Impressionist Landscapes - Atmospheric Perspective - Creating Depth

1. Welcome!: hello and welcome Teoh Impressionist landscapes. My name is Rachel, and in this course we're going to explore the subject matter of landscapes and specifically the concept of atmospheric perspective and the principles that we can employ. Teoh really bring a sense of depth into our landscape paintings. This course is for you if you are someone who finds yourself looking at photo references, or even when you go out to paint on plain air, and you feel unsure about how to best distinguish the foreground from the background in mid ground in this court, I will teach you my process for creating depth and atmosphere in landscapes, even when the queues are difficult to find. There isn't a one size fits all method of creating atmosphere and depth in your paintings, because those effects are often impacted by the quality of light. But you're trying to paint. Therefore, I'm going to begin this course by running through a few different light scenarios and demonstrating how that impacts the atmospheric perspective of a composition. I will be demonstrating an entire landscape painting from beginning to end, and I'll be using oil paints. But the's air concepts that could be applied to any other medium. So don't worry about having the exact colors that I use or even using an entirely different medium. All artists are welcome here. I'll be happy to answer any questions that you might have. So if you have any questions or even just thoughts or advice, feel free. Teoh. Leave that in the discussion, and I really hope that you will post your own painting with atmospheric perspective in the project. Of course, you don't have to use oil paint, and you certainly don't have to paint the same composition that I demonstrate in this course. The most important thing is that you try to approach painting with a relaxed mindset and that you go gentle on yourself. In my experience, it's very difficult to improve at any skill. If practicing it causes you a lot of stress. And so it's really important for you. Teoh. Give yourself plenty of time and also to take a lot of breaks, take a step back from your painting and give your eyes a rest. If you're feeling frustrated a lot of times, all you really need is a little bit of time away from your painting to give you a little bit more objective perspective on what to do next. So it's important to keep working and not give up, and with that said, I think we're ready to start painting. 2. Atmospheric Study #1 - Mountain Range: for this first atmosphere study. I'm going to dio what would be a pretty typical way that you might see atmosphere demonstrated. So we're just going to have your typical blue sky, and this is going to be a mountain scene. And the reason why I think doing scenes with mountains is a really good way to study atmospheres because mountains air usually very far in the distance from wherever you're standing. So if you are standing somewhere, you're looking at a photo. The photographer is standing some distance away from that matlin, and yet mountains are large enough that you can really see some detail on them. And if you think about the stereotypical mountain, seen how they're often painted almost a purple or very blue, that is the atmospheric effect, because obviously mountains are not purple or blue. They're very rocky, and they're actually a multitude of colors that just very depending on the terrain. And there are a little bit, I think, simpler to study the atmospheric effect because they're so large and so we can view them from a distance and still see a lot. Now, if I think about some of the particular challenges I face, whereas I live in Nebraska, which is an extremely flat state weaken see a great distance, and we have a lot of atmosphere here because it's pretty humid, but usually off in the distance. It's just like trees, and so they appear very small may be on the horizon line, and there's just not much to study there because they're very small. They're usually very dark. And so I think mountains just make it a little bit simpler to demonstrate the atmospheric perspective. And so that's why I chose to start with that. So you can see here that I'm just working on the sky right now in a couple little clouds that I'm just throwing in there. Not so sure about those. I probably should have just left those out because they were not actually in my photo reference like this. But eso you can see that in the sky. I started out with a darker, more saturated blue at the top, and then as I worked down, I'm adding more white so that blue I'm also adding more yellow. So if you go outside and you look at the sky and it's a nice, sunny blue day And if you actually can see a good spans of the sky, you will notice that almost every time you look at the sky you'll see that it is very blue . Even on some days, it might be a little bit closer to an indigo blue. And then, as you work down, you get more of a surreal ian blue. And then, once you get down, Teoh, about where the horizon line is, is much lighter in value. It's also much warmer, and I know it probably seems strange to add yellow to your blue in order to make a sky because obviously blue and yellow makes green, but it just warms that color outfit. It almost never reads, is green unless you really overdo it on the yellow. So I would definitely encourage you to observe that. So now I've started working on the mountains in the most distant mountain. I kept it almost the same value as the sky that it's next to. It's just maybe a hair darker because it's the atmospheric perspective means that the molecules that make up the atmosphere are more concentrated as an object is further away from you, so there's more atmospheric molecules between you and the objects, the further away you are from it. So the most distant, odd objects that you're going to see are just going Teoh. Be pretty subtle. They're not going to be really dark. And then, as we move two objects that are closer to you in the mid ground, in the foreground, things were going Teoh be a little bit darker in value and also objects that are further away from you. The atmospheric perspective or atmospheric effects makes them appear cooler. So adding blue and using a lot of blue is usually a pretty safe bet. There are, of course exceptions to this, and I'm actually going to demonstrate an exception to that general principle in one of my other samples, one of my other studies. But that's just kind of a good rule of thumb. I know there's times where I'm painting outside, and I, for some reason, have kind of a hard time actually observing the atmospheric effect. I don't know if it's just because of where I live. We do have a lot of atmosphere here, but as I said, it's very flat. We don't have, you know, even hills really so what I see in the distance. Usually it might be a line of trees. It might be sums farm structure that's just very small compared to the expansive landscape that I'm actually painting. So if I I'm struggling to kind of see the atmospheric effect, I will just kind of fall back on those general principles and just try to make a conscious decision to paint things in the distance a little bit cooler and temperature and also a little bit lighter in value. So as I'm moving Teoh these slopes that are a little bit closer to the viewer, you can clearly see I have more yellow in my mix, so this is more of just your standard green. But I'm painting, and some of those other slopes more in the distance might also be covered with greens. But again, there are a little bit distorted because of that atmospheric perspective. And as objects moved closer to us, or as we view them from a closer distance, we're going to see more of their true colors. Another know when you're doing a study, for example, I just took some of my oil paper and a section did off with tape so that I could do multiple studies on one sheet of paper. And because the dimensions are a little bit funny, they're not, You know, your typical standard dimensions. What I did with my photo reference was I basically just cropped it to approximately the same dimensions as my study, and that does a couple of things. I mean, obviously I want to save space so I can do a lot of these studies, but it also helps to kind of simplify the scene. So I'm not getting lost in a ton of detail in this expansive landscape photograph that is very high quality, hiding up definition, and I could easily see myself just ending up getting lost in the details and losing sight of my actual intention, which is just to study atmospheric and not Teoh actually do an entire complete painting. Often it is actually kind of a nice composition. When you take an entire photograph, just drop it down to something a little bit more minimal. So now you can see I'm mixing up a very warm color. It's very saturated. There's lots of yellows a little bit of right in there, obviously, also blue because it's very toned down color. It's not just orange that you can see how much warmer it is in temperature compared to almost everything in the background and how that really brings it to the foreground. And you're also going to get some darker values up front and you're going to see a little bit more detail. Although, of course we are not looking for detail here. We're just getting the impression of the scene. So look at that mountain range that is most in the distance and how light it is, how cool it is and temperature. It's very faint. And yet it's not as though it's invisible. It diminishes and kind of merges in with the sky. The edge between that mountain range and the sky is a very soft edge, but it definitely looks like it's more distant than say, that mid ground slope that is a very dark blue. And really, at this point, I've done enough with this painting to demonstrate the atmospheric effect. So anything else I could do at this point is just kind of me wanting to add a few details a little bit more contrast in here, obviously, some of the slopes and the four burning ground that seemed to be kind of softly merging together maybe a little bit more than I would like them to. But that is another thing that is important to keep in mind, because as objects move closer to the viewer, you're going to get more contrast in values and more contrast in colors so you can see I'm adding just a little bit of a lighter. Warm yellow to this slope, kind of in the mid ground, and you can see that immediately helps push it a little bit closer to the front. And when I mixed this color, you can see over on my palette. It almost looks a little bit fleshy, but then, when you actually apply it on Teoh the painting, it almost seems orange just because it's so much warmer, it's not really any lighter in value. It's about the same value is the pain that are placing it on top of, But it does just add a little bit of warm. And one thing that I like to dio if I have a scene with a lot of greens or even a lot of colors that are a little bit ambiguous. I'll try to look at the overall composition, and I'll think about you know, what might be kind of missing from this composition. So if I have a composition that just has a lot of green all over, obviously what it's missing are, you know, some warmer tones. And so sometimes I'll throw in a very muted orange color into those greens where you know it's a little bit closer to the viewer. Just Teoh help things be a little bit more differentiated. No, I'm just adding a little bit of highlight. Those clouds up there wasn't really a big fan of those clouds. They just don't really fit. But, hey, I wanted to put me in there, all right? And so the last thing that I'm going to do with this is just add a little bit of really saturated colors. So this basically is just your standard orange, just yellow and red. And I'm using this just in being a little bit of slope that we have most in the foreground , and I'm doing this because that area is a very small portion of the overall composition, so it's just not taking up a lot of visual space, and I really want to help push that to the foreground. So I'm using to really warm, vibrant colors, and I'm also adding a little bit of contrast in there as well. And that's it. So I do recommend doing lots and lots of studies. Keep them small salute. You don't spend much time on them, and then I'm going to do two more samples with different atmospheric effects. 