Transcripts
1. INTRODUCTION: money. Mr. McKendry, I'm a Canadian Realize picture today anyway, walking through my fifth skill share tutorial. And it is the one that has been most requested. It is one of my signature Misty four scenes. So this classes for absolutely all skill levels while you've never picked up a paintbrush, whether you're never started with oil paint or even if you're a professional artists, this class covers all the bases. I'm really gonna take my time and walk you through all these steps nice and slowly. All of the techniques that we're gonna be using our super beneficial for you moving forward whether it's with my classes or with your own work. So this is my most requested class to date, and I'm really excited to be able to walk you through this really misty, beautiful force.
2. TIME-LAPSE VIDEO OF PAINTING: okay?
3. MATERIAL LIST: I've chosen a slightly bigger Caymus for this class. I've chosen a 30 inch by 40 inch campus. You do not need to do something this big. You can scale it down to whatever size suits you and what you would like to create. One of the major drawbacks for oil painting for a lot of people is the dry time that can take months for it to fully dry. This medium right here allows it to dry so much faster. And in doing so, it allows you to keep progressing through your painting much quicker. So this is called liquid like shell. This is by Windsor and Newton. I use this and every single one of my paintings. Sometimes if I'm not in a rush for painting to dry, I'll use walnut oil because I like how it doesn't yellow over time. But liquid Nigel is all I use. And for those of you who are impatient like me, it is an absolute blessing because I love oil paint, and I now don't have to wait so long for a painting to dry in between working on it and, um, working on other pieces. So liquid like Jell Windsor Newton. In my very first tutorial, I showed you that I used gams all to clean my brushes. This is a Canadian version of a pretty much exact same product was called PICO House. It's odorless, thinner, and it is fantastic cleaning brushes. It doesn't stink, and I really love it. So find whatever when you can, but a handy recommend other GAM sol. Or if you're in Canada, try and find this ego house and support this awesome Canadian company. So I use this to also clean off my palate or any other surface that might have oil paint on it at the end of the night, which is usually a lot, Um, I also uses on a rag to wipe off campus if I'm not really, like in the direction is taking, so it just cleans the campus right off. I wipe it down with another rag, and then I essentially have a blank canvas again. So this is what I use for that. When I first started filming these tutorials, I was only using the two inch for inch pro Arte brushes. They look like this. They're about that thick. There are great brush but became increasingly hard to find, especially for students that were taking my classes all over the world. These air, the escort of Barcelona brushes that absolutely beautiful that the natural surged up. I buy sizes anywhere from size 15 all the way up to size 30. And I really liked, um they look a little deceiving because in the package, there actually a very thin bristle when you squeeze them together, as you can see, maybe works out to be on 18 image. So again, these air, their school to Barcelona brushes the natural sertraline. My favorite sizes are the 24 30. You can get them really in any denomination, so whatever you feel would work best for your technique. Go ahead. But I really recommend these brushes. They're really lovely to work with. We do most of our work in this tutorial with those larger brushes that I just showed you the escorted brushes. So it really doesn't matter what other brushes you have on hand when we get to the details tree work. I like these white tackling brushes. The only thing I ask is that you have a nice, crisp tip at the end. Nothing really afraid It just helps you get really nice branch work. So these ones that I use, they are the HJ white tackling brushes. They range in the sizes from four up to 16. For these trees, you won't eat anything higher than a six or an eight, so you can use any type of polity like for these classes. I like to have the tray pallets. Just keep my painting once bottom a bit of a messy painter. Also, you're gonna need a palette knife. You can use this to mix your color on your palate if you like. I makes mine with my brush and then put it directly on the canvas and work it there. So it's up to you. I mostly used these just a scrape extra paint off my campus as I'm working, I work in very thin layers, as you know, and this is an easy tool to use just to get my layers back down to the fitness I prefer. For this class, the main colors will be using our titanium white charcoal, grey, indigo blue, Prussian green and green earth. If you can't find green earth in your local art store, sap green or all of green will be fine substitutes. The bulk of our mixing will have Prussian green in it, so just try and make sure you can find pressure green. It really creates a beautiful color when it mixed in with in to go. A little bit of charcoal gray just really isn't that earthy feel. Also, we have oppression blue here. If you want toe pop your tree line a little bit, you could mix a little bit of that in as we go along. But for the most part, all you'll see muse are titanium white, charcoal, grey, indigo, Prussian green and green er's.
4. PAINTING BASICS: throughout my classes. You hear me talking about different brush pressure a lot, So I thought I'd give you a close up view of what I mean by the different amounts of pressure. When I say to gently rest your brush against the campus and to not apply any pressure or a very little amount, this is what your brush should look like. There should be no Ben to the bristles. Now, when I say, put a lot of pressure on your brush and really push that paint across the canvas. I really mean push that brush down as hard as you can and work the paint around with that amount of pressure. It looks like your brush is almost bent in half, but this is a really great way to achieve the looks we're going for. And this is what I mean when I say that amount of pressure now, clearly, a medium amount of pressure is just right in the middle of the two, so there's a little bit of a give to the bristles. But it's not this hard. It's right in the middle. I also want to show you the amount of paint I'm talking about when I say grab a lot of pain or a little bit of paint. How much I mean when I say Grab a lot of liquid like Joe are just a little bit. So right now I have a lot of white paint on my brush. That's what I named. I say, Grab a good chunk of white paint. I also put on here Ah, lot of liquid like Joe. So that's the amount. I mean when I say Grab a lot of liquid my job. So as you can see, it's very well coated. There's a lot of paint covering the top of those bristles, and then you can scoop up with that same brush your liquid night gel and begin mixing it on the campus. So that's the kind of quantity I'm talking about when I use the term used pick a lot, grab a bunch, anything like that so you can see nice and close the amounts I'm talking about. So on the special show you what a little bit looks like. So this is a little bit of titanium white with a little bit of liquid. Like Joe, you can still see most of the bristles and there's barely any paint on the surface. It's just a real minimal amount. So in time I say, just grab a little bit. This is about the amount you should be grabbing on your brush so just cleaned off my palate . And I just want to try and show you the effect that the medium has on your pain. So you know just how much to add to your brush in certain situations. So right now I just have Indigo Blue here in this little patch. I don't have very much on my brush. We're just pulling it down with a real medium amount of pressure on my brush. Just to show you how that paint moves without any medium, he's gonna have a slight bit of this liquid like jell to my brush, not very much at all. And with what is on my brush. Use that same pressure and pull down. It's already moving the paint around a lot more. I'm getting more painting and add more liquid. My job. A fair amount. Watch how easily that moves with the same amount of pressure. So we do our basic blocking and work on the base labor, peace This is around the consistency of paint you want. You really want to be able to push that around the campus As we move towards a more detailed work, you're gonna add less and eventually, for our final layers, you're barely gonna have any cause. Everything from this layer is gonna transfer upto our final detail work there.
5. BASIC BRUSHWORK PART ONE: I want to show you some techniques that you can practice a little bit closer up. I can appreciate a little tricky to see some of my brush work in the class itself. So I thought that if I brought the camera and closer and I did a few little exercises for you, it will really help you out as you go through the actual class. The first thing I want to walk you through is blending in a transition line. So have a lot of titanium white on my brush and a fair amount of liquid. Mijo, What I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna draw that line. Strata Coughs became us like this. It might be tricky to see, but it's just a moderate amount of paint a straight line across our little practice campus here. After you paint this line of white across the campus, quickly grab a rag and wipe off the excess paint from your brush. Then I want you to pick up some indigo blue and some charcoal gray with a little bit of liquid like Joe. What we're gonna do is we're gonna put a line of that color straight across the top of the white paint that you just put down on the campus. So it'll look like this. You don't need a ton of paint. We're just gonna do a little bit of blending work. And you just need a dark color on top of this white so that we can practice after you clean your brush off the excess dark paint placed the brush so it's half on the dark paint and half on the white paint that you put below it. You want to put a lot of pressure. I'm pushing those bristles really hard against a campus on. What we're gonna do is in a circular motion. With that same amount of pressure, we'll start blending that line together. Keep that circular motion going all the way across the campus with the same amount of pressure. My brush is not changing except that it's moving forward by keeping that same pressure on the brush all the way across. It creates a really nice transition between the light and dark. The more you work this transition, the more subtle it becomes. So let's do that again. Now, as you can see on my brush, I have the white section in the dark, sexually aniline those up again, and I'm gonna do a little bit of a bigger circle. This time. I have a lot of pressure on this brush. You start my circles and make them a little bigger. As I walked all the way across the campus with my brush, the same amount of pressure, What that does is it really pulls the white up into the dark section and it pulls the dark down into the white section. It's just creating a more softer transition between the two lines that we painted. So I quickly wiped off my brush and I picked us more charcoal gray, an integral blue in liquid like Joe and I can do another line up here just to keep showing how to blend the transition. I'm not gonna wipe off any excess paint from this brush with that same amount of pressure gonna push this pain all the way across the campus from one side to the other. You can see my brushes pushing really hard. It's a consistent pressure, and it's the same circular motion all the way across the campus. So with some white on your brush just quickly, Ruffin an extra layer white underneath the section we're working on right at the bottom half on the white that you just put down in half on the middle section that we're just working on the same amount of pressure in the same circular motion. Bring that brush right across to the other side. I'm just showing how you lighten up on area with this technique. Come back to this side. Put your brush half on the dark and half on the section. We just worked with the medium amount of pressure in walking that brush all the way across to the other side. Keep the same amount of pressure the whole way across. You can see that we're creating a much lighter transition between the dark and the light. So put your brush. So it's half of what we just worked on and half on the darker layer above medium amount of pressure, circular motions all the way across the campus again. Then come back to this side and let's just do the same thing along the top of this transition area here, medium amount of pressure, circular motions all the way across to the other side. Now you could still see some of these transition lines that we were working with, with barely any pressure on my brush. I'm going to use that same circular motion across the areas where I could still see my transition line. This will just really blend in super suddenly the brush lines that you can actually see barely any pressure all the way down. Let me going to go one level lower. Then I'm gonna go back up, blended again, barely any pressure on my brush? This is such a subtle technique. You can barely see what it's doing, but it is literally erasing all signs of brushwork, which is how you achieve a really realistic, misty background.
