Transcripts
1. Introduction: Hello and welcome. In this demonstration, I will be painting this
artwork of some hydrangeas. And this was inspired by a photo that I took from my own garden. I really loved the way
that the heart ranges were backlit and the warm light
that was coming through. This painting is painted in
water-soluble oils using a combination of cobra oils and also the Winsor and Newton
water-soluble oils. I really like using water-soluble
oil paint because it doesn't have as
much of the fumes is what normal oil paint does. The colors that I'm
using in this pace. Phthalo blue, phthalo
green, cerulean blue, cadmium yellow made
Alizarin crimson, permanent rose, red, violet, Naples yellow and of
course titanium white. Now before the video begins, I just wanted to
say that this was originally filmed
as I demonstration. It's not really a step-by-step detailed tutorial
on how to paint. However, I do show every
single brushstroke. Sorry, I personally
learn a little bit from just watching.
And sorry what? I would recommend that you
just sit and watch through the whole process if
you have any questions or if there's anything that I don't really talk
about it we'll cover. Feel free to ask questions
in the comments. I would expect most people that would attempt
this kind of painting, all that go into draw these painting already
have a little bit of basic or painting experience. If you don't have any experience painting oil paint at all, algorithmic recommend looking at some beginner tutorials first, this is really sort of aimed
at people that kind of have an understanding of how oil
paint works a little bit. Because it is a bit of a
challenging artwork to just jump straight into
with no experience. So keep that in mind. It's aimed at more of the intermediate sort
of liberal painters. But feel free to watch
the whole video through. Because even if you're not
an experienced Pinter, I'm sure there is a
little bit information in here and that will help you. And I think that you will
still benefit from it. So don't be afraid
to watch the video. I'm just saying that
really it is aimed more at intermediate sort
of liberal painters rather than beginners. That being saved. Sit back and watch. I don't really give a full commentary the
hallway through, but I do give a commentary and describe what I'm doing at certain points
within the video. And yeah, hopefully you find it interesting and
you learn from it. And if you have any
questions, let me know.
2. Sketching the Composition: Now, when I'm laying out
my colors with all paint, I tend to try and keep
them in color families. So I will lay out the blue
tones next to each other, and I'll then move over
to the warmer tones. But that's just
the white I do it. You don't have to
do it this way. But I find that it's easier
for me to mix colors when I know roughly with blues are and where the
other colors are. So I don't have
to think too much about it and it
doesn't matter so much if the colors next to each other mix a
little bit as well. Now in this little clip, I did actually add in another red. I can't remember what that was, but I didn't end up using it. Sorry. Ignore it. I mostly used the Permanent Rose and the Alizarin crimson. I do have three pause a
lot because I like to keep at least one Paul of
Watson's kind of clean. So that's why I have three. This is the reference
rider. Again, we're using this reference photo
is going to be in the corner of the
video the whole time. So you get a bit of an
idea of what I am doing. Sorry, the reference
Florida or a wet. When you look at it,
it's quite complex. You can say that there's a
lot happening in the further. There's trees in the background. There's lots of green
and leaves and foliage. And then of course
there's the flowers. And looking at a reference photo like this can be
really overwhelming. And sorry, the wires that you need to break this
reference further down before you can stop painting
is to really focus on the biggest shapes and
simplifying a lot of the detail. You can say that
as I'm sketching out the rough layout
and the composition, I'm really focusing
on the placement of the hydrangea
is to begin with, I'm loosely by seeing
it on the photo, it's not exactly the
same positioning. I end up adding a few
larger hurt hydrangeas down the bottom just
to balance it a beat. But I am using the photo
as a starting point. But by placing the
hydrangeas first, I can then work on the elements in the background
that I wanted to add in to help give it depth
and to help create that filtered lot kind of look that we have in
the reference Florida. And yet the key is to really
keep it super simple. I'm not really
sketching in many of the leaf shapes and the
super fine details. There's really not much point. I'm just making
sure that I've got the big shapes implies
do sketchy in a few of the larger
hydrangea leaves just to get the size and
the placement of them. But I'm not going to
worry too much about sketching in every
single leaf and stem because that makes it really complicated and really
overwhelming to paint. So we just keep it really
simple with the sketch. And then as we start painting, we start filling things
in based on value.
3. Blocking in Value: The way that I approached
most oil paintings is to start by blocking in the darkest areas and working my way through
to the lighter areas. So to start with, I create
a bit of an underpainting. This layer is quite thin and I sort of choose a darkish
approximate value. I'm, I'm not too concerned about color accuracy
when I paint. I'm more concerned
and interested in making sure that I'm
getting the right values. The values referring
to the lightness and the darkness of the
color that I'm using. I'm looking at the
reference photo and I am working with a mixture of phthalo blue and
Alizarin crimson, which is a darkish purple. And I'm blocking in the areas that I feel sitting
in this value range. So it's not a precise process following the reference
photo quite loosely, but I'm still looking
in the general areas. So you can say, for example, on the bottom left-hand side, you can see that
there's an area of Dhaka shutter of the
trees and things behind. So I blocked a bit of that in a blockchain that
the darker trees. What's the word trunk?