3. Atmospheric Study #2 - Great Plains: for this small study, I'm going Teoh address one atmospheric perspective challenge that I face on a routine basis . I'm going to be painting a very small Nebraska landscape. Now. The scene that I am going to be painting is from the Sandhills part of Nebraska. So there actually are some pills out there. The part of Nebraska, where I live is just extremely flat. We have hills, and almost all of them are man made hills. So I'll still be able to kind of demonstrate why trying to paint land that is relatively flat is a challenge when you're trying to really get a good sense of distance in your painting. But I will have a little bit of help just because there are multiple planes in the distance that we can actually see, and not just one big Platt field and then the sky. So I'm starting out. This time. I'm actually starting the way that I traditionally paint, which is moving from my darker values up to my lighter values. In that first sample that I did, I actually started up in this guy where the values were a little bit lighter. That's not how it typically paints, but it seemed to work pretty well for that painting. And when it comes to painting, there's no hard and fast rules. There's really just a lot of recommendations and suggestions, and you kind of just figure out what works best for your approach. So I started out with some really saturated colors. They're not necessarily dark colors except down at the bottom, where there's going to be just a little bit of shadow. But for the most part, these they're just going to be really saturated colors because these pills that I'm painting right now are a little bit more in the foreground or mid ground. And one thing that I noticed when I'm painting landscapes here in Nebraska is that I don't typically get really blew distant objects again talking about mountain ranges. We're talking about very, very large objects that we can view from an extreme distance. And in Nebraska, where everything is relatively flat, weaken, see a long ways, but because the land and the terrain is so flat, were not going to see a lot of large land masses at a great distance. So even my most distant hills in this painting are not going to be as's far away from me as a mountain would be. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to just start muting the colors as I moved back, making them a little bit more gray. So if I'm starting with the assumption that these hills are covered with grass, that's, you know, yellowish or orange ish. I'm going to tone those down by adding blue. But I'm not going to add so much blue that the color looks blue. It almost doesn't even look like a cool color. So I'm currently painting the most distant slope that I can see in this landscape, and it almost looks just like your typical gray. But it certainly doesn't look blue. And then that hill that is kind of in the mid ground. It's still a very warm temperature, but it's much more muted than the foreground. And one thing that I really like about Nebraska landscapes is that because the most distance terrain is going to be kind of gray and muted, almost blends in with this guy. So right now I've added a little bit more blue to this mix a little bit more white, although I think I'm over shooting how light the sky is and you'll see that when I actually apply this to my painting. It's almost too close in value and color to that distant hill. So I've added more blue. And even though the sky is a very small portion of this painting, I'm still going to start with a darker blue at the top. And then I can add some white, maybe even some yellow Teoh whiten it up and warm it up as we move a little bit closer to home rising. And it also added just a little bit more blue to gray used for that slope. I don't want to completely cover up that slope, but it just seems like maybe the value is a little bit too light. - So now you see, I'm starting to block in the portion of the sky that's closer to the horizon line, not worried about blending in with the stuck a part of the sky. At this point, I'm just kind of blocking things in, and you can do these studies, basically, is blocking studies actually think that that's a really good exercise. If you're someone who tends to overwork paintings or gets too caught up in the details. You might spend some time just doing small studies where all you do is the basic block ins , and then you leave them at that because really to do an atmosphere study a block in is completely adequate. Because at this point, this is a complete atmospheric study. Even though I'm going to go in and just add, you know, some highlights to the foreground, bring it forward a little bit, add some texture and just kind of fiddle with it. I think that you can look at this study and you kind of know what's going on, and you can see very clearly which objects are purposed in the distance. So I'm going to speed this up just a little bit as I just work on adding some details just so you can kind of observe me doing that. But as I said, really, this is a complete atmosphere study at this point, and one thing that I will say that when you're working on things such as mountains or hills or really anything that protrudes slightly from a flat plane, you're going to get different plains of value. So you can see on this mid ground hill that I've added some darker values to the base. And that's because as objects protrude from, ah, flat plain, obviously they're going to catch a little bit more light. And so, rather than adding a highlight to that hill in the mid ground, I decided just to add some darker value to the slopes. And that will dio basically the same effect that adding a highlight would accept. A highlight actually, might make that appear a little bit washed out because it's already fairly light in value. And now I'm just adding a little bit of texture to the foreground, where there's a lot of long grass. In Nebraska, we have a lot of long grass. We have, of course, the Great Plains, the prairies, and I've found that painting grass can be a bit of a challenge. And so my best recommendation is to not try to paint grass just to use your brush in a very loose way. Teoh create an impression of texture and not an impression of grass, because it's really easy for us than to go in with, like a small brush and want to add a lot of lines, and I personally don't find that a pleasant look. But I know it's a little bit of a challenge when you conceal all that detail, so loosening it up, you might just want Teoh use a much larger brush. Then what would even allow you to paint a lot of detail in there? I'm just heading a little bit more value to buy it. Fill in the mid ground. I'm actually distinguishing just the edge of another slope. But as I said at this point and just kind of fiddling with the painting, this is a painting that I think that I might actually want to develop into a larger painting. And if I do a larger painting, I'll probably exclusively rely on this study to do that. So that's why I'm adding a little more detail than I need and doing a small quickstudy and relying on that exclusively to do a more finished, complete painting on a larger scale is a really great way to help yourself get a more painterly effects when you're painting as well 4. Atmospheric Study #3 - Sunset: the final atmosphere perspective challenge. But I want to address is one situation in which objects in the distance are actually not necessarily going to be cooler in value. And this is something that you'll typically observe at a time of day, where the sun is very low in the sky. So during the sunset, but really close Teoh that point where it's going to be getting dark. So the sun is right on the horizon line typically, and what's happening is the warm light from the sun is just kind of enveloping everything in the distance, and it's creating some objects that are almost a silhouette against that really bright backroom. But really, when I look closely at silhouettes or I really observe what's going on it that time of day in the distance, what I notice is not so much that the objects in the distance are, you know, black or even, you know, very dark blue is that they're actually being enveloped in that warm sunlight in a way that actually helps them appear as though they are very warm and almost glowing. So I'm going to be demonstrating a sunset and again I'm going to have some hills or mountainsides just so that we can get objects that are very large. That will show us distance so that we can really focus on three atmospheric effect. So I'm actually using the same color to do one of my more distant slopes as they used in the sky. And one thing I really like about painting scenes from this time of day is that the sky and the earth just seem Teoh emerge together in a way that's really interesting to me. One thing that is going to remain a more constant principle is that objects in the distance are going to be lighter in value. I really couldn't think of a scenario in which that's not the case. So what you're going to see here is that the hillsides air mountain slopes that are more in the distance. While they are actually going to be warmer in temperature than the slopes that are in the foreground, they're still going to be a lighter in value. So right now I'm working on the slopes that are closest to the viewer, and I've added a lot of blue into that mix. You can see that this is actually a cooler color temperature wise than those couple of slopes that you see that are more in the distance. And I'm working not completely from my dark value to my lightest values. Excited star in the sky, that region of the sky that I started with this fairly dark. But I did have to add a little bit of white so that in this slope that's most in the foreground is going to be the darkest value in this painting. So I haven't even actually gotten to the point in the sky where I'm really demonstrating a sunset. But we'll get there, and I actually haven't painted in my most distant mountain slope yet, either. So we're starting to work on the brighter portion of the sky here. I'm going to be using a very similar color from my most distant slope, just adding a little bit of highlight to one of those slopes where again, the sun is just kind of enveloping that form. So I'm keeping things very warm and temperature, but beginning to add more white to start showing where the source of light is, And I really encourage you to actively seek out situations where you're going to get an atmosphere perspective that isn't just straight from the textbook. The textbook Atmospheric perspective principles are that as objects moving to the distance , they become cooler and temperature lighter in value. But every principle or rule. There's always a way to break that and to still have something that makes sense and looks really interesting and unique. So look for photo references or opportunities to take your own photos, or if you get to paint unplanned air every once in a while, you know, try to go out at those times a day where the lighting situation and the atmospheric perspective might be a little bit different and you're going, Teoh end up with some really interesting compositions and observations. So the most distance slope that I'm going to be painting into this composition is basically a warm gray, and it's very lightened value. But it certainly is nothing near a blue, and you can see that just by adding that great to the background. It almost made the hillsides and slopes in the mid ground appear more red than they did before, because we have a little bit of color contrast going on There I was gonna add a little bit of very subtle highlights with this closest slope was to show where it might be catching a little bit of light and one thing Teoh. When I'm painting sunsets, I really don't like to paint objects that are just flat and dark, you know, like a like a solo. EDS. And so even when I'm painting an object but is a bit more in silhouette, I really tried Teoh capture any small nuance. But I can to make that a more three dimensional form because when we just paint a solo and it's just, you know, black or just a really dark blue or purple or whatever, it appears very flat and a natural. So any subtle amounts of form that you can give it, I think, really helps. And typically in those situations, less is more so. Adding, just maybe a brushstroke or two of a somewhat lighter value will really help. I'm just having a little bit more of this really light value but very warm temperate turns to the distant hill, where it's catching more lights and any time that I am meeting in like a light source. So the lightest part of the painting. I do not ever use just pure whites because similarly, Teoh painting solo, Ed says. If they're just a flat black