Transcripts
1. Class Introduction: Vincent Van Gogh and 19th century painter is
generally considered one of the greatest Dutch
artist after Rembrandt and one of the greatest
post-impressionist, the striking color, in fact, brushwork and contoured
forms of his work influenced artists in the 20th century and continue to influence
artists today. Van Gogh's art became astoundingly popular
after his death, especially in the
late 20th century. His work unsold
during his lifetime, sold for record-breaking
sums at auctions around the world and was featured in numerous blockbuster
exhibitions. In part because of his
published letters, Van Gogh became mythologized as the quintessential
tortured artist. In this class, we
will attempt to learn from Van Gogh's
approach to color, brushwork and form, hopefully
without experiencing the pain and struggle that van Gogh went through
during his lifetime. Van Gogh painted various
genre landscapes, interiors, still-life
composition. He's famous for the original
selfies, his self portraits. In this class, we will focus on another subject dear to
Van Gogh's heart flowers. We will study in depth two
of Van Gogh's masterpieces. We will paint a copy of his
super famous sunflowers, attempting to replicate as
close as possible the colors, the shapes, and
the brushstrokes. Our second replica will
be his irises interface. This will be a different
color palette, but the same unique approach that van Gogh is famous form, after we understand his way of thinking a little bit better, we will attempt to use the same principles while
painting from a photo. I will paint peonies interface. We will do this not to
become a second van Gogh, but to get our
creative juices going, give ourselves
some new ideas and hopefully infuse our
future paintings with Van Gogh's brilliant colors and positive energy in the
demonstrations in this class, I will be working
with artists gouache, but you don't have to. You can use any
opaque media that you have without further
delay. Let's get started.
2. Who is Vincent Van Gogh?: Hello, welcome to the class. First, let's ask
ourselves a question. Who was Vincent Van Gogh and what can he teach us as artists? Vincent van Gogh was born
in 1853 in Netherlands, veterinarian known to
his contemporaries, he became one of the most famous and
influential figures in Western art soon after his
death at the age of 37, he only painted for
about ten years, but in the time created
over 2 thousand artworks. Most of his oil paintings
were created in the last two years of his
life when he painted daily, he's often called the
post impressionist. Art historians consider 1886 as the end of the
Impressionist period. Van Gogh was 33 that here and had only been painting
for about six years, younger than the
French Impressionists. He met many of them and they
had a huge influence on him. Among other influences are Japanese prints where he
borrowed his flat colors, shapes surrounded by dark lines, as well as the French
painter Paul Gauguin, the post-impressionist, a master of primitivism and symbolism, an art from his early work, closer installed to traditional
Dutch genre painting, van Gogh went in a totally
different direction with bright saturated colors and textured brush strokes in
a letter to his sister, touching upon the mind and
temperament of artists, van Gogh wants wrote
that he was very sensitive to color in
its particular language. Its effect on
complementaries contrasts, harmony to meet the
life and art of Vincent van Gogh or
an example of how a person who had very little
professional training, special talent for art with hard work and dedication
in just ten years, became one of the greatest
artists in history. I think learning from
Van Gogh's palette and approach can be very
beneficial to modern artists. We can also learn from him
that regular practice, concentration on our art
and not giving up no matter what other
people think about our art or if they're
willing to buy it, we'll make us better artists. Van Gogh is known for his
very personal approach to color and for his preference
for yellow and blue hues. There is some evidence that his mental illness, medications, or maybe consumption
of absence gave him condition that
called yellow vision. The world for him was
tinted with yellow. Problems with vision might also have cost him to see halos around lights that
he is so famously depicted in his Starry Night. In any case, if our goal is to recreate Van Gogh's palette, here are the colors
that we will need. The mango used several
yellow pigments, Naples yellow in
the earlier period of his painting career, he also used zinc yellow, which is lemon yellow color, and also chrome yellow and
orange for his warmer yellows, sometimes he mixed zinc
yellow and chrome yellow. Van **** Brown was mostly
used, mixed with blue. That's what Van Gogh used
instead of black pigments. Since the impression
is banned, black, red appears in a lot of
Van Gogh's paintings. You see here his
palette contains couple warm reds and
couple of cool ones. Same goes for blues, cobalt blue and
French ultramarine, or the warmer blues
that he used. And Prussian blue and cerulean blue over the cooler
ones that he chose. And the two green
pigments that he liked were the radian
and emerald green. He has them separately and sometimes he mixed
them together. Van Gogh used
whites extensively. The colder, wide zinc
white was used for clouds, mostly him, and sometimes
he also used lead white, which is a warmer white. He also mix it with
cadmium yellow. So as you see, with exception
of a couple of greens, Van Gogh worked with basically
split primary palette. Some of the pigments
that van Gogh used or a fugitive and faded over
time, especially reds. So today his paintings
don't exactly look the way they did
when he painted them. This may have been fine
with Van Gogh because the self-taught
artists never actually considered his work
as final Esau, his pieces as Studies who
helped him find his style. Thing goes paint application
was with thick brushstrokes, also known as impasto
style of painting. He didn't mix his oils with
any medium like linseed oil, but use them straight
out of the tubes, sometimes squeezing them
directly on Canvas. In his own words, my brush stroke has
no system at all. That's what Van Gogh wrote
to immediate Bernard. I hit the canvas with irregular
touches of the brush, which I leave as they are. Patches of thickly laid on color spots of Canvas
left uncovered here. And they are portions that are left absolutely unfinished. Repetitions, savage
race. In short, I'm inclined to think that the result is so disquieting
in the rotating as to be a godsend to
those people who have fixed preconceived
ideas about technique. Because of the influence
of Japanese art on bingo, he went from realistic
treatment of form to the most stylized,
simplified approach. He states that himself in a letter to his
brother Theo van Gogh, the shadows and the cast
shadows are suppressed. It is painted in
free flat tense, like the Japanese prints. We will take a closer
look at how he does that when we start
copying his work. But now let's take a look at the materials that we'll
need for this class.
