Transcripts
1. Introduction: welcome. My name is Rachel, and in this course I'm going to show you how to paint a brilliant, radiant sunset in the Impressionist style. We'll discuss some strategies when working from a photo reference. Photos of sunsets are very tricky because the photo was taken in such a low light situation . Finally, I will show you how you can add some painterly energy into your composition. I hope that you'll join me for this course, and I look forward to seeing your paintings and projects. If you have any questions at all, please let me know.
2. Palette Setup & Colors: Let's talk about getting our pellet set up and some of the colors that we will be using, and you don't have to use these exact colors. It's really more important to think about the warmth and coolness of each color and try to have a variety. I already have my palette here set up from some previous paintings, and I just want to use up the rest of this paint before I replenish it. So the first color I have up here is just titanium white, as always. Then this color here is a cadmium yellow, and this is actually called cadmium lemon, and this is a cool yellow, and we call it a cool yellow because it leans more toward that lemon color. Or, if you think about what we stereotype as like a sunshine yellow that's usually a very cool yellow. The next color is cadmium yellow. This is kind of a medium cadmium yellow, and this is a warmer yellow because it leans more toward orange. If you think about the color spectrum, that's right here. Of course, I'm getting paint all over myself already, and then this red here is permanent. Rose. This is pretty similar to a lizard in crimson. But this is a cool red, and it's a cool red because it leans more toward magenta. And I'm actually not going to use a warm red today, or at least in these examples. I may later. Next is French Ultra Marine right here. And this is a cool blue because it leans more toward Violet on the color spectrum. And then right here I have I'm sorry, it's a little off screen, but right here I have a little bit of fellow blue. They low blue is a warm blue because it leans more toward green on the color spectrum. And then the last thing that I'm going to use is called liquid Impossible. This is by Windsor and noon. Liquid is a line of mediums that Windsor and Newton has. That is an AL could medium, and what this does is it speeds up the drying process. They have several different versions of their liquid. But this impostor medium actually keeps your paint very thick so that you can get that imposter. Oh, technique, which is where the pain is built up in textured actually do recommend using this for palette, knife paintings, because when you apply the paint in this very tit thick texture, it actually slows down that drying process because there's just more paint that has to dry . So if you, like me, are short on space, I really do recommend using liquid impossible to speed up that drying time because it can be a hassle toe. Have a lot of wet paintings just laying around, especially if, like me, you have a cat who jumps all over the place. And I have had my cat jump onto one of my palette knife paintings and cover herself in pay and everything else where she walked afterwards. And when you mix us and it doesn't change the color at all, me just show you a little bit of this so you can kind of see it's it looks like a brown gel , but it really does not impact the color of your pain at all. It's really nice, and a lot of times what I've actually learned to Dio is, um, I'll just mix some of this in with my white and not use it otherwise. But another way that you can use this is to have a separate pile and then as you mix, just grab a little bit. You don't need a whole lot into your mix of this. But what I've found is that Ah, white dries the slowest, and my darker colors, like my blues, tend to drive the fastest. So I don't need as much liquid in some of the color mixes that I'll make as they do in my lighter color mixes that involve white.
