OIL PAINTING TUTORIAL: OCEAN SUNRISE

1. Ocean Sunrise Introduction to the Class: Hi everyone, My name is Sarah McKenzie and welcome to this new oil painting tutorial. Today I'm going to be walking you through all the steps you need to take in order to create a beautiful realistic scene like this, you can find all the materials that you will need for this class listed in the section below. One thing I'm going to encourage you to be mindful about as you work through this class is to not focus on the end result. Have fun with the process. That's where your greatest growth comes as an artist, each of these techniques that I teach you are applicable to all of my classes. And the more you practice, the more you focus on getting better and better with them, the greater your work will become in the end. With that being said, I really hope you enjoy this new class and I look forward to seeing your finished pieces. 2. Lesson 1: Blocking in the Base Layers: For this class, we'll be using the following colors. I have Prussian blue, green, earthy, sap green, some crimson, cadmium yellow, Naples yellow, titanium white. And I have my painting medium over here. For this class, I'm using liquid like Joe, but feel free to use any medium that you have on hand. For this painting. I've gone ahead and put my horizon line about 1 " below the center point on my Canvas. Feel free to use a straight edge like a ruler to pull your line across. I've used a really thin layer of Painter's tape because I like to pull that off after I've done all my blending and have the perfect straight horizon line to work from. As you're working through your blending. If you lose your horizon line because you've drawn it with pencil, don't worry, we can re-establish it after we get all of our base layer down. What I really want us to focus on with this painting as loose, big brushstrokes and really playing with the colors in a soft, playful manner. We don't want to focus in on fine detail work. Let's create movement and flow within the piece with larger brushstrokes. This is also going to free your mind up whenever you're working on a painting in the future, because you're not gonna be focused on the end results. You're going to just start learning to play with the whole process. For the base layer I'm gonna be using. My 24 is go-to brush. Feel free to use any brush you have on hand. As always, there's gonna be some bristles that are left in your paint as we worked with the blending process, wait until that layer is fully dry and you can easily just wipe them off with your hand. So don't worry about them when the paint is wet, you will wreck your head trying to figure all that out. We're going to start with the blues and this beautiful ocean scene. We're going to block in a nice light blue and this patch of sky that's visible. And then we're going to use a darker blue and really blocking the ocean down here. On your brush. Take a little bit of your medium and work it into the base of your bristles. This is the base layer, so make sure you coat those bristles with enough medium to make the paint move really easily along the canvas. In the middle of my palette, I'm taking some titanium white and I'm mixing in a little bit of my Prussian blue. Our goal is to create a really nice warm light blue. Using titanium white and Prussian blue. Create a nice soft blue on your palate. Once you have that on your brush, come up into this corner and with a lot of pressure on your brush, start blocking in the top section of our sky. Now this paint is a little thick on my brush. I'm going to add a little bit more medium just to help it move along and blend. You don't want your paint to be really, really thin, but you do want enough medium so that the paint moves easily along the canvas in this base layer. The reason why a little bit more medium and the base layer is just going to be using less and less medium as we go into the different layers. So by having it down on the bottom, it's going to pull up into the other layers. And I really hope you're drawing time and your paint movement along the Canvas. Move this blue around until it covers the top quarter section of your Canvas. Don't come down on the lower. We're going to be doing yellows and whites and a beautiful pink color down here. We don't want too much the blue mixing into that. Right now. We just want this up here. Just locking in. A lot of clouds are going to be covering beautiful blue. So it doesn't have to be perfect. But do spend some time making sure every little corner in this section is covered with this nice blue pink. Setting yourself up with a really well blended background. Really makes your painting look realistic. You don't have to go back and try and fix something in it. After you get some more layers down with the same brush, we're going to block in the base layer for our ocean. With that Prussian blue. Mix it into your white that you have on there. So you start getting a really nice deep blue color. Then take some of your green earth and a little bit of your sap green. Now, if you don't have sap green or green earth and you're using a different green, that's totally fine. You do not need both greens. You just need a nice green to mix into this blue to create a more turquoise color. Because we want the ocean to be different than the SCOM. We really want to get that nice, beautiful, deep color. Now, I'm going to add some crimson to this color in a tiny bit of cadmium yellow. If you've done any of my other classes, you know that we try and add every single color on your palette into every aspect. They're very miniscule amounts sometimes, but by having a little hint of those colors and each layer of our painting recruiting a beautiful cohesion to the whole piece. I'm going to add a little bit more of my sap green. And I'm just going to block in this beautiful deep color. Just transferring this color into the ocean area back-and-forth. You don't eat a lot of color on your brush. The reason we're going back-and-forth is I'm just mimicking a look of the ocean and how it sits in real life. It doesn't go up and down. It's nice and level. I'm allowing my brush to recreate that by just going back-and-forth. Blue has a nice undertone of green in it. Just a really nice turquoise color. We're gonna be adding to this some fun brushwork later. This is just a block in the base color here. In this area out even a little bit more green to your paint. Because we're going to have a really light section with waves and some movement over here. And when those ways movie really want there to be that beautiful aquamarine color here. So adding a tiny bit more green to this section on your brush is suggested. You don't have to, but I'll show you what it's gonna do later when we add some weight to it. We blocked in all the real blue sections of our painting. Although I'm going to be moving relatively quickly through this painting, feel free to stop it at anytime and spend some quality time in that section. You do not have to move at the speed I'm moving. The reason I'm going a little bit quicker is just to help you realize that you don't need to get stuck in overthinking each section, block it in, and move on to the next one. Allowing yourself to do that. You're not overthinking, you're allowing the freedom of play to start taking place. The next section we're going to block in as this nice soft