3. Materials and Supplies: Van Gogh painted with
traditional oils. I'm a water media artist, so I will be working
with gouache, which is one of
the water mediums. Gouache is very
similar to oils in the sense that it's
also an opaque medium. And also the order of painting will be very similar to oils. Especially since van Gogh
worked at a premium, which means applying
wet paint into wet without underpainting
or transparent glazes. Now let's talk a little
more about gouache. What did this and
what is it made of? If you know about
different types of gouache from my other classes, you can skip this lesson. In the class materials e-book, I included a list of
all the supplies, all the options that you have, and you can use that to purchase materials that you need
and set up for painting. Gouache is made from natural and synthetic pigments
from water in binder. There are three
substances that are used as binder in gouache paint. Goulash that has artist
or designer on the label, has gum, arabic is binder
the same as water column. Modern Gouache has an
acrylic binder and is basically acrylic paint
with matte finish. If the label just says gouache, the binder is usually dextrin, which is potato starch. In the demonstrations
in this class, I will be using M
Graham's artists gouache. I bought it as individual tubes. I don't have that many colors to supplement the
calls that I'm missing. I'm going to also use
my set of reef squash. I'm going to take emerald
green out of that set when we paint our own interpretation
in the style of Van Gogh, I will need some pink M Graham doesn't make that
color in gouache. I know you can find it
in Holbein gouache. And he mean, I don't
think it's strictly necessary to buy it
because artists, gouache, designer gouache,
dextrin based gouache. If we take white, we can
tinted with any watercolor. I will be using author pink, but then Al Smith to mix it
with titanium white from M Graham and get bright
pink color for my *****. If you don't have gouache and
you don't want to buy it, you can use regular acrylics to paint the demonstrations
in this class. You will definitely need to add some texture
building medium, like a gel or a paste
to your acrylics to replicate Van Gogh's
textured brush strokes. Even heavy body
acrylics tend to go on. Pretty flat. Acrylics also tend to
have a plasticky shine, but that can be
easily eliminated if you apply a code of matte, medium, FTE, your painting
is completely dry. Artist and designer
gouache works best when it's fresh
out of the tube. You can re-wet it with water, but it will never have the
same creamy consistency. Acrylic wash one's dry
cannot be reconstituted. So no matter what type
of gouache you're using, squeeze it out on your palette
right before you ready to paint in a small amount and closed all the
containers tightly. For palette, I use either
disposable paper palette. You can even just take a
piece of watercolor paper, maybe just a scrap and use that a ceramic palette
will work as well. Or you can even just
use a white plate. It will clean up with soap and water after you're
done painting, other materials will
need for gum arabic based gouache that has artist
or designer on the tube. Or for delicate
squash like hemi, watercolor paper will make a good substrate
for your painting. Paper doesn't have
to be expensive. Cotton paper just sturdy enough
to hold a layer of paint, at least £140 or 300 grams. Smooth textures like cold pressed or hot pressed
or preferable. I will be painting and
illustration board, which is a piece of paper
with some cardboard backing. If you have some,
use it by all means, but you don't have to buy it
specifically for this class. Can be brittle and dry. So you don't want to paint it on something flimsy acrylic. Gouache will work on
various surfaces. You can paint with it
on a new thick paper, on canvas panels or on
a hard board surface. I use fairly small
synthetic brushes, flat and round for
artists course, you can also use natural
hair watercolor brushes. For acrylic gouache, I
would use a separate set, maybe the same one you
use for acrylic painting. Because if even a small amount of paint dries on the brush, you will have to use
solvent to remove it and that my damaged
natural fibers. Depending on your surface, you will need a
pencil or a piece of charcoal to sketch
out your drawing. If you did paper masking tape, you can come in handy to
hold the paper in place. And always have two
water containers, one for washing your brush and one for clean water
for painting, and some towels
for the clean up. All those materials
are listed in a PDF document attached
to this class. Since gosh comes and fairly small containers and painters, inexpensive material as
it is to be able to paint a little bit larger
format paintings to show all the details. I'm going to increase
the volume of my paint using acrylic mediums. The three products I'm going
to test, like molding paste, regular gel with semi gloss
finish this door by Golden. And the third one
is texture builder by delta surround code. It's a craft materials, but it might work
for my purposes. I will mix them with Liquitex,
acrylic gouache first. You see me doing it right now. And the other two paints
that I want to test, our golden open acrylics and gouache dextrin
based gouache, which would be very
similar to how they would react with artists and
designers gouache. So as you see with
Liquitex, acrylic gouache, which is rather thin paint, it goes on completely flat. You cannot see any brushstrokes. By adding molding paste, I'm able to get pretty
textured brush strokes. I would say very
textured brush strokes that paste gives my
paint a lot of body. Let me make a quick
note what Peter used and what I mixed it
with before I forget. Let's mix our acrylic
gouache with regular gel. Next, it has substantial
body as well. The finishes semi gloss, which is probably not bad because if you
think about oil paint, it's not completely flat. Like gouache would be. A little bit of gloss might
be a good thing for us. So this is regular gel. It also comes another finishes. It does help gouache
to have more body, more texture, but it's not
as heavy as molding paste. It's a little more flexible. And my last medium would
be the texture builder. It's a very
inexpensive material, very similar inconsistency
to regular gel. I would say it has a
little bit more shine. I wanted to include
it because it's widely available in the
craft supplies store and it will work
if you don't want to spend money on
professional golden products. My next paint that
I'm going to try is golden open acrylics. I'm using the open, which
are slow drying acrylics, but regular acrylics will
work as well if that's what you have and you
want to paint with them the exercises
in this class, I'm going to do texture
build the first because I already have
it here on the palette. These mediums do
modify the color a little bit because we're
kind of adding more binder, so the amount of
pigment decreases, but that difference is
barely notice of all. You can only see it if
you compare side-by-side. So it's no big deal at all. You can see that even
with texture builder, acrylics do not go on
as opaque as gouache. Even though acrylic
gouache is very similar, acrylic paint has
lighter texture and it has a little
bit more transparency. I forgot to paint a simple, I'm going to paint it
here on this side. So I remember which
paint I was testing. Here is acrylics
with molding paste. This is light molding
paste or a heavier ones. There is promise paste, which is very sandy texture. Molding paste, Gibbs acrylics. It a lot more body and texture
from what I see so far. If I went to, with
acrylic gouache, I would probably use regular
gel or some similar medium. But for acrylics, I
think molding paste would be better choice because
it gives us more body. In my last test will be reef squash because said
it's dextrin based, so it's water-soluble and also you can re-wet
it with water, which makes it very
similar to artist and designer gouache that
are gum arabic based, read up on it a little bit. And Winsor Newton, the company that has a line of
a designer gouache. They said, it's
perfectly fine to mix designer gouache with
acrylic mediums. Just test it first. So you're aware of those
very slight modifications of texture and color with my dry a little bit different also, of course, mediums will give gouache a little bit
of a different finish. We're using semi gloss, let's say, or glossy gels. They finish will be different
than just playing gouache. Gouache mixes with all these
mediums perfectly fine. I'm getting heavier texture, brush strokes, great coverage. I would say the best
coverage of all three. And here they all are
after they drive, I think going buy coverage and texture and the
finish I would say regular gel in combination with Reeves Gouache would
be my medium of choice. I think that texture and the feel of the paint
and also the finish, that slightly shinier finish were the closest to oil paint. Make my task a
little bit easier. My task of painting replicas of Van Gogh a little bit easier. And hopefully those little tubes that I have will
be sufficient to pain good-sized
paintings without working on a tiny scale. I'm going to go right now and wash all my brushes really well. And in the next video, we will start painting. We will do an in-depth study
of Van Gogh's brushstrokes.