6. BASIC BRUSHWORK PART TWO: way, basically every block in trees just putting the tree trunk coming up into the mist. So I'm gonna go over that so you can see it a little bit better. All my brush. I have no liquid like Joe, but I have some pains grace men to go blue and some of my Prussian green. So I'm gonna pretend that the trees coming up into the area here down the bottom, so blocking in trees in the base layer is very basic. It's what you do is you put your brush of the bottom of the tree where you wanted to begin . Transfer a bit of paint onto the canvas from your brush just by doing a gentle circular motion. As you come up from that circular motion, lift your brush up off the canvas so that there's just a edge trailing along with surface of the campus, not the whole brush. So it'll be this area here, just that edge there that's just gonna give you the rough idea of where your tree is gonna sit in your painting. So when we do a tree, Ruffin in the base layer, we're not adding much to this tree. It's literally just the trunk coming up out of the shadow work. So you do not need to add any limbs or anything like that. What you need to do is just kind of make a really rough, very simple, skinny version of your tree. So wipe off the excess paint from your brush and we're gonna push this tree back into the background. What I mean by that is we're gonna make it look like there's a misty layer over the top of it, and it's actually further in the background, not sitting in the foreground, but your brush of the base of the tree on the outside of where your tree meets your background with a circular motion with a medium amount of pressure on your brush, go all the way up one side of your tree and blend it in a circular motion just going over like this until there's no much definition left and that tree has faded into the background . Just keep playing around that whole area with very minimal amount of pressure on your brush , and now that trees no longer sitting in the foreground is pushed back in your painting, I can assure you a close up version of roughing in the basic shape of a tree now. So I grabbed one of my flat brushes. That's the number six. What I'm gonna do is I have the same pain that I was doing. The top layer with all my brush know much liquid like gel on it at all. It's just the mixture I was using. I just rubbed it in that through this base that I pushed back. I'm not sure gonna build the tree up into the foreground now. Just carrying that tree trunk from the bottom right up to the top of minus section. Here, he's gonna darken it up a little bit, a little bit more paint if it's not coming through dark enough. So with the tip of your brush, you're going to start creating some rough tree about some branches coming out. This is how I build mine up. I go alternating signs, different shapes, different angles. I just play with what I think that tree looks like in this certain area of my painting. No tree is the same. No tree is perfect, but I'm just walking my brushed down, creating shapes as I go down right down to the base. You need a little bit more paint. Grab some. But this is what my trees look like in the middle layer of ours. Tutorial their basic. You can see the rough shape. You can see some tree branches. They're not detailed. So I grabbed the blending brush that I used for this area. When we did that first tree and pushing into the background, I'm gonna show you how I could make a pocket of mist come over our tree and how to really make this look like it's a little bit pushed back into our scene. So up here with a medium amount of pressure, I'm gonna keep that circular motion going. And I'm gonna project my missed right over the top of that tree. I'm not changing the pressure on my brush It all I'm gonna grab a little bit of titanium white, and I'm gonna come back up top so there's a little bit more white so you can see it better . Same amount of pressure all the way down. I'm gonna push it right across that tree. Allow that Mr Fall over on this side. Now, with the same techniques that we used to blend these transition lines. I'm gonna go on either side of this miss Pocket that I just created and blend it into the scenery so I would brush half on the mist and half on the area around the mist medium amount of pressure, Same circular motion going around this mist line that I just put in both sides. And I'm just blending that transition line, softening up some of that white with some broader circles. But instantly it feels as if a mist is now coming in front of that tree we just created. You'll see that I use this technique a lot. Once we rough in our trees in our tutorial What this does it just really pushes trees to the back and brings other trees. Ford. So it feels like a really realistic scene was gonna add a little bit more missed down in this section and blended into this pocket we just created because I want to build up a really detailed tree in front of it so you can see what I mean by what's in the background and what's in the foreground. So with that same brush we did on this tree pick up some dark color on that brush again. Same one used over here and probably right about here is get a tree trunk lined and this is just practice. It doesn't have to be perfect. I'm just gonna show you how you can create depth within your painting With these simple techniques. I'm showing you so up top. I have my point of my tree, ADM, or branches than I did on the other one, cause I want this to be more in the foreground. War detailed. And all I do is I pull some dead branches out from the trunk, just a line straight out with a couple little twigs coming off of this. I pushed this brush against the canvas and let it roll down a bit to create some really unique looking branches that I pull the shape off that line just like that. Just create some unique looking trees. Could have a lot of fun creating trees cause none of them are the same. None of them were perfect, and they all look awesome. So just going again down one side of the tree pickups, more darker paint. You want this tree to be very dark because it is in the very front of before ground here. Just keep creating unique branches coming off all the way down. I'm just gonna quickly get the's in. Then I'll show you how I add a little bit more realistic flair to this tree that's in the foreground. I'm just bringing branches from the trunk out all the way down one side and the other side of the tree. As you get down to the bottom of the tree, always be sure to make it a little thicker on the trunk. That's what happens the trees and nature. And that's what happens in your painting. If you want to look realistic, you have to remember these things with the very tip of my brush. I'm gonna create some straight branches coming out from random spots on both sides. Some have twigs, some don't. Some go straight owed. Some fall down a bit droop. These little branches that you're creating right here really make your tree look realistic , so you'll see me doing this a lot in the painting that we go through together. Just go back to some of your branches and using the edge of your brush poll some of the detail work you just did down to make it look like an actual branch. So you just kind of drinking your brush through it and creating points and edges and shapes . That's how you make your tree look realistic in a misty sea. In my paintings, I also create a lot of dead trees because they create a really awesome look to your forest . So right here, I'm gonna show you how I do a dead tree again. I just pull the trunk straight down. You could make these dead trees look really busy or really sparse with how you do the branch work. So what you do is as you're going down, it's just a straight line out. Mr. Random Spots you can add with gentle, gentle brushstrokes, some twigs coming off those straight branches, just really simple, subtle ranch work sporadically popping out of this a tree trunk. As you get closer to the bottom, you might want to have a couple branches coming out a little further than the ones you have up top. But overall, it's just that simple. So there's a close up view of the trees that are in my painting in this tutorial. It's very easy to do. You've seen just how subtle some of the branch work is. Does know how to be complicated. You get to play around with it. It's easy to fix if you don't feel that it's right. But remember, every tree is in perfect and therefore perfect in itself. So just because this is a practice campus, I'm gonna actually create just a layer of mist coming straight across. So with one of your brushes, put some titanium white on it, with no liquid like Joe right about here on your campus, kind of in the middle of the whole thing. With ah lot of pressure on your brush, we are going to bring a pocket amiss straight across thes two trees that we created. Do not let up on your pressure as you go across thing. Go back. Same amount of pressure work those transitions like we did earlier. So with that simple amount of pressure, you can create missed anywhere you want, and you can push trees back or, with more detail work, bring them forward. It's so much fun once you figure out these several nuances to creating depth within your painting, how effective these brush techniques are, creating realism within your piece