area with yellows and reds and the nice peachy orange in a clean area of your palette. Grab some of your medium and work it into your bristles. This is a fresh brush, so I want to make sure those bristles are nicely coated. I'm going to take some titanium white and mix it in that section. I'm then going to add my cadmium yellow, a tiny bit of Naples, and a real small amount of crimson. Now, as you can see, there is no such thing as a small amount. When it comes to Crimson, it overpowers every color and that's fine. I'm just going to keep adding a little bit more yellow to it. My cabin yellow there. Alright, so it makes this beautiful color and I'm just going to add some titanium white to it. And I'm just going to pull it across my horizon line. I'm going to add some more yellow to that. I really want yellow to be more prominent. If you get a little bit of blue in this section, don't worry about it at all. And we're gonna be doing lots of blending work here. It's going to disappear into the colors we put down. I'm adding a little bit more titanium white to my color because I do want it to be a nice, soft, beautiful, warm color up here. I don't want it to be too dark. Just transfer that color above your horizon line, come up about three or 4 ". We're going to create a pocket of lightened brightness in this area right here. We're going to use the same brush, but I want you to wipe off all that excess paint. Still have this nice color on your brush, but we just don't want any extra color. So using a rag, I'm just rubbing it in, getting all that excess color off. I'm gonna go and grab some titanium white and a little bit of my Naples yellow. And right above where we just blocked in this beautiful color with a lot of pressure on my brush in a circular motion, I'm transferring that light color into this area. I'm going to pull this color just slightly down the horizon line a bit more on that transition and really blended in, but not too much. I want to create a little bit more warmth in this area right here. So I'm gonna take a little bit of my Alizarin crimson and mix it into that color I had created. I'm just going to transfer some of that beautiful warm pink tone about halfway across, just above my horizon line. With the same brush with this nice warm color. Pull it off along your transmission line at an angle. You just jiggling it back and forth with a lot of pressure. What I wanna do is just transfer some of this nice warm color in what will be the base of our clouds kinda just poking out underneath. I want our class to have a nice, warm, beautiful field in this section. And getting some of this color reflected up into the bottoms of those clouds is really going to help make this painting look realistic. So again, just pull that color across this section, transfer some of it into this area. We're going to come back and really play with it a little bit with the brush that you're using for the blue, wipe it off so there's barely any paint left or grab a fresh brush. What we're gonna do is we're going to start blocking in the base of our Cloud area. For this, we're going to use some blue and some crimson and just mix it into the corner of your palette. Until we get a really nice soft, warm, blue color, not quite purple. What you're gonna do is you're going to add a little bit of your green earth to that because we want that water reflected up into our base layer. And we're going to add a little bit of our Naples yellow. As soon as you add Naples yellow, it really turns out color into a beautiful milky rich shade. Now you don't want this to be too dark. And you do want that hint of warmth. So play around with it until your color is just a nice, warm, soft blue. I'm just adding all the colors on my palette, really not the cadmium yellow or the sap green. Those two are very powerful colors. They really overpower any of your mixing that you're doing, especially if you accidentally add too much. So avoid those in this little concoction we're coming up with over here. But I really liked this base color. It's going to add a little bit more crimson. I want it to be a little warmer. Play around with it and see what colors you can come up with. You don't have to create the same color I'm doing. This is just an idea of the shadow color that I'm going to put down to these clouds coming up here into this section. With a gentle amount of pressure. Start playing around with where you want the bottoms of your clouds to sit. We're going to come back and add lighter colors up to the top. This is the layer that just establishes way they're going to sit in our landscape. You don't want a ton of paint on your brush. This is a very minimal amount of pressure too, so you're just barely transferring any of that color onto your canvas. But what this does, it kind of sets the tone for your scene. Coming down to your palette and a fresh area. Add some crimson to your brush and a little bit of your Naples yellow. What we're gonna be doing here is we're just creating a softer, warmer shadow color that's going to sit just along the bottom of our clouds here. Now I'm adding some more white to it. I don't want this to be too dark. You really want to play around with this coloring it nice and light. You want this to be a lot warmer, much more purple, borderline pink. Because this is what's going to be reflecting up the base of the clouds from when we do our sons at work here. The minimum amount of pressure transfer, some of that color just about halfway up your transmission line. We're gonna be taking a brush and really working that in and softening it up. We just want to establish where the shadow is on this little set of clouds down here. 3. Lesson 2: Learning how to Build Depth with your Brushes: With the same brush and we're just using wipe off all the excess paint. You don't need to completely clean, but just make sure you rub off as much paint as you can. We're gonna be using this brush to continue our cloud layer building. Once you get that brush nice and clean, take some titanium white and mix it into that nice soft purple that you just created for this base layer. Add a little bit more of your crimson, some of your Naples yellow, and warm it up a little bit. Play around with your mixing. Have some fun creating a really pretty color here. Just wanted to be a nice, warm, pinky shadow color. And we're going to transfer that color all the way up the rest of our transmission line. We're gonna be coming back through and blending this with another brush. We just need to establish the shadow and get that paint down so we can do our blending. A lot of pressure on my brush. I'm just moving it along this section right here, transferring some of that paint into this area. I'm also going to pull a cloud shadow right through here. The transfer some of that paint into this area. With that same brush, I'm going to grab some more of my crimson and Naples yellow. Just continually brightening up this color, making it warmer. Adding a little bit more white to make it lighter. And we're going to start building up the next section of our clouds with a slightly lighter color. Start applying it above the transition line of our shadow that we created for our clouds. Minimal amount of pressure. Just transfer it onto the canvas. Don't come all the way up. We're going to keep adding another layer of white to this. As we go higher, we