4. Preliminary Studies: The best way to study
in artist's style, the approach to color and paint application is
to copy their work, not just look at the painting. In this class, we will
paint replicas of two masterpieces that bingo created at the peak of
his brief painting lines. The first one is his sunflowers, which is officially called if Bayes with fifteenths
sunflowers. He created that in 1888. It is now in Van Gogh's
Museum in Amsterdam. The second one will be
irises in the base, painted in a 1099s. It is in the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York City. This painting is a
very large painting. Them that large will be
very time-consuming. We will size them down for
our learning purposes. Showing all the details on
smaller format might be hard. So to better understand the brushwork and
paint application, we will paint a fragment
of which painting first as a preliminary
study, There's two studies. I'm using a sheet
of Bristol paper. I tore it in half. It was 11 by 14. We don't need anything super
high-quality for this. And I'm going to
sketch out my flowers. I'm just doing a corner
of each composition. I included the outline
in the class materials. So it will be a little bit
easier for you to see what exactly we're going to paint in. Let's squeeze out our gouache. We of course need fresh paint, so it's nice and creamy. I'm just going to use
a couple of yellows, a cooler yellow in the
warm one in my sienna, so it's warm brown and I think I will need some
Alizarin crimson as well to make that orange
color that in the original. If I started painting
with a background, I would cover my
whole drawing and it would be hard for me to work. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to just paint
very simple shapes. I'm going to paint each flower
in a very simplified way. So basically I'm
distributing the colors and covering my paper. So to say, we can do a little bit of
texturing right away. But again, it's all
very simplified in I'm not concentrated on
the small details for now. The flower seem very
abstract, geometric. We can tell they are sunflowers, but there's also a significant decorative
elements in them, but at the same time
they're fairly complex. That's why I thought
this preliminary study will be really good
because it will help us to understand the form
and of course the colors and also Van
Gogh's process. Because I will be showing you in just a second very
important technique that we use in a painting, in watercolor painting, That's
called negative painting. So finding all the
flower shapes, all the flat colors
shapes that van Gogh created for us in leaving the
background white for now. So we only working
on the flowers. I'm using a flat brush. I think it's a little easier
for creating largest shapes. If I need precision
or I need lines. Switch to small round
brush, but much, much easier to paint
those fairly large, flat colors shapes
with a flat brush. So it's my recommendation. If you don't have
a flat brush in your arsenal,
definitely get one. And gouache allows us to
work with very inexpensive, very simple brushes wouldn't need natural hair or
anything like that. Synthetic inexpensive
brushes work just great. And the last quite
a while as well. Let's paint this
flower on the bottom. They kind of look disjointed, but we will get them
all to work at the end. These are basically
my flower forms. Let's mix a little bit of green. I'm using my cooler
yellow and my cobalt blue in, also need to mix that very dark color
for the centers. In the way researchers tell us, then gold mixed his
darks was by mixing Van **** brown with blue
with ultramarine blue. So let's try that. I don't
have Van **** brown, but burnt sienna is
close enough and we do get a very dark,
almost black color. Those leaf shapes, I'm not here. Alarm plus will have some stems. So I switched the very
small round brush. When you do a little bit,
very light green for centers. So lots of cool yellow. Let's add those
smaller elements. We will have to go
over them one more time after we paint
the background, but we can just throw in a few, so we don't forget about them. Very expressive
light brushstrokes. All right, It's time to paint
the background and it's time to use our
negative painting that we will be using a
lot in this glass and that I use a lot
when I paint in general, I mixed some white
with all my yellows. But the goal is to get
that kind of golden color. It's hard to catch it. We see some shine, some distortion
on the surface of the original painting
because it's not flat. But if we can get
something similar, I think it will be fine. It's important to
understand the principle. So what I'm doing,
I'm painting around the flowers that I've already
painted with a flat brush. I'm painting a
lighter background around the shapes that I
already have on paper. This is called negative
painting in watercolor, we do this when we want to paint darker background
around lighter objects. When we use opaque
media like gouache for acrylics or oils
that van Gogh used. We paint lighter background
around Dhaka objects. This not only helps us to
complete the painting, this also helps us to
define those shapes. I'm using a slightly
different shade of added some sienna to my
yellow, light yellow mixture. I also have some warm yellow because I want to
show that texture. Not so much maybe with
thick brushstrokes, but just graphically by using
slightly different colors. I'm creating basket wave that we see in the background
of Van Gogh's painting, adding more texture, more visual interest
to the painting. And you see that I covered some of those shapes
with a background. This will be my first step. And then I can go back and
add more definition and paint those flower shapes a little bit better at the lines
and add precision, which would be very
hard for me to do right from the start when
I just started working. Let's do those lines. I'm mixing more reddish orange, it in some Alizarin
crimson to my warm red. And using a small
round brush to add that line work that van
Gogh is famous for. So flat shapes surrounded
by different color lines. That's his signature
approach to showing form. So looking at the
original and kind of trying to find all those shapes, not rushing through but
paying attention and finding all the
shapes, not the race. We don't need to rush
to the finish line, or it can enjoy the process
and galoshes their creamy, very pleasant medium
to work with. Goulash and Van Gogh can teach
us a lot about painting, going flower by flower, finding all the shapes. This little study
can actually be a nice postcard if you wanted to give it to somebody
and just maybe a little gift will be very nice. And let's work on those round some flowers
that have fading. He painted some of
them that were still in bloom and some
didn't have the petals, it was just the centers. Is that the most textured? So we need to switch
between different shades. I see different shades
of yellow there, some ocher color
that I'm getting by darkening my yellow with
some brown, with my sienna. There are some pretty
dark brown passages as well with gouache, it's important to keep in
mind that light colors will darken and dark colors will probably wash out
just a tiny bit. If you using gum Arabic
or dextran based gouache, acrylic gouache will
stay exactly the same with our squash. It's a little tricky to catch the right tone from
the first goal. But the more you paint with it, the more you will get
used to it and you will start kind of correcting
for the difference. And also, unlike watercolor, several layers of gouache
actually look really nice. It gives you depth and richness. So don't be afraid to go over certain spots
to three times. It's not going to hurt anything. It belonged to make
a painting that arm. If I needed to correct
some of the shapes, if I forgot to separate
them somewhere, I would go back to my light
color and correct that way. So I use the background to correct my flower shapes, right? I think this is it
for sunflowers. We have pretty good
understanding of the brush movements of the
colors that we need to use. Let's move on to
our next fragment. To paint the fragment of iris, let's use our two blues, cobalt blue and
ultramarine blue. And I'm going to
squeeze a little bit of emerald green from my reef set. And of course I will need some white. I did the same thing. I sketched out the fragment
of Van Gogh's painting. You have the outline
if you want to just transfer it onto your
paper instead of drawing. And let's start painting
with object colors. So I'm going to paint
the flowers with blue, starting with cobalt blue, trying to figure
out the shape of all these petals that
we see in the original. So just filling in
the shape with color, trying to be precise
but not worried about small details and
not getting distracted by small details
Can not working on the background because we can very clearly see it
in this painting, will look at the good
resolution photo of it. Or if you have an opportunity
to see it in real life, that will be even better. We can see that the background is painted after the flowers. And there are even little spots where Van Gogh didn't quite cover the whole canvas when he was applying
the background. These are all my floral shapes. And now I'm using darker color, ultramarine blue to
add the outlines. And I'm going to bring
in a second brush. This is a very small
quarter-inch flat brush. I mixed some cobalt
blue with white, and I want to paint those lighter shapes that
I see in the petals. Again, this is a, we need some precision and we can't rush through with this. So take your time and find all those little shapes that
we see in the original. That's why we're doing
this exercise to understand the painting
a little bit better and to be able to reproduce
it and eventually absorb that information
and maybe use it, all of it or some of
it in our own artwork. It seems that we could
paint a lighter blue first and then add more
saturated cobalt blue. That's probably
will be fine too. But in my mind, with a big mediums, I
paid from dark to light. So to keep that order
and not confuse myself, I start with a darker colors. And then I go with lighter
and lighter layers. So we'll do it this way, but you can try it both ways maybe and see what
works better for you. But I'm just showing you
the traditional way, so to say, of working
with a pig medium. There's a bud right here. Let's work on that as well. I'm not touching white yet, so I'm adding some
