. And it should feel a little bit thicker, a little goopy or than it did the first time you use it because it's now been several days or in my case, a week since I used it. So it does dry out a bit. If it feels too goopy, then grab your linseed oil. Or in my case, I have the solvent free fluid because I like the less toxic nature of it. You can pour yourself a little bit. I have this little tin thing that I use. You can just pour it directly on the palette to or in a Dixie cup or a bottle cap or whatever. Whatever you have handy is fine. Should you need it, you can dip your brush in it just a little bit and rub it around in the paint and that'll help to loosen it and make it a little bit more fluid feeling. The more you use, the more fluid it, more fluid it will be. But also the more transparent it will be. So use it only as much as you need to because you do want your colors to mostly be opaque. So I'm just re-wetting the surface and I'm going to focus mainly on the edges and trying to sharpen up those edges a little bit. Knowing also that I'm going to come back right against this edge with the red background. So it does not have to be exactly perfect, but get it as close to as sharp as you can. So turning the canvas so that I'm pointing my brush toward the edge is really helpful. Or you can just sort of turn your hand. It may feel a little awkward, but if you prefer that you can do that or maybe it doesn't feel awkward and you just really like it. Whatever works for you. You can also use the side or the edge of the brush to keep a sharp edge. You'll figure out what's comfortable for you as you go. So now I've got a coat of white over the entire white part. I'm gonna go actually back a little bit more right here because I want that to be a little bit wet so I can blend the red into it. And then I'm going to wipe my brush off, grab the pink, repaint that. And my main goal with the pink is to get it more opaque because in my case, this may not have happened to you, but My went on fairly transparent, so I really want it to be nice and rich there. And then I'm going to pull it into the purple little bit further. So the purple core shadow has something to blend into. But I'm painting very thin. No big globs of paint here that will make your blending very difficult or impossible. I'm gonna go to the core shadow now because I'm interested in that area Since I was just there. Reapply the color into the area already have that's going to darken it a little bit. And I'm also going to pull it out to the right a little bit more. As I mentioned, I wanted to lean more to the right and kinda laying my brush down, just blending it into the white there. And then pushing it back into the pink. Because I want that. I'm pushing here instead of pulling because I want this left edge to be a little softer, whereas I want the right edge should be more hard. So I need a little bit more white. I'm going to wipe my brush, not rinse it because I actually want a little of the purple on there and then get a little bit of white and just soften that edge. I've got too much, so I wipe it off and just soften a little bit. I'm happy with that. So then I'm wiping off any excess going into the brown, rewetting that. And again, mainly to get the transparency to go away, make it more opaque, wiggle into that area. And then finally, the lighter red, bright red reflection right here. Get that on there, pull it into the whites. Up into the purple a little bit, the pink, pinky purple down to the bottom. And then right here I'm going to darken that shadow by getting a little bit of my darkest background color and putting a line right there. But I have very little paint as you can see. And then I'm going to turn it so I can blend that color down into the bottom of the egg just by kinda sketching back-and-forth there. And I can also pointing this direction so I can soften the top edge of that line. And there we go. 24. Introduction to Second Background Layer: So before we get into painting the second layer on the background, I'm just going to talk a little bit about what we're going to do. The first thing we're gonna do it in order of light, medium, and dark the way that we did the first time. But if you remember last week I had you paint these whites into the light areas and asked you to trust me. Here's the trust part. So this is where you're gonna be rewarded for trusting me, hopefully. So we're going to use a color called Permanent Rose, which I mentioned in the materials section. It is optional. You don't have to have this color, but if you do use it because it will make your reds really pop and be bright if you don't have it, just use a little Alizarin crimson in its place. Alizarin crimson is also a very transparent, very intense red, but it's more of a blood red like a brownish red. So your reds will be more brownish and deep looking. If you use the Permanent Rose, there'll be much more vibrant. If you do have permanent rose, squeeze a little bit out onto your palate, don't need much. At least to begin, you can always squeeze more. And if you didn't clean your brush already, go ahead and do that. So using your silicone oil jar or your jar of turpentine or whatever it is you're using to clean your brushes, just rub it down there, get all the color off. Remember to be in a well ventilated area. And I even like to hold my breath when I'm doing it. Even when I'm in a well ventilated area, just to be