7. MISTY FOREST: PART ONE: as many of you have figured out by now, I really drive home the importance of a nice composition to your painting. I hope that by teaching this over and over again, it becomes ingrained in your minds that when you sit down to create your own landscapes, you'll be able to take this information and apply it to what you want to put onto campus. So let's get started here. I want to keep this class is fun and simple as possible. So I'm actually gonna read out this Caymus this time. Ah, lot of you won't have to do this as a starting to figure out how to really lay out a nice composition to a piece. I know a lot of your feeling a lot more confident now, which I'm so excited about, so you don't need to greet this out. But for the artists were just starting out or just joining along for the first time. I'm gonna agree this out. You understand what I'm talking about? So the divider Caymus into thirds you take your width and divide that measurement by three . Put your marks on your canvas top and bottom. If you take your height. Divide that measurement by three. Put your marks on the campus and then do it on both sides. So after you market all your measurements, take a ruler or a piece of wood, anything that's a straight edge and for you to just using a pencil. But since you wouldn't be able to see that pencil line on my campus, I will use paint Gonna blend that paint into my background. No problem. So I'm not worried about it sticking around. It's gonna do a rough line so you can see it. And you do that for all four year lines that are gonna go into your campus, marking it out into thirds. So here's my other one. Just really rough to give you an idea. Not going to do my vertical lines. And now my campus has been divided into thirds, so I've laid the same great on top of the reference images that we're using this tutorials just so you get an idea what I'm talking about. So breaking the composition of a painting down into thirds really makes it pleasing for the eye. With this create over top of the reference photo you're able to see that it is actually broken down into three equal parts. So the tall trees and really dark shadows are focused just on this thirds line in the bottom section left of centre. You'll also see that all the treetops in that layer dance along the thirds line. If you move up a bit, you'll see that this next layer of trees dances just below this top thirds line and that the layer of Miss continues it across. So appears just a darker cloud base. There's nothing happening, but it's still divided from the other two sections. It really creates a lot of drama within the piece, but it also allows the I to follow that missed down to the middle section and towards your focal point, where you have those really dark trees. All of these elements rudely played together to create a really visually appealing painting . You have a place where your eyes excited to be drawn towards, and everything else works cohesively to bring your eye down into that section. So now we're ready to start getting this base layer down on her painting. All of those brushwork, exercise of the beginning class are really going to start coming to play right now, So if you didn't do them, how he's just going back and giving them a shot. This is a really exciting step, because right away you're going to see how we build up the shadows and really create a dimension with the peace without even building up any trees. Yet on your base layer, I want you to grab Payne's gray, a tiny bit of indigo blue, some of your Prussian green and your green earth. I'd like you to mix those around a bit and add a tiny bit of your medium to that. Your look one. Like Joe, it just makes them around on your palate. So first we're gonna put down our shadow work. We're gonna be using these colors to pull up into our missed. So it's really important that this is our starting point. So with that color on your brush, like you just pulled along the bottom of your canvas, using a medium amount of pressure in a circular motion working around campus. So I'm keeping a very firm amount of pressure on my brush and pushing into Caymus and using a circular motion like we practice to push the paint around the cameras. I don't want globs of paint anywhere. I want this to be a nice thin layer to create realistic Miss, You do not want a lot of paint on your brush. You want a super thin layer, so make sure you really spread out that paint by pushing hard and moving in a circular motion all along the campus, you're gonna build a shadow all through this bottom section, so just keep working it along. You don't want this to be to green, so if you have a lot of green like I do, you're just gonna add a little bit of indigo blue and a little bit more Payne's gray into the color that you had mixed to begin with, and then just add that into what you're mixing along. So I'm not worried about creating any shapes of trees right now. I'm just clocking in the shadow work. We're gonna start creating the shapes of trees when we start putting down some of the white paint and drawing it down into this layer. We're putting to create a really need. Look, I can't wait to show it to you first. Let's finish blocking out the shadows. So I've got this holds bottom section pretty much blocked out. I can add a little bit more painful over here. I'm just going along this bottom third section and locking it all in. I haven't added any more paint to my brush. There's enough on their to do this whole section, so just be sure to push nice of heart and you'll see you have plenty of peace to get you through that pool area. I'm pushing very hard on my brush, circular motions and just transferring all that paint that's mixed into that brush onto this famous. You should not be doing delicate brushwork right now. This is rough. So in this area, the trees were actually only gonna come up about half way in this block. The reason for this is because the mist is actually the most important part of this section in terms of drawing the eye back down towards our focal point. So we have the trees that just make a nice contrast, but that missed, we're gonna build up behind. It's gonna be a lot lighter than the other aspects of the sky. We're gonna pull it all the way down through this whole section. This is all gonna be missed, and it's going to start settling behind our focal point. So this tree section, we're just gonna rough in probably about here. That's gonna be where a tree tops are. So with the paint that's on your brush, you do not need a ton of paint. Just keep using the pressure your brush to transfer what's on your brush onto the canvas. You're just going to transfer the paint to create this little section of a tree line. And, as you see it comes down into this middle section just a bit and fades into the bottom layer a little bit more so with very little amount of paint, were able to block in all of our shadows. So now we finish building of the base of our shadow work. Next, we're going to start building up that nice misty layer that's coming through the midsection . So pick up your to enter your forage brush that's clean, and we're going to get to work on that middle air, so you're gonna grab some liquid, my jail on your brush and a good chunk of white paint. So with some white on your brush. We're just gonna fill in the rest of this midsection using a circular motion to get that paint onto the canvas so white. So because of the pressure on putting on my brush, there's little bristles falling off. Left, right and centre. Do not worry about them. Don't even bother trying to pick them off your piece until it is completely dry. We're painting and really thin layer, so it's not going to affect your painting at all. Just know that all those bristles can be taken off without any damage to your painting at the very end after it dries. If you try and do it now, you'll have finger marks and you'll be touching up as you go. Just leave them. They're fine. They're not gonna affect the finished product. I promise. So with this white paint, we're just gonna fill in the rest of this midsection. I have ample pressure on my brush, just pushing it along. There's gonna get rid of my lines here, scribes. More liquid like jail. It's more white paint. I do not have a thick layer of paint on here at all. It's a very thin layer, but I'm just filling in all the blank canvas in this area, so just makes you cover the whole midsection with white.