lighter green. I mixed some emerald green
with a wide to do the foliage, the basis of the
flowers and the stems. And then I keep working on the floral shapes. We
need to do something. In this lower right corner, we see a fragment of a
big group of flowers. I think this fragment will
look especially good. I think that will make a
really nice cartilage, a little present for somebody. Like I said, mangoes paintings, it looks simplified and
they look decorative, but they're fairly complex. He had the forms
very well-developed. And that line work takes quite a bit of
time to get it right. So it's not monotonous, it's not too heavy him. Okay. I need to add those warmer accents so I
squeezed out little more white. I can do the white petals
that I see in the painting, just the few, and also see some warm yellow shapes as well. That's why I have a little bit of form yellow squeezed out and I'll also squeezed out a little bit of
alizarin crimson. While I'm doing this,
I will tell you that the background in the
painting looks white, but I read about some research that scientists did
on this painting, and they discovered that the background was
pink originally, but the red was
fugitive, so it faded. Kind of understand
the thought process with white background. This painting looks
a little too cool. So if we imagine it
with a pink background, I think that's what he did. He use that pink background
to balance it and give it more warmth to give some
contrast to those blue flowers. So my suggestion is to do this. I'm going to paint the
background pink in the Google. Try it first on this fragment
and see if we like it, and then we will do it
on a larger painting. My lower left corner
looks kind of empty. I originally thought I'll just do that little group of flowers, but maybe we can add
that leaf and actually study the way he did leaves
a little bit better. Let's just add that form. I did include it in the outline
in the class materials. So you have that information. I didn't think about
doing it originally, but I'm going to just add it to my painting to
draw it with a brush. Lots of different shades of
green, sound cooler greens, emerald green by itself, mixed with blue,
mixed with white. And we will also need
some warm and mixture. So I'm adding yellow to emerald green and white mixture to warm it up a little bit. And I'll just stop here. There's the iris and the corner, but let's not painted well-respected the
flowers themselves. So I think we have a good
understanding how that painted. If you look at those dark
ultramarine blue outlines that I painted, this is negative painting
on a smaller scale. You see that they're not even, they look really interesting and they look varied because I overlapped some of
the lighter blue over those dark outlines. If I paint them with
a continuous line, they will look too
heavy and too boring. This is the beauty of
negative painting. You will see it especially clearly in the background here. How painting, lighter background
over darker shapes or any lighter shape over
darker shape with opaque mediums helps us
to create that movement, that expressiveness
in the painting and that variety,
that visual interest. It helps us to avoid boring, too precise shapes and makes
our painting painterly. So to say, that that's what creates that painterly approach. So very important technique that we're studying
in this lesson that we will be using
in a larger painting. And I think you
will agree with me, hidden a little bit of
Alizarin crimson to my white instead of just
using white paint, a really makes a difference. I know the lightest, pretty bright and washes
it out a little bit. You will see the finished
painting in just a second and you will see how it looks
away, the pink background. So carefully going
over with a flat brush over all my shapes and
verifying the outline.
5. Replica of Sunflowers: Let's paint a larger replica of Van Gogh's sunflowers,
or more precisely, this painting is called
fifteenths and flowers, and the base will
be painting on a 12 by 16 piece of
illustration board. I want to give my painting
a little bit wider margins. So I'm going to tape off probably an inch or
so on each side, maybe a little bit more. I'm using this white tape. If you have smaller format, piece of paper or illustration
board, that's fine. Just don't use anything too huge because it will just take
much longer for you to paint. Another thing I'm going to
do to prepare for painting, I'm going to kill the white. So to say, I am going to turn my surface with some watercolor. I'm using yellow ocher. I just thought it
will look a little bit closer to Canvas. Color indicates that peaks through somewhere
in my painting. It will be much better than
having white peeking through. And also it helps me to get started on my
tunnel relationships because I will be painting
from mid values too dark, and then I will be
adding highlights. I don't want to see that
bright white of the paper. It will be hard
for me to work on a white surface than on
a slightly tone surface. You don't have to use
yellow ocher, basically, any color you can
use yellow or maybe light brown or
something like that just to get rid of the white, we will give our watercolors
a couple of minutes to dry. Let's squeeze out our paint. I'm using artist gouache brands. I have R, M, Graham and Reeves. So I'm going to squeeze
out my yellows, light yellow and gamboge, cooler and warmer yellow. A lot of different shades
of yellow in the painting. And now we'll also
need some sienna, which will give me
that ocher color when mixed with yellow. A little bit of
alizarin crimson. For making orange. We tested this colors when
we painted the fragments. So basically using the same
colors that we selected before to increase the
amount of paint that I have, I am going to use that
regular acrylic gel, acrylic medium that we
tested in a previous lesson. I'm just going to use
a separate sheet of my disposable palette to
mix a lot of yellow ocher. Because the first thing
I will be painting will be the shapes of all the
flowers in the face. I will be working on object
colors because I need to distribute all my
shapes on my painting. I did not draw anything for me. It's easier to
draw with a brush, but just looking at the
original and finding all the shapes and giving
them a proximate color. But I did provide an outline
in the class materials. So if you want to first transfer the drawing
using charcoal rub, you can do that and then start
working on flower shapes. So very easy. First step, just finding all those occur
shapes and painting them. Carefully, observing them, and trying to work as
accurately as possible. But we will be doing a lot
of work still to verify all the shapes and get them just right the same way Van
Gogh painted them. Notice that he did not paint those sunflowers
as circles, right? They consist of segments
of straight lines, which I think gives them that additional energy
and expressiveness. So we need to do that as well. We need to carefully observe
them and not paint circles, but give them that geometry
that van Gogh gave them. He knew what he was doing.
Or maybe he didn't. Maybe she just did
that instinctively. But it gives his painting a lot of movement and a lot of energy. Some of the shapes will
have a little more yellow. So you see me during that
occur with some yellow in some spots and in some areas I use a
little bit darker shade. And also the top of the vase will be that dark yellow color. We need to fill in
that shape as well. We will need a lot of
yellows for this painting. Let's make some green for
the leaves and stems. Actually, I'm going
to wait with this. Let me clean off my brush. Let's work on the background
first that will be in much larger and more
important shape than the leaves. I am just going to put
it in very roughly. This is not negative
painting yet because I don't have
enough information for negative painting, but I do want to
distribute my colors and cover the
surface with paint. So I have a starting point from which the work started
with a pig mediums, sometimes pretty
time-consuming just because we can do a big wash liquid
though with watercolor. Paint just floats and covers the whole page
basically by itself. We have to apply opaque
mediums with brushstrokes. So it takes a little
bit of time to get all the colors distributed
and all the surface covered. But it's a very easy step. So as you see, I'm almost done with it. One to paint something
on the bottom. The kind of indicate the table. I want to have all
my colors in place before I start
verifying the shapes, outlines it in different colors, and eventually working
on smaller details. We'll have a light
green centers in debt. And I think I want to paint the leaves because
without the leaves, It's hard for me to
see which flowers, which, as we know, we have 50 and flowers here. So let's make some
different shades of green. I see some lighter
than the others. That adjustment is very
easy for us to make. We're not using
green pigment here. We're mixing our
greens from yellow and blue by varying the
amount of yellow, blue in the mixture, we
can very easily vary the tone and the
hue of our green. I'm just going to very quickly
paint there generally. Paint the green
shapes that I see. Van Gogh must have taken
quite a while to paint this sunflowers because some
of them lost all the petals. They're all in different
stages of wilting. I know that Van Gogh's
Museum in Amsterdam, where this painting
is on their website. They have a little
quiz for kids. Can you count how
many sunflowers are in each stage of fading? Once we have all the shapes
approximately in place, we can start finding
some details. I'm adding some more
hansa yellow into my ocher mixture and I didn't
know more burnt sienna. And of course, I'm adding
some gel medium to increase the volume of my paint using
the small round brush, I am verifying the shapes and adding texture
and a little bit of precision to those sunflowers
that don't have any petals. Those ocher colored ones. I see a lot of variation
of color in them. They look pretty monochromatic
from a distance, but if we look closer, there is a lot of color
variation in those flowers. I think to make our replica realistic and
close to the original, we don't need to find
all that variation and not just paint
a flat brown shape. So if you need to look at this painting is in
higher resolution, it's very easy to find online. I also included a photo of