just want to put a little bit of this color onto the canvas. For that transition line. You don't need a lot. So as with all my paintings, do not use a solvent to clean your brushes in-between layers, what will happen? Really muddy up, your paint becomes really thin. So try just to wipe off as much paint as you can and avoid using a solvent. We can clean your brushes at the very end, but throughout the painting, just wipe off the excess paint as best you can to move forward through the painting. Fresh brush, I'm just taking a little bit of crimson and moving it into my bristles. This is gonna be my blending brush wearing and start really pushing these shadows around and building up where I want these clouds to set. I've added crimson because I really want to brighten up these clouds and keep them warm. I don't want that blue to overpower this Cloud-based that we're creating. So with a lot of pressure on my brush, I'm working at along that transition line and just transferring some of that color, grabbing some titanium white on your brushes, you come to this area. You create your cloud shapes by moving your brush up and down side to side in a circular motion. For this section of the painting. This is a fun part of the Cloud building process because you're starting to get a feel for how your clouds are going to look within your painting. You get to decide that, but how you move your brush, throat every section, I'm just transferring that slightly lighter color along the transmission line. Now since I'm coming over into this area and working these transmission lines, I have a lot of dark color on my brush from the base layer below. I'm just going to grab a rag and wipe off the excess color. Grab a little bit more titanium white, mix it in with a little bit of alizarin just so it keeps it nice and warm and continue working that transition line. One thing to remember is you want to keep some of these clouds dark just to really create a really nice balance to the peace between our bright section over here, which is our focal point, and this section which is going to help draw the eye over into this area. So don't add too much white or bright color over here. We'll play with it at the end and make the highlights pop. But just establish a light color probably about to this section here on your painting. Cleaning off your brush. Grab a little bit of Titanium white, some crimson, mix it into that. You want this next color to be nice and light. And some of your Naples yellow, don't use too much cadmium yellow if you can avoid it in this section unless you really lighten it up because it's a very overpowering yellow. Just make sure you really lighten up cadmium yellow. If that's the only yellow you're using, make sure the color on your brush is nice and warm. Don't have it to yellow and start transferring that color into the top section of where you want. The tip of your clouds to sit. Fun way to create these clouds is to just rotate your brush like this across the canvas. You have all sorts of different colors on those bristles. And it's going to transfer some of that paint into different sections. You can go back and fix what you don't like, but it really create some cool effects with your Cloud which might otherwise have been overlooked or not created if you're too focused on creating the perfect Cloud. But by moving your brush and kind of random spots and pushing and pulling and rolling it across your canvas. This is a fun way to create realistic looking clouds. So have some fun with it. I'm just going to put this color at the top of my clouds where I want them to be existing within my painting. There's not really much rhyme or reason to what I'm doing. I'm just following what feels right and fun, really. Creating this as I go here, we're going to take a blending brush and really work this shadow colors. So don't worry if it's a really harsh contrast. I'm going to just add a little bit more of that nice pinky like color to my brushing and come up here. I want some of these sections to pop. We're gonna be doing a lot more detail work. So don't worry about making these clouds look perfect. Right now we're just transferring some nice colors to help with our final detail work to help make these clouds look really realistic. Grabbing some of your crimson. I just want to play with this area for a little bit. I'm grabbing a little bit of that crimson on my brush, a little bit of that yellow with some crimson and Naples yellow. Just softening this area up. I have a medium amount of pressure on my brush. I just don't want these proud to be really dark and looming in this area. I don't want them to be light and fluffy. Transfer some of that color, soften up this shadow area, we'll come back and rebuild it. We just want to start getting a feel for how our focal point is going to look. I want these clouds to be pulling the eye into this section and we're gonna get there eventually. But the first steps in doing that, it's just playing around with softening this area of seeing how you want your clouds to sit. And then we'll move on to the next step. So clean off your brush or pick up the one that you're using to establish this nice warm shadow layer, wipe off all the excess paint with a rag or a shop towel, whatever you have on hand. Don't want a lot of paint. In fact, we're not even adding any paint to it because we're going to use it to blend our cloud bases together. There's a little bit too much blue in my shadow color here. So what I've done is I've picked up some of my crimson on my brush just a little bit, not very much. Just to soften it up and warm it up a little bit because there's a lot of blue in my shadow color here. I'm noticing that it's picking up the yellow and turning these clouds all little green, which is not what we want. So I've grabbed a little bit of crimson, just transplanted into this section down with a yellow meets the Cloud. Doesn't have to be perfect, doesn't have to be super red. But just make sure it's a warmer color. Has your blending the shadow color in. Keep wiping off the excess dark color from your brush as you move along. You really want no paint on your brush. You want your brush to be picking up what you're working on in that section. You don't want to carry all that dark color all the way through to our lighter section. You don't want the hint of a shadow, but you just don't want it to overpower each area. So as you can see, I'm just following all these transmission lines, creating a larger cloud-based by pulling this shadow color a little lower in my landscape. I like holding the brush like this as I blend, it allows me to see what I'm blending into. Whereas if I go like this, I can't really see what the brush is doing is I'm moving across. This is an easier way for me to see what I'm blending and how far down my brushes going to try that out from time-to-time and see how it works for you. It might feel really weird and awkward and that's totally fine. This is just what I do if you see me hold my brush like this is just so I can see what I'm working on down here and what my brush is really doing. So I really liked the shape of these clouds down here because I have that slightly lighter color down here on my brush. I'm going to come back up here and really gently work this section, spreading out this base layer a little bit. We're going to add highlights at the very end. But you want to just make sure that these clouds are realistic with them. You don't want just a thin line of paint. You really want to just expand them a little bit, make them taller and wider and longer. Ever so slightly. But it just gives the eye a lot more to play with whenever it looks at your painting. 