3. Notes on Photo References: before we start painting, let's talk a little bit about painting sunsets from photo references I'm starting out by. She's showing you what some of my own photographs that I've taken it sunset, usually just with my phone and you can see in a lot of them. I have this bright sky have really captured some of the light happening in the sky, which obviously is the focal point. But you can see that the foreground remains very, very dark. I'm definitely not a professional photographer. I know a little bit about how to edit photos and photo shop. If I actually want Teoh have a nice photograph, but usually that's not my goal. My goal is just to paint so one way that you can actually tackle this issue. If you're an amateur photographer, when you're taking a picture of a sunset, take that picture of the sunset. But then right immediately after, point your camera downwards towards the ground. That will adjust the lighting, especially if you're using a camera that's on your phone that will help you capture some of the light that you're actually seeing with your eyes on the ground. Usually when we're looking at a sunset in person. This is closer to what we actually see. Our eyes are able to adjust and we can see both the brightness and the boldness of the sky . And we can also see a lot of detail in the foreground. Now, these are all actually professional photographs from picks obey dot com. And you can see here that we have a lot of information in the foreground as well as the radiant sunset. And this is really what we're going for when we're doing a painting. So in the example that I'm going to show you, I'm actually working from two different photo references. One photo is just a photograph of the sunset itself, and the other is a different photograph taken earlier in the day so that I can see what all the foreground looks like. So I just want you to be aware of that and look for those kinds of hacks when you're doing your own painting
4. Toning the Canvas & Sketching: so the first thing that I like to always do is just to tone my canvas, and I always just use whatever red paint I happened to have on my palette at the time. So this is permanent rose, and I'm just using my palette knife. Teoh. Spread it around on this campus, and you don't need a lot of pain to tone your canvas because then you can use just a little bit of your solvent by dipping your brush into your soul mint. Get it just a little bit damp, and that's gonna help you to spread this paint around. And you want this toned layer to be very, very thin. But I try not to use too much solvent Teoh. Avoid breaking down the finding in the paint too much because the more you're thin the paint, the more you break apart its chemical binding. So I only use just in absolute mint Teoh. Be able to manipulate that paint and you can tell I'm really scrubbing this paint into the canvas into the fibers of the canvas, and you don't necessarily have to do that. That's really personal preference. In fact, toning your canvas is really up to your preference. Some people are okay with working on a white canvas. I feel like it's a little bit easier to judge my values if I have a tone canvas. And also, sometimes I'll even let some little bits and pieces of that tone canvas show through in my painting, and that adds a little bit of interest. And then, just to make sure there isn't any excess moisture, I'm just going to use a paper towel. Teoh. Rub this down, and this will also help to further push the paint into the fibers of the canvas. But it will remove any excess moisture that you have, because you do definitely want to have this layer as thin as possible. If you leave it too thick, there's a good chance that it will mix in an impact, the colors that you place on top of it. And also, if you have too much moisture, the paint that you apply subsequently is going to have a more difficult time binding. Teoh the fibers because there isn't enough traction for it to take hold right now in mixing up just a little bit of ultra marine, blue and raw number I know you can't see the raw number on my palette. It is down at the bottom. But this is going Teoh, be what I used to sketch. And as I do this, you can see that I pause a little bit because I'm looking up at my photo reference. But it's not something that you need. Teoh overthink. You want to keep your lines very fluid and loose. And remember, this is just a beginning point to guide your further actions. So even if something ends up being not quite right, it's very easy to make corrections. And in my sketch, I'm basically just mapping out all the major features in this painting. And since the sky is pretty soft and illuminated, I'm not going to need to sketch anything into the sky. Primarily, I just want to see where some of the lines are in the foreground and in the hills in the distance. And because I have so much space here devoted Teoh the land mass, I don't want it to just be a big block of green. So I'm looking at my photo reference for any points of contrast, or any lines that lead your eye into the composition and I'm gonna try Teoh. Just make some notes of those and the paint that I'm sketching with right now. I'm keeping it very, very thin and light on my canvas because I don't intend for any of this paint to actually be significant or visible in my final painting and then back in those hills, even though it's very difficult to see and it's not going to be very prominent. There are just, you know, some different values back there that I want to make a note of. And a lot of this is just kind of a way of mentally planning out how you're going to handle different aspects of the composition, because I definitely won't be relying too heavily on some of these lines that I'm placing in right now. But I think that when you do a sketch, part of the purpose of sketching is just to kind of create a mental map for yourself into make that connection