object painting a light source as though it's just white, I think just kind of flattens things a little bit too much. So I always add a little bit of color into even very lightest value. And now I'm just adding a few very subtle strokes of warmer tone into the clouds just so that they look a little bit more natural. So I'm basically just using orange, and that will kind of tone down how purple that dark cloud is in right now on screen. That dark cloud at the top of this composition is actually appearing lighter in value than it really is, and I'll be able to show you a little bit more accurately how that actually looked. Once I can take all the tape off of this sheet of oil paper and show you because right now , the way that I have my studio lights set up, it's creating just a little bit of a glare. And glares typically make your darker values appear a little bit lighter than they actually are. and again, I've basically got my atmospheric perspective demonstrated here fairly well. I'm just thinking about, you know, possibly making this painting into a larger, more finished painting. So I'm really looking to see if there's any other values or any other nuances that I can add to this so that when I actually do a larger painting, all rely solely on this study. All right, so I'm gonna move my pellet out of the way, and I'm going to actually remove the tape. Now, one thing I'm going to tell you is that I applied this tape to this paper a long, long time ago and just kind of let it sit. So you're going to see that square down in the lower right hand corner get torn? Because I did that little study a long time ago that paint dried and kind of attached itself both to the paper and the tape. And I didn't really like that study anyways, so I don't really care that it ripped, But I would say if you want to do these little studies where you're taping off one larger panel or one larger sheets, remove the tape right away, so that you don't get that kind of ripping. You see that? I don't get any ribcage around the paint that's still wet with all of these studies. So that is a big recommendation from me Will move that tape right away while you're pain. Still what? All right now, you can really see how dark and saturated that top cloud is, and it makes a big difference. So definitely do lots. And lots of these studies just spend maybe 15 minutes on each, and you're going to learn a lot very quickly. 5. Sketching Atmospheric Cues: here is the photo reference that I'll be using for my whole demonstration. And this is a photograph that I took in Cleveland, Ohio, in the University Circle area over the art museum. And I think it's a really nice composition, primarily because I have a clear foreground, mid ground and background, and there are two objects that kind of dominate the composition. So there's that really distant building, I think is that building's been converted into some kind of school. And then there's this big weeping willow, and then the mid ground is a pond. So I think that this is a really good composition Teoh demonstrate atmosphere. But in a way that's a little bit challenging because that building in the distance is obviously not a mountain. So it's not as far away as maybe a mountain could be. And it's also made out of brick. So it's made out of a material that is typically thought of as being, you know, kind of red or orange ish. But yet it's in the distance, and so I need to figure out a way. Teoh hope that building read as being a little bit more distant without just you know, painting it blue or something like that and making it appear even more distant than it actually is. So I'm going to start out with a sketch. And whereas I usually do my sketches in a very loose way where I'm essentially just scribbling things in this time I'm going to just kind of draw the biggest shapes. I'm gonna be simplifying and massing, and I'm applying hatching lines just to basically indicates value. So I'm taking no in my photo that the building and the trees that are right in front of it are basically the same value. Different colors, perhaps, but very similar in value. And then as they moved to the pond, the value is going to get darker. But the darkest value regions of the ponder actually going to be a little bit closer to that shoreline. So I'm just trying to take note of that. A lot of atmospheric perspective has to dio with value groups, value regions, and I'm trying to also identify areas within the pond that the sky is being reflected in those areas. We're just going to be a lot lighter. I'm basically leaving those alone and then the challenge here is that I have this large mass of a tree and it actually has a lot of dark value in it and just a little bit of highlight where the sun is hitting. But that highlight region is very minimal. So now I'm not so much hatching. I am kind of just scribbling because this is going to be the darkest region in that painting. And I've made a couple of changes to this composition so you can see I've cropped it a little bit. The original photo is not quite the proportion that I wanted to work. I'm just going to be using an eight by 10 panel to do this painting, and the photograph was just a lot longer than that. More elongated, so a crop that a little bit and penance simplified. It took out some of the small trees in the foreground, so this was just a simple sketch that shows some of the most basic atmospheric cues that I want to include 6. Supplies (Recommended, not Required): and now I will go over the materials that will be using. So I have just in a buy 10 canvas panel and then I'll be using titanium white cadmium lemon . This is a cool yellow cadmium yellow medium. This is a slightly warmer, yellow permanent rose. This is a cool red and typically the only read that I use. And then I have ultra marine blue. This is a cool blue, a little bit closer to indigo or even violets. And then they low blue is going to be my warm blue, leans a little bit closer to green, and then I'll use just a little bit of raw number just to get some nice dark values as needed. And then I have some solvents, so I believe this is odorless mineral spirits. But you can also use lavender, spike oil or Citrus oil and then just have a variety of brushes handy. Try to have some brushes a little bit on the larger side. All right, so that's it. We're ready to get started painting 7. Toning the Canvas / Surface (Recommended, not Required): and now I'm going to tone my canvas with just a little bit of red. And I always mentioned that toning your canvas is really up to your own personal preference . I really like to just have a nice warm color and kind of a middle value to get me started. It helps me to judge my values a little bit better, and it's just the way that I prefer to paint. So I kind of just scrape on some pains. I keep it very minimal, and then I dip my brush into my solvent, and that just helps move the paint around quite a lot. And I just try to scrub it into the fibers of my canvas or my paper, whatever it might be using. But this is definitely optional. There's no right or wrong to this. It's really just your own preference, and you don't have to use red. But I suggest using something that's a middle value and a little bit warmer in temperature , so I usually would say Avoid blue or black 8. Sketching the Basic Composition: and now I'm just going Teoh, very loosely sketch in the primary features of my composition. So it typically like to just use some blue and my raw umber. And then I thin it down with just a little bit of my solvent just to help it glide onto the surface a little bit easier. And so I can work pretty quickly. And I actually forgot when you tone your surface you especially if you did use some thinner in there. You want to just wipe that off really good with a paper towel or something just to get any excess moisture off of your surface. So it's not too slick. So I'm just referring back to my sketch just to kind of get these general shapes in here and again, I really recommend taking my course on simplification and massing toe help. You kind of break down scenes that might at first seem a little bit complex and how to find the large abstract shapes and then build your paintings from their. So right now that's all I'm doing is I'm sketching in the largest, most prominent, simple shapes in this composition, and that's going to be enough for me to start. And at this point in the composition, I'm not going to think too much about value. I might kind of stumble in some of the darker values, but for the most part, that will come later. Right now, I'm just trying to be very loose in general, in where I place everything as a guide. And while you're doing this, you know, just think of it as a very basic sketch and not part of the painting. So you definitely don't want to apply your paint in a way that is thick at all. You want to keep everything very thin so that we can really apply paint on top of this without having it interfere too much. 9. Block-in #1 - Foreground: My strategy for working on this painting is going to be a little bit different than the way that I typically work on paintings, because I am putting so much emphasis on the atmospheric perspective. So instead of working strictly from my darkest values to my light, its values, it will still loosely be following that guideline. But I'm going to actually start with the foreground. So in the foreground things were going to actually appear a little bit darker, so I probably will have my darkest values all in my foreground. I'm also going to have all of my most vibrant and saturated colors in the foreground, and as we move back, things were going to get a little bit lighter in value and a little bit more muted or gray . So I'm starting just to kind of block in the shadow being cast by this tree, and I'm basically just using my warm blues, my fellow blue. That doesn't mean that I'm going to leave it this way. But as I said, I am just kind of blocking things in at this point, adding a little bit of that warm yellow to start blocking in some of this grass that is being illuminated by sunlight. And one thing that I do want to say if they haven't mentioned it before is that when you're working from a photo reference, values and colors get compressed by the lens of the camera. So as amazing as cameras are, and they do capture a lot of detail, they tend Teoh make your darker values appear even darker than they do in reality. And they do the same with your lighter values, so they make them appear a little bit lighter or more washed out. Then they actually look in reality. So if you're working from photo references, that's something that you might just have to remind yourself of ever once in a while or even ah lot, because one thing that I tend to do is I tend Teoh be a little bit too literal when I'm working from photo references. And that's not an ideal way to get a painting that looks very painterly and, you know, airy. So I know that in my photo reference, the shadow being cast by that tree it looked almost like it was black or like an extremely dark green. So I'm going to make a conscious effort to add more color variants to that area, and I might even have to go in there with some lighter values just to lighten it up a little bit. And I'm just adding some strokes of a more yellowish green to the foreground. And even though I'm starting on the foreground, that doesn't mean I'm going to have the foreground finished. At this point, in fact, I definitely won't. I'm just basically trying to block things in, and I might be doing a little bit more than just a very simple block in and trying to capture some of the temperature changes that I'm observing in the foreground. But this doesn't have to be the end all bl for your foreground. This is just taking a couple of minutes to get the primary colors blocked in, and to really start thinking about how much brighter and more saturated this region of your painting needs to be than the other regions that are going to be in the mid ground in the background. And you can see here that I did add just a little tiny bit of white to that mix because I felt like that shadow Waas just a little bit too dark. There was too much contrast between it and the greens around it. And of course, the shadow areas also grass. But in order, Teoh create the shadow effect. We need to be able to use a darker value. And I don't really like to just use a super dark green. I don't think that that always actually looks the greatest. And so right now you can see that the mix I have is kind of a muted down violence. And I'm very lightly