Oil Painting for the Absolute Beginner

1. Introduction: Welcome to the oil painting for beginners chorus. I am so happy to have you here today in Messy Studio. My name is Kristin Chronic. I am a professional artist who fell in love with oil painting in 2014. I painted nearly every day since then and over the years, I have shown my work in solo shows and museums, sold my art online and through galleries and paint weddings live at the event. I did not go to art school to learn how to paint, but learn because of willing artists showing me the way. That's what I want to be for you. Maybe you have big dreams of showing and selling your art. Or perhaps you just want to relax and have fun learning a new skill. Whatever you hope to do with painting, I'm here to help you get there. If you are here, then you may or may not have taken many art classes, but you are curious about learning how to oil paint. You may have felt overwhelmed and intimidated by it in the past. You are excited at the possibility of painting beautiful landscapes, florals, or any painting full of color and light. The goal for this class is to equip you with the basic fundamentals you need to start oil painting. You will leave this class with a practical understanding of the medium of oil paint and how it was designed to be painted with the basic fundamentals, value and color. And a step by step process you can follow to continue your journey of old painting. You start the beginning in this class and you'll learn the bones of making a painting. You will learn these things through a variety of lessons, exercises, and demonstrations you can follow along with. I want to help you achieve what you desire in your art. If you just want to cultivate a new hobby perfect. If you aspire to paint realism, I can point you in the right direction. If abstracts are your thing, I want to help you get there. Are you ready to get started? Continue to the next video to learn how to use this course. 2. Class Project: The class project for this skillshare course is going to be to share one of the paintings that you make. This is a foundational course that will give you a lot of information about paint mixing and color theory and values. It's up to you which one you want to share. There will be a full demo that you can follow along with both in a black and white image as well as a full color image. Once you have your favorite piece done, go ahead and share it with the class. I cannot wait to see your work. 3. Supplies: Before you start painting, you're definitely going to need your materials. This is one thing that can make it hard to even start if you don't have them. There are so many options out there and if you already have some supplies on hand, great. I made a mini course that I would highly recommend you watch before moving on, so that we can meet a few of the supplies you will need. However, I will cover the bare basics. In summary, you're going to need oil paint. Oil solvent brushes, palettes, something to paint on a canvas or a panel. And then just various studio needs like space, lighting jars, and paper towels. I have a star next to the solvent. Because some artists prefer to work solvent free, it's possible to do that and just make it harder to clean your brushes. I do use solvents when I paint. I will be teaching using solvents as well. Again, you can keep on listening if you want to hear more about I go into more detail in the mini course. But at a minimum, for oil paint, you will need a red, a yellow, a blue and a white for paint. And also maybe a black early on if you would like. For so many reasons. My favorite brand is Gamblins. I'll be using their products to teach from Gamblins comes in student grade and professional grade. The student grade paint with Gamblins is called 1980. If professional grade is in your budget, I'd recommend it only because it lasts longer. However, if you prefer to invest in student grade at starting off, it will be completely fine, especially while you're just practicing. I will be painting everything actually from the introductory set by Gamblins. They offer the set in both professional and student grade paint. I love it because it gives you a little bit of a curated palette, but a few more color options and just plain red, yellow, and blue. In addition to the student set, I may be adding a few colors such as burnt sienna, manganese blue, and cadmium yellow medium, as well as well as radiant white. Don't worry about taking notes for all this right now. You will be able to download an ebook after this lesson with everything written down in it, including direct links to purchase in case you need to put that. The purpose of mediums is to thin down paint, to help the paint dry faster, and to clean your brushes. Since paint is usually stiff coming out of the tube, you need mediums to help it just be more workable. The two basic categories of mediums are solvents and oil. First, we'll talk about oil. Oil is the most obvious because that's what your pigment is suspended in, in your paint tubes. The purpose of oil is to both thin down your paint and speed up the drying time. Gambling, safflower oil is the one that I use the most, but other great options include linseed oil, walnut oil, poppy oil, and liquid. Honestly, I have been painting since 2014 in oil and I have not found really anyone to be better or worse than the other. It's just a matter of what you have and just getting used to what you've got. I will be painting again with safflower oil, but if you happen to have something different on hand, that's perfectly fine. Solvent is the next medium we're going to talk about. Solvent also thins paint and helps it dry faster. It's also necessary for cleaning it brushes. Here is where some people prefer not to use solvents because it can have health hazards. I will be using Gamblins. Gamsol, again, this is linked in the PDF. After this lesson, Gamsol is virtually odor, odorless, does not really evaporate, and is extremely safe for being a solvent. However, it still is that you'll want to store it in a sealed container when you're not using it, and definitely keep it away from your kids. Solvent also dries faster than oil and it's something that you can use in your painting. I will teach you more in a little bit about when and why you might want to use it other than just cleaning your brushes. Also, I would highly recommend avoiding commercial grade turpentine and, and mineral spirits as they have associated health risks, and they can compromise on quality. Finally, with mediums you're going to want to store them. You can buy some really cool brush washers. And I absolutely love mine. However, they're expensive. If you're just starting off just plain mason jars in your kitchen are perfectly fine. I would recommend getting three jars. The first one is for your solvent, the second one is for your oil. Then the third one is if your solvent gets dirty, you can dump it in there and just let it rest for a couple of days to weeks. And the paint will start to sit on the bottom and the solvent will rise to the top and you can pour it off the top into your clean jar and get back to work without having to get rid of anything. That's one cool little trick about solvents. Just remember, three jars to store it in. The next thing we're going to talk about now is brushes. When you're picking up brushes look for ones with long handles and bristles that are stiffer, such as hog bristle or a synthetic version. There are a lot of types of brushes out there and I go over a few of them in the mini course. However, my favorite ones that I prefer are rounds and flats. And if you're going to get them, be sure to get a range of small, medium, and at least one large brush. You're definitely going to want a large one whenever you paint. Honestly, just like everything else brushes comes down to artist preference. The more you can practice and play with things, the better. You're also going to want to get a palette knife. A palette knife is really helpful for mixing. You don't have to use it for mixing if you only have brushes. However, it makes it so much easier. And I will be showing you how to use it. Next thing we're going to talk about is surfaces to paint tie. There are so many options to dive into and I will share more of them in depth in the mini course. However, for this course, I will be using oil paper for all my demonstrations. If you do not already have canvases or panels. Canvases are usually wrapped and they take up more space in your studios. If you're tight on space, I'd recommend avoiding canvases. However, the positive thing about canvas is you don't have to frame them, which is pretty cool. You'd have to frame oil paper or panels. However, right now, I just want you to focus on doing the exercises and practicing and just getting familiar with your paint that can feel so much less precious when you're just using oil paper. I'll be using arches oil paper. I think there's about 30 sheets or so. It's just a more affordable way of practicing. Next we're going to talk about palettes. Now starting off, if you have absolutely nothing and you want to save a couple dollar, you can totally just tape wax paper to something hard. That's a super affordable way to start. However, if you want to get something special, my favorite is gray palette paper. The gray tone is really helpful whenever you're mixing colors, because white can make things look much darker than they actually are. The ease of clean up using palette paper is totally worth it. So many times, my studio time is limited to what my kids let me do, or I'm an entrepreneur and I may only have half an hour palette paper, lets me mix paint in one session, come back a day later if I end up needing an extra day or two and some of the paint dries, it's not a hassle. I don't have to worry about cleaning it. I can just scrape off the paint that's still good. Rip and then throw away the bad paper and then just get back to work. Other palettes, you do have to maintain a little bit by cleaning them. They're great to work on. However, if you don't have a lot of extra time or your time is very unpredictable, I would recommend looking into palette paper, other options you can use. Our wooden palettes. Glass palettes, make sure that they're tempered and they're meant to be palettes. If you just take a piece of glass and start painting on, it'll probably crack. You can also go to the hard wood store and get marble palettes as well. I've never actually painted with marble, but I've done the other two and they work great. As long as you're fine cleaning them. You can find all these recommendations again in the ebook that is next after this lesson in the E book will be everything spelled out as well as direct links to purchase. If you're curious, you can watch the free mini horse on the supplies as well. It's about 30 minutes long and it goes into a little bit more detail. But really thing is just get a little bit of everything that I talked about here, everything you need and start to figure out what you like and what works for you. It's really not a rule and there's nothing that is absolutely required other than obviously something to paint with and on. All right, I'll see in the next lesson. 4. Why Oil Paint?: Why oil painting? Maybe you are here and you have loved experimenting with mediums such as watercolor and acrylic. And find yourself just curious about will paint. Or maybe you have tried to figure out will painting on your own but feel stuck because it just is not been intuitive. Or maybe you haven't painted at all, but you have admired paintings done from oil in a far. Want to give it a try yourself? Whatever your story. You're welcome here and this is for you. I cannot wait to share with you the basics of oil paintings. You can start your journey exploring them. Before we dive in, I'm going to share with you some reasons why I love it. First, it's so forgiving. Will paint is known for being extremely slow to dry. While this can cause a mess, if you're not careful, it is such a wonderful quality. As you build a painting, change your mind, no problem. You can just wipe it out and start all over. Unlike most mediums where the work you do is dry within minutes will paint affords you a much longer period of time to work with allowing space to combine layers, blend or not, and make a painting that looks so fresh and inviting. Number two, you enjoy a depth of color and transparency. Well, paint dry is exactly the same color, it comes out of the tube. If you've ever worked with acrylic, you may have noticed that it will dry just a little bit darker over time. You can get used to that for sure, But it's so fun to work with color as you can believe that when they come out of the tube we will stay that way. Oil paint also comes in a wide variety of opaque and transparent color. Well, painting is classically used by building up layers over time. This method gives all paintings this particular luminous glow that's absolutely stunning, allowing you to see through the painting, light bouncing off the canvas and coming back through. Other mediums, such as acrylic only reflect light on the surface. They just do not have the same luminosity as oil paint. The possibilities are endless and it's so fun to play with them on that note, you can paint in layers over time or you can paint all in one sitting. This method of oil painting is pioneered by the impressionist starting in the 1860s. And it's called all prima painting or direct painting, wet into wet. This is the type of painting I will be teaching you in this class. Theoretically, you can finish a painting in one sitting painting directly while enjoying the luminous colors and slow dry time of oil paint. These are just three reasons I cannot wait to share with you the basics of oil painting. Keep on listening to our brief rundown on how to use this class. See you in the next lesson. 5. Exercise: How to Hold Your Brush: In this video, you're going to learn three different tips on how to hold your brush. I know this can seem a little bit detailed. However, this can make a big impact on how the paint sits on your canvas. I recommend practicing this. It can take a little bit of practice to get used to, but it's a good habit to have. It can help problem solve in some of the paintings that you do. If you've ever tried painting before, when you're putting one color on top of another baby and it gets soupy and messy, chances are you can fix that by how you hold your brush. It will help you lay paint down more gently and can overall just make your paintings appear cleaner and more painterly. Before I start this lesson on holding your paint brush near the end, I want to point out that this may not always make sense. Sometimes you do need a little more leverage. You do need to hold a brush closer if you're trying to, maybe cover a large area or scrub something in on some of your earlier layers. However, holding it near the end as much as you can when you're drawing, when you're laying paint down, when you're putting in the final touches. This is sometimes just what you need to get a really lovely, painfully mark expression in your paintings. Go ahead and grab a brush if you have one in front of you, hopefully you have a long handle brush. These are ideal for oil painting and in my opinion, for all painting, long um of brushes are meant to be held close to the end like this. It's really easy to find your hands sneaking towards the bristles as you paint back. Grit makes you feel much more in control, but try not to let that happen. Having less control will make it less likely that you will overwork your painting. It will also help as you lay wet paint on top of wet paint. When you're holding your brush, you can hold it a couple different ways. You can hold it like you would a pencil brush like this. You can also hold it over hand. I really like holding it over hand whenever I need to get less control and make more paint. Tria strokes also, when you paint, try to paint from your shoulder and not your wrist. Try not to paint like this. See how I'm painting a circle? I see a lot of artists do this. They use the wrist to make all the motions. Instead, paint from your shoulder. See how my wrist is staying completely still. Whenever you paint from your shoulder, you actually have a lot more control and your shirts will look a lot more competent than if you're trying to use your wrist. The next lesson, we're going to do an exercise together to practice doing this. 6. Exercise: Painting From The Shoulder: In this lesson, you're going to do an exercise to practice drawing from your shoulder instead of your wrist. For this exercise, all you'll need is a sheet or two of computer paper and any writing instrument that you have laying around. I'm just going to use a pencil from my desk. On your computer paper, just draw a line down the middle. That's just to help you separate it. Right wrist on top, shoulder on the bottom. This is a really simple one, practice making motion for the wrist, make a line of circles, make a line of squares, then do straight lines. And off her shoulder do the same. Want you draw circles, square. See how my arm is actually off the table right here, My wrist isn't on there at all. And then straight lines, you may notice that the straight lines especially appear a lot more confident if you go fast enough. The outcome really isn't here to assess how it looks. It's just to get the feeling of what the differences between your wrist and your shoulder. This can be a hard thing to get used to. It's something you'll need to remind yourself of often. However, with a little bit of practice, you'll start to feel much more comfortable. 7. Lesson: The "Rules" Of Oil Painting: In this lesson, you're going to learn about some of the rules of oil painting. I use quotes because honestly, rules can certainly be broken and adapted and changed. However, in this case, they are pretty helpful, honestly. If there's one thing to know about me as a teacher, I do have very little interest in rules. These, however, are worth mentioning because they do contribute to your painting. Staying healthy, if that makes sense. You'll see why in a few minutes. For everything else, I encourage you to push the rules and push the limits as much as you want. However, for this, you will want to do your best to follow these, because your paintings can easily be ruined if you don't. These can certainly be a lot to remember at first, But I'm making a cheat sheet that you can download at the end of this lesson to help you remember them. I will also remind you each and every time I paint, what I'm doing and why to help it become second nature to you two. Are you ready to dive in? Okay, let's get started. The overall gist of all of these rules is the paint that drives faster will go on first. The paint that drives slower will go on last. That's basically the heart behind everything that we're going to talk about today. It's just a matter of learning what drives faster and what drives slower. Hopefully it makes sense. If something drives faster and it goes on top, something that drives slower. And it's very possible that whatever's on top could crack or flake off and you don't want that. The whole point of all this is to make sure the things that go on first will be drying or on their way to drying, before you put something on top that dries Super slow. What dry slow and what dries fast? I made a little illustration for you. I have the tortoise and the hair. I guess that may not totally work because at the end, the tortoise beat the hair. You know what I mean? This isn't a race. This is just slow and fast. Basically, the slowest drying paint of all is the paint coming straight out of the tube. This has the least amount of fillers in it and additives in it. Especially if it's super thick, it will just take a while to dry. Next is paint thin by oil. Whenever you take the oil, the linseed oil, the walnut oil, whatever it is you're using, and you mix it to the paint to make it a little bit more brushable. That will be the next slowest to dry. Then finally, our bunny over here is paint thin by solvent that would be your gram. There are some mediums that have solvent in it. I wouldn't advise turpentine, but turpentine is one of those things. Those types of solvents will make the paint dry the fastest you'd want to put those on first. So here is just a little diagram of what slow and fast actually means. An oil painting, your tortoise, your slow guy, that will take days to weeks, and sometimes months, depending on how thick that you're applying the paint. The fastest oil painting dries is typically in about an hour or a couple of hours. If you have it really, really thin and you're using gesture solvent, you may notice this is different than a watercolor and acrylic. That is one of the biggest differences between oil and acrylic is that it takes much longer to dry. And in my opinion, that's what makes it so fun to play with because you have a lot of grace. You can wipe things out, you can start over, and you're not ruining your entire piece by doing it. These rules only matter, actually, because I will be teaching you in this class, direct painting. It's also known as all prima, or wet. And to wet, basically, you're going to be learning a method of painting that allows you to finish one in just one sitting. Theoretically assuming that you have enough time to finish. The rules that I'm about to share with you are much less important when you're painting like this. Because if you find them confusing, don't worry too much about it. It won't be quite as important than if you're painting a different way. And I again, will guide you step by step. However, it is important that you are somewhat familiar with them because they can help you understand well painting and also the methods for why you're painting