4. Lesson 3: Building up your Clouds: I'm really happy with how this is looking so far. I want to make sure that this ocean is reflected up in our clouds a little bit. So we're going to play with some of the colors in this area to make it look really realistic. I have the brush that I use to block in this base color here, this nice, beautiful warm color. Now I want to warm it up a little bit more. I want a little bit more crimson in this section. I'm going to wipe off this brush and get all that excess color off. It's absolutely okay if these colors still on there, I just don't want it to overpower the work we're about to do. Grabbing some of your crimson and your Naples yellow and a tiny bit of your cadmium. Transfer that nice bright color into this area here. Try not to have that brush go down into this blue color. It always happens to me. All you have to do is take a rag and wipe it off. If it does, you don't want too much of it up here right now we'll add a little bit at the end. But if your brush happens to grab some of that ocean color and pull it up here, no sweat, wipe it off with a rag, and continue on my friends. So it's a good amount of pressure on this brush. I'm just transferring that nice warm crimson color into this section. Then take a little bit of your paint and pull it just past the halfway mark. Don't bring this whole section over just a line. We're going to blend that in over here after. But right now we just really want this section to be warmed up with that nice crimson color. So using the same brush that you're using for all your shadow work, wipe off all that excess paint. Who really want a minimal amount of paint on your brush, taking a little bit of that crimson that you just mixed for this little section here, add it to your brush and work it into the bristles. The reason we're doing this is whenever we do our blending, we want a hint to this color to come into the shadow. We don't want the shadow to really darken this whole area too much by grabbing a little bit of that crimson and working it into your brush. Going to make this shadow blending a little easier on this transmission line with a medium amount of pressure on your brush. Work that section between the dark and that nice crimson color we just put down. What we're doing is we're just softening that transmission line when I'm making a really harsh shadow color. We want this to be a nice soft sunset scene. We don't want the eye to be pulled over here with a harsh cloud line. We really want to soften it up. We're going to come back and darken up this section just ever so slightly to balance that up again, but you really want the base to be soft right now. If you feel you're getting too much blue on your brush and it's pulling in and maybe making a green color with the yellow underneath. All you need to do is grab a little bit of your crimson, add it to your brush, wipe off the excess, and then start blending again. I'm going to pull this color at the base of most of these clouds, shadows that I created. I'm not pushing it up into the whole shadow. I just want to transfer a tiny bit of it into the bottom of our Cloud. I'm also going to come up here and put a little bit underneath where we were working before. Just transferring ever so softly some of that color that's on our brush. We're going to leave it like that for now, to play around with that for a little bit. Have some fun seeing what the colors look like when you stand back from your painting over working towards it, just finding a nice balance where it's a little cooler on this side, meaning there's not as much crimson. And moving over to this side where it's warmer and there's a lot more crimson. It's just going to create a beautiful flow to the painting. It's going to pull the eye towards a really nice, warm focal point. And it looks really realistic because if you were to stand out and look at a sunset or sunrise, you'd see the same color scheme. So picking up blending brush that you are using in this section right here with that nice warm crimson wipe off all that excess paint. We're going to use this brush to soften up this section and create a little bit more warmth. I've added no paint to my brush as you can see, is that nice crimson color with a very light amount of pressure transfer some of this warm color underneath that cloud layer that you've created. What we're doing is we're just pulling some of this color over here to balance things out. You don't need to bring it all the way down to our horizon line. In fact, don't do that because we really want this yellow to stay there. But we're just balancing out that horizon line. I have a barely any pressure on my brush. I'm just using it to pull some of that nice warm color over into this section. With that same brush. Pulls some of this color back and forth a little bit. You're softening up the horizon line. You're making it look really seamless, but you're also pulling this color to balance out the left side of the canvas. You don't want a lot of pressure on your brush. But just really softens out that horizon line and balances everything out. Before we start working on our ocean layer, we're going to come up and we're going to add some really pretty highlights to these clouds just to get a feel for how we want them to look. In the end piece, I'm taking one on my one-inch detail brushes. Use anything you have on hand that has a nice soft supple bristle hawk bristle brushes really leave marks in your paint so you can get that really soft look. You can use them by all means it just won't look exactly like mine does in terms of the blending. What I'm doing is I'm just creating a nice warm light color that I'm going to start using for the detail work on our clouds. I don't have a lot of paint on my brush. I'm adding no medium to it. Don't add any medium to this color because we're putting the highlights on you want a nice thick paint. You can play around with it and blend it, but it won't wash away. If you do any blending work you want it just to kinda stay where we put it when it comes to creating realistic looking clouds, you want to think about where your light source is coming from. So in this painting, I'm going to imagine my light source is coming from this direction here. So when a light source comes from this direction, it's going to highlight this side of the cloud. So whenever I create my clouds, I'm going to remember that the light is going to be hitting it from this direction. If you remember that, then this side of your clouds should have a nice bright color and then it should be a little darker. Doesn't have to be a really harsh shadow, but it shouldn't be as bright everywhere. This is how you create that 3D effect with your clouds. I'll show you how I do that. I'm transferring a little bit of that color. Wherever I want this cloud to kinda pop off the canvas, has you add this lighter color to your clouds, wipe off any excess paint on your brush. Because you're gonna be automatically, it will pick up the base color that you're putting that lighter one over