5. Block-In: Foreground: Now that we have our sketch in place, we can go ahead and start blocking in all of our primary values and we'll get into color just a little bit. But right now I'm mainly going to be focusing on value. Right now, I'm mixing up a very dark green, and I'm going to first be working on the foreground of this painting, and you'll remember that I'm combining two different photographs. Teoh make this composition a little bit more true to life. So even though the foreground in the photograph with the sunset looked almost entirely black, we're going to actually keep it very dark. But we're gonna have a lot more saturation and contrast in the foreground. And I try to always work from my darkest value to my lightest value when I'm doing oil painting. And typically I will somewhat overuse my darkest values, and the reason for that is that it's just a lot easier. Uh, particularly when you're working in oil paint. Teoh work from your darkest values to your lightest values. Your light paint, any paint that is lighter in value or has any white in it can easily overpower your darker colors. But if you use a value that's too light and you've mixed white and tear paint mix, and you decide later that you want that to be darker, it's very, very difficult, especially painting alla prima or what? On what to then bring that value down because the white paint underneath the dark paint is going Teoh. Just pollute your darker paint, and that's just the nature of, you know, applying paint to your painting with a brush or a palette knife. You're pressing that wet paint into the bottom layer of wet paint, and some mixing is going to occur. So therefore, I always tend Teoh almost overshoot my dark values when I'm placing them in, because I know that it's much easier for me, Teoh. Then go over those dark values with lighter values than it would be for me to go the other way around. And so that's just a general guideline that I always work from. Of course, that is just a guideline. It's not a hard and fast rule, and sometimes you'll find that you actually did overpower your dark values a little bit too much, and you'll want to go back in with some darks It's not impossible. It's just not ideal, and it's not the easiest way to work. So just do a little bit of planning. See where your darkest values are going to be and try to work in that order and make adjustments as you need to. So I'm identifying all the darkest values in the foreground of my painting. So the darkest values were going to be the area that's closest to the viewer. So that's that area at the bottom of the canvas. And then those distant hills are also very dark. And when you're blocking and you don't really need to be that careful, you don't need to think too much about the direction of your brush strokes. And also you'll notice that I'm applying the paint pretty thinly at this point. And the bristles of my brush just barely touched the canvas. I'm using a very, very light touch when I apply the paint to the canvas and in order to keep this foreground very dark. Yet with contrast, I'm not going to use any white at all when I'm mixing these greens, so I want to create some variation in my greens so that this isn't just one big block of solid green, and I'm using yellow to bring the value up. So to make my value a little bit lighter rather than using any white at all, I'm just increasing the amount of yellow in my paint. And I can essentially work from this same mix for the rest of the foreground that I'm working on right now, because I can basically just continue to add yellow and I'll use this pile. It'll deeply, a little bit. And then when I add more yellow, the ratio of yellow Teoh blues is going to be a lot higher. And when you're mixing greens and you want a lot of variation in your greens, don't worry too much about whether you are using ultra Marine blue or fellow blue or, you know, whatever variations off your warm and cool blues that you're working with. Try just Teoh experiment a little bit. A lot of times my greens have both ultra marine and fellow blue and also a little bit of each type of yellow, so whether it's my cool yellow or my warm yellow and at this point especially it's just not very, very important to get the exact green right because we're going to be making, ah, lot of adjustments and changes as we work. And remember, this is just a block in. So the most important thing is the values and not so much the particular color that you're mixing and applying. Do you can see that I'm adding actually both kinds of yellow to this mix and you can see in contrast to that dark green how light it's gotten just by adding yellows? And I also added read to this, because I wanted to tone it down that more distant ground. Technically, this is the mid ground. I wanted to be a little bit less saturated in order to get a good atmospheric effect. You want the space closest to the viewer to the to be the most saturated, and then as you move further back, it's going to become less saturated. And in general, the most distant objects in a landmass or going Teoh be cooler and tone, and you can see right now that my distant hills are still pretty green. But that will be an adjustment that I make. So I have added a lot more ultra Marine blue Teoh a mix that's just a little bit off screen . But this is almost entirely ultra marine blue and just a little bit of some of the green that was left over on my palette knife when I was mixing. And I'm using this to add a lot more of that cool tone to those distant hills and to define those a little bit more and you're going to see throughout this painting I This is the only brush I'm going to use for this painting, even for the smaller areas. And when I get to the palette knife work later, I'll only use one pallet knife, but you can see how I am adjusting how I hold it in order to make it work for different areas. Some areas are a little bit smaller and more