Oil & Cold Wax: Dreamy Little Landscapes

1. Welcome: [MUSIC] Hey, I'm Denise Love and I want to welcome you to class. Let me show you what we'll be doing. In this class, we're going to be making dreamy little landscapes. I really love how a lot of these turned out. Look how beautiful that is. I'm going to be using oil and cold wax during this process because I love how it layers on, it's almost like painting with frosting. It's such a nice consistency and you get the yummy layers. You can work on wet paint and get the entire painting done in one day. You can work wet on dry, you can let paintings dry in-between your layers and add more cold wax medium to the top of that. It just looks so beautiful and textural and you get the depth that you sometimes don't get with other paint mediums. I truly love working on these fun little pieces in this class. Look how pretty that is. I hope you're going to love hopping into oil and cold wax medium with me. If you've never worked with this medium at all, it's definitely going to be a fun adventure for you. I have the intro to cold wax class that you could check out if you want to dive deeper into this medium. But what I like about doing small landscapes is they're not so big, it's not super overwhelming, and you get pretty little pieces of art when you're done that you can give away, you could sell, you could use as cards, you could use as gift tags. There's lots of fun things that you could do. You could frame them up and hang them in a little gallery, you could do a 100-day project for something like this and create a different landscape every day. That's super fun. I really hope you're going to enjoy creating a few of these. I do think doing landscapes in the cold wax medium is one of my favorite way to make a landscape. I hope you're going to enjoy this technique and I'll see you in class. [MUSIC] 2. Supplies: [MUSIC] Let's take a look at our supplies that we use with cold wax and oil paint. First of all, you're going to need some oil paint. I'd recommend if you're just starting out, to stick within a brand that you can afford because there's 15 or 20 different brands out there and they range from anything from student grade all the way to super fine, high-quality handmade artist paints. If you're just getting started and you're going to buy your basics, I would pick a line that is within what you can afford and buy either some of the basic colors where you can mix your colors yourself or maybe pick out a range of your favorite colors for whatever project it is that we're working on. With landscapes, I'm probably thinking more muted colors, things that are like I'm looking through fog in the morning, at daybreak that look like they have that lower muted colors with fog. I may not be choosing the brightest pink I can find, but at the same time, I can mix in some color with this pink to make it more muted or use it as a dab somewhere on there as just a tiny bit of accent color. If some of the brighter colors appeal to you, like I think sometimes orange looks really nice layer to under blue because it changes the tonality a little bit and makes it more exciting, especially in a landscape, so if you've got a good orange to use as an undercoat, that would be fine, but you're just going to have to experiment with some of these and maybe consider doing some color mixing as you go on. There are several lines like I was talking about, and academic level or student grade is one of the lines. Some of the main differences there in the quality is the amount that they refine it, the amount of pigment that's in there, the amount of fillers that are included in that mixture. The lower the line, the more fillers and less pigment you're normally going to have. Then as you move up the line and they get finer and paints, then you're going to have more handmade, more refined, more pigment, they're going to be ultra smooth. You're going to pay for those differences in the cost of that manufacturing of that color. These are Artist's Loft by Michaels. I just got these because I like the silver and the gold and I thought that's fun for accents on things. I do have a few student grade, but I tend to stick in the ones that I can find at the art store. I've got Rembrandt, Grumbacher, Winsor and Newton. Those are not the most expensive. Price-wise, not the most expensive. I got him. Graham, Sennelier. Sennelier is going to be a little more expensive and Charvin is a little more expensive. Then I've got Old Holland. This is Whole and Gamblin. Gamblin are not the most expensive either. It's more medium price range. I like having a big white and I like having a big titanium buff. But we can make our own titanium buff with yellow ocher and white, so you don't necessarily have to have a big one. Each of these are just due because years ago I got them and I'm still using them. The problem with keeping oil paints for years and coming back to them and working with them after several months of not working with them is sometimes you can't get the lids back off. Now I'm more careful when I take those lids off to make sure that it's clean in the screw area, there as I screw them back on so that the next time I come back to these, I can actually get the lid off again because I've had to throw out tubes of paint that I couldn't get the top off or that got completely hard for some reason like this one I've let get hard. Some of them I've cut the bottom off and scooped pain out from the bottom just to make sure I didn't waste whatever was still in there that was good. Oil paints, I'd buy, if you're just getting started, a selection of maybe a few of your favorite colors and colors that you're wanting to represent in a landscape. Some colors for the sky and a few colors for our land part, which as we're going through class, you might watch the color sampler videos and see a lot like those and maybe go for colors in those shades before you go out buying just to not buy lots of random colors that you end up not liking. But it just depends on when you want to go art shopping. Every time I film an art class like this, I definitely take it as an opportunity to go to the art store and buy more stuff. [LAUGHTER] It's not like I need them at all, but I did take the opportunity to go and say, what new colors might I need? I love buying art supplies. More so, sometimes than making the art, I think that's a separate hobby. [LAUGHTER] The other thing that we're definitely going to have to have in addition to oil paints is the cold wax medium. There's a couple of brands that you can get that are fairly popular and easy to combine. You can get them on Amazon if you don't have a art store near you. But the Gamblin cold wax medium is what I'll be using in this class. This is a 16-ounce can and it goes pretty far for especially if we're going to be doing landscapes, samplers, and things like that. One can will go a long way. I keep this for a while. Then I have a backup can in case I think I might need more than I got. If you're really excited and love working in cold wax and oil paint, which I do actually really love this medium, it's one of my very favorite personally, then they sell bigger quantities that you can get. But I don't think I'd start out with a big quantity until you know you love it that much and you'll really be using it. I'm using the Gamblin cold wax medium. There's also the Dorland's Wax medium, which is just a slightly different formulation, but a very good one to work with too. If you have access to the Dorland's instead of the Gambling, that's just as fine. The Galkyd Lite is an additive that Gamblin makes that you can add to your cold wax medium, because when you mix cold wax with oil paint, it becomes a very matte surface. It's not shiny at all. It's super matte. Adding a little bit of Galkyd Lite will work a little bit with the dry time. It'll speed the dry time up. This already drives pretty fast. It'll dry to the touch overnight. But this Galkyd Lite aids in the dry time and will give your paint a more satiny finish. If you don't want it as matte as it comes out when you're painting, then know that if you add a drop of Galkyd Lite in each of your paint mixtures, that will give you a more of a satin finish. That's a nice finish too. But nothing's really going to take it back to the full shine of the oil paint because you've just lost that once you started working with wax. You can get up to a satiny finish with the Galkyd. I also have odorless mineral spirits or Gamsol. Gamsol is odorless mineral spirits by Gamblin. I have that in a little brush jar so that anything that I happen to use for a brush, I'll have that cleaner available. When you use this, you don't have to take this cleaner out and do anything with it for years really. You could just keep on using it over and over. Anything that you clean in there and it muddies up the water, it just settles to the bottom and just becomes sediment down there. At some point far in the future, when you feel like you really need to change it out, then that sediment can then be wiped out and thrown in the trash rather than put into your sink or any plumbing like that because a lot of these oil paints, some of them are toxic and you don't want to put toxic materials down the sink and into your water supply. Maybe get a jar with some spirits in it. Odorless mineral spirits is what I use, but you could use the Gamsol too. I wouldn't use turpentine or traditional paint cleaners because they stink and you might react to fumes. I just like having less toxic items around. Then just like that color settle to the bottom, you don't have to worry about changing that liquid out super frequently at all. Another thing that we're going to be using in class is a variety of palette knives. I have so many of these, it's ridiculous if you see my little palette knife jar. I really like plastic palette knives for mixing and scraping, sometimes. I like this one with a square head for painting, so I might have that one out. I like a bigger one if we're doing a larger abstract-y thing. The bigger your knife, the bigger swash of color that you can get from it. I also have a couple of catalysts blades. I'll set those right there. But there's a variety of knives and they each have a different head tooling and a different use maybe. I'd be experimenting with the heads that you got, but for this class, I like the square head one, and then I like some of these smaller pie-shaped ones, that's what I'll be using. I also have a little mark-making tool. This is a clay tool that you get over there for working with clay in the art department. You don't have to have all the little clay tools, but I do like this one that does mark-making. But you don't even have to have that if you don't want to invest in anything like that. You could just use some wood skewers for some nice mark-making that has a nice tip, and this came from the grocery store. There are a lot of different things there, I do a little bit less mark-making in these yummy landscapes than I do regular abstracts and things like that, so I do keep those tools to a minimum. I'm also going to be using some fan brushes. I have a variety here just to experiment with, this is a sable art fan brush, this one is a red sable, this one so old, it's sticky and I'm not sure what it was, but it's more of a thicker, rough one, this is an old, rich. But I'm going to be experimenting with my little color studies and stuff, do I want the softer fan? Do I want the harder fan? We'll talk about what works and what doesn't as we're going if I'm using the soft one and I'm like, oh, that doesn't work at all, then you'll know not to get that one. I could just tell you about it and then you might not remember it, but if we're actually doing it in class and I'm talking about it as you're watching me do it, then you might think, I remember that and that's not the one I want and I have a feeling this one's going to be too soft, this one's a little bit stiffer, but maybe not too soft but maybe not too hard and then these are definitely thicker and I think they're going to make definite lines in our paint as we're going, so I've