top of. Which is not a big deal at all. But you just want to wipe off that darker color as you go along because you'll lose that highlight. The lighter the color you put onto your brush, the more your Cloud will pop in that section. So as you can see, I have a really nice soft yellow. It's nice and bright. Super, super subtle yellow there you can barely tell, looks mostly white, I'm sure on your screen, but it's definitely a really nice bright color. As you can see. It really pops those clouds off the canvas. And by just jiggling the brush around where I think I want that cloud to sit and where I wanted to be coming out. I create the shape and therefore create that three-dimensional effect. You don't want to add a ton of weight without stepping back from your painting and taking it all in. This White should be used just for the highlights. You really want to keep those nice shadow colors, especially over here. You want this white to really fade out into a darker shade as it gets over here. You want our focal point to be in this area. And if you have big pops of white in this section, it's going to take the eye over there, which is not what we want to achieve. So make sure that the brighter colors you use stay in this half of the painting for now. Make sure you add some clouds that are in front of other Clouds. It's really important to create that realistic looking look within your Cloud scene. Just like with those trees we create where you just let your brush roll down away from that tree trunk. Do the same with your clouds. Just see what happens when you allow your brush to create those really strange and random shapes and step back. It's really neat what you can achieve with just one little placement of the brush. One thing to remember is the more unnatural something feels as you paint it. Like this does not feel like a natural thing for me to be doing with my paintbrush. But this is how nature exists, is unique and random and often strange. It's whenever you focus on making a perfect cloud that it doesn't look realistic. So make sure as you work across your Cloud seen, you do these random things with your brush. Play around with it, see what happens when you do. Different movements. Stand back and take it in. The more random you make it, the more unique you make it more realistic, you make it. I've added a little too much highlight color to this section. I'm going to come back with the blending brush and a darker color just to really play around with it after right now I'm just showing you what happens when you add that nice light color into different areas of your painting? So I'm just going to go around. I'm going to add this nice highlight color. Create different shapes of clouds by just moving my brush like this across the canvas. Now one thing to remember is if you stand back and you do not like how something is looking, grab your shadow color and from that section, gently blend it out. And start again. Oil painting is so much fun that way because you're not stuck with what you first put on the canvas. You can play with it over and over and over again until you let your painting dry overnight. I've added a little bit more of that nice crimson color to my brush. Because as we get a little bit further away from these foreground clouds, you don't want it to be the exact same highlight color. You still want that nice little punch of light, but you want it to be a little more subdued than that of the clouds in the foreground. In the back. You don't want to every single cloud tip to have white on it. Just select a few to make them look a little bit more pronounced. By switching it up and not creating as many highlights in the background. You're allowing the eye to settle on the foreground, which is our focal point. With that same brush, add a little bit more of your crimson to that nice white color. Your Naples yellow. And a tiny bit of a cooler blue. As we move across the painting, we want our shadows and highlights to have that nice cool color to them. So make sure you grab some of those cooler colors as we go over into this section. Transfer some of that nice highlight color. Over here. Just make this cloud pop a little bit. I'm going to pull this cloud down in front. I'm going to create a little bit more definition in this area. Again, I'm going to come back and play with this and really make it look realistic. And our final detail work. But right now, we're just creating the general idea of where we want these clouds to sit. I'm taking a color that has a little bit more crimson to it and adding it to the top of this cloud, I want it to be in further in the distance. So I don't want to be super white and bright, but I do want to have a highlight there. So adding a little bit of crimson to that nice light color and transferring it into that mix, some crimson into that brush. Now you're going to have all sorts of colors on your brush right now. And the color you're trying to find right in this area is a mix of everything but still having that nice warm hue to it. So add a little bit of crimson to your brush. You'll have that blue and a little bit of yellow already on your bristles from where we blended in this section. What we're gonna do is use this nice warm color and transfer it to some of these clouds. I really want these clouds to be nice and light and warm. So I really want there to be a little bit more crimson. In each of the clouds. I'm using a medium amount of pressure on my brush. I'm just transferring some of that crimson into these three Clouds right here. It's not a lot. I'm going to come back and make it a lot more pronounced. But I just want that nice warm color to sit within these clouds. Again, it's going to pull the eye into our focal point. It's going to allow this to stay cool and distant. But I think this is starting to look really good so far. 5. Ocean Sunrise Lesson 4: Defining the Skyline: One thing to remember as we start building up this ocean, there's gonna be some reflective light. So a lot of the colors that are up in our clouds, there's gonna be hints of them in or water down here. Even though it's a deep blue, we can still transfer some of these colors that we're using for shadows and highlights into this water to really make it look cohesive and like it's all part of one big scene with this brush that I was using for my blending work in the shadows. I'm gonna go down, I'm going to pick up some of that beautiful blue color we used, some of that crimson color that we used, essentially just kinda going over everything and picking some up with the brush. You don't need a lot of paint on your brush. But what we're doing is we're going to transfer some of that color right along the horizon line. Go back and forth. A couple times. You're not doing a circular motion, lots of pressure on your brush. You're gonna lose that color as you go across. Maybe on the third time you're just going to be pushing the base color along. But that's fine. That's simple idea of transferring that shadow color into this horizon line is all you need. It's actually a very important thing to remember as you work through these paintings, these subtle things you do. I'm going to grab a little bit more crimson, a little bit more Naples, yellow and mix it into this blue color. I'm gonna do that one more time. I'm gonna come back, grab a little bit more of that crimson and Naples