the original painting in the class materials or maybe even before you start painting, take a second to look at it and try to notice all those
different colors. I think it's easier to see all the color variations
when you actually paint, when you're painting a copy. But everybody's
perception is different. So decide what
works best for you yourself and just do that
if you want to stop, find a good stopping point
in your painting process and study the original and then continue painting or do
it before you start. I am finding all those awkward
shapes in my painting. And I'm also
modifying that occur with Alizarin crimson to catch all those warmer areas
that I see in the original. I was a little bit intimidated
when I saw this painting. Like I said, Van Gogh's paintings
are deceptively simple, but if you start getting
into it and looking at it. There are a lot of details, a lot of brushstrokes. But actually the painting
process went really fast. If you work from simplified form and add just
the right amount of details, the painting will take
shape fairly quickly. If you do get bogged down in
details from the beginning, it will be pretty hard
to pull it together. It's time to paint the petals on the flowers
that are not faded. They didn't lose them. I'm using a small round brush. I'm mixed in a little bit
of white into my yellow. And I mixed two yellows. I'm mixed warm yellow
and cool yellow. The researchers tell us
that's what Van Gogh did when he painted a kid
Brandon out of yellow. So I keep adding
it to my palette. And I think I need to add
a little more acrylic gel to increase the amount
of paint that I have. I will need a lot for
the background as well. Actually, before we start
working on the petals, Let's work on the background. It's very patchy and I have
a bunch of green in it. I think I need to tidy
it up a little bit. So let's do some negative
painting and find a little bit more precision
in our background. Painted a little bit
too much of the vase. We can cover that
using a flat brush. I think applying
negative painting with the flood brush
is a lot easier. I am not covering absolutely every millimeter of my background with
my brushstrokes. I want those brush strokes that are already applied
to pick throws. So you see I'm going again
in that cross hatch pattern, the basket weave pattern, to make my background
not absolutely flat but textured
and interesting, my yellow might be slightly
lighter than the original. There are a lot of versions
of this painting online. Yellows look a
little bit cooler, some warmer, some
look really dark. It's of course, a question of the light when the
photograph was taken. Also, image processing, it'll affects what we see on
the computer screen. We also talked
about the fact that Van Gogh's paintings
changed over time. They don't exactly look right now the way
he painted them. So I think instead
of concentrating on the exact hues and
conveying the exact hues, we need to concentrate on
understanding the technique, the technique, and
the overall approach. Overall interpretation
is you see, as I go with my light yellow, I am correcting the shapes of those flowers and they acquire those very characteristic
geometric shapes that we see in the original, thanks to the negative
painting of the background. And I can work around the
petals on those flowers on the left and actually
make them stand out. I will go over them
one more time with it, warmer yellow that I
started to prepare. And of course I will be
adding more details. But as I continue working on
my painting and whatever, I didn't pin triads, some things that happened
to be in the wrong place. I can just cover them with the background and paint
them in a different spot. Alright, this is it
for the background. I can continue working
on the flowers now that I can see what
I actually doing, the background is
looking much better. The gel medium accumulates on the brush a little bit at
the base of the bristles. So it's a good idea
to wipe it with a paper towel or a rag to help water clean your brush
when you're cleaning it. And of course, do not leave
brushes with a paint on them, with a gel on them. You shouldn't really
leave dirty brushes just sitting on
your desk anyways. But with acrylic mediums, It's especially
important to immediately wash the brushes after
you're done painting, not let them dry. As once acrylic medium dries, it's very, very
hard to get it off. Most likely you will have
to throw away the brush. Alright, so small
round brush and I'm adding petals on the sunflowers. In those wilted sunflowers,
those round shapes. They also have lighter areas, so we can use that paint to make the color more varied
and interesting theorem. Different camera view because I was getting too much glare. I want you to see
what I'm doing here. So it in details and
precision until every flower. I know they look
kind of amorphous. When I was working on them, I was thinking this
doesn't look right. What else do I need to do? But this is because we
are lacking darkest darks and we're lacking that line
work that van Gogh used. Van Gogh cannot look
like himself without outlining those shapes
the way he outlined them, he did not do it just randomly. He understood that it
is necessary to give a formal definition and give realism and depth
to his painting. We will get to that in a minute. Let's just make sure we have
all the shapes in place. I'm checking all the
green shapes as well. I don't want to call
them leaves or stems, even though that's
what they are. I tried to think
about them as shapes. You see, I'm starting to outline a little bit with
a cooler tone and even those few brushstrokes
already starting to give my painting a lot more
depth and definition. I need to paint the base
of the flower vase. I kind of forgot about it. That lower portion.
Let's do that. It's kind of off white color. And the tabletop kinda
bothers me a little bit. I only did one pass on it. I think it needs more pigment to even out the brushstrokes. There is basically
not texture on it. So it needs to be fairly even. It's a little too dark
and my paintings, so let's mix yellow
with some white, just a little bit of white
and maybe work on the vase. You see that lingo did not paint the core shadow
or cast shadow. This painting is a prime
example of his approach with flat shapes and contour lines that we discussed in the
beginning of the class. If you think about
academic painting of the period, the
Classical Painting, we can definitely see how
radical was his approach at the time and why he was not understood and
appreciated at the time. It was just something very
new and very different. The outline of the dates and the table with Alizarin crimson. Be careful not to draw
monotonous lines. You see how Van Gogh's line is very alive and it
varies in thickness. It's not exactly straight. And that's what gives it life. So we need to try and imitate
that good chance for us not to be too geometric and
not to be too precise. I see blue line in the
middle of the painting. Researchers tell us that was not exactly blue colored purple, but we'll stick to
blow in this case. There's also little blue outline in the middle of that sunflower. And now I switched the smaller
brush, small round brush. And let's add those
darkest accents to the painting and
give it more depth. See that sunflower on the
left has very dark center. There will be just the few, that's basically a
couple of centers. There is a dark outline on
that central sunflower. And I think that's about it. We're almost done
with the painting. Our final brushstrokes
will be working on the ages of all the
shapes of each flower. So let's do that. I'm using again my ocher that I mixed from
yellow and brown. I'm using lighter yellow,
also deeper yellows. I'm going to go over
all the flowers and verify the outlines and a little more texture
where it's necessary. And I'm going to paint some
lighter brush strokes where I miss them in my initial
work on each flower. Branding out of yellow, there's a lot of bright
yellow in this painting, and I need those
impasto brushstrokes that van Gogh was famous form. So let's squeeze out a little
more yellow and go over every yellow petal in the painting is our
finishing touches. And let's also outline
those petals with darker ocher colored
restaurants as well. If you do it a little bit
too much with that occur, you can always pick up more
yellow and apply it on top. So do kind of reverse negative
painting on a small scale to get those petals to look the way they are
supposed to look. We'll go over all of them. I everyone, over every flower. The last thing I
did on this piece, pick up that light yellow that I used on the background and just make sure that I got
the shapes right there. Um, a lot of very small negative shapes in-between the stamps and
in-between the flowers. So we need to spend a minute or two looking at that and
finding those shapes. So that's what I'm
doing right now. I'm just making sure
I did not forget those little geometric holes
that we see in the painting. Those yellow petals still
bother me a little bit. They need to be really impasto, they need to stand out. And I just didn't
have enough paint, so I'm going to pick up
some more of my bright yellow and just go over them
one more time with gouache, it's good to build
up the paint layer. It is pretty dense paint, but sometimes it takes
a couple of layers, maybe three layers, to achieve
the effect that we want. Acrylics are more
transparent than gouache. So if you're painting
with acrylics, you would definitely need
several layers here. So let's go over all those yellow petals one more time with a
very small brush. Once that's done, the
painting is ready. I'm going to take off
the tape very carefully. I'm showing you here how
I'm taking off the tape. I am not pulling up. Do not pull up because that will damage the surface
of your paper. Pool to this side, 45-degree angle and pull slowly. This is Artist's tape, but it's still very sticky. And I worked on
this painting for probably a couple of
hours and I left it overnight and that was
enough for the tape to adhere pretty well
to my paintings. So you don't want to rip it off, you need to pull it off
very slowly and carefully. This border will most likely
be covered by a frame. But still, if you don't plan
on framing your painting, It's nice to have clean white margins on
the painting. Here it is. And here is a photo of
it and better light. I included that photo in the class materials if
you want to reference it. So this was our attempt at
replicating sunflowers.