delicate, and I don't want to lose some of the forms, especially in those hills. So you know whether I have to hold my brush upside down or to the side, or just use a corner of the bristles instead of the entire brush. I just make adjustments as I work. I've added a lot more of my cool yellow to this mixture. This was my more neutral green, so it had just a little bit of that red in it. But you can already see that. Adding some of that lemon yellow or cool yellow really brightened this mixture up a lot, and I'm getting a lot of contrasts and right here, although the hills are in shadow because they're steeper and so those slopes are not receiving much light because the this the steep slopes are blocking the light somewhat, Um, that sun set, as it said, is still going to be hitting and lighting up some of this flat field and especially in the distance. So I did want to add a little bit of lighter, brighter value back there and then also in the foreground, where the light is just cap, catching the very tops of some of these blades of grass. In this stage, really, I think of as sort of an extension of doing the block in stage, because I know that for this particular painting, I want Teoh add a lot of imposter oh, texture with my palette knife. So I know that I'm actually going to be applying more paint basically over all of this. But It just gives me a good, nice road map, and it takes the work out of trying to cover up all of that tone canvas, because I can kind of get a base layer on here by blocking in and you can see in the foreground. There is still just a little bit of that red toned canvas showing through at this point in the stage. It really doesn't matter. It doesn't bother me at all. In fact, it wouldn't bother me much at all if some of that was actually showing through when I was all done, because I think that adds a little bit of contrast and interest, especially when you have a lot of green. Sometimes you need a little bit of warmth in there. Just Teoh break up all the greens, and again, I'm applying this paint with a very, very soft touch. You can see my brush. The bristles don't even bend when I'm applying the paint because I'm really just trying Teoh transfer that paint from my bristles onto the canvas with minimal contact between the bristles and the canvas itself. And I'm keeping this paint very thin because I'm going to be applying more paint on top
6. Block-In: Sky (pt. 1): Now that we have all of the ground block tonight, I'm going to start blocking in the sky and I'm going to continue using the same brush. But I do want to clean it really well, because we're going to be using a much different set of colors to do this. So I'm just using my solvent to clean it out really well. And then I do dry it off with a paper towel. And now I'm going to start looking at the sky and again, the primary focus here is going to be on value, not on color. But we're going to try Teoh. Just use the the colors that make the most sense. So we don't need Teoh. Make this guy monochrome. But, you know, with different values, we can go ahead and, you know, use the colors that seem most appropriate. So I'm starting out with just some straight ultra marine blue in general, when I look at the sky, I see further up in the atmosphere a lot more of that cool blue or into go. So I generally and going to start out with my ultra marine blue. And as I work down the temperature of the color in this guy almost always gets warmer. And so I'll have this little bit of ultra marine blue in here. But then right away I'm moving into my halo blue And this mixture has fellow blue A little bit of ultra Marine and just a little bit of white Not much at all, but we are going to start lightening the value as we move down and warming up the color So you're gonna see me start Teoh actually add yellows into my blues, and I know that seems strange because we don't really think of the sky as being green. But if you think about it, se lo blue on the color spectrum is closer Teoh Green than your ultra marine blue. So, actually your fellow blue is a little bit green and even in the sky, though it's barely perceptible, you are going to see some greens in the sky. Yes, I'm going ahead and adding a little bit more white here and just a little bit of yellow. It's not much, and I think I took that value up a little bit too high, so I went ahead and added a little bit more fail. Oh, I don't want the value at this point. Teoh make too much of a drastic jump because this part of the sky is very subtle and soft, and it's predominantly blue. So as I apply a new value, a new color, I'm letting part of my brush with the new mix paints on it overlap with the paint that's already applied, and some blending will just naturally occur when you do this, and that gives you a really soft transition. So here about it, a lot more white to that mixture to really bring up the value and you'll see if you look at where my brush bristles are, I do a lot of overlapping with the paint that's already applied. But then I also I'm slowly bringing the paint down closer to the horizon. And as I get closer to the horizon, I do feel like I'm a little bit more careful, a little bit more cautious, because that area is very quickly going to transition into my warm tones and very light values. So I don't want to pollute it too much with my blues. So I am a little bit more cautious down here toward the horizon where the sun is actually setting. You can see I'm adding a lot more yellow to this mixture. It's very light and value, and it has a lot of yellow in it. And this is going Teoh. Begin that transition into those warmer, brighter, lighter values. Then don't worry too much about your brush strokes. You might have some streaks. Just try to remind yourself that at this stage you're basically just blocking things in, and we're going to go over this whole area again with a palette knife and very thick paint , so I am keeping it very thin.