applying that into some regions of that shadow and similar with the actual structure of the tree going to start out with some very dark colors. And this is just going toe happen to be a little bit of a dark, muted violet that I'm using for the trunk and the branches again. This is just a block in, so I will add a little bit more color in here. Actually, add a little bit more than what I can even observe in this photograph, which I just took on my cell phone. So there's just not a lot of information in that photo and the trunk and the branches actually almost look silhouetted in the photograph, so I don't want them to be so flat, so I may exaggerate that a little bit later on in this painting. But for now, I'm keeping everything to a very simple block in okay, and I'm essentially going to use that same color in the tree just to start blocking in the shadowed areas, which is actually the majority of this tree. There's very little of this tree that's being illuminated by the sun, and now I'm working on my next value region. One thing that I'm trying to keep in mind with this trees that you know. It's a weeping willow, and so it kind of has a particular color to it. It's not quite the same bright, vivid green that we see on a lot of other trees. It's a little bit more muted, and that actually is going to prove to be more of a challenge than I originally anticipated . Because, of course, we're going for and atmospheric emphasis on this painting. And so if there's an object in my foreground, that's actually a little bit of a muted color, it makes it a little bit challenging to distinguish it it from theme muted greens that are more in the background and even the pond is kind of a muted green or teal, so that will prove to be a little bit of a challenge. But you know, that just is going to make for a really good examples. You're gonna get to see me work through that sort of challenge. And even though I'm kind of focusing on the foreground right now, as I said, I'm not finishing the foreground. And so I will actually leave the highlighted areas on this tree. For now. I'm not going to go in with those light colors. I'm going toe. Wait until I have the rest of the painting blocked in before I start adding those details, and next we will work on the mid ground. 10. Block-in #2 - Midground: All right, So now I'm going to work a little bit on the mid ground of this painting, and the entire mid ground just so happens to be a pond in this painting. So I'm gonna really just try to keep it very simple and just kind of block it in. And so the color I'm starting out with is a little bit darker. I think this will probably be the darkest value that I'll need for the pond. And I'm just kind of walking in with my large flat brush. And this color is kind of a muted teal is how I would describe it. So I believe I used my warm blue, maybe a little bit of my cool yellow, a bit of red Teoh mute it a little bit and probably a little bit of white, too. But again, I don't really want anything in the mid ground background that's going to be as dark of value as what I used in the foreground. So that's why I would have added a little bit of white to that, because it's primarily blue, just a little bit of yellow, so left alone that would be a pretty dark to value and another challenge when working from photos is again. You know, colors and values get compressed a little bit, and when I look back at this photo reference, the pond appears almost just as green as all the trees and the grass that I'm seeing, maybe just slightly different with different texture to differentiate it. So as a paint, I'm going Teoh make an effort to intentionally exaggerate that a little bit. And I want that color just to be a little bit more blue than any of the greens that are in the foreground. There will be some reflection in there, so I'm going Teoh here start adding a little bit more glean. And as I observed these reflections, these air reflections of those distant trees in the parts of the pond where we're going to get some sky reflected that Skye is actually being reflected from behind those trees in that building so you can see there's one gap that I left close to the center of the painting, and that's going to be just a little bit of sky picking in between the building and those trees, and then right under the tree, there must be more of a sky opening in the distance, and so there's a little bit larger block of pond that is reflecting the sky. So it's good to just observe those kinds of things because at first glance and from a photo reference not knowing, you know everything that's behind the large objects in the foreground, that might seem a little bit counterintuitive just because we don't have access to what's causing some reflections. But I think sometimes it's really just good to think through and try to find the logical reason for the things that we are seeing in a photo reference, or even when painting from life. Because if we don't, then we tend to make things the way we think they should be, rather than the way that we're seeing them. You know, I'm adding just a little bit of a lighter value. That green is still very muted. I muted it again, just with a little bit of red, so it's not as vibrant and bold as the greens in the foreground. And when doing these reflections, I definitely don't need any kind of mirror reflection of these trees in the distance. So that's why I'm able just to keep this very blocky and loose, because those reflections are very subtle. All right, so I think we're ready to move on to the background and sky. 11. Block-in #3 - Background & Sky: Okay, so now I get to start working on the background. So those trees, that building and this guy, I'm going to recycle some of that muted green. The top of the building in the distance is glean. And so painting this building is just going to be a primary challenge of balancing the actual color. So the local color with the atmospheric perspective, which is going to cause it Teoh be much lighter in value and much more muted or toned it down. So I can already kind of see that this brain as muted and light as it is, it's still a bit much for the background. So it's really at this point, you can see how much it's competing with the pond because I primarily use that color. I only add just a little bit of white to it. Then I added a little bit of blue to this mix. Just Teoh mute it down a little bit. It's a little bit closer to gray now. I think it's still may be a bit dark as far as the value goes, and a lot of times when you're painting, you're gonna find there's just a lot of trial and error. I'm going to use that same tone down color to paint an initial layer for that building. But I've just added quite a bit more red in there. Of course, this building is a brick building, so we know that if we were standing right next to it, it would appear very warm and temperature kind of a reddish orange. But because it's in the distance, we have to find a way to really tone that down so that it could be pushed into the distance . And that will be the challenge. And I'm not gonna worry too much about getting the colors exactly right in this phase we have lots of room towards. So I now just using essentially that same color, I added a little bit more paints to it, but it's essentially the same mix that I just used in the building. And remember when I was doing my sketch, I was able to determine that at least a faras value areas go, so the value range the building and those distant trees are very close in value, and they almost form just one large block. And so, other than a little bit of subtle color differentiation. We can paint that entire background almost as though is one unit, and that just goes back to our ability to simplify and mass shapes. So I added a little bit more right here. This is kind of looking a little bit washed out again. There's a lot of trial and error, especially when working with colors that are more muted and being impact more by atmosphere . So whether what you're laying down is exactly right in, what you're going to end up with isn't as important as just starting to experiment. And it's really a difficult to to start judging your values when I still have a lot of my toned canvas showing through. So the tone canvas is nice for kind of just getting started and having something to build up from. I do prefer it Teoh having a white background, but you can see that it really does distort your perception of how you're painting just a little bit. So the tops of the trees are really the only point where they're very differentiated from the building in the background, and there's just a little bit more light hitting very tops of those trees but again, none of these air final colors. This is just me starting Teoh do a little bit of problem solving here, and usually, if I have a mix, you'll notice me doing this a lot. If I have a mix and I didn't use it all up, I'll just kind of set it off to the side. Because, especially when I am working with a lot of muted colors, I can reuse those to a great extent in other mixes that I'm using. And you'll see me doing that quite a lot in this painting, and I'm starting to block in. This guy basically just used some of my ultra marine blue and white in just a touch of yellow. I don't know if you'll actually see me putting the yellow in. I almost always add just a little touch of yellow to my sky colors. Just so it's not so flat. And I decided that that initial mix was just a little bit too dark and value even for the initial block in and the sky isn't super light. It's kind of an overcast day, and I'm actually going to add a shadow or I'm sorry, not a shadow a cloud behind that building. And that's actually I think, what prompted me to take this photograph in the first place? Because there's a cloud that's going to be behind the building. I don't know if you even notice it from nine photo reference. It's very subtle, but almost mimics the shape of that building. And I think that's what caught my eye when I took this photograph. But it's kind of a cloudy, overcast day, obviously not too much because it was completely cloudy and overcast. We wouldn't have any cash shadows, and we also want to have any highlights on trees, and everything would appear a little bit more flat. And then as I bring my sky a little bit closer to the objects in the background, I do kind of want a nice soft edge, especially between that and the trees and even a little bit toward the building. Right now, my edges around the building are very Chris, but I'm going to be softening those up at some point in this painting and now I finally get to block in those areas in the pond where the sky is reflecting and the more we get blocked in, the easier it is going to be to start really making decisions about what needs to happen next. So our primary goal one painting is always going to be just to cover entire surface, get things blocked in. And I always think of blocking in as you know, every stroke I make, especially when I'm using a flat, large brush like this. Every struck, every stroke creates a little bit of a block shapes. And so that's what I mean when I say blocking in. So keeping it very simple and basic and really just thinking about basic colors, basic values and for this painting starting to think about how atmosphere is going Teoh the impacting different objects. Right now, I'm just adding a few sky holes, as I call them to the tree. So areas where the skies poking through the tree, these air larger, more exaggerated than they will be in reality. But it's a start 12. A Few Adjustments: and now I have everything pretty much, I'd say 90 to 95%. I walked in and again by blocking. I just mean I have paint down and I done my best. Teoh. At least get my values in colors on the right track, and there's lots of room to adjust things in the direction that I want. The first thing that I'm doing and adjusting is that building. I think that the value is a little bit too dark both on the roof and in the brick part of the building. And so I'm taking some blue, and this is very similar to the blue that I used in the sky. And I'm just very lightly brushing that over on top of colors that I used to block in the building because I want Teoh help it just be a little bit hazy. And now I'm gonna go ahead and put the cloud in the sky, and what I'm doing is I'm using that same slightly darker blue. It's not much darker, but you can see that there is a difference between that and the rest of the sky, because when I look at that cloud, I can see that part of that cloud is blocking the sun just a little