extra cautious. So put that away, wipe the brush off really well because turpentine does have an oily nature to it. So if you've got a lot on your brush, it will affect your painting. But in this case it will actually work in your favor to have a little bit of tariff on it or not like completely clean. So don't clean it with soap and water. Because we're gonna be doing a very transparent layer of permanent rose over the light areas of this painting first to make those bright reds pop. After that, we'll do a layer of mediums over the darker, shadowy areas. Then we'll finish with some darks. And again, you're focusing on making any transparent areas more opaque, making those light reds pop more brightly, and just touching up any edges or folds as we go. So with that said, we can get started on the painting in the next section. 25. Enriching Background Lights: Alright, I did. I mentioned rinsing your brush. That was, of course, if you need to use it for this section, if you already have a clean brush, you didn't have to go through that. But I'm using the same brush I used for the eggs this time on the background because I want a stiffer brush this time because I want to be able to control it a little more. Where the first pass, if you remember, I used the larger half inch wide brush. It was also a filbert but the bristles were much looser and I wanted that because I wanted to create, I want it to not be inhibited by the tightness of the brush, but now I'm focusing, so I'm going to grab a little bit of the permanent rose. It's kinda wipe it around. Let me Sorry, I didn't really draw off screen. There we go. And paint it right into my reds. And you can see already it's very vibrant, but it does feel a little dry. So I'm going to dab in my linseed oil there, my, excuse me, my solvent free liquid. And that'll help to really spread this. So we're just gonna do this over all the light red areas. Being very, very careful next to the egg because we don't want to get rid in the eye. We want to get right up to the edge. However. Once you get your nice layer on there, just look at it. If it feels a little oily, if it's separating, just kind of massage the color into the canvas a little bit more and then wiping the direction that you want the cloth to go. Because if there's any brushstrokes showing and great, if there are because it'll make it look more painterly. You want them to go in the direction of the clause. We're going to do that to every light red section. And as I'm going, I'm gonna describe a little bit of the anatomy of light as it falls on cloth. It is the same as falling on an EKG or any other three-dimensional object. It's going to have a core shadow or a darkest part. It's going to have reflected lights like, Let's see, where's a good, This is reflected light right here. And it's going to have highlights like local color. So as we're painting, you can kinda keep that in mind. And notice where you see like this, this is a core shadow, e.g. it's very faint, but that is the darkest part of this folded fabric. And on the other side is reflection, and on the right side is light or highlight. Keep going here, just adding more and more of this lovely permanent rose color. This is a great color to have in your toolkit for this exact reason, it's also nice to mixing with other colors, but I really enjoy using it as a way to make my reds pop once they're dry. And don't worry that your shadows look kind of dusty right now. That's just because we haven't gone over them yet. So for right now, we're just focusing on the light areas. Keeping our edges sharp. By pointing the brush towards the edges that we want sharp. Kinda going over the edge as well to make sure it's well painted everywhere. Don't worry if you accidentally get some light into the dark areas, that's totally fine. You're gonna be painting over them anyway. But you're really just focusing on painting the light areas. Like here, I have a sharp edge, but I could care less if I get read into that shadow because I'm going to paint over it with a darker red where I was really careful with next to the eggs. I don't want to get any red in my egg. I hope you're having as much fun as I am with this. That's a big area. I'm gonna get a little bit of drying. I'm not drawing well of solvent free liquid there to help loosen this and move it around the canvas a little more fluidly. And then I'm in my last area here getting right up next to that egg edge. And just do it to your heart's content. Add those lights and when you feel like you're done, you can stop and move on knowing you can always come back and add more when you need to. But for right now we can move on to the next section, which will be the shadows. 