a certain way even if you're painting wet into wet. These rules mostly come from the traditional form of painting where paintings are made really, really slowly, one layer at a time, over many weeks. So they would do a layer, let it dry, do a layer, let it dry. It's beautiful. It's kind of the method of classical realism. But we're not going to be painting like that. Instead we're going to be painting much more direct. All right, Next we're going to cover the rules. Here they are, I know you're excited. The first one is thick over thin. So this sketch here is basically like pretend you're looking at your canvas and you're a fly maybe or an ant. You're cutting it in half and your canvas is on the bottom and the layers of paint are on top. We're looking at a cross section of a painting right now with your canvas in the bottom. You're going to want the thin paint to go on first and the thick paint to go on top. What makes oil paint thin and what makes it Thick paint that comes out of the tube is very thick and stiff. If you thin down the paint with oil solvent, those should be what you used to do most of your early preparations of the canvas you're drawing in your earlier layers. You're going to want to keep your really thick, stiff paint only for the end of your painting. Not only does this make a healthier painting, it also it will avoid that really big, goopy mess. If you've ever tried painting really thick, the first time you put something down and then you went over it, it probably got messy and clumpy and goopy, which can totally work, And sometimes artists do that on purpose. However, in this sense, we're going to try to keep that under control just a little bit, and we're going to do that by making sure it's a thinner consistency at first, and then saving the thick stuff for the very end if you want to use it at all. Here's just another visual of how this works. Because it oil paint dries slowly. It actually dries through oxidation. So it's a very slow process. It's not evaporation, the thinner layers will dry faster than the thicker layer. Just going back to this basic rule, things that dry fast, go first, things that dry, slow, go Second, Start your painting with things that dry faster and end with the things that dry slower. Thin paint dries faster than thick paint. If you're looking at a blank canvas and you're wanting to use paint straight out of the tube. Stop and add something to make it thinner, either solvent or oil. The next rule is called fat over lean. This is the most art speak you'll probably hear today. And I am going to use it because you will hear this. If you ever paint with other painters, this is something you probably will hear. This basically means that the earliest layers of your paint should be a lean and then the ones on top should be fat. This also is more important if you're working in thinner layers. However, whenever you're still painting a la prima or wet into wet, you'll still probably end up coming back in on top and adding some things. You still want to practice this. What makes the painting lean and what makes it fat? Lean paint has a lean medium added to it, This is usually a solvent. There are also others. I will not be teaching about those here, but if you hear something called a Gal solvent version, a leaner version of paint, paint is easy to remember because oil is fat. If the paint is straight out of the tube or oil has been used to make it more fluid, then it would be fatter than anything that's had solvent added to it. Once again, let's go back to the basic rule. You start with paint that dries faster, Solvent dries faster than oil, and you end with paint that dries slower. Oil dries slower than solvent Paint straight out of the tube takes the longest to dry, save any finishing touches using the really thick paint for the very, very end. This is a third rule ish, but it's more of something that I just want you to be aware of. You do not need to remember these, but just know that this is a thing. Some paint colors will actually dry faster than others as well. This is getting to be pretty advanced and unnecessary to think about early on, but it's worth mentioning just to be aware of typically earthy colors such as numbers and siennas dry the fastest and bright colors dry more slowly. You do not need to memorize this, however. It's just something that you will come to recognize the more you paint. Because sometimes the piles will simply last longer on your palette than others. You will just start to get an intuitive sense for this over time. In summary, if you are looking at a blank canvas, you will first need to start with paint that dries faster. The fastest drawing options are very thin down earth colors with solvent. After that use only paint that drive slower. An easy way to do this is only use solvent at the very beginning and use oil the rest of the time. You don't really need to worry about these too much. I will be reminding you of them. And the main thing I want you to take away is that these rules just exist over time. They will be second nature, and you can always refer back to this module if you ever need a refresher. Also, don't forget to download the cheat sheet that I have included in this lesson as a way to remind you when you're painting, you can print it off and tape it up in the space that you're working or keep it with your studio. Things as a reminder, now that you know the basic rules, it's time to move on to the next lesson. 8. Exercise: Playing with Consistency: In this exercise, you're going to explore consistency in oil paint. This is important because not only for the rules of oil painting, fat over lean, thick over thin, it's just helpful to understand what those feel like on your brush. You'll be comparing the consistency of paint straight out of the tube to the consistency of the paint thinned by a solvent and also by oil. At the end of this exercise, you'll have a good understanding of the right consistency you should use to start with, especially since I'm going to be teaching you how to paint wet into wet. Starting with right consistency on the earliest layers is really key to laying wet paint on top. At the end this exercise, we're going to explore the consistency of paint. For this practice, you will need one color oil paint, preferably a darker color, like black, blue or red. I'm going to be using Gamblins 1980 oil color in ultran blue. A brush, a pow to mix on oil, paper or canvas, a rag or paper towels your oil and your solvent. I'm using Sapphire oil and Gamsol. The first thing you're going to do is open up your paint and squeeze just about a pea sized amount on your palette. You don't need too much. That might be more than a. Okay? So the first thing we're going to play with is the consistency of paint with solvent. Okay? Get a little bit of solvent on your brush and just mix it on your palate like this. And bring in some paint. I want you to make it super soupy. See how this almost looks like watercolor? It's so liquid. What's happening when you're mixing solvent is you're breaking down the paint. This can be very unstable. Okay? Use your extremely soupy version and just make a mark on your paper. I look at that. It actually does look just like watercolor. Tilt it up, I'm going to tilt see. You can see it actually start to drip. That's a little bit too runny. It's going to be extremely hard to work with this later because it'll be unstable. It might start to crack and like show water streaks. It also will just take too long to dry. If you're going to use solve it in your earliest layers, you want to add a little bit more paint to it. It's hard to mix a little bit there. Now, take that pure paint from the tube and then just a little bit of solve it. I'm just using the pile right here. You can cut when I'm mixing it. You can see there, make sure you can see that. There you go. You can see the brush strokes of the mixing it, then scrub it in there. You might need to scrub it a little bit. See, whenever I twist it up and down, it actually doesn't anything. If you want it to be a little bit thinner, get in between. You can see how that's a little bit lighter than the darker one, but it also still staying intact. This is about the finish. You would probably want it if it gets to be too thin and you want to stop some of it up, all you have to do is just wipe it out. That actually is a really nice way. I'll teach you this in a little bit when we are preparing our canvas to get an initial layer to tone it down. Then you wipe it out, that's solvent. Now, wipe off your brush, clean your brush in your solvent, and we're going to practice oil. Now, obviously, I just made this solvent dirty and you'll notice this happens to you. Get your sediment or the paint gets in the solvent like this. Let it sit for a couple of days and it'll start to separate. And this is what that third jar is for. When you have your third jar and it does separate, you can just pour that clean stuff back into your clean jar. When you're done painting for the day, pour it back into the dirty jar, let it separate until you're ready to go. I'll teach you that a little bit more later too. You don't need to worry about that right now. All right. The next thing we're going to look at is oil. I have cleaned my brush. I'm wiping it off. I'm using cheese cloth to wipe it off. You can also use paper towels. I found I like cheese cloth because it doesn't shed too much. We're going to do the same thing. Get some of this paint that came straight from the tube if you want to, before we move on, make a little mark of the paint straight from the tube. See how dry that is? Totally fine. This is the thicker paint. This is the paint. It's going to take longer to dry, it's just harder to work with. And it's not something you want to use too soon. I'm going to get a clean spot on my palette. Probably over here I can get some paint. I'm going to do it. And oil, like a lot of oil in your brush, make it super soupy. This is going to be way too much oil. Way too much, but we're going to just practice using it. Once again, make a bar from the super soupy oil on here. Again, see how it's like translucent. It looks gooey. It may not be oily enough up there it is a, it'll start to drip if I let it. This is too much oil. This is going to take forever to dry. You're knocking on top of it. Wipe some of that off. Maybe just get a little bit of oil. Just like that. Dab it, pick up some more paint. Play with that consistency. See now. Again, it holds its shape, it's not a goopy mess. That might, that's actually a really nice consistency right there for filling in some of those earlier layers. See how it actually is dry on the side. If you want to get a little bit more oil practice in finding the spectrum, this one's a little bit wetter. See how you can see the edges and how it's a little bit lighter. But this one is about right, I would say, for the solvent. Both of these are about right. When you're maybe using your brush to lay down a color, you're wanting it to be the least amount of medium is possible to make it workable, especially at first. But if it's too much, it's going to be really hard to paint on top. Yeah, let's try that now. We can practice that. Get some of that thicker paint that's still from but you haven't really mixed up yet. I'm actually add a little bit more just to make a point. Get some of that thicker paint on there. Don't add anything to, this isn't something you're going to do very often. You pretty much always add something to it. But get it on your brush, Feel how stiff it is in your brush. And then practice laying it on top of each one. I already wipe that off, so it's not going to work as well. But you know what I mean? Practice laying it on top. Notice some of it stays on top in the solvent. This one doesn't count since I already wiped it off. But notice how on this one the brush marks the resting on top. I'm holding my brush too. It's like it's very gentle. I'm just laying it down. Laying it down on top and see how it's resting on top when we're painting in one session. All primaria, again, it's French for wet and to the idea of finishing painting sitting you will be painting in layers. Layers aren't having time to dry between. The trick to doing that is making those layers much consistency that can handle it. If I was trying to paint on top of a super goopy thick one, it just goes right into it. Then with the oil, you can paint on top of this and I am painting on top of it. But also notice how it absorbs it more versus laying on top. You can use oil in the earliest layers, you probably will. But it does look different when you're laying something on top. The point of this is just to get a feel for what this feels and looks like, it's something to refer back to. It's something that when you do make a painting and you need to troubleshoot, it could be one issue is that the consistency of your earliest layers, It's just too slippery and you need to get it to be a little bit thicker. Another good thing to point out is that this thick paint here, when you try to start painting on top of it, it's hard to tell right now because it's all using the same color. But it's going to be really hard to lay things on top of this paint because it's already so thick. If you're doing your earliest layers here on the other pencil, your earliest layers are probably going to have solvent if you're using it. And that would be this consistency if you're using oil. Probably about this consistency in general, this is, this is too much, it should be a little bit dry and you could be able to scrape it off easily, sing on top as if you're painting super thick at the very beginning. You can do that. I'm not going to say that I love breaking the rules. You absolutely can. However, it's just going to get really hard if you make a mistake or if you want to add some color on top of that initial area, it's just going to be really hard to do. Try to keep your paint thin at the beginning and not too wet, All right? Now to clean up, wipe the paint off your brush as best you can. This will just help, honestly. It helps keep all the dirt and stuff out of your solvent. Then clean your brush really well in the solvent if you're using it. If you're not using solvent, you can clean it in your oil and then you'll definitely want to use a soap afterwards. It doesn't work quite as great. The solvent does a pretty good job. See how it runs clear here, I'll show you. It runs clear, the solvent dirty, that's why it's blue. But it runs clear from the brush. Rub it out of the brush again. I will probably clean this off with soap later today. All right, there you have it. There's your exercising consistency. I'll see in the next lesson. 9. Lesson: How to Make a Painting: In this lesson, I'm going to share with you the structure and the overview of how to make a painting. You can return to this process every single time you paint. At some point, it may become so second nature that you'll want to try something new, that's awesome. You can use this as a guide to follow or to break it. It's worth noting that this is not the only way to paint. I will show you just one way, and I chose this process because I believe it's a simple and logical approach and it's still one that I use most of the time when I'm making a representational painting, remember that's a painting that looks like the object that it is. I will give you an overview of each and then break them down individually throughout the rest of the course. Are you ready to dive in the process of making an oil painting goes as follows. First, celebrate your courage to start. Second, decide on what you want to paint. Third, gather supplies. Prepare your surface with a thin paint in a smaller brush. Next, you're going to draw in your major shapes, including the major shadows and light. You're going to paint in the dark shadows with a bigger brush. Then you're going to fill in the light and middle tones with a bigger brush. Finally, refine with the brightest lights and ending details. Usually your thickest paint and sometimes with smaller brush. Do you have all that? That's it. If you follow that process, you can paint anything. It's just a matter of getting practice with your subject, getting familiar with value and color and composition in your materials. It's the approach I take for almost everything from a quick sketch to a full commission or a live wedding painting. Within that structure, there is so much room for your individual voice to come out. This process is like a recipe. The earliest steps are like making the base. You will heat up the pan, saute your onion and garlic and peppers, and your oil, and then you'll build your dish from there as that guy. Use this as the framework. Using this framework, you can make it your own. You can make your paintings tight or loose. You can use bright colors or total or few ones. You can paint realism. You can even push the abstraction. You can break the rules. You can make them your own. It's art after all. However, if you are here to learn oil painting, I highly encourage you to learn the process. Before you break the process, you may have noticed the first thing on this list was to celebrate. While the rest of this course is designed to break down these steps in the bite sized chunks, I want to go ahead and address tax number one right now. Celebrate the courage to step up to your canvas. I remember when I was just starting, I felt so many things before I painted. I remember thinking I wasn't good enough being afraid or just overwhelmed at everything there was to learn at the time, those fears and emotions felt like disqualifiers. Real artists couldn't possibly feel those things. I couldn't be a real artist. I have a secret for you. Those feelings are not disqualifiers. In fact, they're part of practicing your creativity. They're part of the journey I have painted nearly every day for years and I still feel those things. I've talked and listened to many artists interviews and they do too. There have been books written about this concept, which I'll include in the text below if you'd like to read more about it. Over time, I've come to realize that maybe these feelings, a passage of being artists, there is no such thing as good enough. Your courage to simply start is what's worth celebrating. Each and every painting should teach you something. If you have a hard painting or if you think you fail, that's the best one to celebrate because you have learned something huge. Each of these steps that I outlined is a learned skill. Depending on what you've already practiced with, some steps may take longer to get down than others. That's okay. Celebrate each and every time you try a common answer to the question, how do I get good at painting is simply miles of canvas. It just takes time and truly the journey never ends. There's always something new to try. The sooner you can learn to just appreciate the journey of the year on, the more you will love painting. I want to take a minute to point out a few places where a lot of beginners get tripped up and that do tend to take more time. For example, when you're drawing in the major shapes, there's a lot that's being assumed. You may or may not have an understanding of perspective, which is not something I'm going to be including in this class. Also, it just takes some time to learn things like the figure and faces and flowers and all those things, just take practice. Also, when it comes to filling in the shadows and the lights, you are going to over time, develop an eye for color and for light and dark. That's just something that we're going to practice and that is something I'll be covering in this class. I'm going to start at the very beginning. Congratulations you are here. You are willing to try, willing to learn, and to practice something you may have never done before. It is my hope that you enjoy the process of learning how to see things a little bit different than you have before. Practicing conveying with your hands and celebrating the lessons that you learn. The rest of the class is meant to break down each and every step as simply as possible. Giving you an intro lesson for some of the more complex topics within each. There's plenty more to dive into. My goal is to introduce it to you and keep it step by step at the beginning. 