7. Block-In: Sky (pt. 2): Now I'm going to move on to the more bright, warm colors at the center of the sunset. So what I need to do is clear a space on my palate because they even though I scraped off all of that blue paint and placed it somewhere else on the palate, I don't want there to be much of any pigment left on my palette that might pollute these colors that are going to be a lot more vivid and bright. So I'm just using my paper towel to wipe off a spot on my palette, where I can mix some of these other colors that need to be a little bit more vivid. So now I'm actually going to be starting out with White because these colors are all going to be so light in value, and I like to use both yellows. They kind of balance each other. If I just use that lemon yellow has a tendency just to really overpower and clash other colors, so I like to use a little bit of my warm yellow just to tone down that lemon yellow. It's very, very strong, so I am looking for where in the sky this dramatic transition takes place between those soft blues and then the area that is really being illuminated by the setting sun. So I started out with that yellow, and then I'm turning that pile of yellow into something that's a lot more orange, added a lot of red. And there I've added more of my warm yellow, but I don't necessarily need Teoh. Add any more white. At this point, the red will bring that value down just a little bit. And for this area kind of surrounding the setting sun, it's very light and value. But we definitely want to steer clear of using our lightest values that we're going Teoh have in our little toolbox here because we're going Teoh. Use the lightest value, of course, to kind of show where the sun actually is and a good rule when you're working with any kind of illumination where you really want the lightest, brightest part of your painting to be a focal point is that you're actually going to use your lightest and brightest colors the most sparingly, because you really need that contrast between light and dark to create the sense of illumination. And so while your eyes are going to be drawn to that point because our eyes air usually drawn toward lighter, brighter, more saturated objects we don't need. Teoh overpower that sense of light by using it too much. So the more you want that light to be a focal point, you should actually be more reserved in using your lightest and brightest values. And you can see that I'm actually using some of this pink mixture. Teoh blend in with some of this guy, especially that sky that's a little further away from the sun, and that just kind of tones it down, and it also keeps that area very soft. We're gonna have the most contrast, where the's son is actually setting, and everything else should be much softer and more subdued. So now I'm adding a lot of my permanent Rose Teoh, a blue mixture that I was using elsewhere in the sky because right under where the sun is setting, there's just a lot of this kind of muted, toned down violet and I, like Teoh reuse paint piles over and over again throughout a painting. I think that that just naturally brings a little bit of cohesion to the entire composition in ways that are subtle. So if I'm mixing a new color and I think that an old pile of paint could actually be used to create that new color, I'll do that rather than you know, starting all over and mixing every color from scratch. And even though I cleaned off my brush before when I started working on the sky, I don't feel as though I need to be overly concerned with cleaning it now, especially because I want all of these colors to be somewhat muted and blended and they're all related to one another. So it's just not as important at this point to have a completely clean brush. And I'm still applying this paint very, very thin right now, and that will allow me to add a lot of imposter, Oh, texture as I go. But having this blocked in first layer of value and a little bit of color, it really just helps you Teoh be relieved of having to do all of this with a more crude tool. For example, I'm going to be using a palette knife toe. Add a lot of texture in here, but a lot of the work is already going to be done for me. I'll just need Teoh kind of replicate these values and colors with my appellate knife work in order, Teoh adds. Some texture and also the lightest, brightest colors that I apply will just be with my palette knife at this stage in the painting. I just don't need Teoh ad my lightest and brightest colors. Yet you can see even at this point in the painting things air really making sense visually , and the rest is just going to be adding some personality.