bit. And so it kind of creates in interesting halo effect around this big cloud. And as I said, one of the reasons that I was even drawn to take this photograph was just because there was this cloud kind of mimicking the shape of that building right behind the building. So I definitely want Teoh include that And I'm just going Teoh, add a few strokes of that to the rest of the sky so doesn't seem completely out of place. But I'm not really going. Teoh change the color of the sky that I can blend the sky down into a tree as much as I want. I'm gonna be doing a lot more work on that tree later in the painting. And one of the most interesting things about painting trees is working on getting some of the sky to show through. And I used to have the approach of painting the entire sky and then painting trees on top so that I could kind of control how much of the sky is covered by the tree. But lately I more so in painting the tree and then kind of painting the sky around the tree . And what I usually find is that when I paint those little sky holes where some of the light is shining through the branches of the trees, I somehow I think it creates a more illuminating effect, like a brighter effects when I actually add those sky holes on top of the tree. So I hope that you'll see what I mean a little bit later in the painting. I know it's a little hard to visualize now because it just looks like there are rectangles on the tree, so I know it looks a little bit funny now, all right, to start creating that halo effect around the cloud, I actually added a little bit of red, added a lot of white, so I could white in the value. And then, rather than just making it a lighter blue, I went in and I added just a touch of red just to make it a little bit more interesting. Give it a little bit more contracts, and for the finished and brightest part of this halo, I'll actually put in a little bit of yellow. So in a way. It's almost like a very subtle rainbow effect because we have a toned down blue at the center of that cloud, and then the halo is going to be a little bit pink and a little bit yellow. So we have blue, red and yellow, very subtle. But I think it adds a lot to leave painting overall. And then I'm gonna just add a few very subtle brushstrokes to the reflections in the water is just to keep everything very coherent. Now it's not very noticeable. So here I go on going, Teoh, add just a little bit of yellow to this. I'm not sure that's going to be a light enough value, because I do want there to be some contrast. Yes, we're doing a little bit more white in there. They just really want to bring that up. I'm gonna keep this very thin halo very subtle. And because it's so bright in such a light value, I want to make sure you don't overdo it. Sorry about my camera losing focus here a little bit every time I move my paintbrush. See, I'm really liking how this is coming along. I actually think adding a little bit of a darker blue around the building helped to subdue the building a little bit, as well as adding just a few light strokes of blue on top of that building. 13. Block-in #4 - Walkways: I now have the canvas covered just about 90 five percent, so I've really done my block in. I've even added a couple of details, especially to the sky. Pretty much done the sky. At this point, there is just a few areas where I have some of my toned canvas showing through. That's kind of another benefit of toning your canvas. It makes it very clear, especially if you use a really bright color like permanent rose. It makes it very clear where you still have a couple things to Dio, whereas if it's just left white, it could be a little bit easier to miss those spots. Now. I've actually seen a lot of painters who intentionally leave a lot of their toned surface showing through, and I think it looks awesome. So it's really just up to your preference again. So much of painting really is just preferences that you develop as you practice and try out different recommendations. So I wanted to add that little bit of sidewalk in the distance. I made it just a little bit maybe two thick at this point, but I'm not gonna worry too much about that right now. I'm also adding a little bit of that sidewalk reflected into the water in the very distant shore of the pond. And then I wanted Teoh make that same color or the sidewalk that's more in the foreground. But of course I wanted it to be much more vibrant and warm because it is in the foreground so you can see that this color and applying now is just much more saturated and vibrance than what I used in the background to help bring it into the foreground. Sometimes I have a hard time when I need Teoh paint a scene that has a sidewalk or a paved road in it, because if I'm working from a photo reference, the photographs often wash out those kinds of services and make them appear kind of just white and flat, which if I try to paint that literally, it just I don't know. I don't really like seeing that in a painting. So what I have done is I just basically try to interpret those sort of things as being a little bit warmer, so a little bit more orange or yellow. And then if there's a shadow falling on a paved surface, I tend to interpret that as kind of, Ah, very muted, um Violet. So that's just my tip. If you are painting from photo references, a lot of times you just get colors that are washed out or flat, and I'm adding just a little bit of highlight Teoh a couple areas of the sidewalk, and I'll do a little bit more work on the sidewalk because, as I said, I do kind of struggle with these kinds of surfaces, and I want to make them look like they belong. But I don't want them just to be flat strips of light gray or anything like that. So I've added a little bit more red to that mix so that I could make it just a little bit more orange, especially where I'm imagining that. Maybe they're getting a little bit less light. So I'm leaving the areas that I think maybe you're getting more light with more yellow. All right, so now I'd say this is 98% blocked in 14. Adjusting Background Colors: we now have everything blocked in except for the highlighted area on the tree. And so I'm gonna go back into the background and just kind of work on adjusting some of those colors. So I'm using a little bit more blue. I don't want to completely obliterate those kind of subdued the neutral colors I have back there because they don't want to add a lot of saturation and color. I still want it to be very subdued, but I think maybe I went a little bit overboard and things back there just looking a little bit dead. So I'm gonna add some blues Teoh the bottoms of the tree masses where there's a little bit more shadow. And this isn't the darkest blue that I could possibly mix up. There is a little bit of white in there again just because I want all my darkest values to be in the foreground and everything in the distance should be a little bit hazy and subdued . And then, of course, I'm just adding a couple brushstrokes into the pond to represent reflections. And I don't need those reflections to be uniform. Obviously the trees are very organic, so just a few strokes here and there, will dio, and now I'm just trying to adjust that distance. Sidewalk. It was a little bit thick. It was a little bit sloppy during a little too much attention to itself. So I just mix up some violet that's a little bit subdued, and I'm going to just try to create more of a division between that walkway, that sidewalk and this pond. And while I've got this color handy, I think I can use it into the shadowed areas of the tree just to add a little bit of color variation in there. I don't want it to be too flat. And when you have areas that are really dark and in shadow, even if your photo reference if you're working from a photo reference, is interpreting that as being a very uniform dark color, it's a safe bet just to add a little bit of variation in there and just play around with colors, you'll get a little bit more interesting effect that kind of subdued, a little bit of that blue in the just, politely applying a few sparse strokes of that violence. All right, so, um, one other general principle that I try to follow is that if I'm working on things in the distance that are green, I try to mix those greens with my cool colors. So, for example, I'll use my ultra marine blue, which is typically the coolest blue that I have in my lemon yellow, which is a cool yellow. And of course we'll probably use a little bit of red. The red that I use just happens to be a cool red, and I find that using all cool colors to mix those greens does help just to push it to the back a little bit more. And then when I'm working on greens in the foreground, I try to stick with the warmer blue and the warmer yellow. Although that's not hard and fast rule, because the warm blue and the cool yellow makes probably the most vibrant, bright green that you can possibly get. And also that cool Yellow really is awesome for creating any kind of sunlight effect as well. So, but in general that's never principle that I try to stick with as much as I can. So and using this green, it does have a little bit of red in it, so it's a little bit subdued, but you can see that it's a little more vibrant than the green I had initially applied at the tops of the trees. And as I look at my photo reference, I am trying to just be very mindful that the highlighted areas on those distant trees is very, very small. So I don't want to overdo that. No, I'm adding a little bit more of my cool blue into this mix, and I'm just going to add a few strokes of this kind of middle value grain in between the highlights where the sun is hitting those two centuries and then the most shadowed areas. So I'm just adding a few very small strokes just to again give some variation. But I'm not going so far as to create really any kind of actual texture because those trees are very distant. We really don't see a lot of texture information in them and again just going back into the pond. Any time that I'm doing a painting that has of any reflection, we're reflectively, I try to just be really mindful to add in those reflections as they work on the subject that's being reflected, and that just helps keep the colors very consistent. But sometimes I forget to do that, and it's usually not Teoh difficult. Teoh remix A color pretty close to what I needed, So there's really nothing. Teoh Review. Forget that as I have to do, and also when you have just a small area like what I'm working on right now, where it's just peeking through the other side of that trees. It could be a little bit too easy to forget about that, so it's good to be mindful, but it's never the end of the world if you miss something. 