10. Lesson: How to choose your subject: What do you want to paint? That is the question. And you may remember lamenting this open ended answer. As a kid, the possibilities are endless. And my best advice to you is to not overthink it, and especially at first, to keep it simple. Remember, right now you were learning a new language. You were practicing the outfit, writing out verbs, sting together sentences when you're new to anything, crawl before you walk and run. If it's been a while or if this is the first time you have encountered a blank canvas and a paintbrush, an object around your house, that is simple. A piece of fruit works great. I am going to be painting this green apple I'm choosing because it is a simple shape. It's not see through and it's about one solid color look for those things when you're searching for a subject. This will make it easy for me to see lights and darks clearly. To get the color right and to not get distracted by a hard drawing. Start simple As you learn and try new things. You will want to break down each subject into its most simple shapes. Eventually, you will feel confident trying complex subjects, just flowers, landscapes, and faces. For this course, you're going to learn how to paint a very simple still life. But I will teach you some tools you can use to see more complex subjects, simply. At the end of this course, you will also get to watch a demonstration of a landscape painting where I put all these ideas together. You can try it yourself. I recommend slowly build into more complex subjects. If you are just getting started and are able to, I would highly recommend practice painting from life, which basically means painting something that is in front of you and not from a photo. There are great benefits to starting with an object that you have in front of you. However, I will say this as much as you need to hear it. What's most important to me is that you just paint. If a photo is all you have to work with, that's totally okay. In no time you will get to paint all the things that you're interested in. Landscapes, florals, nature, people, they are all complex versions of this concept that I'm teaching you. The reasons I'll be starting with painting from a simple object from life. You will get to observe with your eyes, developing that hand eye coordination is really important. I am not against photographs, and if that's all you have, that's totally okay. However, the process of truly observing something from life will teach you so much about how to see details with your eyes. If you stare at an apple long enough, you'll notice color. That a camera just cannot replicate. Like I said before, it is simple and it can be reduced to very recognizable shapes. Once you can grasp this idea on something simple, then you can start to build more complex scenes also made of simple shapes. I will show you more about this later. Maybe you love the idea of painting, what you see, that's called representational painting. Or maybe you aspire to make dynamic abstract work. The root of all of this is the ability to observe and create in response. After all abstract work came after realism, it's part of our history. If you want to make representational art, then you will use these skills every time you paint. If you want to make interesting abstract art, then it's very important to understand where abstraction comes from. You are abstracting something, sometimes it's visual and sometimes it's not like an emotion. However, the ability to make in response to what you observe, will make your abstract paintings much stronger. These principles will benefit any kind of painter. Now it's time to choose your first subject. When you search for an object, try to find something simple. Preferably a piece of fruit, maybe a ball, a simple shell, or an egg, or anything that looks like. It would be easy to see. I would recommend avoiding flowers, metal and glass at first. These can be a little bit tricky. I want you to practice the basics on something that's a little bit more clean and easy to see if you are unable to paint from life. I will have this photo of an available to download and paint from if you would like. Now hit pause and go find something in your house you'd like to use as your first subject. I'll meet you when you get back. 11. Lesson: Painting From Life (If you can!): In this lesson, you will learn how to set up a scene to paint from life using everyday objects around your house. I understand this can feel like an extra step given the availability of photographs, and technically it is. However, there is some value to it. In short, photographs flatten the subject. A camera will make decisions for you grouping lights and darks together and losing a lot of the subtle color shifts that your natural eye can see. If you take the time to practice painting from life, you will see this over time. Beautiful tones in your subject that disappear when taking a photo. However, I'm a firm believer in painting within your limitations. It's more important to me that you just put brush to canvas than to have the perfect circumstances. Simply understanding that cameras alter the image slightly is half the battle. If you're not able to paint from life, practice observing an object and then observing a photo. You take of the object and take mental notes of the differences. Learning to observe and paint from life is the number one thing I recommend if you want to grow in your painting. Once you are able to learn and translate what you see, you will experience so much freedom. You will start to recognize where a photograph is flattening the value and changing the color. And you will also be able to improvise and have fun while conveying these ideas. Here's an example of some of the ways that I play. These paintings are using acrylic and pastel, not oil. However, they convey the point I used a photo when painting them, you can see the ones that are off to the right side. After practice, I know enough about light to make up some of the details that are lost when taking a photo. But taking the time to observe these differences, you can start to play and have fun with them in your own painting too. However, ultimately, the most important thing to me is that you do start to paint. If you're unable for any reason to set up something like this in your house, I will be including some reference photos you can use instead. However, if you do have these objects around your house, I would highly recommend taking this extra step and start practicing. If you decide to use a photo of mine, that's completely fine. But I would still urge you to practice observing the parts of the shadow that you learned about the value lesson. Physically practicing them, even just one or two times, will help cement the concept. It gives your hand a bit of a visual memory that you'll be able to return to again and again. So here's an example in my own living room of how you could possibly set up a scene with everyday objects. I'm using a TV tray, an Amazon box with one side cut out and a reading lamp to highlight my subject. The purpose of the box is to filter out residual light. And since there are windows that can compete with my single light source, remember here we're trying to stick to one light source so we can clearly see parts of the shadow. You can also use a window. If you happen to have a lamp with a daytime bulb, which will look bluer than most indoor lights, I'd recommend it. However, in this example, I'm using a typical warm reading lamp, and it works just fine. It's worth noting that I took this photo in the daytime and I have overhead lights off in my house. There is enough ambient light to paint from if you're working during the daytime with decent natural light. Turning off the overhead lights may help you get a clean light source. If you're painting after the sun has gone down, be careful about how many lights are on in your space. It can help to place the object in the lamp in a dark corner to help filter out the light in the room that you're painting from. So go ahead and set up your still life. It's time to start painting if you're unable to set up a still life right now. But you would like to practice from a photo. You can download this image at the end of this lesson. 12. Lesson: Values (Creating The 3D Illusion): In this lesson, you're going to learn about the one thing you can practice to make your paintings look more real, that is value. Even if you are more interested in making abstract art, understanding how value can carry your painting will make your abstract paintings stronger and more interesting. If you're interested in representational painting, or making paintings that look like the thing you're painting, then you definitely would want to pay attention because this is really important. If you have taken art classes before, you have probably heard of value. And you might even be tempted to skip this lesson. I encourage you not to, because getting the values right is truly the backbone of making paintings. Often, if something looks off on the canvas because of value, what is it? Value is simply how light or dark something is. Value defines the shape of something. It shows you where the shadows in the lit areas are. It's worth practicing often as if you would practice scales like you're a musician. Here I made a painting of mine in black and white. Just so you can see on one end you can see the lit side of the tree and then the dark side of the tree. You can also see the bright sky behind it and how the foliage in the distance is still pretty light in this painting. Value carries the painting I just wanted to show in black and white so you can get a visual. What we're talking about, a typical value scale has ten steps between pure white and absolute black. Each step is numbered and you can purchase really affordable value meters that can help you identify how light or dark your subject is. A very complex painting, can incorporate perfect value changes around the subject and describe it. Sometimes these are so tonal and so nuanced that they can be hard to see. However, it can also be really simplified. This is a painting by Peggy Roll Roberts. I love this series of hers where she takes little sketches of people at the beach. If you look at the one on the left, it's in full color where you can see some really subtle color differences. But if you look at it on the right, where it's been simplified into black and white, she's basically dividing up these people into a dark side and the light side. And that's it, and there's no extra details and you understand what you're looking at. This is an example where value is communicating the story of the painting. In the next lesson, you're going to learn two things. How to mix paint and also how to make your own value meter. Which you can use again and again when you paint. But before you learn how to do that, I want to teach you exactly how value makes a shape look Three D by showing you the anatomy of a shadow. Take this picture of a white styrofoam ball. This is sitting on a shadow box that I have. It's with a white background. I know the background looks gray, but that's because the brightness of the ball is the only thing that's pure white here. Everything else is in shadow in some way. I know if you have taken beginner art classes before, you may have seen this and you may not be super excited to see the prototypical white ball under a light. But don't worry, I'm not going to make you draw this, but I am going to use this to show you the anatomy of a shadow and then incorporate that into things you actually want to paint. Understanding these parts of the shadow will help your paintings instantly look more realistic. Taking this image of a well lit ball, it should be pretty easy to see the difference between the major light and dark shapes. On one side you have the light notated by the cartini sunshine. And then on the other side you have the shadow. I'm going to talk about the light side first. Within each shape, there are more parts to observe. The light area will act to be mostly one value. It's pretty subtle actually. It's the result of direct light on the object. The arrow in this illustration is showing you where the light is coming from. On the light side, you're going to see two spots that are brighter than the others. The first is the direct light. The direct light is part of the object which is closest to the light source. This is going to be technically the absolute color or whatever it is you're doing. In this sense it would be white. But if you're doing a tennis ball or something that's closest what the actual color is of the actual object. The second light is a highlighted reflection, and it typically occurs in the fullest part of the shape. See how the high light is circled. And it's about in the center of the drawn light area that I have on the illustration. This is probably a little bit more than you need to know right now. However, it's worth noting that the highlight is actually a factor. Where you are is a viewer and less about where the light is. It's impacted by the light of course, but it will move based off of where. It's called a specular highlight on objects that are shiny. Like say a bottle, a dark bottle. It'll be really bright compared to the Lit side. And on objects that are more matt, say a tennis ball or a banana, that highlight will not be as pronounced. That's a little bit more advanced, but I just wanted to point that out and look for it. Whenever you observe things as objects start to turn away from the light, you get the mid tones. This is a pretty short transition. It's a common thing in beginners to make this part too much. It's actually a pretty fast transition from light to dark. Don't spend too much time here, but just know that the mid tones is where the light starts to turn into the dark side. The darker side of the object is a lot more going on. This is really where I want you to observe. The first part of the shadow is the core shadow and it's a dark band that will occur right after the light area. It's darker because the other part of the form is getting some reflected light off the surrounding environment. This is the part of the shadow least impacted by the environment and the reflected light around it. That leads us to the next part, which is the reflected part of the shadow. Reflected light comes from the surroundings. If the object is on a white surface, that reflected light will be a lot stronger than if it were on a dark surface. Here in this picture, you can see how this is illustrated. I have the same white ball in the same shadow box. The first one is on a white background, the second one's on a black background. And I didn't change any of the settings in my camera. The highlights are the same value. You can see that the reflected light portions of each ball are impacted by the light that's around them. The one in the white background is just a little bit lighter than the one of the dark background. Again, this might be a little bit more complex. And you need to know right now if you're brand new, if this is brand new to you and you're already saturated with new knowledge, you don't have to pay attention to this. However, if you've been introduced to value before, you may find this little part interesting. The cache shadow is next. And this is the shadow that extends on the surface and it's a result of the direction of the light. You can find the general shape of the cache shadow by tracing the light from the light source to the edge of the object. An object lit overhead will have a very small cache shadow. An object lit from the side will have a much longer cache shadow. Now if you were making things perfectly exact, you would probably want to pay close attention to this. However, a lot of times when I paint, I'm either making stuff up or I am generalizing and basically make the shadow makes sense. Most people aren't going to go around with a ruler and know exactly where the light source was. That's just not realistic, but it's just something that's good to know. Basically the direction of the light impacts, how long the cache shadow will be also closer to the object. You're going to have a much more hard line between the cache shadow and your surface. If you see my arrow, that's a, it's hard, crisp edge. But it's definitely harder than whenever the shadow gets closer to the end of it where it's much fuzzier and softer just again, It's just something that helps to sometimes, I think when we're observing so many things that we're looking at and we don't know to look for certain things. Just being aware of these little details can help you know what to look for whenever you're painting. I also wanted to bring back for a second the idea of taking pictures. I will mention this again later, but notice how dark the background is. Your camera has a tendency to overcompensate and over correct. I will talk about this again, but if this is your first time, if you feel ready to paint from observation, I would really recommend that you do that and not use a camera at first. The camera will flatten things, they will make some of these shadows go away. And it can be really hard to see them if you're not looking at the image or the object right in front of you. Over time, you will start to learn these things and you'll be able to compensate for the camera, and that's totally fine. I'm not someone that's against pictures at all. But there's a huge benefit to training your eye to observe and just understanding that the camera will wash some of these details out. Your eye can see much more than a camera will show you. The final part of the cache shadow is the occlusion shadow. This is typically the very dark part right underneath the object. It's also typically one of the darkest parts of the painting in general as it's lease affected by reflected light everywhere else. Because this can help your object feel like it's sitting on the ground, that gravity is working. Sometimes if something doesn't feel quite right, you don't really understand why the object looks like it's floating. There's a chance that the area right underneath it just may need to be a little bit darker. There is a lot to remember here, if this is new to you, a bit overwhelming. Just taken the bare minimum. Put simply, when it comes to value on an object with a clear light source, one source of light, would that be a lamp? Or maybe direct overhead sun with nothing else. There's going to be a light side and a dark side which she may have already known. Inside the dark, there will be a tiny spot that's a little bit less dark which is your reflected light. Then there will be a cache shadow underneath the object, with the darkest part being right underneath the object. And the cache shadow will be longer or shorter depending on if the light source is directly overhead or off to the side. When it comes to this practice, observing this with your eyes. You don't even need to paint it quite yet. When just place something underneath a solo light source, be careful because you can have other lights that are on in your house which could make it hard to see as outside, there can be some impacts of reflection as well. Maybe put an object underneath a lamp whenever it's nighttime and observe this with your eyes, then practice painting it. This is where a lot of really classical detailed realism can depart from more impressionistic work or work. Whenever you're working up realism, you're capturing every minute detail in this process. And It's a very huge exercise of your observational skills and hand eye coordination. If that's not something that interests you, make educated simplifications. Just going back to Peggy Row Roberts speech scenes, she doesn't necessarily include all of these details. She's got a light in a dark and a shadow and they're all one color and that's totally fine. It's important to understand that there are some details that you are choosing to leave out. Here's an image of one of my paintings where I take this idea and I simplify it for the most part. This is a pretty complex object. It's a tree and there's multiple forms wrapping around the value of each individual branch and the trunk itself. It's almost too zoomed in to see those details, but on this particular tree on the left, you can see branch on the left, you can see where the high light and the core shadow and the reflected light describe the circular form of this tree. In this painting, I keep it very brushy, very loose. That was what I was going for. It makes this branch look three dimensional. I just wanted to show you an example. There is a lot to remember here. I'm going to add one more thing. This is brand new to you. You come back and watch this later. If you are a value expert and you're ready to receive this part, I will encourage you to listen up before you move on. Understand that the darkest light is never darker than the lightest dark. It can go the other way around as well. The lightest dark will never be lighter than the darkest light. Here are two examples where I show you this as the ball on the left hand side starts to turn towards the shadow that's at. It's almost a mid tone, but it's still in the light side. I pulled down the swatch to show you what that color actually is with my ipad, Then I pulled out a swatch from the reflected light. It looks much darker on the white background because the white is very bright. But trust me, I pulled it out digitally. That way would be perfect. You can see that even though that reflected light looks light on the picture, it's still much darker than the darkest light on the light side. Again, on this tree example, on the highlight of the branch, you can see that light side is this medium gray. That's that's the value of it based off of what I pulled away from my ipad. And then on the shadow side, the reflected light looks pretty light in this image, but it's still a solid shade or two darker than the darker part of the highlights. This is another thing. If you're finding that your paintings are looking flat, even though you're incorporating shadow, be careful that your reflected light isn't too light. Because if it is too light, it will make the shadow side, it'll be confusing and you won't be able to understand the values between them. Understanding these elements and putting them into practice is the foundation for all painting. It's what you will come back to again and again, and it's not something you master in a day. The best thing you can do right now is to just let your mind be blown seriously. I remember when someone taught me this and it's so cool, and then start to practice observing this in everyday life. Keep in mind that things get a lot more complex once you start looking at objects in normal settings, as light sources can come from a variety of directions, and the objects themselves become much more complicated than a simple sphere. When you see something lit, simply practice identifying the parts of the shadow and observing the slight variations in value. Being able to see this with your eyes is the first step to be able to, being able to translate it with your hand. In the upcoming lesson, you're going to practice value and you'll learn how to mix paint at the same time. This exercise will be the foundation for the first two paintings you make in this class. The first painting will be a black and white painting. Or if