8. Impasto Application (pt. 1): Now I get to start on some of the palette knife work, and you don't have to use a palette knife if you don't want Teoh. This is just something that I like to do to add some texture. Teoh kind of change the direction of the strokes to make it a little bit more Impressionist and a little bit less soft. But you could just use a brush with thicker paint application and achieve this kind of effect. But what I'm basically doing is I am re using some of the color mixes that I already have on the palate to kind of replicate the colors that I've blocked in. And I'm using that Teoh apply paint in a way that's more thick, and my strokes are a little bit more directional, usually in the sky. If I want to add some energy to the sky, I'll use some somewhat chaotic strokes with my palette knife, and this part will go actually pretty quick. I'm just going to be working on the blue parts of the sky for now. I'll spend a lot more time on my knife work when I get down. Teoh, where the actual son is where all those color changes and transitions are occurring. But while I'm working up here in this blue area, I can kind of relax a little bit and just kind of let the knife do what it will. So I'm not even trying. Teoh apply much control up here because I just wanted to be a little bit more energized. And again, I'm just kind of replicating some of the colors that I had used when I was blocking in the sky and just applying them in a different way. And, of course, as I moved down closer to that horizon, where things are transitioning much more quickly, I'm going to be a little bit more cautious.
9. Impasto Application (pt. 2): No. I am going to start mixing up some more of these warmer colors that I comply with my palette knife. I didn't have quite enough left on my palette, Teoh reuse, Because I do, of course, with the palette knife need Teoh. Apply the paint more thickly, so I'll end up remixing a lot of these colors. But that's okay. And actually, even if I mixed them up a little bit differently than the original mixes I used to block in this area that's actually only going to add to the painting toe have even more variation, especially in this area, Because there's so much energy, there's so many different transitions of color and value. Really having any additional variation is only going Teoh add to the vibrance of that focal points. Primarily, what you're going to see me doing is re using some of my piles over and over again, just shifting the level of warmth or the value in that pile you can see here. I've already transitioned that pile from being somewhat of, ah, light, muted orange, and I've added, Ah, lot more red to bring up the that warmer tone I like to do when I'm working with the palette knife is I make sure that I have a lot of paint on that pallet knife. And then when I I'm applying paint to the canvas, my knife really isn't even making direct contact with the canvas. I have enough paint on my palette knife, so that is a sort of buffer. And so the only point of contact is actually going to be just the paint, not the knife, not the canvas. It's just paint transferring onto other pains. And I do have an entire class on skill share focused entirely on painting with a palette knife. So if you're interested in learning more about this technique, I would definitely recommend checking that out. I think it's a really great way Teoh achieve the Impressionist style because you're its. It's a much more crude tool than any paintbrush, and so it's going to force you to work in a more generalized or abstract ways. You can see as I get closer to that spot where the sun is actually going to be. My values are going to be a lot lighter, of course, and my colors need to be more vivid. And so where toward the outer edges of the sunset are the colors could be a lot more muted , so Aiken mix them in more, especially with the blues that are already there. As we get closer to the sun, we want to keep our colors very much pure. And so I'm being very careful. Not Teoh. Apply too much pressure with my knife because I don't want any unintentional mixing to occur. So right now my knife is actually completely clean. I didn't apply any other paint onto it. I just went back up into the sky to kind of shift. Some things around that were bothering me. And while I want a lot of energy up there, I don't want it to be too distracting. And so I'm kind of just going in and moving the paint around so it ends up being a little bit softer. And when you're working with palette knife, you will sometimes just want to pick it up because the glare of the lights in your studio can impact the way that you're seeing certain colors. Or there might be some texture in there that's distracting, but you don't necessarily see it because you need to pick it up and kind of move it around . Teoh really get a sense of all the texture you have going on in there. So again, when I am mixing up a light value, I almost always start with white. You're never going to see me. Even in this painting, where we have a very light center of focused, you'll never