15. Building Architecture (Finding a Balance with Details vs. Atmosphere): Let's take a quick look back at our photo reference just to refresh your memories. What I'm going to be doing now is just adding a few very subtle details into the building Right now. It's looking very blocky and simple, which is fine, and you might actually want to leave buildings in the distance at this stage. But there's a couple things that I want to dio. First of all, that steeple. I think that's a steeple, Whatever it is that is really protruding into the sky. I need to re emphasize that because as I was blocking in the sky in the cloud, that steeple got lost in the mix and it was never really very solidly to find in the first place. So I'm gonna add that in there. And I think right now the way that I pain today, um, I made it a little bit thicker than I really wanted it. But not to worry, because the great thing about oil painting is that you really can make adjustments to your heart's content, which, you know, is both a blessing and a curse. I suppose so. On Leah, just things that you know that you know you kind of made a riel mistake. Or maybe you just applied a little bit too much pressure, things like that. But there's no need. Teoh fiddle things to death, so I also want to add a few spots of light on the roof. The roof has a couple different planes that are a little bit training angular shaped, and the side here on the left is getting the most light. And so I am mixed up that very subdued green again. So I used my cool yellow, my cool blue, a little bit of red and a little bit of white to create that very subdued green. And you'll notice that any time that you're mixing up a very muted color, you're basically going to be using all three primaries. What really matters is the ratio of each color in relation to one another. So if I need a subdued green, I'm going toe, have more yellow and blue and then just a little bit of red. Likewise, if I wanted a various sub dude red color, I'd be using mostly red with a little bit of yellow and even less blue. So just as an example, because I think that can get a little bit confusing because you basically use all three primary colors to create any color that's going to be more muted and grayed out. So you can see that just by adding a few highlights. Teoh a couple planes on that roof. It looks a little bit more formed and three dimensional, and sometimes it's just those little things that make a big difference. But I'm by no means going to try to paint every window. And every a little ledge on this building even debated on whether I would have that part of the building protruding on the right side of the building because from a distance, I couldn't really make sense of it. I know it's probably just, you know, where some doors are an entryway, but it looks a little bit funny, I think, in the distance. But I decided just to go ahead and just paint what I see. But as a painter, of course. And as Bob Ross always said, you have the artistic license and you can make any changes that you want, and now you can see that I actually am using a more subdued red and When you look at it on my palette, it kind of looks brown. But then, once I apply it to the building, especially the parts of the brick that are getting a little bit more lights, I think you can really see how warm that is compared to the gray that I blocked that building in with. And I'm just starting to look for some of the architectural features on this building and a very general sense by no means I'm trying Teoh make this 100% accurate. Of course, it is in the distance. If I added too much detail to this building, it would really lose that effect of being very distant. So it's really a balance between adding a little bit of details so that you get a three dimensional form but not going overboard to where it's very distracting and even the areas in this building that are very dark. For example, there's a round window that's just peeking over the trees. I don't want to use an actual, very dark value, so I mixed up more of a gray. It's a little bit darker than a lot of those other colors, but I just don't want a lot of contrasts in something that is in the distance. Okay, so there is where I I kind of messed up on my steeple, made it a little bit thicker than I would really like it, but never to worry. But at this point, I decided I'd better just leave it alone before I must sit up even more so you can see every color I'm using on this building is just some variants of a gray or a very neutral tone rather than being anything that even resembles a saturated bright color. But it's getting the job done, so I mostly just thinking about those very subtle value shifts again. We don't want sharp value shifts. We don't want a lot of contrasts just enough to give this a little bit of form, and at this point, I could probably stop with the details already. But, you know, I think we all have this tendency, right? But I certainly would encourage you and also myself, Teoh, really. Just try to keep it simple with details. I know when we're working with photo reference, we have that photo right in front of us, and it's holding still and we're not outside. So the wind isn't blowing. We're not in any kind of hurry. So we tend Teoh, spend maybe a little bit more time on things than we really need. Teoh. So once you have just a couple of value shifts and form, I'd say go ahead and let it be. 16. A Simple Way to Make Corrections: I'm going to correct that steeple, and what I'm doing here is very subtle, but basically I have this very small soft brush. I did not load any paint onto the bristles of that brush so that Russia is completely clean . And what I did was I just I used some of the wet paint around the steeple, and I shifted it over onto the steeple so that I could kind of sculpt that steeple to be a little bit more thin and straight. So I know that that was a little bit difficult to see. But that's basically what I did. And I'm also using that same small brush with nothing on the bristles. Just Teoh clean up that sidewalk in the foreground as well. So this is the first time that I actually have any paints on this little brush, and I'm just using that to add a little bit of a cooler blue toe, one of the planes on that building and the great thing about painting Allah Prima, which is just a fancy way of saying that you're doing a wet into wet painting, as Bob Ross would say for Allah, prima translates more specifically into meeting all at once, so the paint remains very wet. And with oil paint, I find that it's very easy. Teoh. Just move paint around when you need to. And typically, I think that that's the best way to correct an area where you may be applied, too much pains or too much pressure. Just use some of the paint around your mistake and shifted. And now, of course, I was looking at this building again, and here I go kind of fiddling with the details again. So you know, all right now what I decided to dio is to kind of use that very muted greenish grey. Just add a few toned down notes into the water. One thing about ponds, because they are standing water, you're never going to get like a really clear water that's just reflecting the blue of the sky. You're always going to have something that's a little bit murky, which I know isn't the most beautiful way to describe upon. But that water tends Teoh be a little bit, um, grayer or darker than what you might imagine, like a stream where you can actually see through it or see a really nice clean reflection. So I thought maybe I was just tone down the pond a little bit by adding a little bit of those muted color notes. And now this is something Teoh that I would probably file under fiddling because I think really, that background is basically finished. At this point, it's just that I noticed a little bit of grass behind the walkway back there, and so I just wanted to add in a few strokes to represent that. You know, I'm working in a little bit more of my warm blue and using the existing mix, and I'm gonna go ahead and just a little bit of shadow back there as well. Still, just trying to be very mindful of keeping things pretty cool in temperature and pretty muted, not too dark, Which is why I used a little bit of that previous mix in this more blue mix because that light green mix has quite a bit of white in it. So I didn't really need to go back into my pile of white paint and actually looks like I'm out of white paint. So I do try to reuse previous mixes as much as I can So if I need, Teoh makes a color, and I need more white in it than up. Just kind of look for some extra paints from a previous mix that has a lot of white in it, and I'll just use that, whether it makes sense or not. But I think it's nice to just kind of keep your process very organic and fluid and that not feel like you have to mix every single color in some precise way or with it kind of formula . Sometimes it's just the sporadic, accidental things that make your colors very interesting. 17. Back to the Foreground!: it's now pretty clear that the mid ground in the background are pretty subdued compared to the foreground. And so I think that I've been successful so far in kind of keeping that atmospheric perspective just by keeping all of those colors very muted. And now I'm going to go ahead and do a little bit more work on the foreground, and I'm going to try to get this further blocked in. First of all, I'm gonna add some of those highlights to the trees. Right now, I'm just adding a little bit more vibrance and chroma to the shadow. So what I've done is I have added a lot of that warm blue, that fellow blue, a little bit of yellow, maybe just a touch of red and then just a little bit of white to because even though it is a shadow area, it's not exactly well, actually, in the photo, it is a pretty sharp, harsh shadows. I don't know that I necessarily want to paint it that way, and so I am just trying Teoh, soften it a little bit, make it look a little bit more diffused, as if there's some light that's actually getting through, and I'm also going Teoh work a little bit more on the grass. I don't want to overwork the grass. I think keeping it simple is the best way to go. But I do just want to add a little bit of definition between the grass and that walkway. And now I'm using a filbert brush. And a lot of times my choice and brushes doesn't There's no like big Reimer reason behind it a lot of times, and if you've seen any of my other classes, you know that I actually prefer just to stick with my large flat brush. But if I want some really soft strokes, I will go for my filbert, which has very long bristles. So this is actually a long filtered and it really allows me to create strokes that are a little bit more rounded and soft so you can kind of see that I'm borrowing from these previous mixtures to create new mixes and I mentioned before. But I learned that the color of this weeping willow was going to be a little bit tricky because it's just not a really bright, vibrant green. The way that this grass is in the foreground. There's actually a tree just off to the right that I cropped out of my composition and it had just a really nice, bright, bold green color. And if I had just stuck with that, then this would have been a little bit easier. Teoh really bring this tree into the foreground because if you have seen a lot of weeping willow trees, they just they don't have really break green leaves. They are a little bit of a mossy green, and you can see that I could actually describe a lot of the greens in my mid ground in background is kind of a mossy green, so that's gonna have present as a little bit of a challenge. But I am going Teoh work through it and just a little secret. I actually this is the third attempt that I've made at this composition, and sometimes it takes a little while and a lot of reflection to really determine exactly what aspect of a certain composition or painting is presenting the most trouble for you because it didn't really strike me as obvious that my main struggle was actually just the natural color of this weeping willow And so what I've decided to dio in this iteration is maybe just to kind of push and exaggerate these colors a little bit. So I've added a lot more of my warm yellow so that I can start creating this transition between the shadowed portions of the tree and where there's just a little bit of sunlight hitting and kind of creating a very small, thin halo effect on this tree. I didn't really want a sharp contrast between that very light area, which is very small. And then the majority of the tree which is in shadow having a little bit more of my lemon yellow. And so now I'm just kind of experimenting. I don't think that this color is going Teoh be successful in my attempt to translate the street again. A lot of painting is trial and error and just kind of playing around until you get something that feels right and it is really important, especially if you do feel yourself beginning. Teoh, get frustrated. You really need to just remind yourself to take a break, walk away from it. Maybe, you know, and actually what I will do is all actually go and read some of my painting books or all you know, watch a painting class and that just can kind of refresh my mind. Help me, you know, maybe even find a way to approach the problem that I'm having. Or most important, just take my mind off it for a little while so that when I come back to it, I have fresh eyes and maybe can make some judgements about the direction to take. So now I've got even more that nice lemon yellow in the mix, and you can kind of see that this is starting toe work Now. I think that when I just added that warm yellow it just wasn't giving me is the effect of sunlight that I really needed. I'm just adding a few little strokes of it sporadically around the tree again. We can adjust values easily as we go on as we need to, and one thing about trees. You never want to find yourself trying to paint every detail or all the texture of that you see. So try to just keep your tree Teoh brushstrokes 18. Emphasizing the Foreground - Considering Values: I'm going to spend a few more minutes working on this tree, and I really did actually take a break and walk away from the painting. And when I came back, what I realized first was that I had actually lost all those dark values in the shadowed areas of these leaves in the tree because I got kind of fixated just adding lots of