you don't have black, another dark color such as blue, the second one will be in full color. But it's really important to paint in black and white before you add the color. All right. If you have any questions, leave them in the comment section and I will do my best to answer them. I hope this helps you understand how value makes your painting look. Three D 13. Value Exercise: How to Mix Paint: This exercise, we're going to do two things. We're going to learn how to mix paint, and we're also going to create a value scale. For this exercise. You're going to need a piece of your oil paper, a straight edge of some sort. I'm just using a palette from my studio. A pencil, a palette knife, a paint brush. A white and then a dark color. I'm using black, I'm using Gamblin ivory, black. You can use blue if you don't have that. Or maybe a lizard and crimson if you have that. Trying to do. Why block? If you can help it actually definitely be black, you could help it. We just have to lesson on value. And you learned that there is ten steps to value. We're going to actually do five step values. We're going to have five different colors from dark to light. And we're going to use this later on, whatever you make today, save it. The first thing we're going to do at the edge of your paper, is use your straight edge to draw a line, maybe an inch and a half or 2 " down. Then I want you to divide that by five into five equal segments. We five segments, they don't need to be perfectly equal. But the only thing that's important is that you make sure that it goes off the end of your paper. I'm just going to eyeball it myself. That's way off. I'm going to draw these right here. It does not make me perfect. If you are the type that likes to measure by means, pause me and go do it real quick. So I've got five boxes, they're pretty close. The next thing we're going to do now is squeeze out both white and black on your palette. I am going to put white on this end and make about a quarter size amount. You might need some more. I'm eyeballing this and you're black on the other side. Okay, so the first thing we're going to do here is mix. And I'm going to teach you how to mix. And then we're going to give out each chart. I'm using professional grade paint. I know by using both professional grade paint that they're about the same density of pigment. I don't need to compensate too much. If you're using a professional grade and aren't in a student grade, then you may need to add a little bit more. But this is something that we can just eyeball for now. The first thing you do is take about half of the paint of the white your pal, knife and scoop up, say another piece size amount. Wipe off your knife. Take about the same amount of the black. That looks about right. It doesn't have to be too perfect. How to mix is you scoop it up together. Then you just use your knife to smooth it into the surface. All right, this is interesting. I know that the Pal paper that I'm using is middle gray. I'm going to use a little bit extra white because see how this is darker than the Pal paper. I'm going to use a little more white to even it out. Now what I'm having you made right now is a value chart. This is something that you can buy for like a couple dollar. It's really not that expensive. If it's something that you think that would be helpful, I would recommend doing it. Yeah, this is still a little bit too dark. See how it snooze out like this? I'm going to just some out here, got a lot of black. I don't want to keep pace with paint. I'm going to add a little bit more white until it's pretty close to this, to the actual value of this paper. The color is different now. Yeah, you will notice this color looks a little bit more blue than the paper. That's fine because, well, we'll get into that in a different class. That's totally fine. What I'm looking for is that it's about the same value. I need a little more white. We're getting pretty close, a lot of white. I'm doing this at an angle, so it's a little bit hard for me to see it. Let's just save some paint. Obviously that black is more potent than I realized. There we go. Okay, see how it's really close to the same color or the same value. Then you're going to put it in the middle. In between the two, you'll notice it's a white. It's a gray. It's a black. Now we're going to do half steps in between each. I need to get a little bit more white. You're going to do the same thing this time, but take a little bit of this middle color, like you can see it, just a little bead. Take about the same amount of white and mix that the same way that you just did. This is something you're going to have to eyeball a little bit, but this should appear about halfway between these two values. It looks too white bids you to use your best judgment. I think that's about right. I think I got it right the first time. Yeah, it looks really good. This is your middle tone. Your middle light tone. I'm sorry, I'm wiping off my mind. I did the same thing from the middle pile that you the first thing that you mix, it's that half halfway between white and black. And put it on your palette paper, get a little bit of black and mix something that I think this is good too. About halfway between that middle gray and black. I think that's perfect. This right here, you need to pause me catch up. I would recommend doing that. This right here will represent your five value chart. A little bit more black to that. It seems slightly, slightly. We think that something in between, maybe a little bit less, may be about right. There we go, That's good. Okay, there we go. So we've got five steps. I'm wiping off and palette now. I'm going to take my little value chart that I made. If you want to pull out some oil just to make it a little bit easy to work with, you absolutely can. So I'm going to get a little bit of oil. I'm going to, one by one, start filling in my chart. The first one is white, might be a good amount. I'm just filling in the gaps. Now you can make the value of your paint change two ways. You can add white to it or yellow, that's my puppy. Or you can actually make it thinner. Like you can add oil and the value will change because of the white paper behind it or the white canvas behind it if you're using white. But for now, we're going to focus on making sure that's advanced. Right now, we're just going to focus on making sure the color that we're mixing on our palette is correct. In the materials list, I send out a recommendation on palettes. I love using color paper because it's so easy to clean up. But this is the reason why I really like the gray is because it's so helpful in seeing value in between each. Be sure to clean your brush pretty well. I guess you'll be. Mine is still blue from our painting exercise that we did with consistency. So I'm just going to get a little bit of it out. It doesn't need to be completely cleaned as you're just picking up this paint. Now we do that middle town, different oil, pick up that middle town and paint in that square burd. To keep doing this until we get to block here, your middle gray. Notice how much darker these look on the white paper, isn't that interesting? It's white paper. That white surface can make. It can be kind of misleading to see what the actual value of something is. Okay, Clean up that edge. We, the clean your brush. Get some oil pick at that middle. Dark gray. I'm making this a little bit thick, just it make sure we get a good paint color in. This May take a little bit of time to dry. That's okay. If you make this and you have kids or pets around, just make sure you keep it out of reach because it takes a long time to dry. If a cat walks on it or kids get into it, it'll likely still be wet in a couple of days that get everywhere. Paint has this tendency to travel and move around. Okay. Last one. Now I'm going to pick up this black, strict black. Now if you read about this elsewhere, you'll see that there are numbering systems for values and some people will make a value of white and black ten, and then other times it'll be the opposite. I have noticed this often I've read about value. What? Honestly, it doesn't really matter as long as it's actually the right value. The number doesn't matter as long, however you decide to number, this is 05 or the other way around, one of five. Take your pencil again and write down the numbers underneath. I'm going to start, I'm just going to go one to five because it makes sense going in this direction, 12345. There you have it. Right now you've got a value chart with a white, a light gray, a middle gray, a dark gray, and a black. You also learned how to mix on your palette with your pale. Be sure to save this value chart. We're going to use it later whenever we make our painting and we talk about color. One more thing. You can actually save this paint. I don't ever like to waste oil paint because it is expensive. The first painting you'll do, you'll be doing it only in black and white, or in a dark color and white if you don't have black. In the meantime, you can stick this in the freezer. I would recommend if you don't have a palette that has a sealable lid to maybe put it in a cardboard box or anything with a thin raised edge. You can keep it in the freezer to help it last longer. That way it's pre mixed and ready to go when you are ready to paint. All right. I'll see you in the next lesson. 14. Lesson: Seeing Your Subject Simply: In this lesson, you will learn a simple way to apply the principles of value by seeing your objects as a series of shapes. Earlier you learned how different parts of the shadow can make an object appear. You also learned that you can make educated simplifications. Choosing to condense these more complex value changes into something simple like a dark and light and maybe a dab of reflected light or high light in between. There are a range of options between hyper realistic and super simple. But the most important thing is to understand how a shadow tells you its shape to begin with. That lets you make an educated decision and gives you a lot of freedom whenever you're making art. Everything is a shape. Something tells me you're not very inspired to paint white styrofoam balls, let's tell you, okay, and I'm not going to make you do that. What I want to do is empower you to start to see what does inspire you as simplified shapes. Start very basic at first, and practice simplifying every object in your mind. You can use value to communicate these shapes. And you'll start to notice the form is starting to look like the object itself. I'll illustrate this furs with a pretty straightforward example. Our apple. This is clearly not a perfect sphere, but in general, it takes the shape of something round like a sphere. Knowing this and knowing the way a sphere reacts with light should help you as you start to imagine the major light and dark shadows. These major shapes are important because the first marks you will make in your painting are those broad, overarching shapes. Focusing on the details too early can result in mistakes that are hard to fix. But keeping the broad early on will keep your paintings looking more together from the very beginning, especially with wet and to wet oil painting. Here's an example of flower, flowers are actually very complex. I would recommend starting with something a little more simple before you attempt to wet it. This is your first time. However, I want to include as an example, you can see how they really are just overall like half a sphere, maybe a bell shape. Depending on how the flower is shaped on the inside, it could actually look you in like a cup with the hollowed out inside. It's really easy to get distracted with all the petals and beautiful leaves. Keeping your flower in more of a simple shape will help keep its shape overall. Here's an example of a Tuscan landscape. In its essence, a landscape is just a flat plane. Maybe a hilly plane like in this sense. But think of that plane, just like the cardboard box of the apples resting on with spheres and cubes and half spheres that are resting on top. The foliage can represent a cube or a sphere or a half sphere. This photo was actually taken on a cloudy day. That does make it hard to see where the shadows are. However, in general with landscape painting, the sun has to be overhead in some capacity. Unless it's a sunset or a sunrise, you do have a little bit of liberty to make up the shadows, choosing to place darker values underneath the shapes or maybe off to the side in the case of the cube of trees on the left. All right, this is more of an intermediate topic, but I just wanted to throw it in there just in case you're interested. When you're painting the landscape, you may not be aware there's an additional flat plane and that's the plane of the sky. If you think of the sky as a flat plane, just like you would think of the ground as one, then you'll see the clouds as if they were half spheres or cubes as well. Except instead of looking at the top of them like you would trees and bushes, in this image, you're looking at the bottom of them. I drew in a few pretend clouds to illustrate this point. Once again, this is a little bit more intermediate and the converging lines represent perspective, which I'm not going to cover in this class. However, just I want you to understand that a landscape is even the clouds can be simplified into simple shapes, all right? This is my puppy, isn't he? Sweet. He's a doberman shepherd. Okay. Anyway, so this is an example of how you can take a more complex subject like an animal or person and simplify it. So I didn't include every part of him. Obviously, I left out some of his legs and feet and ears. But I just wanted to show you by some bigger examples what it looks like. In this example, there are spheres and cylinders and even a cube with his mouth. Again, this picture is of a cate day, so it's kind of hard to see some of those dark shadows. However, if you look at the image on the right with the pink shapes that are making up his, his body. You can actually start to see the form of a dog coming out by just including shadows underneath. So while I wouldn't necessarily advise starting off using a picture from a cloudy day because it is harder to see, you can see how the shapes are showing themselves. You can use this to help understand where you may put those simplified shadows Just like value. This is not something that you can learn overnight. It might just take a little bit of practice to get the hang of it. The most important thing I want you to take away from this is that by mentally breaking down your subject into simple shapes, you can make a stronger painting with as much or a little detail as you'd like. I'd also like to emphasize it's not necessary to draw this out ahead of time, although it can be a really helpful exercise to do. The idea is more showing you the inside forms which make up the more complex subjects. These are clearly very simplified shapes. If you're interested in those more complex subjects, you can take classes and even Google Search, just how some of those more minute planes are broken down. In this lesson, you have learned various ways you can see a subject by simple shapes. You will be able to take this idea into the next step. As you start your first well painting, the first thing you will do in your painting after setting up is drawing in the major shapes. Take a look at your subject and try to identify the shapes that you see before moving on to the next video. 15. Paint: Palette Set Up : In this lesson, I'm going to show you how to start and complete your first painting. This will be a full length demo which you can follow along and pause when you need to, or you can just watch it and try to do it after getting started. I have white and black paint. If you don't have just anything that's darker, such as a lizard, crimson or ultraine blue, it's really not a big deal if it's not black. I've got three different brushes. Two flats probably maybe besides six or four, and then I have a round size two. Both of all of these are Princeton Catalyst. I recommend these brand because they're really nice for oil painting. They have a stiff bristle, but they're not as expensive when you're just starting off. So I love using this brand. I have a pallet knife for mixing even though I've actually already mixed, and this is from earlier with the value exercise we did. So I'm going to leave it here. I've got a paper towel, I've got my solvent, and I have my oil. I am working on palette paper right now. It's super easy to clean up. And then I've got well paper in front of me as well, so make sure you have everything you need. And hit Pause if you need to, And then come back and find me in a few seconds. 16. Paint: Surface Prep and Drawing in Shapes: Before we get started, I wanted to share with you a little bit about setting up your easel. I have a full size a frame easel. This wasn't very expensive. It's probably $90 on line, maybe 60. The important thing if you are standing up, which I'd recommend because it's more comfortable and you can move around much better, is to have your paintings square in front of you. You should be able to comfortably stand and look straight ahead, and it would be staring back at you whenever you're craning over to look. That is sometimes where it's hard to see. It's hard to capture the right perspective once we start working on that. But it's also just not as great as your posture. That's one thing to consider. If you are painting on a kitchen table or a desk, that's totally fine. You may want to consider getting a desk easel for help. You look at it straight ahead or you can look over on your table looking down. That's totally fine to do. If you end up really enjoying this and you want to invest in an easel, that's what I would recommend. Okay? To get started, I'm using wool paper right here. I do this with canvas too, but I definitely especially do it with wool paper because light absorbs, it's just funky. In order to prepare the surface, I like to both saturate the fiber so it will receive the paint better and kill the white. Personally, I find it distracting to fight. I am going to do that by taking the paper towel. Can also use a rag or cheese cloth. I'm going to get mostly solvent. Remember what we talked about earlier with the rules over thin? Lean over lean. This is going to be mostly solvent, it's going to be more lean and thin. And I'm actually just going to pick up some black. I'm not going to use any white. All I'm trying to do is just pick up some pigment on my paper towel and see how thin that is. And then I'm going to now prepare my surface with my really saturated paper towel. I'm going to cover it, see how it's just killing off all the white. This is just a way to keep it. It's hard to take this down. This is making it more of a middle grade distract. I'm to wipe all that out base there. But what I'm doing right now, I'm saturating it. I am killing off all the white. I'm making it just easier to work, from going to make it sideways. Okay. If you want to take the edges so it's nice and clean, that's kind of fun to do too. All right. I'm going to take a dry paper towel now and kind of get some of that excess little excess solvent paint off selene Snoop. Earlier in the consistency exercise, we made a pretty loose wash and then we wiped it off. This should be familiar and all this is doing is paper do when you're starting a painting, I always like to start with the big shapes first. We're going to do a sketch. I'm taking my round brush right here. I'm going to get it in some oil and a little bit of solvent thin mixture. I already have my five values made. I don't necessarily pre mix all the time, but I am this time. It's going to be a easier if you need to pause me and mix your paint to catch up, go ahead and do that. What we're going to do first is start the drawing. I'm going to use probably my middle dark value for this because I'm going to be laying in the darks first. And that middle dark value, I'm looking at my reference image. In the middle dark value, I'm looking at the apple. I'm thinking that's about the right value for the shadow side. I'm going to go ahead and do this drawing. I have a thin, I'm just laying in the big shapes. Remember what we talked about simplifying the apple in a sphere? I'm holding my brush close to the end. I like to start with really broad marks. This is going to be the top of the apple. This is the bottom of the apple. Then the sides. Luckily, it's an apple, it does not need to be perfect. Then start building it from there. We already know this is going to be a sphere. We already know how light reacts to a sphere. Getting used to drawing from site is definitely a challenge. But flatten this a little bit. I like to do, sometimes I like to be loose with my painting, but I like to clean up the edges a little bit. I'm choosing an apple because it is so simple. I really want to show you kind of these principles. Way we've got the little stem, then this is where it gets interesting. The light is coming from this direction, The shadow wraps around like this because the top flat and more of the apples and light. I'm looking at my reference and I'm going to do my best to copy the major shadow lines that I see. This is what I'm seeing. We've got that little shadow in there. That's about right. Then I'm going to draw in cast shadow. Now, lights coming from here. Honestly, I'm going to do a line. This is going to show me about how far out there it is. That's about how far it's going to go. I'm just drawing basically what I see. Finally, this is going to occupy space. I probably should have done this first, but it's fine. Here's my horizon line. I'm not showing you rules of composition yet, but in general, you don't want your horizon line in the dead center. I like to just take my paintbrush and make sure that it's not in the center. And also this is a really great way to measure. This is about high tall. My reference, I'm sorry, horizon line is I will use that to make some marks and then connect them again. See, I'm drawing from my shoulder, making that straight line. This need to be straight. Then I see a little shadow back here. It's very subtle. But I'm going to draw it in there to remind myself. Because my lights coming from this direction, it would make sense that there is a shadow back there. There's also a shadow up here. Getting lost in that edge. That's okay. All right. There you have it. That is the blocking in the major shapes of your painting in black and white. In the next section, we will fill in the shadows. 