26. Enriching Background Mediums: So now we're going to continue painting in the background. We're going to do this kind of reddish purple color for the main shadows. I'm going to use the same brush I did for the light red for the same reason. So I'm just wiping it off because we're going from a lighter color to a slightly darker color, so I don't need to clean it and just get in there and start painting where I see the medium shadows going around these little holidays, I guess these little parts of lighter red, I'm leaving a little bit showing right there because I'm going to actually put in some lighter red in a minute. Maintain those because if I paint over them with purple, it'll just be solid. So I'm gonna go right down to the edge here. Were that the medium shadow meets the really dark part. Go right up to the edge of the egg, make that very opaque. And right into the light red I just painted, I'm just going to kind of soften that edge between the two. Then there's definitely more of the purple in my picture than there is here, but that's okay. I just chose to do that. So I'm going to fill that in. I could if I didn't like it, I can bring in some more light red there instead, but I do like it, so I'm going to leave it. Bringing my purple down here into that corner. Don't worry about blending right now. Or you can, if you want to blend as you go, either way is fine. There's a purple shadow here. I missed the first time, so I'm going to put that right into the light red. Just a strip right there. It's light enough to where I can get away with doing that. If it was a super dark shadow, it might be a problem putting a dark color right over a wet light color and I may have to redo it as another layer next time, but as it happens, that's not a problem. So I'm just going to keep going. Kinda bloop, bringing that light purple into the light red here, where it gets a little shadowy. Putting it in along the bottom edge of this shadow piece of cloth, getting my bristles and right up to the edge of that sharp light part, rushing it in just everywhere I see it. And I'm blending somewhat as I go, as it's convenient like this edge. I'm pretty much painting it in and blending at the same time because I happen to be pointing in the right direction. But don't worry about blending absolutely everything. You can always go back later and do it. Whatever is your pleasure. You get right, not right up next to the egg because there is a really, really dark shadow right there that's called the occlusion shadow, where an object meets the ground, it's the darkest part. And that really makes the object looks like it's resting on the ground. Just brushing a little bit into here and here, because those are going to largely be the darkest color. But I want some transition between absolute dark and absolute light. Cleaning my brush right towards the eggs there. Again, leaving some areas showing for the lighter red in a minute. That right there, whoops, wrong color. And right here. That I'm pretty Solon. Although my shadows darker than that one, I'm not paying any attention to the crumbly nature of the clause. I'm just going to make that very smooth. And now I'm gonna go back, wipe my brush and do some blending on edges that I didn't do previously. So just kinda look around, see what needs to be softened. Not a whole lot. I really did quite a bit as I was going need some purple right here which I missed. Wipe that off and soften that edge just a little bit. Blended, blended. Everything seems pretty well blended set for that top edge right there. Oops, I got a little bit of white pulled into the cloth. That's okay. I just kinda go back and agitated When the bottom edge. And then lastly, I'm gonna get some of my original light red and paint in those little areas I talked about earlier. Being very carefully and see eggs still and blending into the purple. So just kind of going around and softening like crazy around these so that they stay true. And it looks like that's about it for the mediums. 27. Enriching Background Darks: So for this next section, we're gonna do the darkest shadows and I'm going to use my smaller brush, the still filbert shape, but the one that I think about an eighth of an inch wide because I'm doing smaller areas now and I want to be a little more precise. So I'm gonna do the same thing. Just grab my dark and put it in wherever I see. It. Looks like a little bit up there, a little bit in the wet part of the medium here. And because I'm painting directly on top of wet paint, it goes on lighter, which is nice because it's lighter there. So it's perfect. Leave a little bit or sorry, not leave a little bit. Paint a little bit of dark, just where I see it right next to the egg. They're tiny bit at the top edge of this shadow. Knowing that's a light purple is already wet, so it's going to go on a little lighter and that's what I want. I can come back, come back and blend later. And then my egg got a little misshapen there. It got a little flat on the bottom. So I'm going to use this opportunity to use my dark to read, round it out. And then that is really the darkest area, the occlusion shadow. Again, as I mentioned in the last section, we want that pretty solidly dark, almost black looking. And then it kinda softens out into the lighter purple goes here and here. Kinda lost the sharpness of that edge, but I can always go back to that later. We're going to have a finishing touches section so I can do that there. And then darken this a little bit. Dark in that corner. Definitely this part. Definitely this corner. I'm just going to blend now because I'm pointing in the right direction. Here, I need a little bit in that crease, going right down to the top edge of the red. And then the big daddy, the cast shadow. Here on the left where the light is casting a shadow onto the cloth from the egg. And then going right over the top edge of that fold, right up next to the egg, pointing my brush towards it. All the way around. I happen to have gotten a little bit of a lake, the ink color there, so I'm using this to clean it up. Oops, I got a little white on my brush, but no big deal. A little blend