got a few to just experiment with and that way you'll know what you want to buy when you go to the store based on the experiments that we do. Over here, I also have some catalysts brushes, and a silicone bowl scraper and this is Messermeister is the one I've got, there are a couple of brands out there, if you look up silicone bowl scraper on Amazon, lots of choices come up and there are a couple of brands I've seen that do the shape, but this is the most popular one and it runs $18-20, and it comes in a couple of colors, I like the orange because I can find it, [LAUGHTER] if it were a more subtle color, I might lose it because I had things for myself in my art room. This is my favorite scraper, it comes to a point here, it's not super thick, it's nice and thin, it's got a hard piece in it, so it's pliable at the end, but not the whole thing, which I really like and it comes to a point and it's just got different surfaces that I could use to do paint on, and even though I've let paint get right here, as I'm going I wipe paint off this surface, I could just take a little bit of oil, I got some vegetable oil or olive oil, I could just oil that up a little bit and wipe it right off, silicone tools are really easy to clean and this is my favorite scraper, I'll definitely be using it and I got a new one a while back because I thought one day this is going to wear out and I'm going to need a new one but it's still hadn't worn out and so I hadn't taken this one out of the package is not that funny. The other scrapers that you'll find at the art store is the catalyst brand. Again, I thought I was going to wear that at some point but I hadn't, so I have a backup, their silicone, they don't quite have the same feel as this and they don't come to a sharp point, so I don't use this one as much, but I do have it and I have used it, you can see how much paint there that I've got on it's because I'll pull it out and experiment with it. But these are the ones that you'll find at the art store, so if that's all you can get your hand on, it's still a great scraper and that's my catalyst and they also have some cutouts on it. You need a smooth one at the minimum, and then if you want to do marks and things and your pieces later then some of the ones with the cutouts are fun to play with. Then there's also this bowl scraper that I'd found on Amazon; It's silicone too and it's not a specific brand, I don't think, but I don't love it and I don't use it. If you only get one, get the orange, get this one, just choices that I have, and then I have some catalyst rubber brushes and they come in different shapes and they're fun to play with also their are silicone different sizes, and then this is Master's Touch and it's like a paintbrush, but it's a silicone paintbrush. I do have some of those to play with, I doubt if I'll be using them in this project, but I do have them available, this will be probably my main tool that I'm using in these projects, but they are just an option, so when you're out looking at least you've seen them and know what they are. I also have several different mark making tools that I might consider using in a lot of my cold wax pieces, but maybe less so today, but I just want to bring them up because you may find a reason to use them as you go and I like corrugated cardboard, so these are just torn off of a box that I had a package delivered in and so are these, this has such a fun shape that it came wrapped around something that was packaged. I'm definitely keeping that, look at that yummy shape that has, this was the most exciting thing in my package after I unwrapped it. If you get fun shaped cardboard in any of your packaging that you get delivered, save it, super fun for mark-making and lines and things in your work, and I usually use these in my abstract pieces, but just be on the lookout for fun things like that. These are my favorite mark-making pieces which I doubt I'll use in the landscapes set, maybe this one and it's got really tiny thin ribbed lines there and these are foam stamps, these came from the children's department at Michaels one day when I was hunting the store for anything that looked like I might want it for my cold wax paintings and funny enough, I've not really seen any recently, so that might be harder to find, but these are foam stamp pieces and I use these a ton, these are the ones I've put back to save, this is my favorite one and you can see. That right there is so yummy, I almost want to frame it, but this is my favorite one right here and then I also like the dots, so I have somewhat dots that I use over and over. Fine, just keep your eyes open when you're out shopping and looking. [MUSIC] 3. A Few More Supplies: The next thing I like having around is deli paper or wax paper. This comes out of the kitchen. I have it in a box of squares that I got at the Sam's Club. This is dry wax paper that they sell and it's just a box I keep here in my studio. I got it at Sam's and it wasn't very expensive and I like it because it's in sheets, but you can also get deli paper or wax paper from the grocery store in rolls and you can just cut a piece off the roll as you need it. This is really good because with the cold wax medium, you're spreading paint on like it's frosting, it's really thick. It's not like a traditional paint that you're putting on with a paintbrush normally, and so the layers can sit on top of each other and then you can take a brayer on top of your piece and smoosh those colors in together and it's not going to blend them. It's actually going to make all the colors sink down to the same layer but still be separated. That's fun because we may be doing that on some of our pieces. Smooshing those down to the same layer and fanning and spreading and softening, rather than having all the layers sit on top of each other. Just as an experiment to see what difference that gives us. I do have wax paper and a brayer handy over here in my cart of art supplies. Now, I have little carts of art supplies. I have this big table that I sit at, one of those folding tables that's two-by-four, and I like it because my studio got lots of different things that I do in it with photography and stuff like that and so I can pick it up and put it out of the way if I needed to, if I needed the space for something and then I have these rolling carts where the supplies sit on it, sitting over here to my left so that as I need something, I can grab that and put it on the table. Whereas if everything was in the cabinet over here, I'd be getting up trying to go to the cabinet every few minutes and it's so much easier to have the things I need most right over here. As I said that, I just remembered tape. We're going to be using special paper for a lot of these and so I also want to have available tape, to tape off my papers. I have a couple of options that I use. This is artist's tape that you get from the art store and it's good because it's made hopefully not to tear your paper. But I think it's a little more pricey generally than painter's tape that you get from the hardware store. So the blue painters tape is my very favorite and I like this one inch size or 3/4 inch. It says 3/4, I think. No, this is one inch. This one inch is my favorite size. I also found on my last trip to the paint store, this purple tape right over there beside the painter's tape, and it is supposed to be a delicate surfaces paint tape. Our paper is a delicate surface. If you use masking tape on it, later when you go to peel that tape off, you're going to tear parts of your paper off and so you want to use tape that's not going to be so sticky, it tears your paper when you try to remove it. Either one of these has worked out really well. I've used this on several pieces and been very happy with how it works. But the blue painters tape is the one I use the most. Just some choices on tape there, just don't use masking tape or scotch tape or anything like that. Now, for a lot of my painting, I use a ceramic palette because it's more eco-friendly and I've got a couple of them because why not? They're eco-friendly and you can scrape the paint off and throw it away rather than washing paint down your sink. Because I am a big believer in not washing paints down the sink because some of them are toxic and they get in your water supply and you're just not supposed to do it. This is a better way to dispose of paint, scraping the paint off and throw it away after it gets dry. But with oil paint, you can definitely use something that's eco-friendly. Also, you can use a glass tile that's made for doing something like this and then use your paints and then you would let those dry a bit and scrape them off with a little hand scraper. But for this class, I'm going to be using disposable paper palettes. I like the gray. They come in gray and they come in white. Then I also like, because right here on the very top of it, it just gives you a few color basics and talks about the shades and the tints and the color and complimentary colors and gives you some ideas on color. But I like the gray because it's supposed to be more true for you when you're looking at it to view your colors, you're supposed to get a more true idea what those colors will be compared to being on white paper palette. But I have white paper palettes too. Whatever you can get your hands on. The paper palette is easier to use with this because we're going to be mixing a lot of paints and it's oil paint. It's not like acrylic paints, so it doesn't completely dry very quickly and I don't know, I've just gotten to where this is easier for the oil painting and my nice little pallets are easier for acrylic painting so that's the way I go. Then when I'm painting, I try to have a trash piece of paper or trash cradle board around and I call it trash because I'm figuring it's going to be the piece that I put all the leftover paint on because even if I have a lot of paint left, I don't just want to waste it and throw it away. Paint's expensive. I want something sitting around that I could then at the very end if I'm like, I'm done but I don't want to throw this pain away. It's not really going to be good tomorrow. I want to be able to scrape that paint off and put it on something that can then be the underpainting of a future painting probably. We're trying not to waste paint if we can. I mean, once you go buy some of this paint, you'll understand that concept too. I've got a couple of different surfaces that we can paint on during class and for the most part, I like painting on paper because I can easily store it. They don't take up a lot of space. I discovered over the years with the different art classes that I have done that if I do a bunch of pieces on cradle board or on canvas, what do I do with those? I ran out of wall space. Do I give them away, do I try to sell them? They get in the way. For some of the stuff that I do, I want to be able to pull them back out later and look at them, or use them for samples or go have them framed and so a lot of times, I like to work on paper, especially if you're doing samplers and color studies and things like that. They're easy to store and I can just put them in a cabinet that I have over here for paper pieces. I love working on paper. I'm using for this class, Arches Oil Paper. It comes in a couple of different sizes and it comes in big sheets. I've got the 9 by 12 pad and I have the 12 by 16 pad. I just keep a couple of these pads around because the oil painting in the cold wax is my favorite thing to come in and play with. I like having the paper available rather than thinking, oh no, I don't have any paper and I can't do this today. You can also use watercolor paper, but you must prime that watercolor paper or whatever surface you choose. But I'd recommend at least 140 pound watercolor paper. This is 140 pound oil paper. These are already primed for oil paint. It's a technique that they put in the pulp as they're making the paper so it's infused into all the fibers of the paper and it is already prepared ready for oil paint. If you try to paint on watercolor paper or mixed media paper or sketch paper or anything