17. What to Do When You Make a Mistake: In this lesson, you will learn two options you have when you think you have made a mistake. What I love about oil painting is that mistakes are so easy to recover from because the paint is so slow to dry. It allows you a lot of wiggle room to work things out. I'm sharing this lesson in the middle of the demonstration because I want you to pay particular attention at this stage, the drawing stage. You still have just the drawing. It is so much easier to make adjustments than before you really start painting. Before I share your two options, I want to emphasize just how much you can avoid at this stage. The drawing part of making a paint does not have to be super precise. And I can speak from experience because I don't particularly enjoy drawing. I usually do not make mine extremely precise. However, I try to make it accurate. The more time you spend in this phase, the easier it is to make adjustments and avoid issues later down the line. My first piece of advice is to simply stay in the drawing phase a little bit longer than you think you need to. Don't be afraid to take your rag or paper towel and wipe out sections to redraw them. That leads me to the first option. You can wipe out any part of your painting at any time. I would say about 50% of the time, I wipe out at least a part of a painting, the drawing or a small section. Sometimes I still have to wipe out the entire thing and start over. It's okay. Trust yourself to do this. If you could do it once, you can do it again and you can probably do it better because you've already tried some things that did not work. The second option is to just paint through it. It's important to know that the middle part of a painting never looks great. I've heard this referred to as the ugly middle. When you're in this state, recognize that this is the phase. And to keep going, if you're careful about your paint consistency, you can also paint over work that you've already done. If the adjustments are minor, this can easily get messy. So it may be worth just wiping out a section when you're in the stage. Trust the process. Know that if you're following along this stage, you're making sure your drawing is fairly accurate. You're covering your darks and then your middles and then your lights. Trust that it'll look okay. Don't overthink it. Trust the process. Sometimes you might just need to keep painting. If you think you've made a mistake, try not to get frustrated and instead celebrate the fact that you are challenging yourself. That is brave and you are learning. One of my favorite pieces of art is Michael Angelo's T in Milan, Italy. This is not the famous statute that he completed when he was 25, but rather an unfinished one that he did near the end of his life. In this statue there's an extra limb which some think he abandoned because he changed his mind. Taking the sculpture in another direction halfway through. I think that's amazing. Michael Angelo is arguably one of the most skilled artists making his famous David statue at the age of 26. The unfinished PHS statue was made when he was nearing the age of 90. If Michael Angelo can change his mind and maybe even mess up and start again after the lifetime of accomplishments he demonstrated, then so can we. 18. Paint: Shadows and Darks: In this section, we are going to fill in the major shadows. And so I am using my somewhat larger flat brush for this. I'm going to pick up some more oil and a little bit of solvent. Because again, just still the base layers, that middle value that we mix at middle dark value is going to be a lot right for these shadows. I'm not going to use straight black, but I like that value. I'm looking at my reference and that's about right. I'm going to use this. I'm getting a good amount of my brush. I'm going to now hold close to the end and just lay in those major shapes. I obviously, I should probably be using a bigger brush than this. I'll pick up some more paint. Pre mixing can really help. You may notice that there is a reflected light a little bit in this part of the shadow on the apple. In the reference, I will include that later. That's a little bit different, that's actually reflecting from the ground. I see this is a little shadow there that shadows in there. And then the cast shadow, this is going to be your inclusion shadow. I'm going to go ahead and actually just fill in this entire area. I like it brushy. We're calm this down a little bit later. I like this, this is your middle ground. I'm also going to add in probably using my round brush, a little bit darker for some pretty dark areas. Right here, I see one right there. I see the occlusion shadow right here. Blood that make a mark for it. Yeah, there we go. Then the last shadow I'm going to cover is actually back here. This is going to be more of a middle ground plane, but this shadow back here is fairly dark. Not quite as dark as the apple. For this, I'm picking up both solvent and oil. Again, I'm actually going to pick up more of that middle ground, but I'm going to mix it into what I already have, a darker, it won't be quite as light as the middle but it's still pretty. Just capture that background. I'm not going to ness cover it all the way out here. I'm just going to suggest it. I'm going to let uh, works be nice edge, here we go. That is the shadows and middle round, keep that you see the shape of an apple lady starting, we're going to keep these really broad. In the next section I'm going to fill in the medium tones and the light tones as well. 19. Paint: Midtones: All right, in this section I'm going to fill in the medium tones. In the light tones, and you should start to see the apple come to life. Looking at my reference, I'm actually going to do the light tones at the very end. And I'm going to do the medium to medium light. I'm picking up in between these two on my brush. That's about right, actually, making more medium. Remember, there's ambiguity here and there's ways also you can just make decisions. You can see that there is not necessarily the perfect answer. You can consolidate since we only have five values. I'm going to use that to fill in just a little bit of the background. I'm going to go around the stem, see the very subtle difference, but it's there. Okay. Well, you know that it's there. I also see that same medium tone echoed on the other side of the apple, a round where this is intersected. It's a little bit light for a second because there's light coming through. Now I'm going to get some of this off and just make that edge a little bit softer. Look at me, I'm holding brush a little bit too close. I'm not too worried about filling in all of these things. I also see pretty light to medium light tone value, sorry, in front of the apples. This is not necessarily normal to do it this way, but there's going to be some opportunities, I'm actually going to get right up into it. And it's a fairly light contrast right here. Again, make that soft angle. I'm using both oil and solvent here. I can't really tell you like my formula for when I use it, when I don't. But basically I try my best to. This initial blocking is pretty much the only time I'll I'll use the solvent, then I'll just use oil here. And now I just like that earlier layers to be this way. I'm actually going to pick up at this dark again or this medium dark again, Fill it in to bring up the value. Just bring down the value. Just fill in some of these areas right at the end of the shadow. It actually gets to get softer as you get further away from the light. I'm going to do that by bringing the shadow value down a little bit. Bringing the background and the shadow closer together, we're starting to get pretty close to it over here. My eye is not liking that this is not complete, so I'm going to at least finish off the horizon, but maybe fill in this area. But I personally like leaving some of this here. It's interesting, it doesn't always work. Okay, now we're going to fill in the light, medium, light tones of the apple itself, of the form. At this point, I'm going to get some of this off my brush. I want something in between this, the white and that medium light. Because I'm looking at my reference. Could be okay, but I'm going to be tiny bit lighter. This is something that I need to eyeball somewhat quickly because I've done a lot, It takes you a little bit more time to get the hang of it. That's totally okay. I just remember I've had a lot of time doing this. I'm going to fill in these medium white areas of the apple. Fresh likes to sneak up there. I'm seeing the lit area. This is, you'll see the base color of the apple in the lit area. But usually the base color will come up right and starts to intersect with the dark. Since since we're not using color yet, we will not be seeing that in terms of color. But the value as well, what's the actual value of the apple? Not with the light, but I'm going to fill in just very simply, I'm not including all the details yet. At some point, this part here is going to get lightened up. It shouldn't be blending into the background the way it is, but that's because I'm not going to worry about that until the end. But I do like that I'm getting a little bit of a disappearing edge right now. The disappearing edge, whenever those two values are the same, it can be really nice to use in your painting. I always look for them, especially when painting still lights outdoors. If the values will be the same, it's pretty fun to see them come together like that. Here in this area, you're seeing the light from the lamp that's illuminating the apple bounce back up into here. I'm actually going to go ahead and capture that right now. I'm going to get some of this light off my brush, pick up this medium, and add, see how is that value. It's close. I'm actually going to add a bit of that medium dark in there just to darken it just a little bit but not as dark as the whole thing. This is that shadow I see. The shadow that's about where this core shadow is as well. All see is about a patch. It's not too big but it's there. Lighten up just a tiny bit too big. But it's there, there's a little bit of reflection happening in there that I see. Okay. And at the same time also the apple turns down. Actually, I'll do that too. The lightest dark is never lighter than the darkest light where this apple starts to turn down a little bit. And even in the core, this will not be as light, as dark as this is. We already know that color is, we just make sure about right. Okay. As long as it's darker or lighter than this color, it'll be okay. Let's see. Yeah, there we go. That's lighter. I can totally use that medium to do it. I'm picking up a little bit of oil now. I want to turn this down just a little bit. Also, it's going to work into that wet paint. It won't be as dark either. A little bit too much paint on my brush. Here we go. Sometimes that can happen. There we go. Then I'm going to go ahead also and take a mix of those two light colors and use that to clean up the edges of the core shadow. This is the mid tones where those things go together. I should have a bigger brush right now, but that's what I pulled out. So this is what we got. Kind of put that in a nice shot back here too. All right, At this point, it's starting to look quite a bit like an apple. But I want to bring up some of these highlights too. If he's kind of coming through the paper there, that's okay. I'm also in this opportunity going to take the opportunity to put in the reflected light here. I'm looking at it even though we know it does this. I'm looking at it and it's actually reflecting more up here. It's similar to that. I'm just going to keep it pretty simple, honestly. I would like to maybe round this out, just the drawing itself and then to emphasize that core shadow one more time, I'm taking that medium dark and I'm actually going to get tiny bit darker because I know that is the darkest spot. I'm going to use that to emphasize it. Just laying it on the consistency exercise and talked about that how lay it very gently on see like I'm not putting a lot of pressure onto it. It's actually a little bit of one down here. There we go. Okay, now I'm going to start refining. I'm going to bring up the light in the lit area of the apple. I'm going to start using most of the oil. Now this is wet into wet. At this point, what I have down, I wanted to do too much more than what I'm doing. I would probably need to let it dry just a little bit, maybe an hour or two, but we are going to leave it very fresh and wet into wet. Which means you have to be careful with how thin it is at the very beginning. You're also going to want to Yeah, we be careful in at the beginning and try to get the values right. The first time I'm seeing around this area, it starts to get lighter. This is a little bit thicker paint, you can tell the video it's slightly thicker, slightly less solvent solvent. Just using oil, I'm going to kind of build that shape that grounds out the apple right here. And we're going to add in the highlights next, which is the fun part. I'm taking my small round brush and picking up again some of that middle light. I see a really nice high light over here. See how delicate got some dark on there. I want that. See how delicately I'm holding this, I'm holding right here and jamming it in. I'm like holding it near the end and just laying it in there. It's going to give you more painterly, Mark. You're not going to have much control over everything but it's a painting, it's not a photo. We're okay with that? All right, I'm going to give the rim a little bit of a tension here. Let me go back to my slightly smaller one, smaller flat brush I'm using. What's going on here is my help. Before I do that, I'm going to put it in the dark stem. I'm going to pick up my black. I think this is about the darkest it's going to be. Maybe a little bit of. Yeah, it's pretty close, obviously. The stem is pretty dark. Picking up a pretty good amount of rush. I'm going to lay in a see, I'm holding it. This is not overly overhand. It's over, I'm overhand, and my arm is just upside down, and I see the stem here. I'm going to just pull it up. Just lay it down really gently. What's happening right now is like the top of the apples turning inward. I want to communicate that turn. Part of what I need to do still, is bring down the shadow, just a little bit of this edge. Again, the small brush, I'm just laying it down. This part right here is a bit of a rim. I'm going to communicate that by actually bring this value just a tiny bit darker. It's very subtle, but it will make a difference a little darker than that. We're trying to turn away from the light over here. And then it gets started, it gets lighter again. Okay, see that again, The dark. I'm going to kind of paint in that turn. I'm going to show that form as it turns over, then again up a little bit more dark. 20. Paint: Finishing Touches (Highlights): I'm going to pick up a little bit more dark, just allow this to turn into the inside of the apple. There you go. There's a lot going on over here actually, I don't really like how what I'm seeing is actually like half and half that to me is very confusing. I'm going to take a liberty, fear of little artistic liberty, and extend some of this lighter area past the stem in a way that it's not necessarily doing it, that I can see. But it's going to help it read a little bit. I don't like how it's just half and half see that. See how I'm doing that. You just use my thicker brush to pull that down. Okay. I'm happy with that. Also pick up some of that midtown and as this gets rounder up here to turn in, I'm happy with that. At this point, we're going to add in the final touches and the highlights. The squint, the brightest part of the apple is the reflected light on the middle of the fullest part of the apple. That's going to be the lightest thing that I do. I'm going to be wiping off my brush. I see that since this is a waxy apple, it is going to be a pretty strong light picking up a little bit of the dark here. Just a tiny bit of oil. This is going to be a thicker bit of paint brush here. I like that thick. Already brought up the light in there. I'm just going to overhand my brush. I'm holding it close because I don't want to slip. I'm just going to lay it down. Lay down. Then there's another highlight from the light over here. Once again, down gets light around here. This is a slightly darker version of that light. I want to bring up this highlight a little bit more without it being the highlight itself. I'll keep going through a little bit. The see I'm looking at, I want to lighten up the ground or the cardboard that's on just a tiny bit. Emphasize this because the light is pretty strong down there. I'm squinting. These two value are pretty close. It's fleeting. But there is a moment where that value is a little bit lighter. So I'm going to go ahead and do that too. Now, another detail I want to make sure that I emphasize and add is that inclusion shadow did it before but I can see it lost it a little bit. Right now I'm mixing a darker version of that, medium dark. I'm going to lay it back in because it actually extends right at the edge of that shadow that goes down too far away. There we go, that's looking better. This is the darkest part of the shadow and typically the darkest part of the painting as well, when you're doing a still life and that's looking really good, liking this. Okay. The last thing I'm going to do is highlight the stem. This isn't going to be quite as light as, as the highlight on the apple. I'm going to pick up that white, but then mix it more with the middle gray. I know this because the apple itself waxy and the stem is not even though it looks really strong contrast because that dark is dark on the stem itself. I know it's not just like before. Just like before. Highlight on top, a little guy there. And then this, we'll do that. And then hold onto your brush this time. Just very gently pull it up. See that? There you have it, Your apple in black and white. 