right into that blackish color. Right over the top. Soften that together a bit. I'm going to put a little bit right here just to give this part of the medium shadow a little bit more darkness. So it's not just one solid color. Same thing right here. And a little bit right here. Then a little bit in the top corner. Now I'm gonna go back and blend parts that needs to be blended. So wipe your brush off. If you haven't done all your blending already and go back and just soften edges. Pull that out a little bit more into lighter shadow. Spread this one around and soften the top a little bit, soften the bottom a little bit. That one's good. This one needs a little bit of love right here, pointing my brush towards it and just running. I'm kind of accumulating too much dark on my brush. So I went and wiped it off. And you'll you'll notice if that happens, you'll be at your glute blending and you'll kind of be pulling the dark color into the light without meaning to just wipe your brush off frequently if that happens, this is already blended. This edge doesn't need a whole lot, but I'm gonna give it just a few little dabs because I don't want it that hard. There we go. Oh, and I need some dark right here. It's mostly a medium shadow, but I do want to enhance the darkness of it a bit. Particularly in this deepest fold. On the very far left. They already blended that. This one needs a little bit on the top edge. And definitely need to blend right here, the dark into the medium. And I need a little bit of a dark edge against where the end of the shadow is. And then I will blend that, pointing my brush towards the darker color. Already did that. And then this one needs a little softening. And it looks like that's pretty good. 28. Adjusting Background Lights: Okay, so we're gonna start by adjusting the lights in the background. Start this next section that is by adjusting lights in the background. This is the finishing touches area. So grab a clean cloth or paper towel or don't use Kleenex at crumbles too much. But a clean soft cloth or paper towel and just kinda form it into a point. And anywhere you see on your light reds that you want lighter, you want. This is a great example or here that you want those lighter reds to show through. Try wiping some color off. So I'm actually going to move my palette out of the way because I don't need it right now. And just kinda go in, massage the Canvas. And I'll show you see I just kinda created a lighter pink area. So that's going to enhance the highlights. And anytime you're about to do a new area, just find yourself a new corner of cloth and white and anywhere that it's very precarious like right next to the egg, just tried to have a very fine point there and wipe. And that's not really coming off as much as I want. So if that's happening, you can dip your cloth into your oil or your turpentine, but start with your oil, it's just a little thicker and better for this process if you can get away with it and try that, and that's working much better. I like the way that's working. I'm gonna do this top edge here. I'm tilting it so I can get a good angle, but then I'll show you what I'm doing. So you can kinda see the highlight popping forward just a little bit more. It's just a way of enhancing it. You don't need to do this. It's optional. If you're happy with your lights, you can leave it alone. But if you want to brighten them a bit, you can do this in some of the original pink will show through. So I don't think I'll do a little bit right here too. And I guess a little bit up top here, above the egg. You don't wanna do this in just one area because it'll stand out. So if you choose to do it, make sure you pick several areas of light so that the light looks like it's hitting uniformly. And when you're done, you can be done. Then any extra blending you need to do or feel you want to do, you can go back and do. Now. Let's see. Here I feel like I could use a little bit more permanent rows in this corner to push back the purple a little bit and blend it a little bit more. Same thing here. Just kinda blend the permanent rose with the purple. Actually that's not the same thing, but I'm using the permanent rose. Again. They're just kinda go around and look at everything, see if anything needs extra blending or if there's any edges that need sharpening, you can do that. And I'm feeling pretty happy with mine. I'm going to leave it alone and go on to touching up the darks. 29. Adjusting Background Darks: So now I'm gonna go in and add and blend more and do whatever I need to do to make myself happy with the darks. Immediately what stands out is I kinda lost this corner because I added that extra shadow there. I'm just going to get a little more in my medium shadow color and paint that in because I really liked that shadow and I want it to show up, show up and be there. I painted in the shape and then I'm gonna go back and point my brush towards the edge and just soften it a little bit. And then my darkest dark right here kind of bent in a strange direction. So I'm going to make that go up a little more to be true to the curve. In the photograph. We just sort of pick and choose what you wanna do, what's important to you, what you can let a bunch of stuff go. But if you're feeling unhappy with it and you're not sure why I suggest going section by section and just identifying what is it that's different about your painting than that? And try to