see me actually just applying pure white to a painting. But when I'm mixing very light values a basically used white as a base and then I start adding other colors in and adding any color toe. White is going to bring that value down a little bit, and so here you're seeing me apply the lightest value that I've mixed so far, and you'll see me apply it very, very sparingly. So there's enough paint on my appellate knife so that I can apply it in a way that stick so it'll sit on top of that other paint that's wet and soft. But I'm not using this to cover big area of the painting divided that pile so that I could add a little bit more color in the smaller that pile, the less the previous mixture is going to pollute your new color, but I was able to re use at least some of that. So I've added quite a bit more white and more of my lemon yellow, and we're going Teoh. Apply this very, very again, sparingly, even more sparingly than that previous mix, because this is a little bit brighter because it has more yellow in it. The value isn't necessarily different, but the amount of yellow is going. Teoh be an indicator that we are closer to the actual son. And I felt like that orange maybe was a little bit Teoh much. I wanted to soften it up a little bit. So I have a pile just a little bit off to the side, and I've basically used a lot of very light yellow. So a lot of white and yellow. And then I added some red to it just to soften up some of the red back there, make it a little bit more pink, and now I am going back in with that muted violet, and I don't need to do a whole lot with that. Actually, I'm basically just adding texture, so the color doesn't look much different at all, and I'm adding some of that violet over to the edges of the sunset because I want to tone it down a little bit. It was a little bit too bright over there. I think one thing that you don't see me dio is when I, for example, moved from that violet color back to a very light yellow color. I wiped my palette knife off with a paper towel. So this is actually going to be my lightest value right here. And this is going to be the son. So I have just a small amount applied to my palette knife, and I know it's a little bit difficult to see, but I'm just giving a little bit of dab where that sun is peeking through. It's very subtle, but it really helps give that sense of illumination and lights.
10. Impasto Application (pt. 3): Now we've got our sky completely finished, and I'm going to move back into those hills in the distance as well as the foreground, using my palette knife. First thing that I want to dio There's a really distant hill back there that I actually didn't even sketch in because it's such a small feature. But I'm gonna go ahead and add that in now. And I'm actually using some of that same mixture, a used up at the top of my sky. So it has a lot of ultra marine blue. It has a little bit of halo blue, and I also had added just a little bit of red to it to make it a little bit more violet to show that is back in the distance. So it has that kind of atmospheric effect of things further in the distance, becoming much cooler and tone. And now I'm using that same mix of that very dark violet, and I've added some of my green mixed to it just to very subtly, um, create a dark value that isn't necessarily green. It's actually a very muted color. It's a still a very cool color. But adding green warmed it up a little bit, and I can use that to create the effect of some distant trees on the slopes of these hills . It's a little bit difficult to see right now just because of the light, causing some glare when I apply the paint more thickly. But I am going to pick this up and then you're going Teoh, be able to see and actually over here on the this other hill on the right side of the canvas. The light isn't quite causing as much of a glare in, so you can actually see that color more accurately and adding those trees. Obviously, I'm not painting individual trees. I'm massing them together there very, very far in the distance. So we really can't distinguish any individual trees. It's just for the sake of adding a little bit of variation, so those lines back there aren't just completely smooth. We're adding a little bit of texture back there to represent where the trees are, and now I'm using that dark mix, that same dark mix that I was saving on my palette from when I was blocking in these values , and I'm just using that again to replicate some of the values and colors that we used to block in the foreground, and now I'm just applying it more thickly with the palette knife to create texture. So I'm finding some of those dark lines that I think kind of help lead the eye of the viewer into the composition. And it adds a little bit of contrast in this foreground, and I'm just bringing those back in with these very thick strokes with a palette knife. But I'm trying to do here is actually soften that transition between the mid ground, which is the more distant areas of the field and the hills. I don't really want a sharp line there. I want to keep it very, very soft. And