different strokes of color so that this area of the tree wouldn't appear to flat. And by doing that, I ended up actually taking away all of the dark values that I had started with. So I'm gonna go back in and add a little bit more shadow Teoh tree. And also, I'm gonna work a little bit on the trunk and just, you know, there's gonna be a few little branches peeking through a swell. You can start to see that I'm working around those sky holes and I'll probably have to go back in and Brighton those up. But I do just want to try to maintain those as much as I can. They were very large and blocky before, but you can see that as a added paint strokes throughout this tree I have kind of created more organic shapes to those sky holes and this color that I'm using right now you can see on my palette. There's a lot of blue. There's some red in there. There's definitely some yellow because I actually borrowed some paint from a prior mix that had yellow in it. But I primarily just want to keep that it's dark as I can, and I have to be pretty careful at this point with my dark values. Because the reason, of course, that I tend to paint from my darkest values and work up to my white values is that it is definitely a challenge to try to apply a dark color on top of paint that's lighter in value or if it has any white in it at all. Because if there's any white and you're applying a darker color on top, that why is going Teoh pollute the paint that you add on top? And so if you do find yourself needing to do that, I recommend loading up your brush with a lot of paint so that you can apply it very thickly and also with a very light touch. So the less pressure that you use, the less intermingling or inter mixing you're going to get and why it is so strong that it's just not an issue to need to lighten things up. So if you start out with a dark value and you need to go lighter, it's never an issue with watercolor. And when I look at my photo reference, the trunk of the tree looks very flat, very dark, almost black. But I don't really want to paint it that way, so I'll start out painting it pretty dark. And I'm using my raw umber and my blue. I think I'm out of my Failla blue at this point. So I think I'm just using my ultra marine blue, which does make a really nice dark saturated color. And I'm just starting to define the trunk and a few areas where there's branches peeking through a little bit, but especially on the trunk would all want to Dio is add some very subtle highlights just to give the trunk a little bit more forms you can see compared to that really dark color. I applied using that violet, which does have a little bit of white in it, but it's still pretty dark. That kind of helped out a little bit of form, and I'm going to add some nice warm tones to the trunk as well. So there's more red in this makes. And I'm just putting this kind of on the edge of the trunk so that the center of the core of it is very dark. It's getting the least amount of light. The light source is coming primarily from behind the building in the way I know that is because of the way the cloud is linked so we can see that just the outer edges of that cloud have light wrapping around them and filtering through. And that means that the light sources somewhere behind the cloud, it might be off to the side, probably off to the left side. We don't see the sun, but it is important to try to think about where your light source is coming so that you know, when you want to add a little bit of modeling effects to something such as that tree trunk where my photograph just isn't giving me that information. It's important just to kind of think through that logically so that you can make informed decisions, and now we have a very light but mossy green that I'm going in with again. I'm just kind of experimenting and trying to find a balance between the literal color that I'm observing in that tree, but also really wanting to bring that tree into the foreground. So this is a light value, but it's a very subdued, mossy green. And every time I add a stroke just kind of contemplating the impact that it's having and the only texture that I'm trying to give the impression of is just those kind of hanging. I don't know if you call the vines, but you know these hanging very loose branches of the weeping willows. So that's why I'm using more of a downward stroke. But I'm not going to go into any more detail or texture beyond that, and I'm kind of losing my dark values again just by experimenting and fiddling around. But I'm not gonna worry too much about that because, as I said, with that cast shadow, I want to actually keep things relatively soft. And so if I have more of a soft transition between my highlights and my shadows, then I think that that's actually OK. All right, so this makes is much lighter. I think there's a lot more lemon yellow in here, and I think it's creating a little bit nicer highlight for this tree. And again, my general rule of thumb is just that the lighter color that you're using. If an object has a highlight, use these lightest colors most sparingly. So I'm not going to use this color all over my tree like I did with that mossy color. I just mixed up a little bit more, and so you can definitely see that this mix just has a lot more of that yellow in it. This time, I've added, are actually a little bit more red in there, just to warm it up a bit as well, and to also create a little bit of contrast. As I said before, if I haven't area where there's just a lot of green. One way Teoh add a little bit of variation is to actually add some read into your greens. Just adding a little bit of red warms things up without actually shifting the color too much. When you apply these strokes with your highlight color your light color. Just be very bold and where you place them, Don't overthink it. Just lay down that stroke and whether that's exactly where you meant it to go or not, just let it work for you. Don't be too finicky about that, because when you're applying these very light, bright strokes, you do get a lot of contrast, and it changes things quite drastically at first. But I think that you also this is an opportunity to step back so that your eyes have a chance to rest and also adjust to the changes. 19. Emphasizing the Foreground - Light Values & Saturation (Chroma): I'm going, Teoh, continue doing just a little bit more work on this tree before I take a little break from it. So this is probably the lightest value that I've come up with. And at this point, I think that I've gone overboard with these white values just in the course of kind of experimenting to see what was going to work. But I am continuing. Just Teoh add to that a little bit. Sometimes hindsight is 2020. So a lot of times I'll look back and realize, you know, I had already taken it too far at this point. But yeah, you know, when you're just kind of on a roll in your in that mindset, it's hard to stop working and to put things down. So when I do take breaks there, almost always kind of forced breaks or, you know, breaks out of complete necessity and they're always valuable. So I would say, you know, again, just to reiterate painting shouldn't be stressful or frustrating, but it is true that sometimes there are challenges that present themselves, and sometimes it takes a little bit of time and reflection to really think about how to address those. And sometimes when we're right there in the mode of painting, it could be a little bit difficult to even really see what we're struggling with in an objective way. Overall, though, if I look at this entire composition, I do think that it is headed in the right direction. And as I said before, this is actually the third time that I painted this exact composition. And so I have had some time to think through the problems that I knew I would encounter. But I think overall I can see that it is heading in the right direction. Okay, so let's take a little break from the tree, I think move on to the truck. So I again, I've mixed up kind of, ah warm mutual color just to add along the edges of the tree just to give the trunk a little bit more form than it has in the actual photograph. But I definitely don't want to overdo that. Use that same color just to add a little bit more variation in the sidewalk right now, even though I do have several paint strokes with different colors in the sidewalk, I feel like it maybe needs to be toned it down just a little bit. So having that mixed seemed like they probably weren't just to tone down a few portions of that walkway or sidewalk. Now I'm going Teoh work a little bit more on the shadow right now, it's kind of standing out like a sore thumb because it has so much blue in it. So I do need Teoh find a way to tone that down, and I don't think that color was going to be the way to go. So it actually seems like it's a little bit more appropriate to use a few strokes of that in the pond. And again, that's kind of a dark, greyish green color. So it does kind of fit the pond a little bit more in the shadow, adding a little bit more saturated, bluish green Teoh the back of the pond where there's just a little bit more shadow fiddling with those background trees from no good reason, really. I think at this point the background just be completely left alone. David very, really did in general when painting water, especially when the water is very still, like in upon you really don't need to have that many brushstrokes, and I don't want Teoh give the impression that there are like waves or ripples in this water because the water is perfectly still, All the variation that you see in the water is really just different colors being reflected into the water and so brushstrokes that I'm adding or not to create like a texture for the water, but just to add color variation. So I mentioned how that shadow was kind of standing out like a sore thumb. And one approach is to kind of bring those cool blue colors elsewhere in the surrounding area so that there isn't such a stark contrast that isn't really making sense. So that's what I'm kind of doing. I'm using that very saturated bluish green, just Teoh. Add a little bit elsewhere, and then the other method is Teoh. Start bringing some of the surrounding colors into that area that's standing out maybe a little bit too much. So I lightened up that bluish green with a little bit of white and a lot more yellow. It's still not nearly as warm and temperature as the grass that's in sunlight, but it is warmer than those deep blues that I had in the shadow area. And so that does help a little bit, right, son coming back into that tree, realizing now that I've overshot all those highlights, that there's just too much in there. So I've mixed a darker, mossy green color again, and going back in there have to be careful because, of course, I apply my paint in a very thick imposter so way. And so the thicker the pain is on the surface that you are painting, the harder it becomes to increasingly add more and more paint on top, because when you're pain is already very thick, it creates a very soft foundation. And if you think about what kind of surface you would want to build a foundation of a building on, it wouldn't be a soft surface. So more paint you have on there, the softer your surface and you're not going. Teoh. Be able Teoh apply more and more paint with no limits. And so I'm realizing now at this point that I have to be making some really big decisions and sticking with um also adding just a couple of little hangers off the tree. It's a little flyaways, I guess, Um, giving that tree just a little bit more of an organic shape and not such a solid mass. 20. Emphasizing the Foreground - Bold Brush Strokes: If you look at the areas in the tree where I had applied those sky holes, you can see that those have become greatly diminished as I've worked on this tree and all of the leaves trying to get that color right so you can just barely see where I had put those and so will definitely have to go back in. I'll probably wait until I have this tree at a point where I'm really happy with it before I add this in, because otherwise I'll add them and then end up painting over them again. Right now, I'm going in basically with just some pure halo blue, because again have lost so many of those shadows. And as I said, I don't really need a really deep, dark shadow in here because I can give the effect that the light is pretty soft and diffused. But what I'm going to do, because I already have a lot of light values in there, I'm going to just go in with some really bold strokes of just a low blue to