21. Lesson: And Intro to Color as Value: It's time to talk about color. Now that you have an understanding of how value affects the appearance of the shape of an object, you are ready to learn about color. In this lesson, you will learn about the basics of color as value. It will be a beginning level introduction. I absolutely adore nerding out over color as much as I want to tell you everything I know right now, I recognize you need to understand it one step at a time for the goal for this lesson is that you understand how to use color as it relates to value. The first thing that you need to know is that color has value. Color can be light, dark, and anywhere in between. And understanding that will help you as you build a painting. And color, to be honest, you can completely mix up the colors. If the value is correct, your subject will still read like this wonderful portrait by Falvius painter Andre Derain. Pretty cool, huh? Each color in its purest form has a value. This is something that you're going to practice in an exercise following this lesson. It's important to know because the color of your subject and the color out of the tube may both look, say, red in the case of this apple. But since red coming out of the tube is typically a darker value color, you may need to add something to it to make it match the value of the light area of the object. You can use any color of lighter value to make that red lighter white is the usual choice. Sometimes you would add yellow as well. Red. Adding white will make it look a little bit more pink, and adding yellow will make it look more orange. Adding a little white and a little yellow may be a good balance. If the subject is not either one of those colors, this is getting into much more advanced color. But if after you add white, it still doesn't look quite right. Sometimes you might need to add a different color, like green or blue. But I'm not going to cover that in detail in this class. The simplest way to make color lighter or darker is to add black and white. If you are brand new to the idea of color theory, I'd really recommend starting here. The colors will look a little bit dull if you using only black and only white to lighten, darken them. But it's okay. I would much rather you have the colors maybe off. But the value is right at this stage. It's much more important to me that you can understand color as light and dark, or somewhere in between. And that also just understand there are many ways for you to lighten and darken it. As a side note, this photo is silly. One day in the studio, I had a white and black next to each other and it looked like they were getting married. I took this photo, this was a few years ago and I thought it would make you laugh. I shared it here too. Use your white and black. It's totally okay. However, if you'd like to explore color a little bit, you can totally play with adding colors that are darker and lighter to adjust the value instead of just adding white and black. Actually, on second thought, using white is still my primary way to lighten the color. But sometimes I do add yellow or even blue or red to that white depending on the color. But again, that's getting a little bit complicated. You don't need to know all that right now. If you are interested in exploring color a little bit, I'd encourage you to practice mixing to match a color that you see. It's totally normal. If when you're practicing it's a complete mess and train wreck, that is very typical and that means that you're learning. It's okay. In this chart, I list some common colors. If they tend to be light, medium, or dark coming out of the tube. This will vary base off of the type of colors you're using. But I wanted to give you a general grouping of values of fairly common pigments that you might see in oil painting. Your lightest colors tend to be white, naples yellow. And your cadmium yellow light is pretty white too. Also cad yellow medium is on the edge. Medium value colors include yellow ochre, cadmium red light, manganese blue hue, and raw sienna. Your darker colors will be ivory, black, ultramarine blue, quinacridone, magenta, Alizarin, crimson, probably vorridian green, burnt umber, burnt sienna, some of those darker earth tones. In theory, you can use any color from a different value to change the value of the color at hand. It is easy to get a color you didn't intend to get by using something too different. In the next slide, I will share with you some basic color theory to hopefully help you take a look at this color wheel, the colors opposite from each other. The red and that bluish green are the most different and will have the biggest impact on color. If you mix colors closer to each other, the result will be more subtle, which means just the initial color will be less different than it was if you, it was something that was completely opposite. You can see this with the color yellow. Adding purple will make it appear more brown. But adding a reddish purple will even to be a little bit more orange. If it's more of a blue color, the yellow will look slightly more green. Funny, you bring that up, Kristen. I want to make dark yellow. Remember, yellow has value and it can't be anything else. Yellow coming out of the tube is extremely light. This is where yellow in particular is a challenge. What that means though, is that in real life, dark yellow is also maybe not what you think it is. It can be a darker brown, a gray, an orange, or a green. It's a brownish color in this picture of the banana. Seeing this with your naked eye can take a bit of practice. It is definitely a bit more of an intermediate and advanced skill. The only thing I really want you to take away right now is that you can use a color wheel to help you choose a color to change. If you want to change the value with color, know that using the opposite color will change the color the most. In this lesson, you learn about the value of color. And then you can affect the value of color by adding white and black, but also by adding other colors. In this lesson, we talked about sticking just to light and black. For now, if you are brand new, if you'd like to venture out into experimenting with color, you now know that you can use color to change the value. And that the color that you choose may have a big or a subtle impact on the resulting color that you get. 22. Exercise: Identifying Value in your Colors: In this lesson, you will need oil, paper, a paintbrush, oil insolvent a rag or paper towel. Your value meter from the How to Make a painting overview module. And then about five to seven colors, not white or black. In this exercise, you're going to learn about how color has value. The reason why I had you start with black and white painting first is because the values truly carry the painting. Once you add color, it can be so easy to get distracted by the beautiful color options on your palette and forget the fact that they had value. In this exercise, we're going to take the value chart that we made back in that exercise. We're going to practice identifying the value of certain colors. Now as you can see here and talked about before, this only has five options. And the range in between white and black is practically infinite. There's so many different values that can exist within these steps. That leads you to the point where, as an artist, your job is to simplify. Your job is to recognize the ambiguity and to make a decision yourself. This is an exercise in that you're going to lay out some color and we're going to choose the number that it's closest to use. That is just a practice to recognize how darker light something is. This is actually much easier said than done. If you find that this is a frustrating experience for you, it's okay. This is something that it takes a lot of practice. The first thing you're going to do, I have a couple of different colors that I'm using from the introductory kit. I have Alizarin, crimson, cadmium red, light yellow, ocher, cadmium yellow, light ult, blue, and titanium white. I just chose these because there's a really nice range of value here. And also it's red, yellow, and blue. But two different yells and two different reds, take your palette and squeeze out the paint. I like to do it personally in rainbow order. I think it makes more sense to me. Squeeze out just a tiny amount of your pal, you're really not going to need too much here, like half a pea. I think they keep using a analogy. What I just a little bit. I don't want you to waste too much paint because this is going to be just an exercise. Some Cad, red, light, yellow ocher. Yellow ocher is an earthy color. It comes from the ground. It dries faster. It dries a little bit choppier than other colors. Cavium yellow, light, they do. I mentioned this before. Cam, yellow light, cavium red. These are part of heavy metals I trust gambling. They have a really safe process and I use them. But if you are looking for alternatives, you can use nap fall for cadmium red light, and hands of yellow for cadium yellow light. I, my opinion, not quite as potent. I don't prefer them, but they will work this time. Okay. I just have a little bit of each color on here. Now. I'm going to, in the brush, in the solvent, just to make it a little bit thinner. And then some oil. This is how I usually do it. I do a little mixture of both and then just mix it in a pile on here that lizarin crimson. And just make a mark on your oil paper. We going to do some tests. Notice how if it's thin, it's a little bit transparent. If you want to make it a little bit darker, we'd add a little bit more. See what it looks like. You're saying there's your lizard and crimson thing that brush. Same thing for the next couple of colors. Got some solve it and some oil. Pick up some of that cadmium red light. Mix it till it's buttery and smooth. Just going to mark it down. Same thing. Pick up some of that yellow ocher. Mark it down a little bit more. A little more oil. This is a skill that a lot of practice. It's something that I want to go into a little bit later. There's something called the Munsell Color System, and they have a really awesome book that you can practice this with. And they give you a kind of color chips you get to organize. That probably doesn't sound that fun, but I think it's fun. Yellow and that squeeze that white. But I'm going to use where we already know that we Okay, and then we get some blue. Here are just some of the colors that we have now, either color chart and we're going to identify what the value is. Now remember, like I said, there's an infinite number of values in 1-5 But since it's going to force us to choose the one that's closest to this is arbitrary, your eyes can be a little bit different. But basically, when you hold the color chart up to that color, you're looking for the color that's the least. Obviously a lizard, crimson is not a one or two, or three. I think the debate is 4-5 between the two of these. It's definitely in the middle, I'm going to call it five. I think that's the least amount of difference. How I'm doing is I'm actually closing one eye and squinting and it will start to fade into it. I'm going to call this in five writes down for cavum red. I could tell this is more in the middle. It's definitely not five, I would say it's 3-4 I'm going to call it four. I think it's close to a four. All right. Next we have yellow ocher. I'm looking at this, it's definitely on four. It's pretty close to a three or two going back and forth. I see the least difference as a three. I'm going to call this a three. This was not planned but it is going in order that is handy. All right. For cabin ye light, it's definitely on one. I'm going to call it two. Then for your Ultramon blue 4-5 I'm calling it a five. What this means is that your five are your darker colors. And then they go down from there. Being able to identify the value of your color will help so much as you learn to build a painting. However, this does take practice, just be easy on yourself. In the next section of this exercise, we're going to look at what happens when we combine colors. In theory, it will land somewhere in between the two values if they are of different values. However, sometimes oil pigments react differently whenever mixed. I'm going to show you an example where that happens as well. The important thing is that you just practice and get to know what you have. It's not necessarily something you need to memorize as much as it's something that you should enjoy just exploring and learning. And you will develop a bit of a visual memory just by practicing. The next thing we're going to talk about is the way if you mix two colors together, they will typically come up with a value somewhere in between. I'm going to pick, I'm going to pick either a 5.3 or 4.2 I'm going to go 4.2 because these are really strong colors. Show you this. If I mix a 4.2 the result will not be darker than a four, or lighter than a two. I'm going to pick up some of the Cad red light and mix it in with my yellow light till about halfway. I don't know, maybe more yellow And see it did not a palm mix here. It wasn't, since we're using such a small amount, it wasn't really necessary to do that. Here's a mixture of red light and yellow light value chart here. It's definitely not a four, I don't think the two either. That's pretty dark, I would say it's closest to a three. When you add these two together, they do always add up to the middle color depending on how much you use. However, it's just something to be aware of. We can do this a couple more times just to see what happens off my brush. Maybe we'll try some of the Cad yellow light with a little bit of ultra roon blue. So we're going to make it green here. You can make a dark green light green. I'm going to make green about half and half. Okay, here is cave yellow light plus ultra blue. Here's that pretty green that it makes. Now let's see what the value of this is. Ultron blue is closest to a five. This is definitely out of five. Cabular light was to a two. I would say it's not a two either, but that means it's somewhere 3-4 I think this is a three. This is the closest to three. Finally, let's do it one more time with the Ultron blue and we already know O Prinsons dark. It will be. Let's do it. Ultron blue plus Cad, red light and see what happens. This is going to make, yeah, a purple color. The right here, they're really dark pole. That's interesting, let's check that out. I would say obviously at five in this case, the ultramarine blue stayed really dark. Whenever you added a different color that is a characteristic of a lot of darker colors, that it takes quite a bit to make them lighter. Sometimes it's worth playing with your gain colors to see what happens, you just don't know. I hope you found this helpful in identifying the way that color has value. It's something that when we start painting with color next, it's important to remember and to refer to if you need help. 23. Choosing Your Palette: Choosing your palette can be such a fun experience. In this lesson, you're going to learn a few pointers on selecting a palette of colors to choose from. Let this be a discovery process and have fun with it. There's no right or wrong, and if you only have a couple of off the wall colors to work from, go with it. When you paint with color, it's more about how the colors relate to each other on the canvas than how close they are to real life. It's completely okay if the best color you can mix is not match real life over time, you can learn to rely on the colors around it to help and make sense. Overall, simple is better. Using less colors will give you more control and keep your paintings looking together and cohesive. I could seriously spend days talking about color theory and color psychology and palettes to use. It's so much fun with oil paint, it gets even more exciting because you have opaque and translucent colors and interact with each other. It's really so cool. However, that's a bit much that's not within the scope of this class, especially when you're just starting. Try to keep your palette as simple as you can. Typically, three to six colors plus white. There are plenty of artists, including myself, who typically work that limited. Once you learn how to mix between them, you can really start to enjoy the possibilities within a limited palette of color. When you start with a limited palette, you can mix within them and enjoy a lovely range of colors that work together. Keep in mind that with a limited palette, you are limited to the colors that are formed within the boundaries of the colors you've chosen, but that color is relative. In the example below, there is not even a blue included in the palette. The best green is more of a brown color. It may not be as bright up a green as you see in real life, but as long as the value is correct, it can read okay, compared to the other colors for your palette. Granted, sometimes it's best to choose a palette based off of what you want to highlight. If you're really inspired by some true greens, I probably wouldn't recommend using this kind of palette for that. This is typically portrait palette. However, I just wanted to prove the point. This is a bit of an advanced concept. If you find that you're a little confused, it's totally okay. The main point to take away is that you can make nearly any color, makes sense within the boundaries of a limited palette. Keep on listening for a few suggestions that you may enjoy. Here's a great limited palette to start with. Cadmium red light, cadmium yellow light, ultramarine blue and white. Included in this photo is a little index card of color possibilities between them. I didn't do this super strict, I just wanted to show you what can be done within those colors. You can see the highest potency of the pure color and how bright they are. But also you can see some of the lovely supporting grays and tones in between. You can do so much just these three colors. If you want to expand that, I would recommend adding Alizarin, crimson, cadmium yellow medium, and manganese blue hue. Those six colors plus white gave you a warm and cool version of each color, expanding your color potential greatly. If you've never heard of warm and cool versions of color, no worries at all. I don't expect you to. And it's not something I'm going to explain in this class. All you need to know is that with this recommended palette, you get a pretty complete range of color options that you will probably enjoy if you want to have a more earthy palette. Try Alizarin, crimson, yellow ochre, and ultramarine blue and white. You can also add any earth tones, such as your umbers and siennas. These will give you some subtle colors that echo the palte of the old masters before the more bright colors existed. I love how muted this palette is, and it can be really lovely. Finally, if you love a pop of modern color, try this combination of pigments unique to the 20th century. These didn't exist prior to Quinacridum, magenta, thalo blue, cadmium yellow, light and white. You can see from these ideas that the palette you choose can affect the mood and the outcome. There's no wrong answer here. Just use one of my suggestions, or choose your own and just have fun with it. We're going to get to painting very soon. 24. Painting: Full Color Demonstration: It's now time to incorporate color into our painting. In this lesson, I'm going to do a full length demo showing you start to finish how I approach color when painting something simple, like an apple. What I'm using today is the same three paint brushes I used in the previous demo, solvent and oil. I have a Palet knife and the colors I'm using a white, cadmium yellow light yellow ochre, ling blue and cadmium red light. To start, I'm going to lay out the paint on my canvas. Sorry, on my palette, I'm going to go in rainbow order from light to dark. I'm going about quarter size amount. That's kind of a lot of paint, but it's okay. I don't know if I'm going to use yellow ochre, but with all these greens in here, I wanted, I wanted to make a green in two different ways. And having a yellow ochre might make a different kind of green, the darkest you cut next. This is not required at all. However, it can really help keep your colors look cohesive. I'm going to mix some of these main values in colors that I see paying attention to value. I have my value meter right here. First I'm going to mix, just like we did before. The first thing we painted in was the dark side of the apple. I'm going to mix that green and then we know that green is close to this value. It's not too hard with the blue to get somewhat close to that. You do not need to mix ahead of time because I find it more efficient to mix it ahead of time. I'm going to lay out some blue, maybe half of that it off. Then I'm going to pick up, I'm going to think yellow, ocher, ants. I have a pretty good sense for colors. I'm going to do both of these and see what green it gets me. It's not going to be perfect, but I think it's going to be about right. And what I like about this apple here is that it's a really clean color. I didn't do a red apple with a bunch of yellow sometimes make it hard to see. The nice thing about using yellow to make the green, is it actually lighten the value as well? See the difference? It's a bit lighter. Actually see it's about perfect there. I'm going to hold it up. I actually really like this color. It's not necessarily perfect. I really like it for what it is. I'm going to go, I'll probably just put that here. The next color I'm going to mix is a background color. You'll notice I'm not using black on here. I don't really use a lot of black. There's nothing wrong with black. I'm not going in temperature right now, but it's not always. You can just somehow make your colors look a little chalky or muddy and something like that. I'm looking at this background box, honestly, you can have fever you want. But I'm going to go ahead and I like how it's the opposite color of green. It's more of a orangey red. That's the opposite of green, like how it's going to stand out. I'm going to, I'm using yellow ocher, caving red light to mix a base orange. And then go from there and see what we're going to do. I'm holding this up, I actually really like this. And value wise, it needs to be a little bit lighter than that. It is. However, it's a little bit too bright. Your eye, you may be seeing it this bright whenever you're painting. However, I don't want to cause so much attention to it. I'm actually going to add, this is an orange color. And the opposite of orange is blue on the color wheel, but blue is darker. And I know it's going to make it a little bit, a little bit darker than I want it to be. I'm can get just a tiny amount of blue, maybe even less than that. Go and see how this goes first. To do it down a little bit, it's not going to be much, but it's going to be enough to just bring down the intensity just a little bit. I like that actually. I think, I like the darker one. We're going to have some darkers in there as well. Actually, I'm going to do the same thing again, pick up some of this red, some of the yellow ochre, make that middle orange. I know that this box gets a little bit light at times. Again, I'm going to mix in the blue to bring that intensity down and see the difference. See how that's, that's a little bit just duller than this one. That's about blue. Did you're getting a little bit of color theory right now. Again, a tiny amount of blue. Let's just bring that intensity down a little bit. I want you to look at the apple, not at the background. The background should be supporting the apple here. We are very similar to the other one, but I actually want to lighten it now. White may make it look a little bit more blue, and that's okay. If it doesn't look good, I'll just a little yellow. But I think actually it's going to be about right. Yeah, we may need to lighten it a value even more. Okay, so this is going to be what I use for the lighter areas of the box. You're going to be painting already. You do it this way. This can take a little bit discipline to start. It's so good to do. Okay. The next thing I'm going to make is just that middle tone green of the apple. I'm actually going to take my rag and remember this should be about medium, medium, white. Yet there you go, that's actually dark. Which is good. That, okay, the apple itself was more on this two value. So I'm going to pick up some yellow and a little bit of blue. That blue is dark off the blue is very powerful. I just know this from doing a lot. I don't want too much. Let's start with that and see where we are. Okay. Actually kind of like that actually pretty good the way it is. I'm going to leave that one there. Nice mid tone. And then I might go ahead and mix a light tone as well. Doing the same thing, I've got some yellow, a tiny bit of blue. I'm on a little table so you can see it. It's