6. Replica of Irises: In this lesson, let's try to replicate the full painting
of viruses interface, a different color palette, but very similar approach, as I mentioned in the lesson
where we painted a fragment, the background on this
painting faded over time. It was pink originally. So that's what I'm
going to use because I think it looks
a lot better with all the blues and cool greens that I see in this
painting instead of white. And that color will be very easy for us to mix because we have Alizarin crimson and we'll have plenty of white
on our palate. In preparation for painting, I did the same thing
I did for sunflowers. A taped my 12th by 16 illustration board to my
foam core drawing board, leaving a fairly wide margin. Just think it looks better. And I'm also toning the white of the paper with some
pink watercolor. The color totally
doesn't matter. I just thought the
background will be pink, so might as well use pink
for the initial wash to kill the white while the
watercolor is drying. Let's squeeze out our gouache. We won't need very many colors. We will have cobbled blue, and I'm going to use
phthalo blue for that intense blue that I
see in the painting. I think ultramarine
blue will work as well. I will need some emerald green, green pigment that you have a green that has a lot of
blue in it will work. And of course I will need white. I will need some, like I said, Alizarin crimson
for the background, but I can squeeze it out later because I don't want
it to dry on the palette. I tried to squeeze the colors close to the time when I'm
going to paint with them. No pencil drawing or this one. For me, it's easy to
draw with a brush, but you do have the outline
in the class materials if you want to transfer it first
and then start painting, will of course, start painting with object color and
simplified shapes. I just thought by starting
to draw with a brush, I can already start creating those dark blue outlines that I see on all the flowers
and on the base. If you feel like transferring, you can do the pencil lines and then draw over them
with blue with your brush to kind of fix the painting in place so you
don't lose your drawing. Again, quite a few of details. Once you start drawing, you see that this painting, it looks simple, but it's not. It has a lot of details. When I was preparing
for this class, I considered showing you replicas of Van
Gogh's landscapes, but they have even more details. Again, they look very
simple colored shapes, but there are so many details. Once you start looking
at them really closely, maybe it will be our next class. We will study Van
Gogh's landscapes. For now, let's concentrate
on the flowers, and let's start filling our shapes that we
outlined with dark blue, with lighter blue colors, mixed cobalt blue with white to create the
base for each flower. And I will be adding some
more color variation to them, even just straight away. Let's add some petals. We can use more white and then some petals we can grab
a little more cobalt blue and start painting all the petals in a
very simplified form. To better understand
what's going on, we can roughly divide this
flowers into three clusters. There is a big cluster
in the center, vertical one with just
a couple of flowers coming off of it towards the
right edge of the painting, our right, there is a smaller cluster on
the left-hand side. And there is that one flower or maybe a cluster of
flowers on the top left. So if we kind of think
about it this way, it will be easier for us to understand what's going
on in the painting and not to be overwhelmed by all the forms that they
moved painted here. Now might've painted some leaves and some stems with blue. Which is not a big deal
because it would be very easy for me to retain them with that light green kind of cool green color
if I need them, I'm mixing in some emerald green into my blue mixture that
unifies the painting. And also I'm getting
a color very close to what I see in the
original and the reference. Here, you see the importance of painting the background
negatively because it would be very hard to paint those leaves and
especially to leave all those negative
spaces between those thin leaves and
stems accurately. That's why when you come in with a lighter color at
a later stage and paint all those little
negative spaces and give all those flowers
some breathing room. Let's paint the picture. It's very pale blue, I would say it's not
exactly pure white. So white button with the
various light tint of blue. Again, it can
verify the outline, the form of the picture
at a later stage, when I paint the table, a few more light petals
in each cluster. Van Gogh did a good
job making some of them lighter so they
will come forward. And he also added those tiny yellow accents
that we saw in the fragment, which also warmed up the composition and also made
it more three-dimensional. Now, that's been the table. A mixture of emerald green with some white
is going to work. If you don't have that
emerald green pigment, you could mix cobalt blue with lemon yellow or a hansa yellow light,
something like that, with more cobbled bloom, with just a tiny bit of yellow, it might be slightly
different shade, but it really doesn't matter. So just to see which begins you have and try to get
as close as possible. It's not critical to
be super accurate. It's time to work
on the background. Let's squeeze out
some fresh white. Will need quite a bit of paint. I'm going to tint it very slightly with my
Alizarin crimson. I don't want red color. I just want a very slight
pink tint to my wide. And of course, I will need my gel medium again to
increase the quantity of pain because I don't want to spend a whole tube of white paint in the background and run out
of paint, maybe midways. So I don't want texture. Gel medium also helps me
to create that texture. The texture is not the
same as in sunflowers. It's more just a
random brushstrokes. Awesome. You can see
that because I didn't mix the alizarin
crimson that well, I'm getting a little
bit of color variation, which I think looks really nice. But sometimes paint needs
to be mixed thoroughly, but sometimes not mixing it completely actually
works to our advantage. I think now you can
also see the advantage of applying pink
watercolor wash. First, I can create the
background fairly quickly because I already have
some paint on paper. I'm just creating texture
and I'm verifying the outlines of the
bouquet or viruses. I switched the smaller
flat brush quarter-inch to get in-between
all my flowers. Now, it is time to verify
the outlines and to paint all those negative spaces between all the flowers and give them some
breathing room. Good idea to let the flowers themselves dry completely before you
start working on this, I'm dragging paint a
little bit because it didn't dry, but it's okay. We can not work on that
area for a minute. Gouache dries very quickly. So even if it's
applied very thickly, if we'll wait a couple minutes, it will dry and we can just repaint that spot.