like that, it's not prepped for oil paint. What it will do is very absorbent and it will leach the oil out of the oil paint and it will make a greasy ring around any oil paint that you've got on there. I discovered that when I was making little color palettes for little pieces that I was doing and I'd have a color palette on some watercolor paper of whatever piece I happen to have done so that I could save that and refer back to it later and then a year on, all of those little paints have ugly little rings around them. Here's an example of that. These were some color studies that I did with some different colorways and just playing to see what I could do. I saved my color samples here on a piece of just scrap paper. I think this is just mixed media paper. But look how the oil leeched out and leached through to the back. At some point too, that paint could separate from that paper because I don't know, it just leaches through and then isn't a really good adhesion. At that point when it's doing that, the paper's oily and everything. Even for the color palette pieces now, I'm probably going to cut up a piece of Arches oil for that and save them on that instead of trying to save it on some other paper because this is what you end up with, with the oil paint. If you do try to use some paint that you have, if you have some gesso, like the Liquitex gesso or whatever brand it is that you're using, you can coat the paper in several coats of gesso. One coat is not enough, so you do a coat, let that dry, do a coat the other direction, let that dry. Some artists use up to four coats of gesso on pieces that they're making that are serious, that they're going to put up for sale and stuff but if you're going to use watercolor paper or some other paper, you do need to prime it with gesso or it will not work for you very well. The Arches oil is what I'm using. Then you can also use cradle boards. I have several pieces. I went to the Dick Blick and just got a super pack to play with. It comes in different sizes. If I'm doing play pieces like this, then I don't mind the thinner side. Then if we use these, these are unfinished wood so we do have to coat this in gesso before we can use it because it will also leach the oil back out into the wood. It just doesn't work very well either so we have to gesso that. We would take the sides and then we'll paint the sides with any color that we want to finish our piece. It doesn't have to be with oil paint. I usually paint the sides with an acrylic paint and a color that complements so that this is then ready to hang up. But if I'm doing really serious pieces that I want to make a statement, then I actually like the really deep sides and so I might get inch and a half on the side panel if I've got some pieces that I've really been practicing and I thought, I'm ready to do some serious pieces for a gallery or to sell or give away as gifts. Then I think when you do the one-and-a-half-inch side, it looks so rich, and when you hang it on the wall, it just makes such a statement. If you get real serious about it and you're using cradle boards and you want it to look really rich, get the deep-sided cradle board for that. One last thing I meant to mention, because so many oil paints have toxic ingredients possibly that you might be using, definitely make sure you think about safety and use some gloves. The blue gloves are nitrile. If you get the latex, or I know there's another type glove out there, those are fine too, they're the creamy-colored gloves. The nitrile is nice if you are allergic to latex. Then this just happens to be the box that I found. When I was out looking for a box of gloves, that's the one I got. But definitely consider wearing gloves every time you do these because you're going to get so much oil paint and stickiness on your hands from the way that we do this. Because when we're pulling paint off of these and your hands will just get all blocked up and sticky and you don't want to have all those sitting on your skin so definitely get the gloves. I also keep handy some shop towels to be wiping things off my silicone pieces and stuff like that. These come from the paint store and I like them because they're thicker and they're really heavy-duty. You can use paper towels if you want. I also have plenty of paper towels handy. These are also really nice for buffing your piece when you're finished because they don't have all the fibers and stuff that would stick to your piece when you're buffing. I love having the shop towels available. That's what you'll see me using, but you can also use paper towels. If you're going to be using any powdered pigments in your paint, which I'm not doing, but you certainly can mix powdered pigment in with your oil, wax medium, and create a paint that way, then make sure you're wearing a mask so that you're not breathing in all the little particles of the pigment. I just wanted to throw out there, a word about safety there. The oil paint and the odorless mineral spirits, even though it's odorless, they still have a fume that they're putting off. So if you're fume reactive or fume sensitive, then consider working with an air purifier in your room, maybe the window open and a fan going. Just consider some of these things. If you're ever working with art supplies and you get a headache, you are reacting to something and you need to have more air circulation in the room than you currently have. At the minimum, maybe turn your fan on if you've got a ceiling fan. I actually have some window fans that go in my window and pull air out because I like to work with several different mediums that need a lot more ventilation than others. So consider different types of ventilation if you're starting to work with this particular medium or odorless mineral spirits or what have you and you start feeling like you're reacting or you're getting a headache, you need some more airflow in the room. I just wanted to mention a little bit about safety there. Just keep those things in mind, and I'll see you in class. 4. Saving some ideas for reference: One of the things that I've done that I want you to do too, is collect inspiring, atmospheric, moody landscapes. I have gone on Pinterest and I was just searching moody landscapes, fog, atmospheric landscapes and I went through and I just saved inspiring pictures so that I would get an idea of color, composition, different horizon lines that we could consider. I just wanted a bunch of ideas and even though these don't look exactly like animal paintings are going to look, it does give me an idea of some colors that I could consider. Just a high horizon, we could have a high horizon with lake or water. We could consider other colors in our piece rather than just gray fog. So I was just collecting some to just get ideas that I might consider in a moody atmospheric landscape. I want you to look around on Pinterest and in magazines or go out on a foggy morning and take a few of these photos yourself of the fog. Because this right here is the perfect little landscape for what we're doing. It's moody, it's got a horizon line, a little bit of a tree line, a moody sky there. Same with this one, with the ocean where it's got a lower horizon and a moody skyline up there, this one where I really love that, it's moody all around and we've got the center horizon coming in on the lake and this one right here will be very inspirational for me in one of my pieces. Again, very moody, we're on some water. We can see our trade line going up and down super fun. I want you to be looking around and even consider going out on a morning at the fog and you want to go early in the day when the fog is still there because after the sun gets up and it gets warm and the fog burns off, you've missed your opportunity. Then of course, look here on Pinterest for some good ideas that you might just be able to refer back to later. Something fun that I like to do that I just wanted to mention there, collect inspiration for your pieces. 5. Horizon lines: [MUSIC] In this video, let's talk a little bit about horizon lines. This is just a sketch book that I'm using here, it's nothing special for oil paint because I'm not going to be painting in it, but it's just a mixed media pad. But, I want to talk about different horizon lines that we might consider in our color studies. I'm just going to draw some squares on here that look like what our color studies might look like, [NOISE] and talk about different horizon lines that we might consider. I like to think in the rule of thirds personally, here you don't normally want something right across the center, it's a lot less interesting. I wouldn't do 50-50 personally, that just is not my favorite. I would either do lower thirds or upper thirds so that you have a little bit of land and a whole lot of sky, or a little bit of sky and a whole lot of land. That would be probably my first choice. Next choice might be lower thirds, but maybe we have a tree line or some hills. That would be really fun. Another thing that might be fun is lower thirds or upper thirds, maybe we're doing that sky and lake scene, and they're all blending together, the sky is reflecting into the water. Maybe, I want to have some type of land come into my scene, but not necessarily all the way across. I could have that in the upper third too, it doesn't have to just be that lower third. I can do that in either way. That's a couple of ideas there of horizon lines that we might consider. When you're looking at landscape inspiration, I want you to look at what is the horizon line in the photo that you're looking at. Why did you like that photo so much? What are the colors? What's inspiring about that inspirational piece that you saved for whatever reason? Keep in mind some of the different horizon lines that you might consider for a peace that you're painting. These are some of the more popular ones that I'm going to consider. I definitely don't want a 50-50 line right across the panel because it's not very interesting. I'm going to be thinking personally probably lower thirds, lower thirds with maybe a tree line or a hill bump. Then I really like when the landscape comes in, but maybe not all the way over and I like that lower and upper third. Find find the great big splotch of land with a little bit of sky, that looks good too. It really depends on how you do it as to how that works out. I'm probably going to stick with lower third, lower third with a tree line and maybe some of these coming in, but just different things to experiment. If you would study some of the pictures that you love, maybe draw out a square and draw out a horizon line that matches that picture to save for yourself for ideas later. I like having ideas to refer to so that when I'm looking at a piece of paper and I'm thinking what am I going to do? I can refer back to something and be like, "Oh, I think I'm going to do this one and I get excited rather than just sitting there with a blank mind [LAUGHTER]. Consider horizon lines, and make yourself a little cheat sheet of some ideas as we're going. [MUSIC] 6. Mixing paints: [MUSIC] In this video, let's talk about mixing our paints. You'll notice in the very first color study, the little landscape that we do, that I'm starting out with some colors that I already had mixed up on a pallet and said I'd been playing and I was already working with the colors. That was this little landscape where I used yellow ocher sepia, transparent, earth orange, fallow blue, terre verte, and titanium white. But apparently, when I was mixing the colors to show you how I mix colors, I didn't hit record. In that first video, you're going to see me working with some colors that I forgot to record. In this video, [LAUGHTER] I'm going to show you how I mix the paints. But it's going to be a different set than I had originally started with just because I don't want to duplicate that. I want to make another little landscape in a few different colors. I always use a little bit of titanium white. I went ahead and put the titanium white out here. Then I thought maybe I could test out olive green, which is a color that I just got and