not my normal way of painting. Go get take up a tiny bit of white because I want it to be a lighter, lighter green. I like that a lot. Yeah, I think that's going to be nice. Okay, we've got it here. This is going to be the main color of our painting this time. I actually want to see what happens, but I don't prepare the surface Sometimes it's fun to play with that and it'll be a little bit harder to scrub into. This paper can sometimes absorb differently and I don't like the way it's absorbing right now. I'm going to go ahead and not prepare the surface with anything like we did last time just to see what happens. If we don't like it, it's okay. The first thing that we do remember is we are going to draw into major shapes. Again, I'm going to use oil and a little bit of solvent just a little bit in the earlier layers. I'm actually going to pick up that darker tone of the apple. I like that. And now I'm going to start drawing. Actually, before we didn't do the horizon first, let's do the horizon first. Make sure that this is not halfway go. It's definitely not halfway. See, I'll just make that line. That might be a little bit too dark for now, but that's okay. I'm just going to just suggest it. I use the marker later. Okay. So now for the apple going to cut, do the boundaries. It's a I'm just eyeballing this and luckily it's an apple, so no one's going to sit here and measure and tell me that I was off. And if they do their means, they say you paint. People do that sometimes, okay? That's our building in the shape of the apple, just like before. Same thing just now. I'm using green, kind of like this. It's still, we know we open last time that we liked the way that light kind of poured over the side. Let's stem there. Picking up both oil and solvent is running, but that's okay. It's because this paper is really absorbent and if you're using a canvas, you may not be eating quite so much. Okay, I'm going to do this. I'm drawing in that shadow. Remember, here's where I know the shadow actually does this. I'm going to go ahead and finish it, but we know that there's a little bit of a light area in here and if you want to just draw that in as a reminder. Totally can. I'll draw that. In's a little bit of a light patch, that's going to be the shape of the shadow. And then I'm going to clean my brush, pick that medium dark of the box. This is actually going to be not the shadow of the box but the medium of the box. I'm going to make it darker by picking up just a little bit of this core color on my brush. Sorry, the sun's in there a little bit. I have a sheet over the window trying to make it not do that. Then I am going to darken it by adding both yellow, red, and blue. I don't want to add just blue. I know that. I don't want to be quite so purply, but that's about right. It's going to get yeah, it needs to be the four to five range. That's about right. Using this darker color going to include where the occlusion shadow is going to be suggest the Shadow. Remember gets faith fuzzy over here. And then there we are actually, you know what else is going to do? That stem is a very similar color occlusion shadow. So I'm actually going to go over the stem as well, just like that. Next we're going to fill in the major shapes. The next step in this painting is to fill in the major shapes. I'm going to start, just like we did before, with the darkest green of the apple. I'm going to use oil and a little bit of solvent here. I'm going to pick up a good amount of that green. A lovely green that we mixed with the yellow ochre. And the altering blue, yellow ocher is an earth color, meaning it comes straight from your earth. It gets a really nice subtle color too. I just love it. Think it's a beautiful color. All right. I'm going to use the end of my brush and just lay this in. This is like the opportunity to be so painterly. I'm going to scrub it in. Maybe the consistency right in your brush can be a little bit tricky falling around that shadow on the back, but it will help a lot. And getting it too thick, it's not going to help you too much. So keeping it thinner, especially at the beginning, is helpful. Okay, I'll quickly pull this in. I'm not paying attention to perfection here. I'm just trying to get the major shape. When you squint, you see an apple. Next, I actually, I'm only going to wipe the green off my brush. I'm not going to get too much out of it because I like picking up some of this same darker color that we mixed before you use that middle gray box and then we added a little bit of red and a little bit of blue. I'm going to make a little bit more of that and fill this in for the cache. Shadow needs to be a little bit darker. I'm not in blue. I'm balancing that red in there because I don't want the blue to make it too purple. It's still dark enough with that color in my brush. Now, I'm going to actually, this is going to be the darkest shadow right here. But I'll be able to adjust this in there later. Remember, I did not prep the surface. It's a little bit drier this time. I want to see what happens a little bit more medium to get thinner. There we go. Yeah, there we go. All right, we have that. I'm going to go ahead and fill in the background a little bit more. I like to do the background interchangeably with the foreground because it makes some interesting lines. Again, I'm picking up a little oil, a little solvent, making this more buttery to paint with. I know this more middle value is in the back. This is where I think mixing ahead of time can be really helpful because you're not having to spend all of your time observing and getting into the zone of paintings a little thick. Already thought through the analytical side of things and now you just got to paint. It's already there, right in front of you. That's really helpful. I'm so you how we need to mix more of this. I think whenever you're constantly going in and out, remember what I use? Think it was just yellow over a little more of that. You're constantly having to go in and out of the brain you're using when you're mixing paint is so much different than the brain you're using when you're painting. I just like to have a little bit of balance there. And mixing, doing some of this is taking me out of the flow of the concentration of what I'm doing. Give us a little bit more blue. Okay, that's getting pretty close. Probably mix too much, but that's okay. Get that nice and buttery, you get mixable tiny bit because we don't have any solvent on the back for now. Okay. That's good. Nice. And a lot of pain too. And actually that lighter color, I already know that this shadow gets lighter at the end, so I'm going to go ahead and fill that in. Now I'm using the biggest press I have, which is to be honest, feels a little bit small, but I will be fine actually. It's hard to see but behind the apple because like the base is hit, sitting on the ground like this, this is actually some space where there's actually light peeping through. So I'm going to go ahead and put that in there. See that in my. Okay. I'm going to fill in the rest of the box by combining the light and medium colors is like. Has that. It goes together. I am selling brush a too close, it has a tendency to sneak up there. If you ever see we do it, call me out. I'm seeing right now the values. This is soaking up a lot of paint that will paper is why I keep going back. Just different, blend it in, scrub this in. There's a spot here where these get lighter and I see that I'm going to go ahead and block it in with this main color first. I want to come back and later do it. What I can also do to make it lighters, it's just wipe it out a little bit. This is the balance of pain. You have that option necessarily want to add light to everything that it will just happen as it goes. You'll figure out ways to work the more you practice. I like kept the horizon line and send it out probably better way. Let's just scrub that in. That's rattling. It's annoying. Huh? Again, it's starting to get lighter. As you get towards the front, I'm picking up more and more of that lighter color down here that blend a little bit. Then over here, it's again between the light and the medium of that orangey color just suggests where I really like the fact that this is red, like a reddy orange. It's fun. Be careful around the step. I'm not going to cover up what I did, but I'm also not being exact. You can just lay it on top really gently and I like there's a little bit of edge here, so I'm going to basically say that line without saying that line by allowing there to be a subtle value change. And that's it, filling the space just a little bit. It's definitely drier. Now, I'm going to use this, we've crossed over into filling in the lights. This is a light section, I'm not going to separate. But yeah, this is just if you don't like the white background either, but you don't want to tone it with a black. You can, you can choose a different color to tone it with this one, actually, toning it in this like peachy red color. It could be a fun thing to do, really actually. There are rules and you'll hear people say it all the time. Hey, aren't you supposed to? They say that. I'm just like, I don't really want to hear it. You have to say next. We're just painting over here. We're just trying things. We're having fun. We were enjoying ourselves. We are practicing our observational skills. In that sense, I think painting makes us better people, right? You can observe operating to that light here. Okay. I probably won't do too much for more background. This is just a study anyways. Cover that in. Pretty as distracting. Sometimes I like this thing soking through, but sometimes I can get distracting. So we don't want that. All right, we have the background and now we're going to fill in the middle tones of the apple. The part of the apple, like the part that is illuminated by the light, not the total highlights. I'm going to bring that darker version of our green onto my brush and just a tiny bit of soltanuse. This is still that first layer and it might just need a little bit thinned up. I'm going to lay in that nice green. I love it. I love green. It's the color of life. Okay, notice I haven't changed my brush once yet. This brush is actually getting a little bit dirty. I don't want that right on there right now. Okay, I'm getting a little bit close because I don't really want to go. I am going to be careful of these edges right now. However I really like a good, I'm going to do something I really want to try. I'm going to have to wipe it off in between. I'm just softening this edge. I really like it, but I don't want to bring the C. I don't want to do that. I'll bring it right in there, try to get that out. That's okay. It's just nice sometimes to have some interesting edges. I'm going to bring that down here. Again, we're going to keep this all the same color, we will worry about the details at the very end. I'm holding the brush closer to the end right now. Mostly going to need to leverage. It's stiff, the paper being so dry sometimes then you see that Yeah, I I don't like that line. I like to keep my edges a little bit softer. Wipe off my brush. A lot of this honestly is just getting a feel for just doing it. And you will over time, learn these things. I can tell you what the consistency should be. But here we go, actually remember how we have that reflected light in there. I'm going to go ahead and include that. But it's not just that green, it's a bit of that green, but it's also the red from the box. This is where we can start to play with color and this is where premixing can really help. I'm going to pull in some of that red, start to mix it into the shadow here. Whenever it's reflecting the light. It's not just straight white light, also the color surrounding colors. If you look at my palette here, I'm bringing in some of these reds into this little section where we know there is a bit of reflection from the ground. See that actually probably need to lighten up that value just a little bit. I'm a tiny bit of white. Just tiny bit. There we go. Lay that in there. Okay, I'm going to bring back some of that darker green because this is where we're getting into that inclusion area where it's very dark. I want to make sure that's okay. There we go. Okay, I'm happy with that. Oops, I forgot to continue with that cree. Here I am, I'm running out of a pretty greens. I even mix a bit more with my brush. I remember this one was pretty simple. I just jested blue and add red to it, so it's pretty strong. But I'm going to just bring in color. We'll do the same as we did before. We will connect the details at the very end, but I just want to fill in kind of the gaps. So I left myself. All right, where in my round brush, there it is. Okay. Again, I'm mixing just a little bit of this color on my brush. Just you can mix any rush. We're happy with the Pow knife, but it can get challenging sometimes. You know, you end up getting too much paint on your brush and then it's all gluey. Pallet knife can mix can really help save big messes. I'm going to use the smaller brush to connect that edge. Then we're going to add to the details. All right, now we're going to start playing with some of these fun details. I'm going to start with that reflected light in the shadows, cleaning up and cleaning up its edges. And at the very end, we'll do the highlights. Let me give that just a few minutes to dry. First, I'm actually going to clean up some of these edges. My brush is pretty dry. I just wiped it off with my rag like this. I am not someone that prefers to do a lot of blending. However, sometimes if a mark looks distracting, I will try to cover that up. And actually what's cool here, anything my brush, there's already a little bit of this darker color on my brush. I'm going to use that to put some color into the reflected light. Maybe just add a tiny bit of that lighter green. Just a tiny bit. That's going to be a reflected light, which I can see is along the edge here. I'm also going to want to pick up a darker green again. Actually, maybe make it a little bit darker by adding some blue, maybe a little bit of that red. Using those premix colors can help add some color harmony because they're all starting to filter into each other. Isn't that Pre networks? I'm going to use darker bit just to show where that core shadow is. Since I am focusing on this apple right here, I don't want to ignore the core shadow. Actually get this brush is a little bit cleaner. Sometimes brushes can splay the have to like separate like that. It's fine for some work but not always fine for others. These are affordable cleaning brushes, but they're still not the highest quality. I have found these splay a little bit quicker than other brands that are more expensive, but they're really good for practice and they're wonderful penalty lines. I'm going to take some darker, clean up this edge. I actually, I don't know if you notice, added a tiny bit of that cadmium red in there as well to make the value slightly darker. And also we mostly for that reason, it also kind of dolls down the green a little bit too. Okay, I'm going to take that smaller brush that I have, it's a little bit splayed, clean it a little bit with my rag. Now I'm going to take this lighter green. Now I'm going to add just a tiny bit of will. I don't want it to become so soft that it doesn't want to stick. I'm going to start filling in some of these lighter areas basically. I see this form right here. I'm going to be really gentle. This is actually the past, the trick to painting a keeping the earlier layer is a bit thinner and not super wet but also being very gentle when you lay on top. And the way to do that is to hold your brush over hand like this and just lay it on top. Slay it down. See this? Then there's a bit of a highlight. This is where we played with this last time to brought that bowl shape. I'm actually going to take my smaller rush and pick in between our mid toad in our dark and just communicate this curve over the side, that midtone. Yeah, that's probably why it's not making sense. Then I'm going to bring it around here to midtone, around here. If you find yourself having questions about color, please drop them in the comment section. I'll do my best to answer them. I can, yeah, bring this around. Okay. And then also, this M right here around the apple, I just made that lighter green. A little bit lighter. And I'm going to just show how it's a very subtly, We see that. Then also, I want to make this more gradual. I'm taking my time here. I would really recommend you practice this as much as you want, but honestly do speed pings, time yourself for like 20 minutes and see how far you can get in the wipe it out and do it again. It's really fun exercise. I'm cleaning up, I don't like that wipe poking through. Okay. I'm really liking what this is. A couple of things that, before we had the highlights I want to point out. I'm going to fix that blood that a little bit. It's not that sharp of an edge. Okay. This shadow is completely red. But in reality, there's going to be a reflection of the apple into the shadow as well. In order to do that, I'm going to take that darker red mixed and add some green to it. It doesn't look like much, but it will have to bring in those colors and unify them a little bit. Just a little bit. I'm also going to continue with that reflected light in the bottom here. Get some of that richer green or red. Add it to your green. See again. See how nice it is to have these colors already mixed. I'm like evangelizing for that right now. It does help though. It really does like lets you stay in the zone, I'd like to get that darker green again, I'm going to have to mix some of my brush. Pretty blue, tiny, tiny, tiny oil. I don't want too much at this point because this is in the rules of oil painting thick over thin. This is the thicker paint. Like I said, we're not doing the super long. I'm happy with that. Maybe clean up this little edge here. Keep forgetting to clean. My brush is in between. It makes it hard. There we go. Okay. Now, finally, we're going to add those highlights in to make sure my brush is pretty clean. For this part, I'm going to do the highlight on the stem first using my small round. We know this stem is this color, so I'm actually going to start with this color. I'm going to X on my cold over here. Then I'm going to add some white to make it white. And I'll be light. I want to actually add a little bit yellow and yellow. Okori'm just looking at this. I know that this is not completely white and adding a little bit of color will help give it, it'll look more realistic like it's actually a stick, not just a white edge. Those little subtle details, you'll touch nose over time and they make a huge difference. Just like before I have a good amount of this light, it's almost like a Beijing orange color. I'm going to dab the top of the stem. You get a little bit more. I'll hold on at this time. It's like gently lay it down. Pull it up. See that if you have a smaller, I'm actually going to use y bigger brush here and pull in some more of that red. Because I like that. I actually allow it to blend a little bit, a little more red. It's subtle, you guys. So subtle. Okay. Now we're going to do, kind of want to light it up just a tiny bit. Now I'm looking at it. Remember this is a painting, it's not a photograph. It's okay that we show our brush strokes. Okay, here once again, I'm going to start that green actually, I'm not going to make this pure white because there is a color to that. But I'm going to get a little bit that lightest green that we had mixed and add, make sure you can see add in white at this point. It's getting to be a little bit thicker and that's okay because you can see the brush marks so well, if you can see it, this is where you can lay it on top. The brightest, brightest highlight is right in the center, In the center of the fullest part of the light. Also in the center of this subtle lit space. Here, I'm just going to lay on top, it's pretty wet. This is one time where it's all prima you ever want to go back in and make it darker or make it lights? Totally. Okay. Okay. You got a pretty strong high light and that's because the apple is shiny. If the apple wasn't shiny, it didn't have the wax on it, it wouldn't necessarily need such a strong right. But I'm actually, I just mix a slightly lighter version or darker version of that with that green. I'm actually going to allow to have a little bit of halo around it. There's also, again, I'm going to pick up, I'm going to use that into the weeds here. Meteor tone green, just like we did before. Bring out the highlights on these sides. Then there's another small highlight. I think this might be from my do, but it's a little bit blue. I'm adding a tiny bit of that blue into that white on this edge here. I'm just going to lay it down. It's so subtle. A tiny bit more so social. But it's there. I see it. So I'm going to play paint it. I would love to know. Have you noticed anything more Now that you've been looking for the shadows and light and form, have you started to see things differently? I remember when I was first learning, I would like go to the grocery store and observe and mix paint in my head. Like how would I make this color with what I have, with what I know about pigment? And it just practice. I'm actually going to bring up these middle tones or this transition area just a little bit. I don't like how probably bring up the highlight surrounding. And as well with this lighter color, there we go, Beautiful love. This turns around. The longer you stare at it, the more you're going to see. It's so easy to keep going. You can go as long as you want. If you keep seeing things you want to try to do it, just try to keep those initial values around the same. There's a big, nice, lovely white spot. So I'm going to add that at the very end can be a tiny bit more white up here. Just a tiny bit. I'm mixing another bit of that dark because I keep losing this line. I don't want to lose this line at this point. I'm only using oil and I have a bit on my brush. I'm just going to, this is a little bit tighter than only paint, but I wanted to show you how I guess that makes sense. You bring in just a little bit of that shadow on this side because it's there. I'm pretty happy with that. There you have it, a demo in full color. I can't wait to see what you do. If you feel so inclined, go ahead and host it in the comment section so we can see it. Actually, before I do that, I need to lighten up. You're finding a few things now that reflected light in that shadow is just not quite dark, light enough. So I'm going to mix a little bit of there. There you go. See it now. Very hot. You're painting in full color. 