replicate that more closely. That is often a way to make yourself feel surprisingly more happy with the results. If you're not sure what it is you're after and it's completely optional. Of course, I'm wiping my brush off between colors because now I'm going to blend light to medium right here and get that much softer. Get this edge a little more blended. Actually, I want that edge to be darker too. So I'm gonna put a little bit of my dark color right into my medium there and then blend it a little bit more. I'm also going to blend my reds further here. I'm just going to wipe through them because I don't want it to stand out as much as they're standing out right now. It should be more subtly part of the class. I'm gonna do some more blending right here, kinda pulling the darks, extreme darks into the medium darks, more. They have more of a relationship. Get that edge a little softer. A little bit more dark into this part. Little bit more dark right here. Wipe my brush, comeback and soften those edges a little bit. Jab at them. And then I'm actually going to switch brushes. I'm going to use my very tiny little pointy brush. This is a number one sized round brush. And I'm going to grab a little dark because my egg got a little misshapen right there and I don't know if you can see it, but there's this tiny little dot of white right there canvas showing through just kinda yelling at me. So I'm going to use the pointy brush to not only cover up that little white speck, but reshape my egg right there. So it's very round once again. Just gonna kinda look around and see if anything else is standing out. Here's a little while I have dark color on my brush. There's a little tiny speck of white from my egg color right there. You can get rid of that 0 and on the very top edge here and miss that when I did the light section, but I can do it now. There's a little bit of background showing right next to my egg here. I just got a little permanent rose on the tip of my very tiny brush. Wipe that in, wipe my brush off and go back and soften it, kinda pull it up into the surrounding background. A little bit of blending there that I didn't want to happen between the egg and the background color. This is a great opportunity to reshape your egg if you see any weird points are, are little pieces showing through that you don't want showing through. Now is the time to do them. Back edge here seems not quite round enough. So I'm just being very nitpicky. And you can be just as nit picky as you want to make your heart sing. And I'm feeling like that's good for the background. So now we'll go on to adjusting the egg. 30. Adjusting the Egg: Okay, We're going to start with the egg, adjusting the colors on the egg and shapes and stuff. First thing we do is put on this extremely bright white highlight with just plain white right out of the tube, titanium white. So use your tiny brush, your number one are similar round brush. Clean it off if you just used it like I did to adjust the background colors. So make sure it's really clean and dry. Grab just a little bit of plain white on the very tip of your brush and locate approximately where that highlight is and just dab it in and don't expect it to show up brilliantly. It's, you're putting white on white. So it's supposed to be very subtle, but you're just going to dab in a little oval shape approximately where you see it. Then once you've done that, just use the tip of your brush and dab around it. Let's zoom in here so you can see that a little better. So I've put my oval and again it is white on white, so you won't be able to see me doing this very well. And you won't be able to see it on your canvas very well. But all you're doing is making it barely subtle by dabbing around it, so it's just there and that's going to draw the eye to the brightest, lightest part of the shell. From there. Kinda any adjustments you need to make on mine. I feel like my red didn't go high enough on the back edge there. So I'm going to use my smallest filbert brush, clean it because it's got the black color on it. And get some, some of the red. Actually, I'm going to try the permanent rose because I really want this red to show up. It's not gonna be screaming at me, but because I'm painting into wet paint, it shouldn't show show up that much. I'm going to try not to let my hand touched the painting because it'll get paint on it. But it is very challenging not to rest your hand on something there. I'm just putting this pink and so it can give a little bit of a reflection right there on the back edge of the egg. And then sort of soften it into the purple and into the brown below it. I just sort of succeeded in wiping the brown off. So I'm going to put more brown in there. Brownish red. And I'd also like to brighten the red right here. So I got just some more of that original color, putting a little bit more of that in and blending it back into this shadow. Then I'm gonna just kinda dab at the front edge a little bit to soften that. I'm also going to just use the tips of my bristles and dab at the egg with just the tiniest amount of this red color on it right here. To get just a hint of that eggshell texture on there. You don't really need to do this. I'm just showing you how in case you feel like it. And that's enough. I'm going to wipe my brush off and then go back and touch it up because I kinda made an accident a line there of color and I didn't wanna do that. Now I