this is whole bean. I thought this would be fun to play with. I have realized that when you're getting your paint out of your container, if you leave any paint up here that can then squish down when you squish the lid down, it basically glues your lid shut for the next time you're coming to get paint. If you will do that where you flatten it out and don't get extra paint on the side and even consider taking your extra towels or whatever and cleaning the top of that off before you put your lid on, you will not glue your lid shut. Because let me tell you, that becomes a problem after a while and then you just can't get anything open when they're glued shut. You just have to be real careful about that. I'm actually going to be a lot more careful now than I have been in the past. I'm also going to try the sepia. This is also a whole bean color. I like the sepia because it's a really nice deep brown, similar to Van **** brown almost but a little bit different shade and maybe a little tiny bit of the thalo blue. Put a little bit of that out there. Let me tell you, this blue is intense. If you get it on anything, it just keeps on going. [LAUGHTER] Then maybe transparent earth orange because I really like this orangey tone. Then I thought maybe I'd try this [inaudible] cool gray. The landscapes, I'm trying to limit my color palette. I'm looking at my inspiration photos that I collected on Pinterest and just seeing what colors are in that, what can I do with that? I put a little bit of the cold wax down and I put a bit of the oil paint down. I'm aiming to mix the cold wax medium with the paint, and I want to do it at about a 50, 50 paint to wax ratio. You don't want to really go over 50 percent wax because it starts to break down the consistency of stuff over time. You can do as little as say, 30 percent wax to paint if you want to do less wax because the more wax, it does feel waxier when you're using these paints. The paints themselves feel waxier. Then I always seal my little container back up immediately just so it doesn't dry out. I do all that first. That way I'm not mixing paint and sticking my dirty palette knife back into my paint bucket and contaminating my wax. Then I will come and mix everything. It's at this moment right here where you can then, if you want to try the Galerkin light, and this is an oil paint medium additive. What it does is it ages the drying time and this stuff already dries pretty fast. You'll hope it'll be dry to the touch in 24 hours. But this will also give it a little bit of a sheen and you just want a dropper too, not hardly any at all, just a tiny amount, and Gamon says up to one-third if you have to, but just a very tiny amount. I think I'll put it in my color palette this time because I don't put it in the color palettes of any of the other ones that you're watching that I do. It just might be fun to experiment with. I don't normally use this. This actually makes it a little more creamier, like it's, I don't know how to explain it until you're mixing it, but it's a little less waxy feeling even though it's full of the wax, so it does change your consistency a little bit. It will give our final landscape, so it'll give a little bit of a satin sheen rather than being completely flat. That'll be interesting for you to just experiment and play with, consistencies but quite a bit different, actually mixing them in. If you mix a few with just the wax and then mix one or so with that additive, you can really feel the difference. It's a lot creamier in the way that it feels. I'm just getting everything ready before I even move on to doing a piece. Now that we've got all our paints mixed up, we are ready to start. I always put on a pair of gloves when I'm working in the oil paints, which I should have had it on mixing those, but I was actually very careful not to get it on my skin because, lots of oil paints have toxic materials in it and you don't want to get this on your skin. I definitely recommend wearing some gloves when you're working with this and painting. Then I'm also going to show you in the next video how we prep our paper and then we'll get started. [MUSIC] 7. Prepping your paper: [MUSIC] In this video, let's prep our papers. I have cut out some five-by-five squares just because that gives me an option on how big I want these. I was playing around and seeing did I want it larger, did I want it smaller. You'll see even in some of the landscapes that we paint that I'm testing out, how do I really want to do this? [LAUGHTER] I'm actually going backwards and now coming back to record this. I need to move the paint out of my way because I just stuck my tape in the paint and I have a habit of sticking my arm in paint. I'm right-handed, so I put it on the right side, but then everything is sitting in paint. [LAUGHTER] I've caught five-by-five sheets. If you're using the arches oil paper, I used the largest pad and decided to cut it into smaller pieces because I got a bunch of pieces out of that. It's already prepped for oil paints, so I don't have to prime it. If you're using like 140-pound watercolor paper, you do have to prime that before you can paint it because it's just not prepped for oil paint. The oil will leach out over time and then the paint will flake off. It's just not prepped for oil paints. You want to do 2-3 coats of gesso on your watercolor paper. This is Liquitex gesso, it's what I use. If you're using something other than paper that's prepped for oil paint, you need to prime it with 2-3 coats of that. Then you can paint on top of it with oil paint. I'm just using painter's tape that we get from the hardware store because that's usually the most economical way and it's less likely to tear our paper when we peel it. I've decided I want to do little landscapes that are landscape in format. We'll be making several that are in this format. Then I trim the paper off at the bottom when I'm done because I was painting on the bottom of these accidentally. I want to do a little landscapes. I want to tape it off about the shape that I want and then it gives me enough paper to trim later. That's how I'm going to be doing my little landscapes during this workshop. [MUSIC] 8. Big Sky Landscape: [MUSIC] In this project, I'm going to be using some of those colors that we mixed up. I've already been out here experimenting a bit. Getting paint on my table. [LAUGHTER] It's really good if you cover any surface you're going to be working on with some type of surface, you don't mind getting dirty. Then I've taped a piece of paper. I've cut up a bunch of five-by-five pieces of paper out of a big piece of paper just to play on because here's an older one, so don't judge. But I've tried it like this where I've taped off several days and just went back and played and to see what I could get and then I found that if I did them all wet and I went one after another, I was putting my hand at them. I've decided that I find it easier to work on one little piece of paper and I can move it around and then I can set it to the side. I've just taped this smaller than the five-by-five because I thought I want these to be a little fun or abstracts that aren't too big. They're just easy to accomplish doesn't take all day to do. I have taped it to just the back of a mixed media pad that I had. The very last page is that thick cardboard thing and I thought I'm going to save these and let be able to use those as my surface for some of this. Part of what makes an atmospheric landscape to me is like maybe we're at the lake and we're looking were there early in the morning and we're looking through the fog and so everything's misty and blending together and so I want my piece to do that too. I want to have a horizon line in there, so I'm just going to start laying some color in a little bit. We can go light color on top of dark color with this technique because we're working with such thick paint medium that we can layer right on top of it without a problem. I think I'm going to take a little tiny bit of blue and make a really light bluish color and maybe a little bit of this sepia, that was more than a little and try to get a blue-gray like just a real soft blue-gray color to start off up here. Maybe I want a little bit of this white with some of that sepia and create just a warm grayish tone in there too because I almost want this to be like I'm there early in the morning. Part of what makes these atmospheric to me is that the paint gets real soft and smudgy and blended. That very first layer, I'm going to work on some of that softness, and then the layer I put on top of that will add in some details and stuff. But I really want it to just start off real blended and soft, smudgy like that. Then we can start working a bit on some upper layers and stuff because then I might come back and add some more detail for this light cloud area and I can add a little more detail for our bottom landscape area. You can see how, to begin with, working small definitely going to be much easier and save your sanity than starting with a big piece. It lets you experiment and play with colors, which I really like to do, and then trying to be when I do this real soft with my palette knife, I don't want to do the palette knife so heavy that I am smudging what I've already put on there and digging into the wax that I've already done. I'm going to zoom in some and let that focus a little bit on what we're actually painting maybe. Then as you work your colors, I'm going to do several times where I blend and add color and come back and blend. Just to give it depth as we're working to give it a definition to add to the interests. I don't want to spend days and days on little pieces like this, but I do want to spend some time working each piece a little bit. This is my fan brush and I have discovered that the softer the paint, the softer the brush is better because the real heavy thick brush tends to just dig way too much into the paints. But I'm just here maybe giving a little moodiness to the clouds and stuff, I want to be real careful not to pick up that bottom color so I am doing the wipe off of the brush like I do with the wipe off of the soft silicone scraper. Then two, be real careful not to do this right in the middle like I just did because you'll get weird lines in the middle. Might be easier if you start at the edges and swipe from there and then build and grow your piece from that. I find it fun to mix the colors here on my knife too because then I can have some interest and some differences going in that layer that maybe we didn't have otherwise. I do like mixing and doing that, that's fun. Maybe adding some marks into our landscape and then smoothing over some of those and leaving some of them. I know we might come on back up here to our top. Might do a little bit of blue and umber in that top part again. Get a little interest going in our sky. I did pull it down into that part that I just did, but I might just layer right back on top of it because I wanted the sky to really come to that horizon, not sit above it. I didn't want it to look like they were separated as I felt like I just had them. Then maybe one more sushi here of what we're adding in. Just mixing a few colors on my brushes to instantly add some other depth in there without extra layers. Maybe I'll come back with a little bit of a cloud cover. Now that we've got it where I want it there. Then I'm just being real careful to lightly smooth that in so that I have an interesting stormy little sky there going. It's not really stormy, but more interesting cloud movement, I guess we could say. I might just tack a little tiny bit more into the bottom here. Maybe with the brown and the green, not brown, but this is that orange earth ocher and that terraverty just because I think it's fun. I like those colors. I might do a little bit of the sepia in there just for extra bit of darkness. That's beautiful. I'm loving that. Let's just see what we got. I would normally wait overnight to peel that open, but I want to work a little faster on these. I don't want to spend so much time on it that I work and work and rework it. I just want to