It's no big deal. The bouquet looks
a little amorphous because we don't have any darks. We don't have all
those dark outlines that van Gogh created. This will be our next step. I think the background is done. Let's wipe our brush
real-world and wash it. I'm going to wash it
after I'm done painting again with soap and water. But now let's give our painting
a little more definition, a little more precision with those darker blue outlines
that we see in the original. I'm working with my
smallest round brush, and I have another brush
in case I need to pick up some lighter pigment and correct the petals,
all the stems. So just picking up pure blue pigment and
doing the outlines. And there are also those
darker petals in some places, very dark blue so we can paint them at this stage as well. So adding the dark accents. The tour will be outlined. The inside of the
handle is yellow. I will do that in a minute. We will do our yellow
excellence as well. I think that's what makes
mango one of the major things that makes a van Gogh's so
popular and attractive. His paintings look really spontaneous and
energetic. For us. They look like they
have movement in the breeze because
of his brushstrokes. And I think also because
of those simplified form, you can tell that he was just capturing the moment and Bush in his impressions on paper without being concerned
with perspective, with shadows, with details, he just wanted to capture the moment and he did
in his paintings. That's, I think one of the
reasons we love them so much. I'm going all over
the bouquet and finding dark blue elements that are blue lines and shapes. And as you see, I'm barely touching the paper
with my brush. Even though this brush is thin, the painting is fairly small compared to the
original obviously. And also the details
need to be small. We need to work lightly
to avoid super heavy, dense lines and to
avoid continuous lines, we don't need
continuous lines here. Van Gogh's painting is a
little more square than mine. I have larger borders on each side of the bouquet,
but that's okay. We can either trim them
before we frame the painting or just not worry about it and live a little
more space there. He's composition sometimes
didn't quite work out. We know that when he
painted sunflowers, he had to add a
wooden strip on top of his canvas because
he ran out of room. So with this, iris
is on the left side. We can see that he ran
them off the page. Maybe he wanted to fit
the whole bouquet, but that didn't quite work out. Oh, maybe that was
his original intent. While I'm working,
I see that I missed a few petals on the iris that's in the
upper right corner. I'm just going to
outline it and then I will fill it with color
in just a minute. Let's outline the table. Grounds our composition
that connects the vase to the sides
of the painting. Very important in composition. I write the line work is done. Let's continue working
on the flowers. I mixed some very light yellow
color and I'm going to go over the bouquet again and add those pale yellow highlights
that we see in a few spots. I will also use my
emerald green cobbled blue and white mixture to give a little more
definition to my leaves. For now they're all
uniform green color, but in the painting
they actually have some color variation. Some areas are lighter, warmer, and some
areas darker green. That what I have
in the painting. Mostly I need to add those
yellow highlights and you see immediately they're starting to look more like the painting. And they also somehow start looking more
three-dimensional, even though they outlined
with those blue lines, van Gogh somehow found that approach that I've personally would've
never thought off. To make things decorative
and abstracted, but realistic and
three-dimensional. At the same time, the stage takes me a
little bit of time because I'm looking
at the original and trying to figure out
and the tango where each leaf is the kind of go
in different directions. So we don't want to rush
through this stage. I'm also correcting the
pedals in some spots. So two brushes at this
stage really help. You can assign one for darker colors and
one for highlights, or one for cool colors, one for warmer colors. That will save you a lot of
time having two brushes. You won't have to
watch them after each color application
because that takes time. And also it will prevent you from diluting your
paint too much. We're using gouache, that of oil so we don't
want it too watery. We wanted to discuss
creamy and buttery. So we don't want too much water in washing the brush would
bring some water. Tiny warm accents
on the flowers. And also let's paint
white highlights. I kind of started on those, but I had blue on my brush
and then not quite wide, but I see some pretty
bright white petals in some of the flowers. And we know that iris has
different colored petals. A lot of varieties have
different colored petals. I'm also trying to
vary my greens. You see me mixing warm green
with more yellow in it. I squeezed out a
little more Alizarin crimson because some of those warm accents are
more orangey than yellow. So I toned down my
yellow a little bit and going back-and-forth
between my toothbrushes, adding highlights and making tiny little corrections
to all the petals. So many different shapes that we need to find
in this painting. I think some of that
yellow is probably the base of the flower that's
a little bit dried out, so we need to paint those. I'm correcting the leaf
shapes as well as I go along. It's hard to keep those
heavy blue lines. Correct? Width gives
them the right here. So we can go back with different colors and cover
part of the line if need be, make it more varied. The painting looks a lot
better after we varied that green and after we
added smaller details, painting is almost completed. The background looks splotchy with those the
blue brushstrokes, but I'll get to it
in just a second. We can also lighten the
picture a little bit. It's a little too
blue in my painting. And I also need to
fix my background. That would be the last
thing I'll be doing because I worked over wet paint. I didn't wait for my
flowers to dry completely. I dragged some paint
into the background, but now things are drier. Also, my brush was
a little too big. So I working with a
small round brush so I can get between all the flowers and
correct the background, negatively paint
that pink background between the flowers
and the leaves. So that last correction, Let's also thin out that line that separates the table
from the background. I couldn't painted thin enough, but it's very easy if I cover up portion of that line
with the pink background. If you have some
paint leftover, I do. So I'll brush it on the background to
even it out a little bit and going to fill in some gaps that I have where
I didn't have enough paint. So just a few brushstrokes
important to go in different directions
because that's what we see in Van Gogh's painting. Big blue blob here. Let's fill it in with ink. Alright, I think
this looks good. The painting is done. I'm going to very
carefully and slowly take off the tape after
the painting dry it. And here is my replica of
Van Gogh's Irises in a vase. In the next lesson,
let's try to apply it. What we'll learn from
Bengal to our own page.
7. Painting from a Photo: Peonies: Now that we know
a little bit more about how Van Gogh painted, how he approached his florals. Let's attempt to our own
interpretation from a photo. Van Gogh painted any peonies. So it will be especially interesting to put
our own twist on it. The composition is very similar to what he
usually painted. I'm just straight on view of
a vase with some flowers. Before we start working, let's figure out
our painting plan. We will start as we did before
with paintings simplified overall shapes
just to distribute our colors and cover
the painting surface. So to save, our second
step will be to paint the outlines
of the flowers, the vase in the table, the way Van Gogh did. After that, we will
work on the petals, on the flowers paint the leaves, start adding some details, will, will then work
on the background. We will need to paint
that wall and the table. In our last step will be to
do some negative painting. We will give some variety
to all the outlines. We will add the
highlights, small details, and just put final polishing
touches on our painting. You have all the
reference information for this tutorial in your
class materials. If you need to look
at the larger photo or you want to use an outline that I
provided to help you draw the flowers
and the vase. I have my illustration
board taped to my drawing board and tone slightly with cobalt
blue watercolor. I will be painting with
artists gouache again, and I'll tell you that I do not have a pair of pink that will be necessary for these peonies
and grandma make that color. I could probably find
it in other brands. But what I do have is opera
pink by Daniel Smith. It's watercolor paid artists gouache and watercolor
have the same binder. Just the pigments
ground differently. So what I'm going to
do to save myself time and money and effort go
into the art supply store, is that I'm going to mix or
per pink watercolor with white gouache to get that pink for shadows
on the flowers, I'm going to use
Alizarin crimson. I think it will be fine. I can also mix it in into that bright pink
mixture to make it work with the rest
of my flowers. And I think I will
need some cobalt blue little bit
later for the vase, maybe for the background. We will see, I'm
going to squeeze it out on the bottom here
just a little bit. For now, let's draw the
outline of the flowers. Let's draw the overall
shape and let's fill in that shape with our pink to get started on creating
the book came. I didn't draw anything for me. It's easier to draw that
shape with the brush. But again, do what
works best for you. If you need a pencil drawing, by all means, start with that. And I'm going to also
mark where the stems are going to be in the
leaves and the vase. I think I'm going
to give that face an outline with cobalt blue
to make it look the way Van Gogh approached painting of vases and tables
in his paintings. And there will also be some fallen petals