yellow. With the full face of my blending brush, I'm gonna go all the way across one last time. It is super subtle, but if you're up close, you can see all of these shadow colors now reflected in their horizon of our ocean. Take some Alizarin crimson and titanium white and mix it into that blue. The last thing we're gonna do before we take off our tape or re-establish our horizon line, is take this light color, go right along or horizon line for the ocean here, and transfer that color. The reason we've added that nice light shadow color in this areas because the horizon is further in the distance and is therefore lighter than the foreground. We're starting to create the illusion that this is a long ways away, as opposed to just a block of color. This is how you achieve a realistic looking horizon line. Things that are further away are lighter and as you come closer to the foreground, it's darker. Using some sap green, some crimson, and a little bit of your Prussian blue. You want to create a really nice rich greeny blue in this section of your palate. Then you're going to take some titanium white and really lighten it up a little bit of your medium if it's too hard to mix around on your palate. But you want this color to look really bright. And turquoise Sea so makes sure there's a little bit more of your sap green in it. Because what we're doing is we're going to start creating some hints of waves right off the bat in this section here. Whenever we create our waves, we really want to remember focal points, so we want them more pronounced waves and the highlights to be in this section. So I'm gonna start my wave line right around here. I want that to be pulled into this area. I don't want to have really bright waves all the way up here. We're going to focus them in this area with that color and your brush completely flat against the Canvas, you're going to be moving your brush back and forth with minimum amount of pressure. Remember you have a dark color underneath that's going to transfer up into this lighter color. So don't push too hard because you'll just immediately get rid of all that light color that's on your brush. I'm just going back-and-forth and I'm pushing some of that light color into my darker color. Now, It's a very subtle movement going back and forth, just like what the sky you want, hints of every color you've used in the sky, down in your water. But you want the prominent color to be more of a turquoise, a greeny color. It's just the way the ocean looks in the natural world, especially with a beautiful sunset above it. So as you can see, if a beautiful light green, I'm going to come back. And what I wanna do right now is just use the tip of my brush to just get an idea of where I want this little wavy section, rough part of the sea to sit. Again, I'm just going back-and-forth on jiggling my brush to transfer some of that lighter color into different areas. Make sure you take the time to step back from your painting in this section, it's super easy to correct if you add too much weight to an area, but it's also good to get in the habit of standing back from your painting and taking it all in. So often we're sitting up close and we can't really wrap our head around the bigger picture. But by standing back, you give your eyes a break, give your brain a break and you can see what might need to shift or change or what you have to do to balance it out better. We're going to come back through and be adding definition with the waves with a nice bright white, but the soft Color that we created by mixing all these beautiful sunset colors into our turquoise is really setting the tone and the mood for this section of the painting. Play around with this. Use the tip of your brush and drag it along and see that you get a really pronounced line of paint. Or if you use your whole flat section, really creates a little bit more of a deep wave or a deep highlight in the ocean. Play around with it. Just make sure you keep your brush going back and forth. Don't go up and down. You're gonna lose that beautiful, realistic look to your water. As we get closer to the horizon, we want to add a lot more of these warm colors to our paintbrush in this section of your palette that you had that nice crimson color already mixed around as some of that to your brush. And add a tiny bit of white so that it's a nice light color. To create realistic waves that are in the distance, you really need a nice crisp edge to your brush. So this is my one-inch brush still, but I don't have any splaying bristles now, if you don't have a brush like this, that's fine. You're just gonna have to adapt your technique to what I'm showing you here. As waves get further in the distance, they get smaller and smaller. I just like to push my brush into the Canvas so that it transfers a little bit of paint in a straight line. Now, we have a lot of paint in our base layer here. So you're gonna have to play around with the amount of why you add to your brush so you can actually see the color, but you don't want it to be too pronounced. You don't want these to be super white. It's a very subtle wave line you're creating. You're allowing the eye to imagine that these waves just go off into the distance. I'm just pushing my brush into the canvas. I'm going to add a little bit more white and a little bit more crimson and yellow. And I'm just going to walk my brush and random sections up into their eyes and we're going to soften this up with a really soft passive, a blending brush after. But by establishing the hint of where these waves are sitting in the horizon, you're creating that depth of field that is really important to a realistic sunset piece. About an inch or two below your horizon line. Just add them as little lines, just little dabs of your paintbrush. And as your waves get closer to the foreground, start adding bigger lines. You don't want to push too hard on your brush, but just start establishing a few waves that are a little thicker, a little more pronounced. But still keeping that nice level look to your water by keeping your brush going left and right, not up and down. And the slowly add more pressure to you brush as you get closer to our foreground section. What you're doing is just creating that depth of field. You're creating realistic looking wave scene. And as you get right up to the foreground here, push your brush in a lot more so you get those thicker lines that will make it look really realistic in the finished painting, it's really important to take breaks and step back from your painting and get a feel for how it's looking. You can see where you need to add some more waves, a little bit more, highlight a little more shadow. Or maybe you just need to start a certain section all over again and that's completely fine to do that you just take your base color again, blend in that nice bright color you just put on your canvas and then just start reapplying your highlights using the techniques you learned and what you learned from that little mishap. And try again. Everything is just trial and error and painting. Sometimes it looks awesome, sometimes you need to work on it. There's nothing wrong with that. That's how we learn. So I'm adding a little bit more Alizarin crimson, a little bit more white to my brush. I'm gonna come back to this section with my nice bright green and add some more. Sap green. Now