play with color, get my swishiness go in with my silicone scraper there, and see what I can get. Look at that. As soon as you peel the tape, it instantly gets way more fun. Look how pretty that is. I love that. I'm going to call this one like looking out at the mountains on a clear day because that ended up really pretty and rather than overwork it, I think I'm going to stop that one there and maybe play on a color study with some different colors because that's very pretty, I'm very happy with that. I hope you enjoyed this quick little painting and in atmospheric feel getting those first smudgy layers in there to really make that atmosphere for you. Then adding on just bits of color above that, some clouds, and some landscaping, and seeing what you can come up with. I think I'll do some more color studies with you in this same vein because they're fun, and it lets you see some other colorways that you might want to experiment with. Let's get to it. [MUSIC] 9. Warm red and purple Landscape: So I've gone ahead and take down another sample or piece here. I've added some more colors to my palette. I've added this green earth by Old Holland, which is another oil paint brand. I just randomly thought that's a pretty color. When I was at the Dick Blick, I've added in a ivory black by that Old Holland company. I've added in a whole lean, neutral gray, which is this one, that's the green, that's the black. This is an M. Graham & Co, turquoise. I've also added in some Winsor & Newton cadmium orange, and quinacridone violet, just because I want to experiment with more little color studies and I don't want to keep going back and forth mixing color because it just slows you down. So if I want to experiment with, say, a sunrise that looks all pink and magenta with those light misty colors, I want to have a little bit of that color available. So I'm going to go ahead and get that first layer started. Probably with the brown. Maybe a little bit of this orange earth. Maybe not. Maybe I'm going to just rethink this. Hang on. So maybe I actually want that underlayer to be the magenta. Let's go ahead and do that magenta feel that I was just talking about. Then that'll just be the undercoat. That won't be my final piece. But it might be interesting to see what that does as we're going. Let me just see if I can spread that out on here. Again, I've just taped to the paper to a shape that I like. I don't want it square. I want it to look a little more landscape-y in the shape. I've just taken that little bit larger piece that I had cut and just made a larger, just fill it in larger, just because I wanted to. I'm just scraping some of that extra paint off and we'll just save that over there. Then we can come in now with maybe some lighter colors, maybe white and gray at the top. Then let's just see as we blend this. Because I want it foggy. I want that slight undertone of some color. I'm going to start by just getting the paint on here and then we'll smooth it out with our silicone bowl scraper. Then once I smooth it, then I'll add in some landscaping and then clouds and stuff. But I want to get these first, initial soft layers going. I like that. I almost want to have the landscape come in, but not all the way, like maybe we're at the lake and it's a gray, misty morning. I'm just going to start adding in some of these layers and I'm going to zoom in a little bit for you, so that you can just see what I'm doing here. I'm just mixing the white and the gray for the moment. There we go. I like some of that movement there. We could come in with our brush and we could add some movement in here too that because as we go back and smooth that out, we'll have a little extra movement in here. I'm going to add a tiny bit of that. Maroon in with the white, but, white is a bright color. It's just a tiny bit, we could add in and then maybe we'll get some of that in our swipe-y clouds too. We'll be careful not to set your piece right down in the middle because it'll make lines that you're not happy with. Let's actually go in and maybe add in some landscape here. I think I'm going to do in the maroon color but also mixed with some brown. Maybe some of this orange earth come back in and lay in a horizon here. I like it having the maroon in it because our overall picture is maroon. I like having some of that in there. I wanted that point to be a little steeper, but that's okay. Let's see if we smooth in some of this. If it's not doing exactly what you want, you can do exactly what I just did and swoop some of this paint back off. We can come back and add more to the sky because that wasn't quite where I wanted it. Maybe I get this a little swooshier with the sky. Pull this back in a little tighter. I want a tighter in there, so let's work this in a little bit more. I'm just coming in with that sepia, that magenta color, and a little bit of orange. Then I just tacked in a little bit of that black. Because I want a little bit of the darkness. Not so overwhelming. I want some of these other colors to shine through but did want some of that in there. I might come smooth this out and then we'll see if we're ready to be at our final layers. Because I still want it to be very dreamy smooshy like we're looking through the mist on a foggy morning. So I want this bottom layer to give me that impression and that top layer. Then a layer on top of that to give me my definition in my texture. Now, I'm just being real super light here with what I've got going on, barely skimming the surface to give myself some interest. Somewhere, I picked up some orange, which I don't necessarily want there on that layer. One of one oranges in there a little bit, just not overwhelmingly everywhere. Just mixing in the gray and the white here on this layer. I might do a little bit of smoothing in here. I didn't come in with my thin brush for a little bit of movement here. Very softly. I like that movement down, there so we'll work the sky a little bit more. I'm just mixing too that little tiny bit of paint mixture that we had, the white and the gray over here. I'm just mixing those a little bit with my palette knife. Just to give some differences there in the colors that we're seeing as I rubbed those on. That's pretty. Then I'm going to pick up with my paint and I can zoom out if you want to see a little bit of that. I'm thinking I'm going to pick up again this magenta, a little bit of orange, a little bit of sepia, and a little bit of black. Then just come back in here and add that layer in there. I love that. Super happy with that. I could continue to try to really smoosh that out for the really smooth atmospheric. But I really think on this one, I like that little bit of texture that we've got going. As you pull back from an abstract, that's when you really start to see the colors, mesh and blend. So I'm going to take my gloves off and pull the tape off and just see what it is that we got on this one and then I will set this to the side to dry. I had my gloves off in between and I touched something that was blue and I got blue everywhere. I think it was that fallow blue that did that. You got to be really careful with touching your paper. That's why I made these a little bigger so that I can come and trim these later. Because I know I'm going to get that paper dirty. Look how beautiful that one is. Oh, my goodness. That's really beautiful. Loving that one. I'm going to make sure real quick that I saved my color palette on this one, then will be set. I did that on that first one, but I didn't show you that I was doing it. Let me just do a color palette real quick with you on how I'm doing these. I just have the little pieces of leftover Arches paper because I used to do this on mixed media paper. But they get that little weird oil halo in it. This is what I was doing when I got the paint all over my hands. But they get that really weird oil halo lighter and then the paint starts blinking off because it's not really securely on there. I'm just going to take my palette knife here. I'll create a little square of each color. Like with the first one, this is what that ends up with. I create a little square of each color, I'll write down the brand and the color that I used and then I store that away with that piece of art. That later, I wonder, how did I get that? Now, I know. I used a little bit of sepia. There we go. Then what I'll do is I'll just go ahead with my pencil, and I will go ahead and write quinacridone violet. Then Winsor & Newton cadmium orange. Then I've got the Old Holland hybrid black, I got titanium white, and I've got a neutral gray. By this one's a Holbein. This one was the sepia. So that is Holbein sepia. Then I will set this up on the back of my table to dry. I'm going to set this right with it so that I remember later, this is what colors I used to get this pretty atmospheric-looking landscape. I could revisit that color palette again if I really really love it. I'm going to set that one up to dry. Then I'll probably do another color study because the color studies really are the most important feature for learning how to work with your paints and seeing how the wax mixes and trying to get different composition ideas and color ideas and just seeing how things work together. Really, you should just do hundreds of these. I'm going to try another color palette. I'll see you back in class. 10. Blue Landscape: I'm ready with another color study. I've got my piece taped down and I have the same colors here on my palette that I was working with, but I thought what if we did one that was mostly blues, and white, and misty like I'm out in the ocean and then it's foggy out there? I'm going to work with maybe the white and the gray, this Phthalo blue. Not Phthalo blue, this turquoise. This is M. Graham turquoise, that's the neutral gray and the white. Neutral gray is this one by holding blue and the white. I better clean that up before I get paint on everything which I have a tendency to do, I'm a messy painter. Then I'm going to maybe add in a little black. This is that ivory black that I've got out by Old Holland. [inaudible] I think pretty common from every brand, but some of these other colors. They do change from brand to brand. That ocher changes quite a bit from brand to brand, but I think what I might do is go ahead and come for white and gray top here; sky, and maybe have the blue coming around but not be as dominant on the whole composition. I want it to leaf in from the bottom there. I might even mix a little bit of this white and touch of that gray in with that blue. There's a lot of blue going on in there, I don't want it to be so vivid. Well, the lighter I get, the more teal it gets. Look how pretty that is. I might go ahead and lay a little bit of this color up here. I was thinking dreary day but as I lay that teal up there, it's less dreary and more cheery. Let's go ahead and get that soft and squishy. I do that with my bowl scraper. Just get it real soft mushy there. I really want this one to blend way more than some of the other ones have blended. I want it to just be very atmospheric. I will come in with some of our turquoise. Look at that color and almost want it to just be a sweep at the bottom. I don't want it to be overwhelming to the whole piece. It almost looks like sea there, didn't it? We'll come and start getting some of this to be more wispy. I'm wiping my thing every time otherwise we're going to end up with weird paint streaks but I'm trying to avoid weird paint streaks. [inaudible]. Let's see. Let's go back here what this gray and white shade. I might even want a little bit of the black in with that turquoise. We don't want turquoise up there, let's pull that back out. Let's be real careful. What you have on your knife when you go to pick up your paint so that you don't have tons of other wrong color mixed on top of the white. Just like I did right there. I might take my fan brush to pull some of that down. Little textury layer in there. Whip some of my clouds around maybe and then I'm going to come and smooth back some of that texture. I'm leaving some of it but very soft amount there then we'll come back