don't have much of anything on my brush and just sort of manipulating the color around by dabbing at it. If there are any edges you want to do, darken, lighten anything, soften anything, blend anything. Now is your chance. But do take a good long look at it and make sure you're happy with it. That being said, you can always let this dry and other week and come back to it and do more. It's totally your call. You can go over it as many times as you want and add and subtract. And you could redo the lights if you want these light pinks even lighter, you can put more white there and make them really brighten the next week, glaze over them again with some transparent red. You could add more texture to the egg shell. You can darken any shadows. You know how to do everything now so you can go back and do it to your heart's content. And with that being said, we're gonna get onto signing our painting. 31. Signature: So now we're gonna get onto signing our painting. If you want. This is optional. But if you do want to do it, use your tiny brush again, your, your round brush size one or smaller or something around there. Make sure it's clean. If yours isn't already, just rub it in your turpentine and get a nice point on it. And then you want to use a color that is similar to your background color so that it shows up, but it doesn't scream at you. Like I would never sign yellow or green or something there because I don't want people to look at the painting and see my name immediately. I want them to look at the egg. I'm going to use the darkest background color because my red is already wet. If this was dry, I would probably choose to use my medium color so it didn't stand out as much. So I'm just getting a little bit on my brush. It's pretty fluid, but if it feels goopy at all, just get a little bit of your oil and rub it around on the palette to get, get it really loose. You can always add more paint, but just start with very little. Then sign somewhere where it's going to show up. So I'm going to assign on this part of the red, keeping in mind, if you choose to frame it, your frame will overlap your canvas a little bit. So go in at least about a quarter of an inch to make sure your frame is not going to cover your signature. And then you can sign your full name or your initials, or just your first name, or maybe just your last name. Or you can do your name and the year, or there's 1 million ways to assign paintings. You can certainly do an Internet search and look at how to sign a painting and see how other artists have done it. I'm just going to put my initials because it's a small painting. Usually I signed my full name and the year. I'm going to put my initials in the year. So I'm going to start with a D and an F. And 2023, I'm losing color already, so I'm going to just finish these Latin odd numbers and then go back and get a little more paint to make them stick out more. That's a little more than I wanted, but that's okay. This is all just fun and games and practice. And if that happens to you and you don't like it, just wipe your brush off, you can go back and pull some of the paint off. If you really hate it, you can wipe it off with your towel and do it again, or you can let it dry and paint over it with red, light red next week, and then paint over it with your signature again. There's ways to combat it. If you don't like the way you signed your painting. That's it for signature. And now we can just go into talking about what we learned today and thanking you again so much for joining me. This has been a really fun class. I hope you've enjoyed it as well. 32. Congratulations!: All right friends, that is it. Thank you so much for joining me for this class today or over the last many days. I hope you've had a great time painting and learning some things about oil paint. Hopefully you've gained some skills that you can carry forward into other subjects you'd like to paint. Just to recap specifically, what we did was we learned how to do an underpainting and oil, how to let it dry so that we could do more on top, putting more layers on top and creating textures and richness in the painting by layering, We learned how to mix colors to replicate pretty, pretty exact colors in a realistic reference. We learned how to apply the paint for different textures, soft edges, hard edges, big, nice fluffy blends, tight little blends, sharp edges, all that stuff. We learned how to create different shadows and highlights. We learned the names of some different shadows and highlights. We learned how to layer four richness and texture and how to create believable shadows and highlights in oil paint. So I hope you had a great time today. I encourage you to take from as many instructors as possible because I feel like personally, the more people you learn from, richer your experience will be and the more tools you will have in your toolbox for how to move forward in your own artistic journey. If you're interested in other mediums. I also have classes in graphite, chalk pastels, oil pastel, watercolor, acrylic painting, and colored pencil just to kind of a variety of other mediums. So feel free to poke around and explore those. And I would so appreciate it if you would leave me a quick review so I can know what worked and what didn't for you and teach better. I'm always looking to teach better. So thank you again so much for joining me and I hope you have a beautiful rest of your day.