here on the bottom. I will have to
repaint them because I need to paint the table first. But I'll just mark
them for now to make sure my composition works. I think it's fine. It's actually pretty close
to the reference photo. And now I will need
a lot of paint. I will need a lot
of white to paint the vase and also to
paint the background. Here is my acrylic gel. I'm mixing it in
into white gouache. I'm going to fill in
the shape of the vase. I'm dragging some blue and, but it's actually
gone down and we can use a little bit of
color variation there. Let's squeeze out a little
bit of our emerald green. I think it will be perfect
for the background. We can fill in the background
just roughly for now, not mixing the paint
completely because I want that stripy kind
of variegated effect. Can also add some blue
and do the table. The table is wide, but I think it blends
with a vase too much. So I think I'm going
to make it blue using cobalt blue
mixed with white. So just roughly
distributing my colors the same way we did when we
painted the replicas. Let's work on the flowers and
gradually add the details. I'm going to outline
those flowers the way we did it with irises and with sunflowers to
some extent too. I have a small
brush and I'm using pure alizarin crimson to find the shapes of all these petals. That ***** consist of
lots of little petals. In also, I seem some
darker shapes of shadows. But the way we're
going to show them, we're just going to show pure alizarin crimson
shape in that spot. It's important to observe the flowers carefully
even though we're simplifying and we're making our painting more decorative,
more abstract. We still want our flowers to
be recognizable as peonies. So we need smaller
shapes in the centers. But on the perimeter
of the flowers, the petals are fairly large and they fold away from the flowers. So that's what we want. For now. We can do it fairly roughly because our negative painting, negative background will come to our aid in just a
few minutes and we can verify and correct
the shapes of each flower. Okay, There's my
outlines and now I can start filling them in with
different shades of pink. I will do a few darker ones where I see shadows
on the flowers. And then I can do some
lighter ones later. They're in the centers and where the light hits the *****. This photo would be
fairly hard to paint with watercolor because we don't have very pronounced light
and shadows there. There is some flowers, but in general it's lit
with very soft light. But if we use Van
Gogh's approach, we can actually do very good job on it because he was not
concerned with shadows, because he was concerned with
color, shapes and lines. Let's move on to slightly
lighter shapes there in the centers and picking up a lot more white with a small brush. So you see my painting is
going forward fairly quickly. I see some of the edges of the petals have a little
bit of a white border, some outlining them with white. It doesn't all have
to be alizarin. We can have a lighter
outline as well, just finding all
those various shades of pink in the *****. No. So this is the time when I can do negative painting on a small scale and make some of those alizarin lines
a little bit thinner, cover them up with
a lighter pink. This gives a very
interesting effect, a lot of movement and
energy to my painting. I think the flowers look good. I can work on them a little
more later if need be, after I take a break
from them for a minute. Let's work on the
background and let's verify the contours
of those flower. I have my flat brush
and picking up mixture of emerald
green with white. And I am painting
the background, working around the flowers and making corrections on the
shape of that group of flour. And also trying to find those
little negative spaces. If you look closely, there are a couple of them
around that bottom flower, that central flower that's
kinda bottom center of. So I do want to paint that
the way Van Gogh did it in this small negative
spaces are very important. They add that air and the
breathing room to the painting. So now I'm applying the brush strokes on the
background just randomly. I might do a little bit of that vertical stripe that
I see in the reference. I'm going to think about it. Let's paint the stems. I'm actually not using the color that I see
in the reference. I'm using emerald green and also I'm modifying it with
some cobalt blue. We don't have to exactly
follow the reference. We can use the colors that van
Gogh used in his painting, or we can come up with
our own combinations. The leaves are not super-large, so what we are going to add them real quick with
a small round brush, but they really bring
something to the painting. Darker shapes. Let's add another one on this side as well
just to balance it. It's not in the reference photo, but it's not a problem
to paint it real quick. And that stamp was too sick. So I'm going to cover some of it with the mixture that I
use for the background. So you see how
easy it is to make corrections when we
have opaque paint. The tried to add more
texture to the background. I'm going to do a little bit of a vertical stripe
to kind of hinted those boards over the whatever
it is behind that bouquet. I'm going to go fairly lightly at first to see
how it's going to look. I like how those stripes connect the flowers to the
top of the painting so that central
balanced composition is even more accentuated. Also feel I need more
paint on the background, can see my paper through there, so I need a little more paint. Again, I'm not
applying paint evenly. I don't want flat shapes even though I don't have any shadows. I do want some variation
in the brushstroke, variation of texture
and color to restate our fallen petals and
the painting shadows is so liberating for me because
they're not easy to pay. And so you have to
understand how shadows are cast and which color
to mix for them. And do they need
to be transparent? It just complicates our life
as painters quite a bit. They are painting shadows. So Van Gogh and freed us
from all those concerns and showed us how to
work very expressively. And just to have
fun with painting. I lost those lines. I wanted between the table and the wall and
around the vase. So let's bring them back with cobalt blue
with a small brush. I'm not going to do
a rigid outline. I'm just going to add
them in a few spots, making them thicker or thinner. I don't want to even contour. I want it to be varied, so that's what I'm doing. And I think my painting
is pretty much finished. Maybe a little bit more
paint on the background, darken it just a bit, add a little more texture. Let's see how it's
going to look. I stepped away from it for
a minute and evaluated it. And I think what I can do is add a few more white highlights
to the flowers to make them stand out more to increase the contrast in the flowers, though, I have my small
brush and I'm adding pure white and just a few
spots in the centers. Maybe touch up the
vase a little bit, can be a little wider, can blends with the
background too much. So I'm going to make
it slightly lighter, keeping it flat though we
don't want the shadows. Maybe verify if
you petal shapes. And I was not happy with those
stripes in the background. I think they compete with the flowers and distract
from the flowers, I had some leftover paint, that light blue
and green mixture. So I applied it in the
other direction pretty transparently with
transparent brush strokes, with horizontal
brushstrokes that created that basket weave
pattern on the back leg, van Gogh did on his sunflowers. So I think first of all, made
my painting work and also made it look a little more
like Van Gogh's style. And after that it was finished. And here is the final result in a better light pianist
in this style.
8. Class project and final words: For the class project, create a copy of one or several
of Van Gogh's paintings. Pay special attention to color and two brushstrokes and
tried to replicate them as closely as you can reference the two demonstrations
that I included in this class or use any other Van Gogh's paintings
as your inspiration. When you feel more confident
working in this style, try to use the same approach to create your own
original piece of art. I provided several
photos that you might find inspiring in
the class materials, posted paintings and
the project section, I would love to see them. Vincent van Gogh is known
for his original style of painting that art historians
called Post-Impressionism. He only painted for ten years, yet his artwork is immediately recognizable for
its striking color, emphatic brushwork,
and contoured forms. What did we learn from Van
Gogh's approach to painting? We studied Van
Gogh's palette here, used mostly pure
saturated colors, but managed to find a
lot of variation in them and make his paintings visually striking and nuanced. We saw how he simplified
forms, eliminated shadows, and use lines in combination with color shapes
to describe form. We practice his paint
application with defined in pastel brush strokes that
create energy and movement. We did all this not
to imitate or copy his style is modern artists. We studied Van Gogh to
expand artistic horizons. Look at paintings from
a different viewpoint. Aren't the big
brave to experiment and not overthink our work, but follow our heart during
the creative process. As an artist, Van Gogh did
not appear from nowhere. He'll learn from
the impressionists you can do if you take my class, impression is with gouache, where I create replicas of Pierre Auguste Renoir ours
and Claude Monet's paintings. And then paint my own
interpretation of an iris in the style of
the French impressionists. On my YouTube channel, learn to paint with
cosine ionised. So you can watch
additional tutorials where I paint with gouache and create replicas of impressionist and post
impressionist paintings. All my videos have full explanations of the
thought process that goes into creating original
paintings in those styles. I hope you enjoyed
this class and this journey into art history. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you
in the next class.
Ksenia Annis, Figurative artist