with a little bit of blue and maybe a little bit of black. Just pull my landscape a little and see what that does. I almost put a little more of that gray in the sky. I might take a little bit of white mixed in with just a tiny bit of black and make a gray, or I could mix some more of that neutral gray but I might want some stormy gray out here. I'm just working that a little bit. Real soft here with the gray and the white in the clouds here and then I might push that back a little bit. I'm liking where this is. Let's add a little movement here with our fan brush. I might just go ahead and push that back a tiny bit and we'll see where we're at, we might be there. For some of these, I'd like you to try doing something like this where you don't overwork it. We get a little bit of sky, a little bit of movement in the sky, soften out your pieces, and then call that a day and just see where you're at with that piece because some of these we can way overwork it. That almost looks like it needs more though, it's thin right through here. If we way overwork it then I'll know it's almost too much, but I do want it to actually have enough paint on there not to just look like an underpainting. Maybe some extra details right in there. Well, I love that. I was just mixing a little tiny bit of that blue and that black and then I'm just softening it. I don't want it to be super-duper textural. Coming in real soft, getting some of those details softened right here at the horizon super-duper soft. That was not as soft as I intended. Hang on. I love that. We can add a little more texture right up here to the sky and I think I'm going to go with this. Look that, yeah. Super-duper soft. I'll pull this back just a tiny bit to make sure this is clean. Just wipe at each swipe. Yeah, I think that's beautiful. I think before I overwork this 20 times well maybe I'll add a tiny bit of textural element right in here, but for the most part I'm going to go ahead and call this one done. Like that. We'll wipe off my tools, peel this and see what we got before I'm tempted to keep on adding to it. This was the teal and gray and black basically. There's not lots of color in this one. Look at that. Exactly why I should have gone ahead and taped this down here but I plan on trimming these up, so that's okay. Look how pretty that is. Just one tiny piece right here, I hope I don't ruin it. There's a blue speck. Yeah, right there. That's driving me a little tiny bit crazy. There we go. Don't touch it again. Don't touch it. There we go. That's what we've got with a little bit of teal and gray, so I'm loving that one. Before I forget let's just make our little color palette here. I used this turquoise and I used this gray and I used white and then I do believe I used a smidge of this black. There we go. Then when it's dry I will trim that up so that we don't have a splash of color down there. Now I will write next to all my colors what they were, so this was M. Graham turquoise and this was Holbein neutral gray, a tiny white, ivory black, and then I will just set these back there to see what we get. I'll let it dry and so I love that one. I'm happy camper with that, so let's just keep on working in color studies and I will see you back in class. 11. Orange & Brown Landscape: [MUSIC] I've got another one taped off. This time I taped off the bottom so I don't paint on it with my random movements [LAUGHTER]. Still got my color palette over here and I thought maybe I could experiment with the ocher. Again, I like the yellow ocher. I like that to be more dominant in this piece. I'm just going to grab my palette knife and I think here, I think I might do a bottom layer of orange, which a lot of people do orange under blue. It's really fun. I'm going do the orange. Really good here under this. Really just smooth it out pretty good so that it's not [NOISE]. There we go. [inaudible] left. I think I'm going to come back on top of this with some ocher and white. Just experimenting with some color here. I want you to get creative and think of colorways that you might not normally have thought and see what can we get. I think I'm going to do this one with the landscape swooping in from the side, or I could do it more landscape, less sky. That might be interesting too. Now that I've thought of that, let's do something completely different than what we've already played with. I might want to go ahead and swoosh in some of these colors and get it with my nice little dreamy background going here. Yeah, look at that. Oh, so pretty. Maybe we want more foreground and less sky just to see what we get. [LAUGHTER] I don't have as much brown mixed up though. I've got a little bit of the sepia and this brown, but let's just come in like this. Oh, look like we have a cliff right here. Let's start like we have, oh, yeah. [LAUGHTER] I get so excited when I put something down on paper and then I'm like that's exactly what I was imagining in my mind. Got something catching paint there. Let's see. Now I think I'm going to need some more of that sepia mixed up though because I'm going to need that to continue adding layers. But look at that. Let's go ahead and smush this down some. Oh, yeah. I love it. Well, I didn't mean to do that. I wanted to get a little texture but not quite pull the paint off. Let's smooth that back out. [LAUGHTER] Let me zoom in for you a little bit while we're painting. I actually am going to need some more sepia. Let's pull the sepia out and I will mix up a little more of the sepia with wax while we're going. I've already mixed up some sepia for us, so I am ready to go. I think I'm going to blend it, the sepia, this transparent, earth orange and maybe some black. I get different shades as I'm lightly putting that into my foreground. I like how they do their own blending with the wax as you've got some other colors going in there. Oh, look at that. Didn't mean to do that. There we go. I want it to still be dreamy, so let me see if I can pull that back a little. I'm just going to continue adding some layers here as I'm working this. I could come in with my fan brush for a little bit of texture. We can just see if we like it or not. Oh, yeah, look at that. Adds a little bit of excitement up there in that sky. Very softly, barely touching, pulling some of that back a little bit. Then I might come back here with my yellow ocher and some white mixed together and create a little more interest in our sky. Be real careful that you don't get a weird color of paint on your palette knife as you're working. I just touched that down into that maroon and then that's a bright color. I don't know that I want that maroon in this painting so I got to be real careful about setting that palette knife down where I did not intend. Just getting some smushy paint go on here. A little more of the black and orange there. I might come back up here a little bit to give me some interest up here. At the wrong angle, so I'm scraping my painting, so don't be afraid to turn your painting as you're working because I'm at the wrong angle and I'm scraping paint off that I don't intend to. There we go. I might smooth this in some. I don't mind if I have a little bit of that orange background peeking through. I just don't want it to be so stunningly obvious. Look at that. Oh yeah. [NOISE] Just super-duper light here, just as light as I can possibly do it. There we go. I want a little brown and orange here at the bottom. Oh, yeah, I love that. Oh my goodness. Go ahead and smooth that tiny bit. For some reason, I have this stubborn piece of orange hanging out up here. I'm happy with the whole thing, but that one piece of orange. [LAUGHTER] I like the orange under it. I just don't want there to be a whole splotch of orange that looked weird. There we go. As I pull out some more orange. I got that weird magenta on my scraper. Here we go. Let's push that back a tiny bit. There we go. I think I'm going to call this one good to go. I like that. Let's go ahead and pull the tape off. [NOISE] This time I was smart and taped the bottom part there. Even though I'm probably going to trim it, I do like it when the whole paper is clean. [NOISE] Look at that when we peel it off. Look how pretty that is. I'm liking that. Now that I see it though, I almost wish I had pulled that a little further in. Very interesting little experiment there on what we've got going. I almost wish I pulled that in a little and there was a little dip, but I think I'm going to go with it. I don't want you to think too hard about these. I want you to just get some under your belt, get some wins, gets some color palettes going and some texture. Just see what it is that you can create. Let's just go ahead and mark our colors on here, add some ocher. I do like this color palette quite a bit, and then that white. I'm going to go ahead and write our colors next to that one and set it to the back and let it dry. Then I might play some more [MUSIC]. 12. Stormy Sky Landscape: I'm back to my color palette that we did in the mixing video because the original mixing video I apparently didn't record. I've already got my paints mixed up with the paint and the oil, the cold wax, and a little bit of the gal kit, which is our paint additive, that's going to make this dry even a little bit faster than it already does, and it's going to give us a tiny bit of sheen to our painting rather than completely flat and mat like just using the wax would. It's fun to experiment both ways and let me tell you this gal kit goes a long way, so don't go to the paint store and buy a gigantic one, buy the smallest quantity you can possibly fine, because if you keep it long enough, it dries up and it goes bad. So tiny, tiny bit of this is all you're going to use per mixture and buy the smallest container of it that you can find. Then if you decide you love it and you need something bigger, you can always add to it later but I've already ruined one of those where I didn't use it at all, but it was open and so that gal kit just dried up to a real hard liquid that didn't pour out anymore. I'm just using transparent earth orange, phthalo blue, I've got some sepia out here, I've got some olive green. I've got that cool gray, and titanium white. I'm just going to play around with these. These two were by Whole [inaudible] , this blue is a Winsor Newton, this is Gamblin. You can see this is Sennelier, I'm not really stuck to one particular brand, I just go buy the ones that I think are something I might like and then I just end up with a lot of stuff. I'm thinking that maybe we might want to do a grassy morning on a gray morning day or something, I don't know. Let me try out this cool gray, maybe some white. I'm just going to start throwing some paint down because on this first layer, we're doing our under painting here and let's just see what we get. I love to experiment, maybe I'll just go ahead the hallway with that. I'm laying thin layers. I don't want to lay a super heavy layer to begin with, because then I'm digging right down in that when I start laying some of these others. Let's do some of this orange and maybe a little bit of this green. Maybe we'll start with some cloud cover up here. I like that already. Maybe a little bit of the sepia. In the landscape part, I love really blending those colors in good. I'm going to zoom in so that you can really see better what I got going on here. I'm going to start my smushy layer. I loved the first layer to just be smushy and dreamy, and get you started. You're laying the colors, you're giving the foundation. I don't want it to be personally really heavy. You won't get that. I don't want it to be super heavy, I want it to be real smushy and dreamy on that first layer. Just my preference. Definitely, start getting the paint things going and see what really works for you. Let's go back with this gray and white. Maybe I want to come down a little further into that landscape. That's fine. Then I'm going to put a little bit of the orange and the green, and the sepia all on my paint at the same time because I like it to just blend even as I'm putting them on. I like that just natural blending that it