again, I'm just kind of adding more yellow to this mixture to bring the value up again. I'm not going to be using any white at all in the foreground, because although there's gonna be some distinguishing features and we don't want it to be completely in silhouette like it shows in the photograph, it's also still very dark because the sun is going down. It's evening so we can use a lot of saturated colors. We can use some very dark greens by making our mixes lean more toward blue. And then we can bring up the value at least somewhat by adding more yellow. And that's how we're going to control our values in this area of the foreground, where we want to show some features. But it's definitely going to need to be much darker and value than the focal point of our painting, which is that sunset and back there again. In that mid ground, I'm going to use some more muted greens, so some greens that have a little bit more read, even if it's a very small amount of red, that's gonna help bring that saturation down a little bit and visually push that part of the field further into the distance. I'm also adding just a little bit of this lighter value of green into the hills. They're very distant, so obviously we can't see a lot of detail. But I do see some slopes that are getting just a little bit more light, and so I don't want those distant hills of another far away, and we don't see much detail. I don't want them to appear flat, so if there's some areas in there where I can add just a small amount of the more saturated and lighter green Teoh help make it a little bit more convincing than I'll use that those kinds of lighter values very sparingly back there. But they can be useful. But I don't want to put so much detail into the area that it distracts away from our focal point. We can have a little bit more texture up in the foreground without it being too distracting . Because the values air more constrained, those values are closer together. There's not as much contrast. So even though we're gonna have some visual interest in the foreground, primarily using texture and very subtle variations in value and tone. Obviously the most vibrant and light part of our composition is going to draw the eye in the way I use. The direction of my strokes in the foreground is very, very intentional. So in this field, where I want to push things a little bit further into the distance, I'm using strokes that are a little bit more horizontal, and then down in that left hand corner, you'll see me using more upward strokes and That's just to give the impression of grass that were very close to, and so we can see a little bit more of that texture. I don't want to overdo it. I certainly do not need to try to paint blades of grass, but just that little upward motion. Whether you're using your palette knife or a paintbrush, changing the direction of your stroke can actually do a lot. So I'm kind of looking at things and realizing that I need a little bit more contrast in that lower left hand corner where I've applied a lot of UPS strokes. I'm mixing up a very dark value. Has a lot of ultra marine blue mixed into some of that existing green? And then I added red to bring the tone up a little bit because I want just a little bit more contrast here. There's a lot of green in this field. And so, in order, Teoh distinguish the foreground that is closest to the viewer. I'm actually going Teoh warm up. That dark value was some red. It's very subtle, but it does help again, generally speaking, with the atmospheric perspective and the effects that we apply things in the foreground are not only more saturated, but they're also typically warmer in value. So adding red Teoh, that green mixture is going to bring the value up. I'm sorry the it's gonna bring the tone up Teoh, where it's a little bit more warm, and I'm using that also very sparingly. Just as I use my lightest, brightest values very sparingly, I also want to use my darkest values sparingly. It doesn't have to be quite a sparingly as those lighter values, especially in this composition, because we need a lot of dark in order to contrast with that luminous light. But I don't want Teoh overpower some of those more saturated greens, and now I'm just using a lot more yellow in my mixture of green Teoh indicate where some light is hitting just the top of some of this grass in the foreground, and we can apply a little bit more of this as we come closer to where the viewer would be standing. And I don't want to overdo this area. It's not the focal point, so I think that at this point we're gonna call this done
11. Close-Up of Painting & Impasto Texture: let me pick this up so I can show you a little bit of the texture I was able to achieve by using my palette knife. Teoh, add a lot of imposter. Oh, to this Impressionist painting. I really hope that you enjoyed taking this course, and I hope that you will post your paintings of sunsets in the project. And if you have any questions, of course, please feel free to ask Happy painting.
12. BONUS! Process Overview at 8x Speed:
Rachael Broadwell, Fine Arts Teacher