8. MISTY FOREST: PART TWO: wrapped in two sections. Other painting. We have our shadow work on the bottom. We have our white, which is gonna be the base for our miss work in the midsection and up top. We're going to start bringing a little bit of a darker sky. So for the top section, I'm gonna add a bit more charcoal gray to the color that I already mixed for this bottom section. What I want to do is just have a little bit of difference between the sky and the base layer down here. It's going to be super subtle. It's gonna be mixed in, is still gonna look really cohesive is just a little trick just to give it a little separation. So using the brush used to block in your mist, we're going to start creating the sky layer. So you already have a lot of white on that brush. Would you to grab some charcoal gray and mix it in to the color that you used for the bottom section. So it should just be a little bit more of a grey version of the same color because you have white on your brush. It's obviously gonna be a lot lighter and that's what you want. So all my brush, I have a bit of that color using a lot of pressure. I'm gonna start hearing the films the entire top of my painter's and pushing hard on my brush, and I'm just dragging that full line across the entire tough. Now that you pull that first line across the top, grab some liquid light gel on your brush and some white paint right underneath. You're gonna start pushing that white paint up into the dark, pulling a dark layer down towards our miss layer. Don't bring it all the way down. You want to leave that nice bright white there For now, just keep going all the way across, pushing all the way up, then pulling them once you block in this first section and a bit more white paint and do the same thing through the rest of the top. If I have a lot of pressure on my brush, I do not have a lot of paint on my brush. I'm just pushing and pulling that paint all the way across in circular motions up and down . I just have to get rid of my line here. I'm gonna work that for a second all the way across that. Just adding a bit more weight here. So this is just rough. You do not have to have perfect brushwork. We're just getting the color on so that we can really start blending things together. So we put our base layer down for the top section, and it has a slightly more gray and blue look to it than the bottle. We don't want it to be a very stark difference between the two. So what we're gonna do is just to really tie them together a little bit more, gonna take the brush that you're using to create your base layer gently. You're just gonna work it over in circular motions, transferring just a tiny bit of that paint into this top section in a circular motion with the same up and down technique all the way across. When you get about halfway, you might want to turn your brush over because you might have a little bit more paint on outside that color on it. Just keep keep going all the way across you just putting the slightest amount of shadow work color into our sky. So our entire Caymus is now blocked in and has a very thin layer of paint across the whole surface. This is essential for creating realistic missed. So with the same brush we just used to add a little bit of the shadow work into the sky. We're going to start blending are layers together. If you look at a reference photo, you'll see that there's a real deep pocket of missed sitting in behind the dark trees along the bottom here to create that. What you're gonna do is blend your dark up into your light ever so slightly. We're gonna go back with another brush with white on it and pull it back down and just keep dancing it back and forth with a lot of pressure on your brush, we're gonna start easing the transition between the really bright white we laid down in the dark shadows. You put a lot of pressure on your brush and along this line you're gonna dip down a little bit. Come back up, get down, Come back up. We're not going high into the white. You're just dancing along either side of that line that we drew all the way the end like that. So grab some titanium white. And along this new transition later that you created, you're gonna put that weight and do the same technique along that line. You're just gonna blend the transition with this lighter shea that we've created? I have a medium amount of pressure on my brush in a circular motion. I'm just following that bottom line, bringing it down a little lower here and there just to start creating pockets. Where that Mr settling into our base layer. Circular motion, same amount of pressure on my brush all the way across. I'm starting to build up a little bit of depth. So with these two papers is so far, one of your brushes should have a lot darker color on it, and one should be a lot lighter. I don't want you to wash these with gam, Saul. If these are the only brushes you have, take a regular paper towel and really wipe off all the extra paint on your later brush for this next up. If you do have extra brushes on hand, grab a clean when it could be a two inch for inch and we're gonna grab some more white on our brush. So with that weight on your brush right around this area, pushing really hard all the way along that transition line tell you it's really blended together. So by pushing hard and drawing that white paint across, I've really made that line vanish. It's starting to look like missed. What I'm gonna do now is with that same brush, I'm gonna push really hard and I'm gonna start creating some pockets of mist. The only thing I did there no other paint on my brush. I kept a lot of pressure on my brush and through the starker section by rotating it ever since. Likely as I go across there's now a layer of mist sitting there. I find that so cool how easy that is to achieve. So do that same pressure. I'm gonna walk my brush along just a little bit here and start working this shadow area to I find it's so exciting that just a little bit of white paint in a ton of pressure, you can easily build death within your missed. This was a super simple step. So we're gonna go over this once again on this section I put some white paint on my brush. I'm putting my brush right around here on my campus. As you can see immediately. I have a ton of pressure on that brush. You can see the bristles are kind of bent in a circular motion. I'm gonna push that white paint and pull it at the same time pushing whole. However it goes right into this dark space, it doesn't look perfect yet. This is very rough. So what you do is you go back and on that transition line between light and dark, you put your brush, same amount of pressure, no more paint. You work that transition in a circular motion, you just pull it across the campus, creating a layer of mist. Play around with it. If it doesn't look like what I'm doing right now, you just need to practice the skillets. Doesn't mean you can't do it. You're gonna get it. Don't worry about it. We're just gonna keep building up. Little pockets have missed along the bottom here. So same brush. Grab a little bit more titanium white and right around this section, which is gonna be right behind our focal point. I want that miss to be a little lighter behind the trees. So I'm going to start at the transition line. You can see where the shadow meats, that white paint we put down. I'm gonna put my brush, and I'm just gonna pull it down in circular motion halfway into that bottom section. So this was a clean brush on the other side. There's actually very little paint, and this is great whenever you just want to blend a lighter section. So I'm gonna grab a bit more titanium white on that other side of my brush, and I'm gonna in a circular motion, pull it across that line right to the edge. Gonna blend in some of this transition line a bit more gently. Not much pressure. My brush wouldn't do these transition runs between the light in the dark
9. MISTY FOREST: PART THREE: the way. One of the keys to making really realistic missed is to really build it up behind the trees that you're gonna be painting over top of it. By doing this, they really look like they're settled into the landscape. So one of the things I do to create a really realistic Mrs I just bring that miss down a little bit more than what you think you should. You could always paint the darker paint on top when you want to create your focal point and you don't have to try and figure out how to fix the mist after you get some trees in there by taking the time in the step to really figure out where you want your mistress it you're saving a lot of time. And when you do your detail works, you don't have to go into the background of fix anything. It's already exactly where you want it to be. So if you look at our reference for our focal point is just around this section here, what I want to do is I want to drop this miss just down a little bit here and a little bit over here so that when I build up these trees, they really pop against the background. With no extra paint on my brush and a very gentle pressure. I'm going to bring it down so that maybe there's about two inches of shadow left that are untouched and back up. So you don't put a lot of pressure on your brush. When you're doing this kind of blood work because you want that shadow to be in behind your trees, it really creates depth within your landscape. So I have very little pressure on my brush, and I'm just gonna gently walk it down in circular motion to create where it might fall behind the trees he put in the foreground. One thing to remember is you don't add any more. Titanium went in this section. You really want to keep shadows alive and kicking down here. If you put too much white, you're gonna lose all the power of that focal point right off the bat. So just be mindful. Do not overwork this with a lot of weight. I'll show you what I mean. So this is my brush is still quite dark, but there's enough white on there to create the look I want. So in this section, I'm just gonna pull some missed across the bottom, Very gentle brushstrokes. By using that circular motion in anything missed related, you're creating movement and you're combining the colors and a really life like wait that mimics what missed would look like moving through a forest. I'm just gonna blend this transition line between this miss layer I created and the shadow there. I have a lot of dark paint on this brush, actually, So it's perfect. Some welcome Lose my shadow. And in a gentle circular motion, I'm gonna push my brush along the canvas where I want that miss to be settling. So you get to create the movement within your painting with your brush. Be very mindful of that. Remember, this is still very rough, but you're just getting the base layer ready for more detail work as we move through this piece. Barely have any pressure on my brush, and I'm just gonna blend these transition lines between my shadow work and my missed work. It's going to really give the illusion of that miss settling into this front part of the landscape use minimal pressure no more paint on your brush. And the more you work on those transition lines, the more realistic it becomes. We believe the bottom section for a little while because it's coming along really nicely, and we're gonna focus on making this a little bit more cohesive with whatever brush you have that is the lightest wipe off all the excess paint. And let's start blending this together so you can see a lot of brushwork in our sky right now. We just roughed it in by pushing your brush really hard into the campus and using a larger circular motion, you're going to start eliminating all this brushwork and creating a really uniforms sky. So with no extra paint on pushing super hard, he's going in big circles all the way across coming down into your miss. But not a lot. You want to leave a little bit of a profit there for blending all the way back up from one side to the other at a tiny bit of your titanium white to your brush. We're going to start working