does. Two, we might take one of our fan brushes and as I've discovered, the softer the paint, the softer the brush needs to be but I like the real soft sable one and then this real soft orange one. The real stiff one, when the paint is this wet, this real stiff one just digs right down into it and I don't love it. If I'm working on wet paint, I have discovered that I really prefer these two fan brushes, the softer one, this is a fan satellite by Ulrich, and this is a red sable scholastic blick brush, this is a four, and this is a six, and these are some good sizes. We're going to use this one I think, and just pull some texture into here, and then I'll lay it on again. I like the different layers, that's why I go ahead and paint it and then layer it, and then paint on top of it some more and I like those under layers in there to just add to the interest. Then I love to smooth them back out, and just build until I get a final look that I'm just super excited about. It's not all about getting one layer and being done for me. Be real careful, as you're putting stuff on with the palette knife that you're not straight on, you're at a slight angle because if you go straight on, you pick up paint just like that and you're wanting to avoid just randomly accidentally picking up some paint. When we can also use our brush, I want to do this last I think, so let me come back up here to the clouds and work that sky a tiny bit more. I love that when you get that random paint spread like that, it just looks like a wispy cloud out there. I'm going to come down. Oh, look at that. I just like smushing the paint around really. This is the most fun, just like you're playing with cake frosting on. Yeah, let me get that really yummy smushiness in there. Oh, yeah. I know you think I'm doing the same thing and I am doing the same thing over and over, but I want the underlayer in there, I want the light in the color variations that those layers add to something so that then when we do finally come up with our final layer, we have that depth and interest to our piece. Back with the orange, the green, and the sepia, and then this might be the final little layer here, let's see. I'm just going up and down and smashing it on and given that impression of many layers in there when really it was one that we did here with our knife. Look how pretty bad that is, oh, my goodness. This will be the fastest one. The more of these you do, the faster they get. I think I might just stop right there. That is so pretty. Look how pretty that is. Because the more you do, the faster you'll get in your little rhythm, you'll figure out what colors you love and what do you want to shine through and if you decide to do something like 100 day project and do a little bitty landscape every day. If you look at the picture you got from Day 1 to the picture you got at Day 100, it'll be drastically different. You've honed in your skill, you've honed in your technique. Let's peel this tape off. Let me just peel this tape off and see what this looks like because that I know it was the fastest one I painted for you. Look how pretty that is. Oh, my goodness, this might be my favorite. Say that every time I paint something because they're all my favorite, but I just like so many things and whatever I do last is my most favorite at the moment. Oh, yeah, look at that. It's like beautiful mountains. Totally not what I had planned, I'd planned on doing grassy, but look how beautiful that is, oh my goodness. Before I forget, definitely want to save our color palette, so I'm just going to take a piece of paper because I'm not sure where I stuck my little scraps. Let me set this out of the way before I ruin it. I want you to always save your color palette because you're going to love looking back at these and seeing what color did you use. I know I had the phthalo blue on my original paint palette over here, but you know what, I didn't even use it. I use the white paper towel here. I go through a bunch of towels, so if you want to just pick up several rolls of cheap towels, you're going to be using them so just have them available and handy. I love that. Let me use this orange. I want to do another one with the same color palette but maybe focus on something else and the sky. I might do another one. I don't ever like to and then we've got the gray. Then make sure you write what those are, you're not going to remember that later. We're definitely got titanium white and then I use the Holbein sepia, I used the Holbein olive green, and then I did not use the blue but I did use the Gamblin Earth orange, and I used Sennelier cool gray. Then I will set this with this as part of my future reference and as part of my, just can't wait to go back and revisit this color palette. I love saving color palettes so I'm going to set this one to the side. Look how beautiful that turned out. I may use this exact same set of colors because this is a lot of paint leftover and I don't want to waste it. Don't waste your paint. Paint is expensive once you start buying these nicer brands. You want to have a trash palate or something sitting to the side or a few more pieces of landscapes ready to go so that you don't waste the paint that you had there. Don't just throw that out. Keep some extra things to the side and experiment. All right, I will see you back in class. 13. Orange & Brown Cliff Landscape: I've got another piece prepared and ready to do another little landscape. I'm doing another one because I had some paint left over from our last project. I've moved them over on my color palette over here. I'm still going to use them, but I also thought it might be fun to play with a pink. This is called blush tint matte sennelier. You can easily probably get that pink with one of these raw sienna or raw umbers with a little bit of pink and a little bit of white probably mixed in. You don't have to get one of these expensive ones if you don't want. But I do like the sennelier colors, but I thought wouldn't it be fun to have maybe some pink in that sky rather than gray or blue like it was a sunset and the sky was lit up with the pink and stuff like that. I thought that would be fun to maybe have that as my undertone and have pink in the sky just to mix it up a little bit. I think it's fun to explore other colors. You might try orange in the sky, some type of ocher, yellow, just all those colors. Now go out one day at sunset when it's particularly colorful and just see what colors are shining in that sunset. I'm just going to get that laid down on here, and then I'm going to lay some sky here. I did mix these also with that gao kid because on that last one that we did which is still sitting back your wet, so I'll try not to mess it up, I did actually like how creamy that made the paint mixture and I enjoyed using that gao kid. I've been doing the cold wax stuff for quite a long time and I'll be honest and say, I've just been in my mind why don't use the gao kid all that much. Let's mix some of this and let's just go crazy. This is that transparent earth oxide. But after using it on that last painting and here on this one, I like how creamy it is and how yummy it's making this paint. Let's just start layers. I'm just starting that first layer and getting it smushed in there because I like that smushyness. I'm going to come back with some of this pink, maybe some more yummy cloud cover. Maybe I want to be in the mountains and I want to make this a cliff and calm down. Maybe similar to that ocher one that I did earlier in class that I wished I had a little bit better orientation of my clips. I believe I had talked about in there. Let's just go back for that composition and see what can we get this time. But I think I want to get my sky pretty much laid in here the way I want it before I lay that cliff in there. Let me just zoom in for us. That way, you can better see what we got going on. I like how you're using that fan brush gives you some movement in that color and changes things just a little bit. Then I might smooth some of that movement out, but it hasn't taken away. As I get lighter and lighter, I'm layering light in there. When you're all done and you get that almost light effect as it's coming out, I like the layers underneath it. Because then you start to rarely see beautiful designs behind the stuff. I love that. I'm trying to be really careful not to start quarter-inch down from the edge there because you don't want it to look like all your cloud Cover started at a weird place, so I want it to go off into, but not so often to it that I get a weird white line at the top either. But I want the top to still be part of the painting, I don't want to tear the tape off and then think, well, what did I do at the very top there? Why did it do that? Because I've done that before too. I really love what the sky is doing, let's just get our sky down pat, and then we will do yummy smushy two or three colors in that cliff part. Rather than overworking it because that first sampler I did earlier with the ocher, I have it over here, let me see if I can get it with this one right here. I feel like I'm overworked at early on. This one, let's get the sky set, let's come back and add in our cliffs maybe, and just see if we can get some mixing. The orange, the green, the olive green, the transparent earth orange, and the CP. I'm mixing that on my knife again altogether so that as I start to do my little squishy landscape marks here, they just naturally blend as I'm going. We'll just see what we can get at. I wanted maybe more of like there's a mountain over here maybe or I might end up regretting that I did that, but we are just going to see what we can get. I really like it. I'm not sure I like what I did right there with that little swoopy part. But maybe I like it. I'm just continuing to mix those colors on my knife here and then just work in it here. Because it's almost like I'm getting to where I really like doing the sky, getting it where exactly where I want it and then filling in the foreground. As you go in, that might end up being the technique that you like. I like that. It's almost like we have a little bit of sky that's coming through. Maybe that's some water that's reflecting from the sky. I like that. I might not even clear that out. You want to work on a little bit of your mark-making when you're doing this, maybe you're going to have some tree line and maybe you want some a little extra mark in there. You just want to experiment. I really liked that now. I did that actually it gave me that extra little bit of blending and movement, that was nice. That's got some fun stuff going on there. Just a little bit of the mixing of the three again, just coming back, maybe some final touches here. Then we just might peel this tape and see what we got. Because you don't want to overwork. I like that. You don't want to overwork it, but you definitely want to get it to a place that you love it. I just totally did not mean to do that. There we go, but put some pain but I get there. I don't think too hard. You get to a point where like, I think I love that and then go with it. We'll add few lines in here, I love that. Just very softly with the tip, I'm just adding in a little tiny bit of some lines and texture there. That's fine. I do love that. Maybe I want tiny more texture with the clouds. Again, this will just be a yummy layer on top of everything we've got going. I love those layers and that you see through the layers. I love that. Let's call this one and heal a tape. Let's just see what we got. Then don't forget to of course, save your color palette. I love when you finally peel the tape, you reveal everything that's not covered in. Oh, see. I like that when it gives you that crisp line and you don't have that paint outside that, I love that. Look how pretty that is with the tape peeled. Super pretty. I'm really happy with that one too. That would have been fine too if we did maybe streaks of color. Get creative with your colors and maybe just throw a horizon in the front with some nice dark shades, but be creative with what you do up there in that sky. How fun is that? This one I use the pink, just to make sure you get your color palette in. I used this earth orange, I used this olive green. I still have a ton of paint over here, so I should definitely and I use this brown and I used titanium white. Totally different look, using a very similar color palette as the last one. But I love what we have going on there. I'm going to write my colors on my color palette and set this one to the side and let it dry. I hope you enjoyed this little painting and I will see you back in class. 