kind of cool things down. Take the value down a little bit. Maybe it's softened this up a little bit overall and when I'm kind of looking for is how some of these lose hanging branches are layered on top of one another and just trying to create a little bit of depth, or at least the impression of depth and layering in the branches of this tree in trying to soften it up a little bit and went a little overboard with my highlights, obviously like and I've definitely lost a lot of the branches. I can still see a few of them, but I have slowly painted over those little bits of branches peeking through a swell, so I might want to go in and redefined those at least a little bit. And sometimes painting is just a back and forth process. Okay, see, I'm gonna start darkening up, please. Portions of the tree, the branch, the trunk that air higher up in the tree, and so they're more in shadow. They should be a little bit darker than Trump. And keep in mind any time that you're painting with a color like halo blue. This pigment is very, very strong, so a little bit will go a long ways. That's why I'm being a little bit judicious and how I apply this because I know that I can easily overwhelm everything else around it. But as I look at it now, I think that adding this halo blew into some of the shadow areas was a good choice because I can really see how that shadowed area I've been able to cool down that temperature without making that contrast too stark to sharp. And what I'm noticing a little bit now is that my pond is a little bit too monotonous in terms of values. So it's all just kind of a middle value, which when I look at the photo and say that that's pretty accurate. But I do. We just want Teoh give a little bit of atmospheric perspective to the pond, even if it's not obviously evidence in the photo reference. So I'm going to add some more vibrant strokes of color in the foreground of the pond just so that there's a little bit of differentiation between the foreground of the pond and the back of the pond. So even though this whole pond area is technically the middle ground of my entire composition, I can still do a couple of things to give this flat plain a little bit of form. So I'm letting these colors be a little bit more vibrance and colorful, not nearly as grey or toned it down is what I was using before in the pond. And you can kind of just see how that very subtly gives this pond a little bit of form, even though it's very still, it's not moving, it's very flat. Sometimes you just need Teoh take a few licenses, and now I'm mixing up a really warm, greenish yellow. I mean, this is really at this point, it looks more yellow. It have quite a bit of red in there and not much blue. And I'm going to use this Teoh again. Work a little bit more on this grassy foreground to kind of live in it up a little bit. Hopefully, bring that cast shadow of the tree and the grass together a little bit more by intermingling some of these colors. So I'm just adding some very soft strokes of this nice, sunny, yellowish green. Or I guess it's more of a greenish yellow that seems like maybe a bit much. So what I'll do is I'll just kind of stumbled a little bit more of that around, so windows intermingle. I don't want to completely obliterate or cover up the greens that I've already applied. It just want to have some variations, and I really want to warm that area up. And now I'm just letting this really nice bright color merge with that shadow along the edges of the shadow. So if you think about a shadow, it's going to be darkest at the center of the shadow, where there's a more concentrated mass blocking out the light, and then it's going to defuse at least a little bit along the edges. Even with a really sharp, crisp shadow, you'll get a little bit of diffusion around the edges and the softer you want your shadow to be, the more diffusion that you want to add. So you want a little bit of a gradual change between the darkest area of the shadow and then the areas around the shadow that are in light. You can see at this point the foreground really stands out against the background, and we are very close to being finished with this painting 21. Emphasizing the Foreground - Using Contrast to Create the Effect of Light: Let's go ahead now and bring back some of the sky peeking through the tree. And we also need to refresh, I think, a little bit of those light reflections in the pond. So I'll start there just adding a little bit lighter value in there so that we really get some nice contrast. And we get that impression of light reflecting in that pond and picking through from behind . And this is a very simple mix, of course. Just a little bit of blue. Ah, lot of white and just the least amount of yellow, so little that you really don't even detect it. But I feel like it does make it a little bit more natural looking. It might be making this highlight in the pond a little bit too big, but again, we can just kind of move things around a little bit and adjust until we get things of the way that we want. I already think that that looks a lot better with this nice, bright reflection of the sky in the water. I think we needed that little bit of contrast, but I'm adding a little bit more white, just a little. A tiny bit of blue, not much at all, just so that we have a little bit more paint. And now I'm going back into allow some of that sky to peek through those hanging branches. And this time I'm using my small brush. I'm not using my big flat brush again because obviously we've done a lot of work to this tree since then. Things are coming along really, really nicely, and so I'm just looking for just a few little spots. Teoh add a bit of sky peeking through, and I'm certainly not looking at my photo close enough or even trying to get every single little speck of sky showing through. I'm actually just looking for the areas that are maybe just a little bit larger and more prominent, and I'm including those and all those small little specks of sky that might be showing through. Just try to get yourself to ignore those because adding them will actually just make things look a little bit too busy. So you're again reminded that less is more when it comes to Impressionist painting. We want to keep things very loose, painterly, soft in general. Great. So let's get some really nice, bright, orangish yellow or yellowish orange in. Not sure we're gonna add just a little bit more really warm, bright areas to the grass again, this is something that I'm not observing in my photo reference. I'm just kind of stepping back every once in a while and trying to decipher what is missing from the overall composition. And so what I noticed when I stepped back is that there's a lot of greens. Obviously, in this painting there are some blues, a lot of toned it down cool grays. And so what's really missing is some nice, warm, bright colors. And so that's why I decided to go ahead and just kind of exaggerate the warmth of the grass . And I'm also going to add a little bit more of a saturated orange to a couple places on this walkway. Just give it some life. I just I really don't want that walkway Teoh appear overly uniform and flat, and it's kind of hard to make those decisions. And again, I do kind of struggle when I'm painting some kind of paved flat surface because just kind of is monotonous, and I don't want anything that boring in my painting. Not sure what better way there is to say that. So when I'm working on paved surfaces like that and there's no shadows cast over to kind of just make a little bit more interesting and buried, I'll just try to find other ways to add a little bit of variation onto those kinds of surfaces. You know, I'm just adding a few loose strokes of that somewhat more muted orange into the grass, and it really does work nicely with the greens. It doesn't make the grass look orange, but it does make the grass look a little bit more natural now. I'm also just adding a couple of strokes of that into the pond and not over doing it. I just want that to be very subtle. - Go back into a tree again, kind of experimenting with that very warm yellow. See if that's going to help me again. Just get that effect that I want trying Teoh really make this tree stand out against the mid ground in the background, but staying as true to the actual color of a weeping willow as I can, because if I make it too bright and bold, it's gonna be pretty obvious that it's very inaccurate from an actual weeping willow e Think I made that little sky reflection a little too large. So I'm going back in with some of the dark green, and you can kind of see it over to the far right of my mixing palette. This is a color that I had mixed before and I had extra. And now I'm just kind of repurpose ing that to sculpt that reflection down to a little bit smaller of a size. And I'm also trying to make the edges a little bit sharper because when we have still water , we tend to get very sharp shapes in the water. Whereas if the water was rippled, they would be a little bit more zigzagged. Okay, so that's coming along pretty well. It's a little bit smaller, and now we're just about 90% finished with this painting. We're just going to do a couple of touch ups before we call it good 22. Emphasizing the Foreground - Final Adjustments: okay, I like a little bit. We're not 90% done with this painting. We are about 98% done with this painting, so there's just a few little touch ups that I want to. Dio and I took a little break, stepped back, kind of reevaluated things from a more objective standpoint and realized that this painting is actually coming along really well. And I think that I'm really happy with the atmospheric perspective that I have in this painting. So again, I'm just kind of in this water and giving it a little bit more perspective. So I'm adding a little bit more of that lighter kind of aqua green color in the foreground , so and even a little bit more of a yellow screen. But I don't want to over do that by any stretch. In fact, I think I already went a little too far, so I'm going back in with that lighter, our quad dream. So that's not standing out so much. And let's not forget about that smaller portion of the pond over to the right. I don't want to neglect. That's just gonna add a few strokes of color there as well No, I'm stepping back and just kind of squinting my eyes. But when you squint your eyes in order, Teoh, make a decision about your painting. Squinting is very helpful because it when you don't have your full range of vision, it actually takes away some of your ability to see color. And so what you primarily will see is value. And that's what I want. Teoh judge. Right now, since I have this painting very, very close to being complete, I want to make sure that I have my values in here pretty accurately. And so I want the building and the trees in the background to be fairly uniform in terms of their value. It may be just a little bit of highlight at the top of those trees, but overall I warrant that value range to be pretty consistent, and the mid ground being the pond is also going to consist primarily of middle values, although having some lighter values in the foreground is very helpful. One thing I realized is that I just need a little bit more separation between the shoreline of the pond and then the background land mass. And so I'm going in with just Cem. Pure cool blue, my ultra Marine bloom just adding a very thin stroke back there just to help define the edge of the pond. And that really helps. So now, as I squint my eyes, I see a little bit more definition there without over doing it and having a really dark blind back there. Okay, well, I think that this is the finished painting, and I really like how this turned out. And once I get this out of my studio lighting situation, you'll be able Teoh, see a little bit better, the colors and the values and the atmospheric perspective. 23. Process Overview: way. 24. Final Thoughts: all right. So I brought my painting outside because natural light is always better. No matter what I do with my studio light, it just can't do what the sun conduce. So I wanted to show you some close ups of the final painting, and I just wanted to thank you for taking this class. I hope that it was helpful for you. If you have any questions or run into any issues, or there's a scenario where you're just not really sure how to interpret the atmospheric perspective, Please let me know. And I really look forward to seeing your projects and any comments and suggestions that you have in the discussion. Thank you so much and happy painting.