this transition line a little bit. Between are really light section and our sky on a little bit more titanium white and along that top the one he was gonna add a little bit of a lighter color. So using a regular paper towel really rub off all the excess paint that's on this brush that were just using Takes a couple seconds. But I really want you to see all that paint off of us. We want the color that's on the brush. We just don't want all the extra paint that's on there, and I'll show you why. The reason why we got all the extra paint off our brushes? Because we're gonna be using it to blend the sky down into this miss layer dorm time the color to come down to this white. But we want some of it to transfer. So on this side, right above this tree line that we're going to be building up with a lot of pressure on your brush. Bring that skyline down into that misty layer, come up, then pull it down, Tana pressure on my brush. I'm just doing the same technique that was doing all along, up and down all the way across. It's tying the sky into our misty later. It's also giving the missed what will be some definition when we do our highlights. So by blending these two together, we picked up a little bit of lighter paint on her brush. What we're gonna do is we're gonna bring that up and create some wisps of clouds in a circular motion, pulling it down into our missed in sections from coming down at an angle and bringing it down into our misty layer. Huge circular motions down towards your miss. What? Those brush strokes didn't just create a little bit of dynamic movement within the clouds. It's so subtle you might not be able to see it. When you're done, you're painting, but it is their present to the I. It will be very pleasing for the so with the same brush with minimal pressure, really gentle circles, pull it across, move up a little bit and do the same thing all the way back for just blending any visible brushstrokes into the mist in the sky, making look really uniform. I'm just going across left to right, right to left minimal pressure on my brush all the way up my entire campus. So if you stand back from your piece of this point and really take it in. You're gonna get really excited without even roughing in any trees. You've created a really beautiful, misty scene. Next, we're gonna focus on this midsection here. What I want to do is I want to create some definition behind where treetops. They're gonna come up the same way. We're building the definition behind here for this focal point without on your brush, we're gonna really lighten up the background behind with these treetops are gonna sit so with a ton of pressure on your brush and that white paint push really hard straight across like that. Add a little bit more white paint and come up above that same amount of pressure and bring that line across a ton of pressure. Well, that's doing It's creating a nice bright light that's gonna be behind the tree tops, which is really gonna make them pop. So grab any brush that you've used. It has a darker paint on it. We're just gonna be using the edge of the very tip here of this brush. And I want to Ruffin, where those little trees are that you see that are kind of off in the distance. So we have our rigid trees coming in here behind them. I'm just using the tip of my brush and pushing quite gently. Actually, I'm gonna create those pockets of trees that we see coming through the mist just so that I know where they are and where I can build them up as we keep moving and then a little bit further in distance and a little higher up. I have the other little pocket of trees, so it's important you get a general idea of where you want these little trees to be. Were the creators of the movement within this piece? What that means is, as a miss comes down over this ridge, there's gonna be some shadows underneath these trees which will really give your missed really realistic look. So by roughing them now, we can start thinking about where those shadows are within our mist. If you pick up the papers that we were using for the sky and the blending work in the middle here, what I want you to do is knowing that this is the general area of where treetops are gonna be with really gentle pressure. Pull them down just a little bit into this section. Just really small line. Not big circular movements were just gonna pull some of that really settle shadow down into this Missed here. Well, that's gonna do is gonna allow us to see where we need to add highlights and build off of as we get into our detail work. This is the perfect point. Before we go any further to really practice your brushwork, I'm gonna put in some more pockets of Mr I Explain what I'm doing as I go when I want you to do the same, I want you to play around with your transitions once you add a little bit more white painted certain areas and watch out that missed pops off the campus or you could blend it into the shadows more and it falls more into the background. So there's all these little subtle techniques that you can use to really breathe life into your landscape. One of the most important aspects of this midsection is the mist that's rolling through over this little ridge and down into the valley behind these trees. We really want to make sure certain aspects of that missed are nice and breaking that they pop off the campus. I'm taking a little bit of titanium white on that brush that I was using before. And I'm just going to at a little bit more right along That transits your mind. And I wont that missed to start rolling down into this little valley area by pushing the paint down in this direction, I'm creating the illusion that mist is actually coming down over this ridge and settling down here. This is really important if you want to create a realistic, misty scene. So I'm gonna go again about a little bit more white gonna push along here. I'm gonna have a nice, bright section just behind these trees. I'm gonna build up in this area and on the outside of those, I'm gonna bring some more weight down. Left that, miss, settle down into the valley area down here. It's the subtle things that you do as you work on a misty landscape that really have the biggest impact. So it might not look like we're adding much here when we add a little bit more white. Just look a little lighter than what it was before, but that is really gonna pop when we put our trees over top. So I'm gonna bring that down a little bit more over my transition line just to blend a little bit more shadow up into this. Just walk it down into this valley where I have my mist settling you behind what will be our focal point. So we're just gonna keep adding a bit of white to our brush and creating a little bit more of a highlight to this mystery section in the middle Here, I just have a little bit of titanium wire brush and using circular motions, medium pressure, and I'm letting my brush act as if it is the Miss falling into this valley section below. You can create all sorts of little effects with your brush. I'm gonna show you another technique just to create a little pocket of missed in here. I have my brush flat against the canvas in really small, gentle circular motions. I'm transferring some of the paint for my brush onto the campus and as I go out from that circle, I'm gonna lift my brush up ever so slightly. Just so it's the tips just on the campus and minimal pressure just gonna pull some white paint away from that center point that I started. I'm also gonna go this way and I'm gonna walk some more, just pushing on the edge. And I'm not pushing very hard that I'm gonna go back and just blend a little bit of those outer edges into surroundings. All of a sudden, you have a little pocket amiss settled into your landscape super simple technique, but a very powerful statement. Whenever we start doing our detail work, so I'm gonna add some more missed in this section. I'll show you how I do it. I don't want it to be too bright, but I do want to play off this nice bright pocket a missed I have here and being a little bit more down here. But I'm gonna really gently draw out until it's almost no weight on my brush and just blended into the shadow work. So I'll show you what I mean. So with my brush flat on that side, I'm gonna push a little harder in this area, so I want a little bit more white to transfer onto campus. I still have not put any pain. Tell my brush this is just whatever is on the brush already. So I'm pushing kind of hard. Does it move away from this area? Gonna keep that circular motion going? I'm just gonna pull these lists of mist down to a shadows a little bit, maybe haven't come up a little bit into what will soon be the base of our trees. That's not much pressure. After you finish work without any section, just take a quick glance at your brush. It can help you decide what you should do next. So we just finished his miss work throughout the darker section of the campus. I'm gonna show you what you could do with the sex to a little bit of dark paint on your brush. That's really gonna make some things pop. So down here with this darker layer, we're going to need this little section of mist. I'm really gently rotating my brush and transferring that darker paint. So by adding just a little bit of darkness down here, creating a greater depth of field when we build up our focal point trees right here it's gonna be really need to see once we start doing your detail work. So just trust me and give it a bit of a shot. Play around with it. You want to come up into your transition area a little bit and then pull it back down? Just soften up all of these areas where the mist meets A shadow is gonna make it look a lot more realistic. It is a really subtle movement. It's a subtle art, This wonderful missed work. I still have that dark color on my brush. So I'm gonna come down here when you push a little harder, cause this area haven't really touched much yet. Want to remain dark in this area. But I kind of want to pull a little bit of miss through and maybe bring a little bit more missed down through here. So start imagining where you're gonna want to place your bottom layer of trees and just softening up some of the shadow work behind them and those transitions. So it's really gonna pop whenever we do that Detail work