14. Grassy Landscape: I'll do another little painting. I thought since I was already going to do it, I might as well film it. I had planned on not filming another one, but I still got paint leftover and I just hate to waste it. All I'm doing, I've got the same color palette that we had out from the past couple of paintings. I'm taking this Phthalo blue and this blush tint and mixing it together for a rather pinkish, grayish, dulled-down color here that I thought might be really interesting in the sky. Just see what we can get. I just love these little landscapes. Even if you just get into one little rhythm and you do the same landscape over and over changing the colors, they end up so different each time you do them that it's definitely worth just playing and practicing in there. I come back with some white now up here. I'll go ahead and do my little get-it-flowing and blending here. It's real soft getting that underlayer, getting some movement in there. I can zoom in so that you can see what I'm doing. I hate when I zoom in that you can't see the color palette at the same time, but I want you to really be able to see the painting itself, not so little that you're like, what are you doing? I might take my fan brush here and get some of that color movement, going in there. Rather than that being a white cloud, maybe I want that to be more of a slightly gray clouds. Maybe over here on my color palette, I can mix up a little bit of this cool gray with some white and maybe not have a white-white, maybe have a slightly grayish-white cloud, something like that maybe so that it's not white-white. Then start smoothing some of that up here for some of that cloud cover so that it's not so stark. Consider that too. Your clouds don't have to be white. If you look up in the sky, clouds are all different shades of white and gray. Get some movement here with this. Look at that. I love what all the layers adds to our painting so that we really get that depth. I'm just barely skimming over the surface there so that I get that paint to give me this yummy texture that we get in there. Just the tiniest bit of paint here on my palette knife when I do that too. That's some fine movement now in that cloud and that sky. I'm just laying a little more paint on here, just really getting some depth in the sky. Don't be afraid to spend some time. Once you've got a direction that you like, go and spend a little time perfecting that little area before we come in with that foreground. I didn't mean to do that unless you want to be real careful not to gouge the paint back out. Let's come back over with one little skim here. We're going to dive this depth and color. I think I'm going to go ahead and smush it in so that I can do it again. Not do it again on purpose but because I lost some of the definition I wanted and some of that. Some of those clouds, I lost a little bit of the definition I wanted up there. I might come back with the white because that'll actually give me a little bit color tone difference from that grayish white that I've been using. However, the subtleness that I have in the sky now, look how beautiful this is, that subtleness that we've got going on in there. I love that. You can tell too that it's been layer after layer, it's not just one layer on there. I love that. I think I do want this to maybe be a little more with the green and the sepia. I don't know. Maybe we'll throw in a touch of this pink, this flesh color. Yes, look at that, and build our horizon line right here. Just to snap of an unusual color, then maybe it implies there's flowers on the field. Maybe that's what I was feeling here. Maybe they've got some flowers out there. That little bit of pink gives me that. I like it when there's movement in the ground, not just straight. I do really like it when I've got some movement down there. Maybe some scrapes, maybe some little taps and we'll get a little more movement. Maybe we've got some lines in there that we can scrape in with our knife and then tap back over those just to get some color variations. I like there to be some interest in there so you're not just looking at just a plain line for your horizon. Look at that color with that green. Green is yummy, isn't it? I like there to be a couple of spots that are dark and I like some light so that it implies there are some depth in there. Maybe a little more of this. Throw in some pink flowers. I'm going to work this one for just a minute till I get it right where I want it. I'm just going back for a little bit of the green or the sepia. Now the paint is awful thick. I might have made it too thick. You can work on your landscapes, and over a couple of days too if you want to work dry on dry paint rather than work wet paint like I'm doing, you could let each layer dry and come back to it tomorrow and just see what it feels like to work each layer when the layer under it's dry. That's fun. Don't do that. I'm just going to put some hash marks, Some mark-making in here with these. I like that grassy look that we just created. I might come back with my silicone tool and soften that out just a little here and there. We might even come back and do something that we've not done before. Maybe tap our fan into one of our paint colors and see if we can tap a tiny bit of color in our landscape, like it's a field of flowers and those are little flower beds. Think of some of that too like maybe you want to tap in some flowers here and there and just get something completely different. This could be something where you're doing it on a dry layer. Maybe you come back tomorrow and tap a little bit of that into a dry layer to really get it defined. We'll come back on here and smooth it a little bit. That's fine. It might smooth a little bit of it. I just want some depth and interest going in there. Just see what can we create? Maybe switch our brush around some, that's pretty. I like in the little swishy brush marks here till you overdo it. Yeah, that's real pretty there. Let's just tap a few flowers in here. Very pretty. I might go with that. Let's just take a look here. I've got a little bit of movement there. I've got tiny flowers brushed in. Let's just go ahead, peel the tape and see what we got. Now that I've said that I might come back with just a tiny bit of the green and brown and give myself a little tiny bit of darkness that I worked back out of here. Then I promise I think I'll be done. I don't want to stay on the foreground forever. I just want to make beautiful little pallets and then just see what I got for the day. See, now I like that. I think that did it for me. That little bit of extra with the dark movement in their, very pretty. Let's take the tape off. Let's peel the gloves off and see what we got. Then I will save my color palette on my little piece of extra paper. See the peeling the tape is really one completes it. A lot of times I'm not happy with what I've painted, and until I peel the tape off and then I'm like, look what I ended up with, and I get so excited. But that's what brings me back again. That excitement. That magicness of peeling that tape off. Look how pretty that ended up. Now that we've peeled a bunch of the tape, there we go. Look how beautiful that is. I liked the little bit of pink bits that we've got in there because it made it we're looking at a field with some flowers in it. Super happy with that one. Then save your color palette. I'm going to go ahead and cut off a little piece of, I might just cut this one off, but I think I'll cut a little piece of the arches and saved my color palette. Then I will see you back in class. 15. Finishing your pieces: [MUSIC] Let's talk about finishing our pieces. Once you have painted one of these pieces, how do you finish it off? Everybody wants to know how to finish the painting. With our traditional oil paint, they take so long to dry that you can't put anything on top of them for about six months. You got to let that fully cure before you then add something like a varnish. With these, they dry to the touch the very next day. But you don't want to be adding anything on top of that as a finish at this point. You want to let those cure for several weeks, at least, before you consider anything else. But do you even need anything else? To be honest, this is a finish just like it is. You don't have to do anything else to it. If it's a paper piece, then you can frame them. If it's a piece that you have done on cradle board, they're ready to hang, paint the sides in a color that matches your landscape and then the finished sides and it's ready to hang. If you do want to add something else on top just to make sure that it's really protected, then what they recommend is a clear coat of your cold wax medium, just a real thin layer of that and then you let that dry for many days up to a week or so and then you can come back with a soft lint free brush and buff that surface. Then that's done, you've got your clear coat on there. You want to not be buffing it before it's fully cured because it'll pick up the lint of your towel, even though it's lint free, it'll still pick up a texture of the cloth you're using. You want to make sure it's dry way before you try to buff it. But you can add a clear coat right on top of it. Let that sit for a while and then come back and buff and that could be your finish coat. Some people also want to know if you can varnish these. The answer is yes and no. If you contact Gamblin and you ask them about their Gamvar Varnish for oil paints and stuff, they will tell you if you're using a mixture of paint and wax, the wax has to be less than 30 percent of that mixture for you to be able to use the varnish on top of it. If you use just a tiny bit of wax, less than 30 percent, and 70 percent is paint, you've done your painting and you want to varnish it, Gamblin says the Gamvar works great with that. If you use a mixture like I'm using, which is more fifty-fifty waxed paint, you cannot varnish it. The varnish has solvents and things in it that actually start to break down the wax and stuff in your painting, and it will actually ruin your piece. You don't want to varnish it if you have a fifty-fifty paint mixture. In that case, leave it just like it is or later go back with a clear layer of the wax and then call that done. You can frame these like a regular painting. I'd mad it so that there's space in-between the glass or a space filler so that this is not directly on the glass. You don't want this touching the glass. If you're painting on the cradle boards, you can just paint the sides and they're ready to hang. There's couple of different options there. I would definitely mad it and frame it, and just see how beautiful some of your pieces are. Pick a piece that you love and see what you can do. I particularly love this one. I really love this one. I really loved this one. There's some really good ones that we've done here in class that I'm really pleased with and happy. I even like quite a bit my flower fields that I created. I like that. So several that I have just fallen in love with and actually might want to hang in my art room here as inspiration for later for days that I'm feeling discouraged, because nothing works out because there's plenty of those days. [LAUGHTER] I hope that gives you a good idea how you finish it. You can only varnish it if it has less than 30 percent of wax or it will break down your painting and ruin it. At the least, leave it just like it is. You don't have to do anything to it. At the most, clear coat, let that cure, and then you can buff it to a little sheen after it's cured. I will see you back in class. [MUSIC]