25. Painting: Tuscan Landscape Demo: In this video, I wanted to share with you a demo of this image from a Tuscan landscape that you saw earlier in the shapes video as just a way to put it all together. You know, I'm sure you're not inspired to paint apples and oranges, but I know many people want to paint a landscape. And so I just wanted to use these principles of simplifying, simplifying shadow, and using color and putting it all together. I included this video just to, to kind of help you as you start painting subjects you're interested in and how you can simplify it. This is a fairly fast demo without a lot of detail. I kept it pretty simple 'cause I just wanted to show you what it could look like. All right, enjoy. So I'm using one of the pictures that you saw, and this is actually my palette from the color painting. You can totally do this. I'm using a panel today. It's a nine x 12 centurion oil prime deluxe linen panel. These are my favorite panels to paint with. They are really smooth, but they are oil primed and they are linens. They're more expensive. What I'm going to do is actually just pick up some of this extra paint on my paper towel with a little bit of solvent and a little bit of oil. I'm now going to prep my panel with it like this. I like this warmer color. A lot of artists, when they do landscape paintings, will do burnt sienna or umber because both of those, the burnt color is a little bit redder. So it's actually a little bit too wet. So I'm actually going to wipe some of that off and do it again. It's already on there. Okay. I know from experience it's going to be a little bit too slippery. I leave it that way. This is where today I'm not using cheese cloth but you can see if you look paper towel starting to slip a little bit. Once again, wipe up some of this paint to get some of that red. A little more paint on there. There we go. That's better. I'm going to press this panel. Kill the white. The white is still showing through. You look really close, but I like that red color. I'm just turning in a different color. In the meantime, I'm going to speed up this video and pre my palette. Everything is the same in terms of palette as the last painting I do of the apple. The only thing I'm doing for this one is I'm adding two larger brushes. I really like painting with bigger brushes at first, especially, so I really would like to do that in order to get the broader strokes down. So I'm not using these small ones till the very end. I'm putting these up at the side for now. All right? Just like before, actually I scratch that. I'm going to use my small round to establish the horizon. I mix this blue for the sky. It's going to be about this color of the sky, not so much the horizon. I'm just going to use it to establish in this painting, the horizon is a little bit less than halfway. I'm eyeball it, there's a lot of really lovely sky in there. Eyeball it and make a mark and then connect it from there. There we go. That under layer, it's still a little bit too wet. You know what I'm going to do? I'm just going to pick some more up with my brush or with my paper towel. It's had enough time now to wear, it, still is getting the effect, I mean. How is all gross, but it's not. There you go. It's still killing the white and it's making the surface a little bit more slick, but it's not going to be too slick. I don't want to be coming through the sky this much. You can always lose ahead of time if you like or whatever. That's about right. Okay, So the first thing I'm going to do here is actually probably the sky. I'm going to take this blue in my bigger brush with this lovely blue, that's too much. Make some more of that you got too, so it's fun. All right. I ended up making some more off camera. I'm going to go ahead and sweep up some of this in my wider rush. A tiny bit of oil just lay in this lovely sky. I love that blue. It's so beautiful. Using the bile marks. Not worry too much. As I mentioned earlier, this is a plan. This is a plane that's coming towards you. The atmosphere is at play here. When you're painting landscape, you are dealing with atmosphere. This is not, the purpose of this class is to talk about this. But I just wanted to reference it. You know, I think what I'm going to do, go ahead and like, I don't want to do the sky first, I want to do the sky first today. At least part of it, I'm just adding some white here. A little bit more oil and more just like bringing in that light. Sorry, I realize I didn't finish talking. I might do some other things later, but I'm going to at least lay down something, maybe a little extra white. I'll have to clean that up later. I'll let that dry a little bit. Okay. I decided I'm going to work I'm going to do a little bit of drawing first. And then actually I'm I'm cleaning my brush over here in a different bigger pot. This is a bigger brush, so I just need a little bgger pot in my little jar. I'm going to use all of the sage green. And I'm going to use this to draw out. Now what I see there's like this lovely blue often distance from all those trees. This cube of trees right here. Remember we talked about that it's a cube. I'm drawing this three V cube. We're not going to go into perspective here in this class, but that's what I'm thinking of right now is the way these are going in, This is not a flat plane, this is a hill. I know that this plane goes down. Just drawing, actually almost spell out for me in the roads and I'm using this green. It's not actually green but it's okay. This is just the drawing. I'm going to thin that down a little bit. Got really nice trees over here. I'm actually not really intentionally, I'll just do it here. I'm just going to go ahead and put in the shadows. Now there, I don't really need to wait for them for too much. I see bushel of trees and leaves over here. I'm going to generalize this. I'm not going to put too much into that. I, this is putting it all together. I'm seeing these as big shapes. Using the value and color. I already have to make this painting now I am not going to include all these details. It's the beauty of landscape painting as you have that of freedom. Then there's this really nice pick up for that darker color, like the grasses that intersect in the foreground. And I really like them. I'm going to go ahead and paint those in. At least remind myself that they're there. And then there's this tree. This tree has shaped like this. But we know in general trees are maybe would be shaped a cone. Right? I'll just fill that in, since I've lost that a little bit. Some people like to draw out things meticulously. I think of painting so much more as sculpting and things come and go almost like I'm working with clay. This tree right here, see how it's a cone? And then there's the shadow underneath like that's the broad shape of the tree. Then there's this. Okay. The next thing I want to do, I'm debating if I want to do the background first or kind of some of these details. I think I did the background. I'm going to pull in one of these smaller brushes. I'm going to take this blue that I already mixed, except this is what the sky is. Remember I added to the blue and white. I added red and yellow to do it down. To bring back the blue, I'm adding just a tiny bit of blue, maybe a little bit of red. This is where I wish I had a different red, because this red has a bit of yellow in it, so it does dole down. But I am making it darker, which it does need to be. But I'm also bringing the blue, the intensity of the blue back up again, this blue to light. But by starting with that base color, it's going to make sense within the context of a painting. I think that's sometimes what I see beginners do a lot is they make the, these strong colors and they don't make sense. I want this to just be a relationship to this color. I'm already made already in the sky with this brush to be very careful and just lay in that horizon as, as atmosphere affects the distance, it starts to lose your yellow. I think your yellows first, then you're red and then all that's left is blue. That's why when you look at a horizon, you do oftentimes see blue. That's what's going on, what's happening with the horizon. And it's also, things get closer in value to. Okay, I'm going to leave that there. I think that's about right. This is an impression, is painting, remember? I am not keeping in all the details. But that being said, I'm going to continue that conversation about the horizon. I already have to my darkest darks and my major shapes. And now I'm going to start filling in the mid tones in the lights. This green, there's a lot of green, if you can see in the reference image there, a lot of green that it was in here. And it's essentially the same green, but because it's affected by the atmosphere, it gets lighter over time and a little bit bluer. Into that same blue that I painted, I'm adding a little bit of white and some of that green, maybe a little bit of both. I'm going to make this pret simple. I'm going to do this in steps. I'm just going to make it a pretty simple. All up, almost like a one time needs be a little bit darker to make sense because the value is darker than the mountain range. And communicate how those darker greens are fading into the distance, you see that? Okay. And if I want to get a little lighter, that's okay. Because there are some spots where it's a little bit lighter, but I'm not going to do too much. Hold the brush a little bit low. Okay. Ironically, it's actually that same atmospheric condition is the same color as the reds in the foreground. I want to make those reds pop though. I'm actually going to bring up their intensity sun by adding in a little bit of extra yellow, yellow ocher as well. The picture that I'm using flattens it, but I know that it probably is a little bit brighter in real life. In this picture, the sun, it's obviously not there in the storm. I'm to cover that. I'll go over the, the trunk again later. Okay. That's a little bit warmer. The next thing I want to do is bring up darker, or lay down the shadows in the darker parts of the land. For this, I mix this burnt color and I'm going to add a little bit of red and a little bit of green. Just because red and green neutralize each other. It's basically be basically, I'm adding red, yellow, and blue. Just the green has already been made. To bring up a little darker area, I'm going to capture this plane right here is also to show the shadows. If you've noticed not adding a ton of oil at this point, I'm liking it being a little bit more brushy and dry. I like the way it's looking by these trees in the picture also because I have the sun coming from this direction. Even though it's a light sun, there is a shadow over here. So I'm going to go ahead and lay them in. I'll use whatever my brush plus a little bit of that green to bring up that. Then I forgot I get these things in here. Bring us in the dark green again. See when you mix it already to look how consistent my values are. They're not all over the place and confusing. They are consistent and making sense within the painting, actually. On that note, I need to rate that value a little bit darker because the tree is in the foreground and I want to bring it up some. If this is a little bit over your head, that's totally okay. I'm just going to keep talking. Think so much you can learn from a demo and just watching someone. I'm going to bring down the value of that tree a little bit. Also, the tree is a cone, but there's shapes within it. These are three D, I don't know, amorphous shapes of foliage. Which means that those have volume two. You can make them up like pretend like there's some shapes in there and you can see it in the picture too. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm reading down those values now. I've got those darker shapes in, I'll continue adding in. It's a texture down here you can't really see it, I think. But I'm going to fill in the lights. I did the darks, I did some of the planes of the sky, which I need to continue with. But then I'm going to do the lights now and I'm going clean my brush up a little bit, probably a bigger one. Take this light green that I made and add light, this is a dirty light now, but that's fine. I'll add a little more though now. We're going to start adding the highlights to the trees and to the land. Let's be a little B. Okay. I'm going to keep the simple box shape that I was showing you earlier. Right? I'm not going to add the details yet. That's something I can add later, but I just want to communicate that again. These trees here, these are all very similar and value in color. It just works. So just let it go. I'm not getting rid of those little shadows, I'm letting the shadows poke through. Yeah, here we go. Mm, yummy. I just love it so much. Okay. I was waiting to bring in some of these because this tree is actually kind of blue. It's beautiful. And so I'm going to actually use some of those blue from the sky into the lighter areas of the tree. I don't want to, I need a little one blue. I really want to honor that because I like it a lot. So I'm just kind of making these rounded forms of like I'm plating some of those rounded forms of those areas of foliage here. Hop. What drew me to this image was just how these colors were. They were lovely sometimes I love peeing bright, sometimes I love ping neutral. I just really like painting here. I'm actually adding even more white and making this really light blue. I'm a little bit ahead of myself here, but I'm so excited to do this tree that I'm doing it anyway, so this would be my brightest brights. This is where the highlight maybe is of the painting. This tree, I think is the focal point. Get these little guys in there. There we go. I'm going to use again that lighter green and this grass, there's a couple of highlights in there. I actually need to bring down that dark again because I lost the tree stem in here. It looks like the grass actually I forgot about, I didn't miss that first, the grass actually comes in front of the trees. This is actually another dark spot. This is an impressionist painting. It's not supposed to look exactly like a picture. There's room for interpretation and that's what's so fun about painting. Okay, I'm going to clean my brush. I'm adding in some of the light areas of the landscape. I already mix kind of this base color that I'm using to adapt. So this is just a T, can you still see that there? Hopefully they can see that this is just some lighter areas that I'm going to move into these planes, keeping the colors pretty neutral, natural. I'm going to go very lightly over this dark area. I'm going to take this medium. Color and kind of just go over the foreground as well. But this is a really light area. And so I'm actually going to go back over this a little bit with some light. I'm keeping my oil very my paint, It's pretty thick at this point. Oh, never mind. Look at me just doing it. Anyways, here we go. I'll probably go over it again. I get this bright foreground in here bringing some of my smaller rushes to kind of get, I don't know, I love using a big old rush, but not whenever it's going to go over too much. What I just did at this stage, it's okay to start making it smaller. I'm actually just kind of filling in this area. It's a hill that's kind of lighter on top and then it goes down all rain, getting kind of close you guys now, I'm going to take the opportunity now to start adding in just a little bit more detail. And I'm probably going to stick to my smallest brush. I'm liking that now to bring up some more highlights. We have these roads. I'm making an impressionist painting and I'm okay. I like the fact that this paint is juicy. If I was doing maybe a different type of painting, I might want to rain it in a little bit. But this is a landscape painting that just refer some of that romance. I'm going to leave it in. There's a nice grassy area over here, it's lighter green. I'm actually going to include some of those details in the trees. These are like individual forms. Now, I'm just allowing them to be individual forms. Bringing that down, bringing some of those highlights into it a little bit. See how when you started off as shapes and then you start adding the details at the very end, it comes together. Your eye can still connect it. There you go. All right. I'm starting to get pretty happy with this. I think it's a texture there. What I want to do is actually let's lighten up over here too. I want to brighten up the sky. I really like that early layer that I included, but it's, I have no clouds in there and I want to kind of see what happens when I do that. Lighten up these you going forever? I would encourage you to stop though before you think you need to, because remember, this is a painting, it's not a picture. If you want to, the picture, we already have that. Okay? I'm going to clean the green out of my brush really well, because at this point, actually, you know what I'm going to do. Instead I'm going to use my round brush instead. This big round brush, this is just a little bit easier actually. Still have some of this blue on my pallet knife which is perfect. And then I don't want to use that. It because it's, I'm not the best about cleaning in between. I know some people are really good about doing that, but I personally found it doesn't really bother me too much. But it bothers you, make sure you're cleaning in between. Okay. So I'm just making a lighter version of this. Blue for the sky. I don't want a ton of oil. I'm seeing enough oil to make it stick on my brush. This is a pretty thick round brush, just a little more white. Oh, a hack. Screw it. Okay. I really like, I'm just going to kind of, you know what, that's a little bit too stiff. There we go. Use this one again now. There's too much P oil on it, okay? I haven't taught you perspective yet. You're not following, you're not sure what linear perspective is. That's totally okay. But what's happening with the sky is that it's going to a focal point. Clouds will look smaller and closer together, Closer to the horizon and bigger as they get up top. I am allowing some of these guys to, I find these clouds off to the side here, distracting. So I'm probably not going to include them in that sense. I just want to keep it simple, but maybe include some opportunities for cloud coverage. I'm just using white here. I might add a little bit of gold once you get closer it is reflecting what's on the ground. What's happening now is this is pretty thick paint. I'm probably going to do is let this dry a little bit and then come back in with white. Later I do that, I will show you the result. We're recon, just trying it now. We'll see. We'll see if it's thick enough that sometimes all prima painting you don't give it enough. There we go. It's sell, that's coming through. I got It's because the bottom layer is pretty thick and that's okay if I don't like it. You can always just go back over it later when it dries or wipe it out there. You have a Tuscan landscape. I hope that this has been helpful to kind of see how you can put it all together by looking at a subject such as the landscape in shape. And I hope that this has empowered you to paint the things that you would like to paint. 26. Conclusion: Congratulations on finishing this class. You have the tools you need to get started painting. Just like gardening or working out or yoga is a practice, you get better from showing up, taking small steps that over time lead to an exciting improvement. You now understand the basics of oil painting supplies. You know the order of how to use them on your canvas. How to mix them to make the right consistency and color. You also know how to hold your brush and set up your easel. You learn how to identify value in your subject, even when it may be a little bit arbitrary. You can mix up value in black and white. And you also understand that color has value. And you are learning how to make color the right value. You understand how to make something three D by using value. And that you can simplify any object in the simple shapes. You also know that you can make a painting by starting with a pad in the back, a broad drawing blocking in your shadows, and then filling the light spaces. You can apply this method to anything from a still life to a landscape, to a portrait. Anything that inspires you the ability to do this does take some practice. This is where this class leads you. You have the tools to start, try new subjects that interests you, practice in black and white. Try and color and enjoy the process. I will include some further resources in the next lesson that can help you in the next steps of your journey. As well as a survey that you can use to share your feedback on what you still have questions on and what you would like to learn next. Thank you so much for taking the jump to learn oil painting with me. I'm so happy to have you and I can wait to see what you make.