10. MISTY FOREST: PART FOUR: before we started on any more detail work. Ah, few met this serious just a little too dark for me. I want to add a little bit more missed work up here. Really? Soften up this transition between this dark and the light. Maybe even bring the light down a little bit more. I don't want these trees to be huge, and I don't want them to overpower our focal point. So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna soften this area up a bed and bring some lightness in behind where those treetops are gonna be. So pick up any brush. It has a lighter, called her on it right now and just wipe off the excess paint that will be just fine for the section. You have an extra brush, pick it up and add a little bit of your titanium white to it. Since we've already built up a really beautiful on solid base layer gonna show you a few little tricks to start building up a little bit of definition into this tree ridge here, my brush facing this way on the campus and with a medium amount of pressure just gonna walk it along this transition. Mind London in the bed as I go here, and I'm just gonna dip it down as if it's kind of falling behind some trees here. So the simple technique of taking a brush, laying it on its side and slowly walking it down into your shadow live really gently. Of course, you don't need a ton of pressure all the way across, and then maybe just even down a little bit as it falls over that ridge so you can see where some of the shadow work came up here. What we're gonna do is with this white paint on your brush, it's just soften up that transition with a light paint again. So by doing this simple brushwork where we go up and down and gently pull a bit of that brightness down into the shadow layer when we're done and we build up our trees in front of it, you're gonna be creating illusion that there's actually more trees beyond the mist. You can see a hint of the shadows of their treetops behind. What will be this Forest Ridge? It's a really simple way to create a little bit more depth of field in any area of your painting, so I'm really liking how this is looking. I think when we Addison detail work with the treetops and then blend in a little bit of missed around the base, it's gonna look really awesome. There's one more technique that I want to show you before we dive into some detail work and really make these trees come to life in this scene, pick up your brush that has the darkest paint on it. Wipe it off really well until there's barely any pain tonal whatsoever. Now, if you have a fresh brush, grab that cause that's just a good So on your pallet mixed together equal parts charcoal grey, indigo blue and pressure green off a little bit of sap green. It makes that together with your brush. You don't need a lot of that paint on your brush. So what we're doing now is we're gonna be using one of those techniques that we learned when the exercises before class. So we're just gonna be blocking in the general shape of these trees. A lot of them are gonna be blended right back into the background, so don't worry if you don't get it just right. So what we're doing is we're just creating the base, the tree and maybe half of the trunk. The rest were gonna come in and do a lot of detail work with a smaller brush. This is just gonna give us an idea of where we want things to sit. So I have my brush flat on the canvas like this as I leave the circular motion to create the trunk of the tree. I'm just raising my brush off campus. Just so the edges. What's pulling the paint up in the coming back down? Circular motion brush flat on the canvas, pulling up on the edge of my brush toe where I kind of want that tree to grow up, too. It's a super rough. I want some trees back here. Just the edge off your brush, pulling up right back here. There's gonna be some true talks behind this myth, so I'm not doing the entire base. I'm just kind of rubbing my brush along and coming up every once in a while to signify that . Hey, I think I'll put a tree there. So it was taking equal parts Payne's gray into go blue and oppression green. I have it on my brush. I'm just going along the base of where I want trees. As I find a place where I do want to treat a pop up. I'm just slowly lifting my brush up off the canvas and creating the tree trunk, doing this all along the bottom just to give my eye an idea of where I want to build things . Where, what trees to sit, where I want empty space to be sure to play around with how many trees you want or how few trees you want, because you can change it so quickly with the swipe of one year later brushes, and I'll show you how to do that Right now. Let's just block in some trees wherever you feel like things should go. So as you're building up these trees along the bottom, do not use this brush to create. Any of your tree limbs were going to do that with a much finer brush. Right now we're just building up the general shape of where we want things to sit, and we will go from there, play around with this a lot, have some fun and figure out what works for your forest and what doesn't work. I'm gonna show you how to fix things. If you get too much dark pain in a certain area or if you have too many trees, trees or too tall, too small, I'm gonna show you all the really quick fixes for those after we get all this blocked in. So just play around with this and have some fun figuring out how you want. You're forced to look in this misty scene. I was creating pockets of trees. I'm gonna do the detail work of these trees in a little while, so I don't need them to be perfect. I just want to see how it looks when I step back, see if I need to add some, take some away, make some bigger, some smaller just to create a really nice balance within the painting. They're gonna show you how I do that in a second. Over here, I want some trees to kind of feed off into the mist here, so I'm just gonna do the top half of the trees just to show where they're gonna go to do that. All I'm doing is I'm just have my brush against a canvas was creating the tree trunk with the edge of my fresh. I'm really excited to show you how to really blend all this mist around this and really make this pop. For now, we're just gonna keep adding a few trees. So up on this section was going to use the edge of my brush. I'm gonna be using a much smaller paintbrush to do detail work. I just want to start building up the shapes of these trees. I think we'll have a couple little treat chips. I'm literally just using that corner edge of my brush to do these ones in the distance. I'm not using much pressure. Just that the edge of this brush right there on the corner. That's enough to put just a little bit of paint onto the canvas in the areas where I think I might want some trees. This might change. I can easily hide, um, with a layer of lighter paint. So don't sweat. If it's not looking the way you want to, just yet play around with it until you get there. This might take a while. Might happen really quickly for you. Whatever the case. There's quick fixes. If you feel like it's not working for you, or if you're one of those lucky souls that it just seems to feel right right off the bat, then you are laughing. It's one of my favorite things about painting. Misty landscapes is how quickly they can change with the simple movement of one of your paintbrushes. So with any brush that you have, preferably one of those a little bit more darker on it. So you don't want a lot of white transferring into shadow work, Graham that over here I feel that this tree tops are just too high. I want them to kind of go from a tall point here, fade down at an angle with my brush right above them medium, a lot of pressure on my brush up and down. I'm just gonna push paint down on top of it, and immediately they've changed their shape. The simple up and down movement pushes the paint down. It blends in the transitions, and it creates the tree line shape that I want. I want it exactly like that. I wanted fading off into the mist, so this is looking really rough along the bottom away. I want this to go. I wont miss to be greeting this so same brush flat on its side. So in gentle circular motions, you're gonna bring some of that later color that's already on the cameras up into the base of the shadow. You just put in for those treetops so immediately they become pushed back in the scene. They're not quite as prominent. I'm gonna like them up. Just leave it a little bit more, gente lee. Just barely the pressure of my brushes blending it in a little bit all around the outside. Transitions. So how's your working through this next step? You might find that maybe have too many trees and you want to get rid of a certain section and try again. I'm gonna show you how to do that by just taking out say, this section of trees. I do like these trees, but for the sake of this lesson, I will take the little build them back up the way I want them again. So with that same brush that you have just above those trees, start gently in a circular motion, pushing your brush right along the tops of them and then down towards the ground. Do that again. You're just essentially erasing it with this paintbrush and blending it into the mist behind. You don't need to get rid of the entire base because you're still gonna want a base down there. Whether you like those trees or not, they can be bushes. That could just be a shadow. But I wouldn't erase everything. But that's a simple way to get rid of those treetops. Then all you have to do from there is grab one year later, brushes and along the top with a fair amount of pressure. Just gonna bring some more lightness back into that transition and work it along the top here, just blending the shadow back into the light. Mason Seamus, If you need to add a little white paint, go ahead. Is he going back and forth until you build that missed up the way you want it, Then I can take that brush again really gently. I just finished the blend of that transition. So this is a prime example of why I love oil paints. You do not need to commit to a set idea. You don't worry about your paint drying fast were being unable to change something after you put it down on the campus. You have so much freedom within this medium, so liberating and exciting. Now that I've taken those trees out, I'm gonna build them back up because I did want some trees there. I don't need a lot of paint on my brush because I already have some dark paint on here. I'm just gonna make some tiny trees in here by pulling my brush up just on the edge and creating the tree trunk again. Don't do any detail work yet. I know you'll want to because it's starting to look a lot more lifelike, but have some patience and wait until it's the right time. So I'm just building some trees up along the bottom here. So don't worry if in the foreground here a lot of these areas, you just feel a little dark. We're gonna be doing a lot more miss work in the final stages. That is really going to soften it up and make it feel really life. Like, right now we're just getting our shadow work in for these trees that we're going to start putting the detail work on any second. So the final step before we start doing your detail work with a brush it has very little paint on. It doesn't matter if it's later dark, we're going to start going around all the trees we put in and just softening them a little bit into the background. Just the top sections were going to be creating the detail work with a small brush. So if they fade into the background of it, that is absolutely OK, This is a really need step before you start detailed work. What this is doing is gonna push some of these treetops into the background, having a little bit of that lighter paint over top of them, just gonna send them into the background. So if you decide that maybe you don't want to build a tree right there in the mist hidden in the background, you will have a tree trunk, and it's really gonna create really wonderful depth in your painting. So this is a fun way. If you have too many trees, you can push them into the background. Also, it's just a really nice way to blend that missed behind the trees at your building. So that's why we're doing this step. So I'm just on either side of wherever I have a tree, just gently rubbing the side of my paintbrush across it and just softening it up a bit and sending get into the background ever so slightly. This is such a subtle step, but it makes all the difference once we start our detail work and excited for you to see it like that tree top gun away from you got a little bit of white paint here and just blended into the background of it. Very Go see how easy it is just to completely shift the look of a certain section, adding a little what white paint or a little bit of dark paint and gently moving your brush around. This work is so much fun that way. It's up here. There's gonna add a little bit of white paint to my brush. Just gonna soften up this whole section over here. I really want the miss to be coming through as a break in between that tree line that I've Pete it up here. So I just had a little bit of white paint, have gentle pressure on my brush, just pushing it through this section to create the illusion of the mist rolling through that ridge down into our valley again, I just want the very tips of these trees showing. So what I'm doing is I'm just building up underneath them until they're barely there. And then let me go through with our detail work. We will make them pop with a finer brush. We're gonna pull some more missed up into this ridge. I don't want it quite so pronounced. I want all my focal point just to be drawn over here, so I'm going to soften up this ridge along the base a little bit.