sap green is a super powerful color and I love it for these bright ocean scenes. It just really makes things pop. And it creates really beautiful colors when mixed with everything else that's on this palette. So I really enjoy it. But for this now, I'm going to add some more white, little bit more Naples, yellow, and a little bit more crimson. I'm going to start creating my highlight color for the top of these waves. Making sure that this wave highlight color is nice and bright. Go ahead and start gently pushing your brush against the Canvas where you think the crest of a wave might be. As you can see, it is a very subtle movement. If you want to make it look like the wave is just fading out into the water around it. You just make your line thinner as you go out until it just disappears into the water. I like to push my brush against the canvas on the big flat side so that a lot of that paint transfers into the certain area. Then I'd like to just take the tip of that brush and pull that paint around. Back-and-forth, real gentle. You do not need a lot of pressure on your brush and you really need to play around with this technique and see what happens when you try different things with your brush. These brushes are so versatile, they can create so many different shapes and patterns and really are a ton of fun to work with. So make sure you play around with them and figure out what kind of pressure on your brush and what kind of angle you push it on the Canvas does for your scene. Make sure you step back and take it all in. As you move your brush along in this stage of the painting, you're gonna be collecting a lot of that darker color on your brush. Just wipe it off or mix it into the color that you've been working with for our highlights. And add a little bit more white so that it doesn't get too dark. To create a really beautiful highlight to the wave. Just grab titanium white and add it to the top of one a year highlighted sections. As you can see, it really makes it pop. It really turns that wave three-dimensional. And then transfer some of that lighter color underneath, about an inch underneath to create that frothy look like the wave is just crusting and about to roll back into the ocean. This technique tastes a lot of practice and you really need to play around with this. It's not going to happen instantaneously. This is just learning what your brush can do for you and what the colors do and how they mix together and blend together. So please take your time and have some fun with this. Don't focus on the end project. Just learn these skills because every single time you sit down to paint, it's gonna get easier and easier and your paintings are gonna become more and more realistic. I'm going to add a little bit of white to my brush and pull it from over here. So I feel that I've lost a lot of my definition because I added too much of that white color here. So I'm going to grab a fresh brush. You can use any one that has a darker color on it. I'm going to create that beautiful turquoise color again, that nice deep one. Now I've blended most of it away on my palette. So I'm just using my Prussian blue, both migraines. And I'm going to mix that together. All my palette, I'm going to add some my yellows and my crimson. And now I have that nice dark color on my brush. What I wanna do is I just want to bring it through and break up that highlighted section that I created. Back-and-forth. Just a couple of times. You don't need a lot of it. And you just need to put a line here or there through that section to make it look like there's some ripples in the water or a wave that's broke, or just the shadow of the water itself. You don't need a ton of this darker color, but what you're doing is just re-establishing some of the contrast that makes it look realistic. One thing I like to do as well as just use a brush to gently pull it across from one side of the painting to the other. To just create the illusion. What it does, it just softens up those harsh edges and makes it look like realistic waves. So play around with this section. Until you find a happy place in your scene that you feel really good about. Make sure you add little crisp lines of white here and there without any of the base color mixed into it, just allow that to be your papa color. Play around with it. Make sure you take those breaks and stand back. Have some fun. Once you're happy with how your ocean is looking in this stage, then we'll move on to the next section. 6. Lesson 5: Final Detail Work for your Painting: One of my favorite parts about using painter's tape as my horizon line is removing it has that nice straight line. This is the perfect time to re-establish your horizon line if you were not using painter's tape, just take your measurement down, use a straight edge and use paint along the top edge to re-establish it. Don't use pencil because you're going to lose it again, but you'll still want pencil showing in your final, final piece. So I'm going to show you what I do to re-establish our horizon line. I'm going to add a little bit of medium to my brush, pick up some cadmium yellow and a little bit of my crimson, as well as my Naples yellow. And I'm going to add a bit of white to that. Alright, I'm going to show you how you can reestablish your horizon line very simply. So take your measurement, hold your straight edge, whatever it is that you don't mind destroying with paint or you can wipe it off after. Don't worry about that. Take that nice soft yellow color. Make sure you have a fair amount of paint on your brush for this and make sure it is a slightly more light color. So make sure you have a nice, beautiful amount of yellow in there and white. And just pull that across your horizon back-and-forth. Now, because this paint has been sitting here for a little bit while I've been working on all the other layers. Some of it is rather challenging to move around and is deciding just to stay put. So just keep adding paint and moving it back and forth until you get rid of until you re-establish your horizon line. If some of that blue from the ocean comes up into this section, that is completely fine. We are going to be transferring a little bit that ocean color even up into our clouds. Because remember, we want everything to play off one another. So don't sweat if you see a little bit of that ocean color pop on up into our sky, you're actually making your painting look even more realistic without even knowing it. Alright. I'm going to keep holding my straight line here. I'm going to go up the brush I was using. For this section. I'm just going to blend in back-and-forth. Just soften up the transition from that harsher color I just put in to re-establish my horizon line and sky that we've created. Now I'm going to add a little bit more of crimson to my brush because I feel like I'm losing a little bit of that warmth in this section. Just going to go back and forth a few times until it just looks a little bit more realistic and soft and blended nicely. So just keep going back and forth to establish that nice blended color up until probably the first 2 " of your sky above your horizon line. Then take your straight edge off and you should have a nice clean line. Now some of that sky color transferred into my water. This is a great opportunity to make it look like your horizon is fading way into the distance by lightening it up. With that brush you were just using for your blending. Don't add any paint to it. You will need a steady hand, but don't worry, it is supposed to look a little bit more hazy and muted with a lot of pressure on your brush. Pull it across the horizon lines so that your brush is equal distance up into the sky and down on the water. Wipe off that excess paint from your brush. Because now you have a lot of dark paint. Come down into your osha little bit and soften up. Whatever brush marks were left behind. From that little pasty just made can even go back across that horizon line. What you're doing is actually you're taking off the harshness of that line. You're really softening it up and in turn, you're really making it look like you're, I can go on for miles and miles into this beautiful scene. So now we're getting into the final detail work with a fresh brush or clean off one of the brushes that you used for the shadow base color up here in the clouds. We're going to rebuild some of those shadows, mix a little bit of crimson into your brush and wipe it into your bristle and then wipe it into a rag so that it blends into your bristles really well. Then take a little bit of that turquoise color and do the same thing. We're just having it, so it's just a hint of that color on our brush. We don't want a lot of color transferring onto the canvas. This is just gonna be a really soft amount of shadow that we're adding to our painting. Wherever there's a shadow in your Cloud, transfer some of that color into that area. We're just re-establishing some of that contrast that was lost when we are building up our highlights. It's very subtle work. You don't need a really dark color and you don't need a lot of it. We want our clouds to be soft and a little bit muted. We're gonna go back and create a little bit more of a highlight work. And then at the end, but transfer that color different areas. Now I'm creating a different shape, a cloud just by pushing my brush into the canvas and moving at an angle until it leaves the canvas. And that's just softening up these background layers a little bit, making them look a little bit more exciting for the eye. I'm going to grab a little bit more of that color. I'm going to come up here and the shadow section and re-establish a little bit of the definition in these dark clouds. Transfer a little bit of that color to these clouds. It is super subtle. Play around with this and make sure you take those breaks and step back from your Canvas to see what this is doing. Because a very subtle amount of pressure on your brush and applying that very soft shadow color to a certain area can really change your scene instantly. So don't rush around and try and finish his paintings super-fast without taking the time to see what these shadows are doing. So make sure you take breaks and step back from your painting. Another thing you can keep in mind as you're working on your clouds is transferring the tip of your brush into various upper areas of your Cloud. It's just helping your clouds look more three-dimensional. Play around with this. Your clouds do not have to look anything like mine. I'm just showing you the techniques so that you can use these awesome tools to create any kind of beautiful cloud or ocean scene you want moving forward. So I just have my brush on its side and I'm just applying some of that shadow color to this area, softening it up as if it's almost fading into our little sky section here, which I like, I like how soft it is. You can also have a sharp shadow line here and really just blend it in so it looks like it's really pronounced. But for this painting, I really want the sky to be soft. I want those waves and this punch of color here to really capture the eye. So I'm not creating too much definition in this area. Who doesn't like a soft, dreamy sunset, so I don't want my clouds to be too crazy. I'm going to transfer a little bit of this color up here into this section. I'm just pulling my brush along the canvas on its edge, creating those wispy clouds up there. I want to add a little bit of a white cloud up there. So what I can do is I'm going to grab some of my titanium white. I'm going to mix it into that crimson color with a little bit of the blue and teal in it. I'm gonna come up here. I'm going to dab it at the top of these clouds just to create something interesting, see what happens when I do that. Then I'm going to transfer it. Just truly dragging it along the canvas and pulling it up like a wispy little cloud up there. Just create something else for the eye to focus on. Something different than the other clouds. So it really makes it look really interesting and unique. That color, I'm going to transfer a little bit of it throughout these clouds in random spots, stand back. So you would have, does have some fun playing with these clouds. Don't rush through this section. I find Cloud work to be some of the most relaxing painting I do. Because it's so neat to see what happens with just a simple twist of a brush and how quickly it can change your entire painting. Now we're into the final detail work with this piece. And I'm not gonna do a ton of it. I'm just going to show you some techniques to use so that you can create your own finished painting. Grabbing a clean brush, I have a three-quarter inch brush here. Taking a little bit of medium, I'm going to pick up a light color. Now I really want these to be more pink and yellowy color. So I'm going to go ahead grab some of my cadmium yellow, my Naples, and my crimson and just mix it into a section of my canvas. I'm going to wipe off all that excess paint. Grab a little bit more yellow, get all that excess paint off my brush and make it nice and bright and white by adding some titanium white. All you're gonna do is go through and add little highlights to your Cloud. After you put your brush on the canvas and there's white there. All you have to do is with barely any pressure on your brush in a circular motion really soften the transition from where that light color blends into the Cloud. It just really makes clouds pop. So again, I'm transferring that light color and then just gently blending it in. So you can do this throughout your entire sky. Transferring highlighted areas here and there and blending them and see what happens. But I'll let you play with that. The last thing I'm gonna do before I leave you to finish your painting is just create a little bit more definition in this section here with a fresh brush, grab some crimson, cadmium and Naples yellow, and mix it onto your palette. Out a little bit of white. You do want it to remain dark, so I just made that a little too light. But what we're doing, we're just going to create the illusion of some really subtle distinct clouds resting just above the horizon. I'm just bringing my brush back and forth. Transferring hints of that orange and crimson and yellow into this area. You can play around with your focal point if you really want to make this pop, add more white and yellow and really play around with making this a really bright focal point. But I like the idea of it just sneaking out through this hazy layer of distinct clouds. So just play around with all these beautiful colors and shadows and light until you're happy with your painting. Really hope you enjoyed this process. I'm really grateful that she joined along.