11. MISTY FOREST: PART FIVE: way dive into the final detail work of this painting. I just want to take a minute and remind each of you that this is what I do day in and day out. So if I make it look easy, it's because it's muscle memory for me. My creative journey as well as yours, is constantly evolving. I don't have a fixed goal at the end of it. When I sit down to create a piece, sometimes there's nothing what I wanted it to look like. But I'll find beauty in that. I'll find growth in that, and I'll work with that. So just keep playing around with this practice. All these brush techniques, I promise you that it's going to get a lot easier and come a lot more naturally to you as you do it over and over again. If you're feeling disheartened because what you're creating does not look exactly like mine , that's a great thing. Not that you're feeling disheartened, but that it doesn't look exactly like mine. On Lee, My paintings could look like my paintings. What you create is absolutely 100% you so own that realize that what you're creating is unique and awesome and perfect in itself. It doesn't have to look like mine. What you're doing is you're learning techniques to help you grow within your craft, and that is the most important part of this whole process. So for the final detail work, it really doesn't matter what little brush use. I have sizes 4 to 12 of both Filbert and flat. I'll use the very size is the most important part is that there's a nice, crisp edge to it so that you can do really nice branch work. It's really going to give this realistic feel and make those trees pop against the missed. You just spent so much time building up, so let's build up the darkest trees first. Then we can have a little bit of white toe are mixture so that the trees that we build around them are a little bit more pushed into the background. So create a mixture of equal parts into go your charcoal grey, your Prussian green and your green earth a little bit of liquid nitrogen just so it's easier to push along the campus to create your trees. This is a really exciting part is you get to decide how tall or how small you want your trees as we build on this final detail work. I don't really want my trees coming up. Say, beyond this line, I kind of like the size that they are right down here. It just gives a little bit of a cohesive float the peace. So what I'm gonna do is start building up my darkest trees from the shadow area. Pull your brush up as high as you want that tree tip to go. A little more paint on your brush if it you need it. So I think that's a good size for that big tree there it had a bit more. But right now, I'm just gonna play with this to create the tree limbs. What you're gonna do is just like we practiced in their exercises from the tree trunk. You're just gonna pull out and create various little outcroppings with the edge of your brush? They can be any shape. They could be drooping branches. They could be straight out. Just keep building up one by one, all the way down your tree trunk. So the parliament trees, they're gonna be pushed in the shadows. and they're not bad details. You don't have to do a ton of detail work down here. You want your detail work to be focused on. See the top half because we're gonna do a bit of blending Not very much, but enough to make it so that you don't really need to spend a lot of time on the bottom of the trees in this stage. So I'm using my number six flat. I'm going to on the very tip, pulling some straight branches right across maybe a couple little dead branches on the tree in a poll tip up. So it's super thin off my tree top of my tree and put a little tiny branches up top. The subtle nuances in the little imperfections in each tree is what's really going to make this look realistic. So don't just do perfect branches coming down the whole tree. Get creative. Look at the reference fold if you need to and see what kind of branches I do and copy those , it's gonna give you some great practice on the many different variations you could do to create these beautiful trees in your landscape. So I like the height of that one. I think I'm gonna do another one. That's just a slightly higher. Just a little smidgen off to the right here. Pulling that down into the shadow. Same color, my brush just pulling it from where I want my treetop toe. Generally begin pulling it right down into the shadow. I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna make this tree unique unto itself, Not copying the one beside it. Little straight branches that don't have any needles on them. Full branches jetting straight out somewhere bending down. That's more paint. I want these trees to be pretty dark because there are focal point. So don't be shy about making them based on pronounced making a statement like they should. Okay, just keep working down the tree. You can dance your brush along and twirl it along to create some weird shapes and some interesting designs. Just keep walking your brush down that tree and playing around with different branch sizes and shapes. Make sure it's nice and dark because you really want the I drawn to this little section of our painting. You can add more again. We're just getting the general detail work done here. I love. Putting little thin dead branches coming off of these trees really gives a really a fascinating look to them. So on either side of this tree, I'm gonna have to more beauties and change the height. So when it comes to painting these trees, a great tip is to not have all the treetops lining up on the same plane. You want them to have a different variation in size all the way across. Its really pleasing to the eye. And it creates a riel. I need to mention to the peace. So I'm just gonna keep building these trees. You do the same. I don't have to be perfect. That's what's gonna make it look really realistic. Just dance your brush along that tree trunk all the way down to the bottom and had some little imperfections here, there, so that they look realistic. Did you want on the side? This one's gonna be a little heavy on the left. So do more branches on this side. A couple drooping down on this side already. This is looking like a really realistic foreseen. We're just getting started, so keep adding that color to your brush work to the right to the left. Build up the trees the way you want. TEM, You could do exactly like I've done in my reference painting. Or you can create your old, completely unique little forest. You cannot do anything wrong at this point, you're creating your own vision. That's pretty awesome. So just focus on creating the really dark trees right now I'm gonna show you some tricks on how to build some in the background that are just faded into the mist a little bit. Right now, we're just using the same color all the way across to build up the rial main focal point down in this section and again make sure that there are different sizes and heights. Make some trees nice and plump. Make some super told, skinny. Somehow lots of branches, Some have very little were about some dead trees in here, too, because that is what you find in a forest. The not all perfect trees find life and death everywhere. So just walking along with the same brush, just adding that same color in creating my own little awesome STI forest scene.
12. MISTY FOREST: PART SIX: if you're finding that you're pains getting really think and kind of hard to move around on your cameras, just adds more liquid my job to it. You can't at this point because you want your brush toe dance over top of the bottom layer . And sometimes if you had more liquid like jell to that, it allows it just to kind of float on top of it, as opposed to picking up the colors that are underneath and dragging it along. So we're just using those techniques that I showed you in those exercises. There is nothing fancy about it, just doing those over and over again and getting creative with these trees so that it looks like a realistic forest scene. They have a little guy hiding down here, filling up some of this space. As you start building up these trees, I really encourage you to step back from your campus and take a look at how awesome they look against the miss that you built up. You're going to see that that shadow work we did down in the back is super fun and realistic. It's creating the depth that the I needs to be drawn into that valley that you can't see, cause this blanket of mist is up on top. This is the exciting part of the painting because you're starting to see all those little pieces that might not have made sense is we're working through. They all seem to come together and pop right about now in the stage of our critic. So I'm just gonna have about three times your trees back here. So I'm not worried about some of these trees being a little dark, even though they're further in the background. From my focal point, this might come as a total shock to you. What? We're gonna be doing some more blending work. We're gonna push them ever so slightly back into the mist a little bit. And it's just gonna create the right depth of field for this whole section. Some a lot of the paintings I do especially miss work. There is so much repetition as you work through it. It's building something up there, pushing it back into the background and building up a layer on top of that, then pushing that into the background. And before you know it, you have layer upon layer of a really realistic looking scene that you never would have had if you just did a short cut and did maybe just one or two attempts at it. So it pays to do all this extra work because he creates a really realistic landscapes when you're done. So I think I would like have a dead tree coming up. Maybe right in between these ones. Dead trees, air fun. They're just literally a straight line from where you want to start right down behind the ones already have. Take a little bit more color in your brush and just using the tip of that brush. Pull a few greatly branches, but from the trunk all the way down, I really love putting little dead trees throughout the landscape. It just really gives a pop of interest to the I just keep moving along the bottom here, building these cute little treaties. Make sure you really put a variation of size throughout this bottom. Wear really draw the eye in tow. What you're creating, everything's the same. It's pretty boring. So I'm putting shorter trees down in this section because I really want the mist to pull the ID down towards these big trees in the front here. I'm adding a couple little scraggly dead trees in the middle. Have a little lone ranger here in the pocket of messed nobody around him. Get creative with this and play around with it in practice. So in the final detail work, if you're not happy with the section you're working on, I'll just give you a quick example of how again you could knock it back into the background and rebuild it up without any issue whatsoever. So I'm just grabbing one of my brushes I'm feeling. Let's pretend I don't like this tree, even though I do That's what I do for you guys. Gentle strokes. So grab a little bit of white on your brush and work it gently over top of the area that you want to correct or we work Bola. That problem is gone, and now you get to rebuild the section the way you want it. You can do that in any part of this detail work. Now I'm gonna bring my treat back toe life, show you how to do that. One thing to know when you're moving across is wherever there's a shadow, you don't necessarily need to be built a treat. You can leave it just as a dark area Could be a bush. It could just be a rocket. Could be anything that the I wants to believe it is so you don't have to block in a tree in every single aspect of the shadow that she created. Just do one or two here or there. The I knows that there's a forest there, and it kind of leaves a bit to the imagination. Mr. What else could be beneath those layers and missed it Be created. Make sure you have the random dead tree here, there. So all along here have been building up full trees as we get into these miss pockets that we created earlier. Just gonna want to have the treetop poking out. You don't like the whole tree cause then you have to redo all the missed. So just from the top of the misleader up and create little true tips coming up were to do a lot of blending work with them, so they're not too pronounced. You don't have to do the whole tree in those sections. So appear of a little shadow area I'm just gonna do a couple trees and see how it looks. I might change it. Step back in a bit. I'll take a look and see what I need to work on, but I'll put them there for now. And I can easily blend them into the background and make them super subtle if I think that they need not be so pronounced. So again, I'm just doing the treetops over here. If you do have a lot of paint on your brush and these air starting to become really dark, that's OK. We'll take another big brush after, and we'll blood them in which I'm sure you haven't had enough of yet. So I'm just working along all these different edges that we've created all these little pockets of shadow and putting a few trees here and there. Seeing how it looks, I could change anything in the drop of a hat with a simple brush stroke. If nothing is feeling right now, get on a little bit of white to that darker color I was using not very much, but just enoughto lighten it up a bit because these trees are not gonna be his dark as the ones that were building down here. I'm only gonna build up about half the tree. I don't want them to be too big there in the distance. Happy little trees all along. Make sure you add a couple dead ones in there just to give you a little bit of character. Don't worry about how detailed these are. You can't really see a lot of it. Just focus on getting the general shape begin a couple little branches moving on to the next one. Just keep adding trees of various sizes on top of one another in the background in the foreground. All along, this rich, we're gonna be blending it in a bit. It's gonna look really awesome as I come down this rigid Been, I'm only gonna have a few trees. I don't want to have a huge wallet trees that just ends abruptly. So I'm just gonna have a few treetops here that are just barely visible through the mists. But it just loves the I to be led down and to feel that it doesn't just drop off into nothing, that there is some trees hiding in there, and then it's just the forced continues it doesn't just vanished completely. I'm gonna show you some techniques that just had a really make that missed feels is weaving through this whole area. So don't worry if some of your pieces or too dark again, I'm not adding anything to my brush. At this point, it's just the color that's left over from all the work I've been doing. As I get further back and the painting, my trees are going to get lighter. So it actually works out really well. The brush is actually carrying the right amount of paint in the right shade for what we're doing.
13. MISTY FOREST: PART SEVEN: Wade. Right now it's a final. Blending work is a very important step to achieving a really realistic blend between your trees and the landscape around them. So we have anyone here brushes, wipe off all the paint that you can and let's get started. So you just created these tree lines. What you're gonna do is take the brush with media pressure. You're gonna pull the base of those trees into the misty layer. Now, we're gonna make this whole pop, but what we're doing is we're just blending it in a bit. Same with this layer below. Just blend the bottom of those trees into the misty layer around it. You can use the edge of your brush just to pull a little bit of it down. You just gonna blend in those misty layers. Now there's a lighter color on your birth. It's not super light, but it's enough to make a real impact down here among these trees without adding anything to your fresh. So this is my favorite part of this building. You're just gonna be adding really gentle brushstrokes wherever you want a pocket of Mr wherever you see one. In the reference painting If it's easier for you, let your brush flat, gently walking along the landscape in this section as you get away from the middle of where you're working on, lift your brush up onto its edge and just really gently moving across those trees. It's just creating a little bit of a misty look in this section, so I'll show you another technique with the same brush with no paint on it. In between these trees, I want to have some mist coming down and settling along the foreground here. So I have my brush on its side wherever it fits with medium pressure doing my circular motions. And I'm just working my brush down into that section, see how it's pulling that missed into this area. I'm gonna pull some onto the side, too, and just let it fall into this foreground really seamlessly. Just gonna turn my brush over because they have a lot of that dark paint that I just pushed my brush over top of on this side. If you turn over your brush, you're still gonna have some of that light paint from before in the middle of those trees. Again, I'm just gonna pull down, so the lightness just kind of stops where the undergrowth would be. So look, with that simple technique. Just did it made it feel that that mist is crawling along the top of these trees and now it's finding its way out into the foreground. It's created a really neat look down here. I'm gonna go over to this side here. I don't want these trees to be quite as pronounced. I want to have some mist coming in along this edge here. And I want these to be pushed back a little bit and have some miss coming in to greet it along the front here with that same brush in between these trees, I just want a pull some of that lightness down doesn't have to be a lot. And we're gonna go back and we're gonna add some more definition to the bowels of the trees that we kind of erased when we're doing this missed work. That's super easy to do. So I like that. I like how that mist is just kind of seeping through to the foreground here and add a little bit of white to my brush because I picked up a lot of dark paint as I'm doing this technique, so I just have a little bit of white. But over here on the edge, where I don't have a tree, I'm gonna start my brush work I'm gonna start with small circles, gentle amount of pressure And I'm just gonna pull my brush up and down along the base of these trees and mainly make it feel like this mist is just kind of seeping in and around and greeting all the other misfits coming through. I'm also going to go really gently just over top of the trees with this brush barely any pressure. But what that's gonna do is just gonna push them into the background ever so slightly so that it makes these trees pop more on the campus and become the focal point with the same brush. I'm gonna add the same effect over here. All I'm doing is putting my brush flat against the campus in between the trees that I want to bring the miss down into. And then I push in a circular motion and walk my brush wherever I want that miss to be. I am moving That missed with my brush you are always created movement with every action you take on a campus. So be mindful of that, especially in these final stages. You want it to feel really realistic. Well, everything kind of has to move together, cohesively. So you pick up one of the later brushes, I'm gonna wipe off all the excess paint. So this whole section has kind of lost its pop, and I want to create a nice break. Layer missed that settling in across this section. So I just have a little bit of white paint on my brush. I have my brush flat against the campus again, blending it into the different layers. But I've already put down and having it walk itself across the landscape. I'm creating the movement with how I move my brush. So play around with that. Figure out what happens when you push really hard or when you push really softly when you have your brush up on its edge or flat. This is the perfect time to really experiment with your brush and see what each effect has on your overall painting. On this ridge, you can put your brush up on the side in between these trees and just take a few out with mist. You have been misted. Have a little bit more white here underneath. Push it up into this three base here, play around with out for a minute. Really blend together. Your transitions in these final stages is really important to walk away from your campus for a few minutes and come back and stand in front of it again, you might pick up on where its imbalanced or you might see something that you want to change. So I just step back from my campus and I realized I really want to change something. So I'm not a big fan of this section right now. I just feel like something's missing is not as misty as I wanted to be. It's not as pronounced. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna show you the wonderful world of oil painting. Why? I love it so much because you can change things. No matter how far along in a painting you are, it's not gonna ruin it. I put some white on a fresh brush. What I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna create ah, bigger miss pocket coming down and eliminate some of these extra trees. It's just too busy for my eyes. So, Bob, these trees big, broad brush drops, just go to town and hide a lot of those trees. In doing this, I'm still pulling the viewer's eye down towards my focal point, but I'm eliminating a lot of business that was in the section that's more white. I really want this to be awesome right up here. It comes down the valley there and add some more white. I'm just gonna keep playing with it till I reached a point that I'm feeling. It's got a better balance, too. I could go on rebuild any trees I want, so I'm not worried about them. What I want to do is just find a proposition that is pleasing to the eye, and that means adding some world whiteness in this section. You do not have to do this. This is me making my painting suit myself. I'll step back in a few minutes and take a look and see if it's getting closer to what I'm hoping is my finish painting. I just keep adding a little bit of white paint to my brushes. I work over this area. I'm already liking how much lighter it's feeling. I'll go back and allowed some detail work to this ridge. But I feel that lighting this section up just make my heart happy. And that's the most important part of painting. So with a clean brush, this is a number four flat. I'm just gonna go along and pull that slightly darker color up and create some tree tops out of it. Very, very subtle. You might not even be able to see them as I'm doing it, but they're they're they're just tiny treetops and they're very important because they're still gonna bring the eye across. I really like how subtle they are. This is one of the things I love about oil painting. You do not have to stick to your first vision because your paint is no stuck on the canvas . You have the freedom to completely transform your painting at any point throughout your process, including the very final stage like I just did so essentially have created a pain trolling adventure for you. With this piece, we started out with that dark ridge of trees appear with the Miss pulling your eye down towards a focal point. It was beautiful. It just wasn't exactly what I was feeling. With peace from my direction, you can totally keep that now. You've also seen what it looks like now when I washed it at with a lot of missed. There's some really subtle hints of trees within that missed, but it's a much softer and less pronounced ridge line there. You do not have to follow me to a t. Have some fun with this and figure out what makes your heart happened. When you're looking back at your campus, what makes you want to jump in and explore? So we're finally done with all the blood work was gonna walk you through the final detail, work on these trees, and then we get to call this painting complete. So using that same dark color have been using all along, we're just gonna pull some of those tree bows out from the tree trunk again into the misty area that we built up in between her trees. They're still the foreground, so we need to make them pop. And the easiest way to do not just add some of your dark color and create that same unique look for each tree once again in the spaces where it might have been rubbed out by our brushwork and are blending. You just walk along with the super dark trees that we laid in and fill them back in like this. Very subtle, but it makes a big difference to the finished product. I was doing it to all the trees that are in the foreground at another little dead tree right here. A couple little branches on it, just something fascinating in that dead space painting, Angela, your tree tops look the very tips of your trees because when you're blending, sometimes they get taken out. So just touch those up wherever you need to. So I'm just moving along the whole line of trees, touching up what needs a little attention. And then we are done. You can do whatever you like with your foreseen. I'm gonna leave you here to finish up your detail work, however you see fit. But I really hope you enjoyed walking through one of my signature misty landscapes. If you have any questions, the best way to ask them is on Instagram. You can find me at artists are McKendry. There's a link to it on my profile page on here. But I'm always there to help, and I really hope you enjoyed this process.
Sarah Mckendry, Canadian Realist Painter