That's what I'm looking for, the tree trunks in
the background. And I've added in a few
shadow areas to and from here I can't work my way up
using the darker greens. And then I go into yellows and then they go into
the lots of colors. And all of this is still
quite a lot wash of color. The paint isn't really thick because this is
water-soluble paint. I've just boarded it
down a little bit. We've water. I'm not using any solvents, but it's just a nice thin
layer to begin with. I can't go back in
later on and add in some more darker
areas as well. If a font that the stock value
isn't quite dark enough. But for now that's the darkest value that I'm going to put in. And then I move to a slightly green of vision of
this darker color, too blocky in the areas of
value where I see darkness, but it's not quite as deep blue as the previous shutter color. So it's kind of a valued grainy blue color
that I'm blocking in there. Sorry. I sort of add that to
the areas that I can see it. Again, I'm just using the
reference photo as a guide. If you need to sort of get rid of some of the
detail or if you have trouble viewing the
reference picture with all that dizziness in it, then try and screenshot eyes
as you're looking at it. I think I had
mentioned that before in other tutorials
that I've done. You've, you squint your eyes. It will take away a
lot of the detail. And you can then
use that as a guide and just look at
the areas of value. If you're painting in this darker green
value, for example, just squint your eyes and see whether it blocks of
darker green seat. And add that in way you say it. Keep it really
loose and Start RV. Think it like you
can see I'm making quite broad marks with my brush. I'm not worrying about individual leaves or
individual shapes. I'm just blocking in flat color because those details of
individual leaves and shapes and beat some cases can come on lighter
with additional layers. The moment we're
just blocking in the values as we see them. Now that I've added
in that green again, I'm just working my wife from the darker values to
the lighter values. Once I'm happy with that
middle range grain, I can then come in with
some larger grains and do the same trick as before. I'll squint my eyes looking at the reference and see where I can see the patches
of a lot of green. And I will just block
that in a mostly ignoring all the patches of light that's filtering
through this area. Because I can come in
later on and adding those light holes
with a lighter color. Sorry, I'm treating
that whole area is green to begin wave. Anywhere I see this
a lighter green in amongst that foliage. Up in the top and
down the bottom. I'm just going to block
it in and I will add in the light filtering
through later on.
4. Blocking in continued: I thought, I've got to mention in the
beginning of that I'm actually painting on
a art-board panel. Sorry, this isn't a canvas. It's actually a team
panel that's got like I've mounted a GeoNet. I really liked painting on these more solid
surfaces with oil piped. Found that I have to scrub
brush into the canvas quite so much and I can keep my brush strokes quite clean and smooth. I've found that I do
prefer to paint on these. Yeah, if you're wondering
what this season there's lots of different
brands of them you can get. This isn't a particularly
expensive brand on I think it was gesagt might be from
memory. I can't remember. As far as size goes. I believe it's about 40
centimeters by 20 centimeters. Yeah. I don't know. I'm not
good at remembering that. Anyway, as you can see here, I'm just working my way around. I've done that most of the
blocking in for the values and colors in the
background foliage area. You can see that I've lift
that the top-left corner up, fairly wide steel because
most of that is going to be light coming through
like a watercolor. So I didn't want to add
anything on there yet. And now I'm just
coming back in with a bit of a darker color
because as I said earlier, once I've added in a
few different values, I suddenly noticed that
the original dock, a value that I added
wasn't quite dark enough. Now I'm coming in with a
slightly thicker paint to go in with some
more darker shadows. And I believe that I
do that a few times. During this process of painting, I will darken areas and then coming with
highlights as well, just to make sure that the
values are pretty good. And these areas I won't
like quite a bit of shadow behind some of these
hydrangeas so that There's lots of leaves and different purpley blue
colors really pops out. There's not quite enough
contrast in that area. It might look a little
bit flat later on. So I'm just making sure that
I get plenty of docs in. It's much easier to add docs early on than it is
to add light up, because once you have
watercolors on top, it's really difficult to
add doc on top of light. That's why most oil
paintings of Dr. lot. More too dark. So far the colors have
all these greenery has been made up of phthalo blue, phthalo green, titanium white, and the cadmium yellow, the color greens
that you say so far, it's just a combination of those colors and sometimes it's just the fairly blue
and the yellow. Sometimes it's just
the stripe phthalo, green and white, a
couple of tonnes. Then obviously I've
added the yellow into it to make it more yellow. Now that I'm doing
the hydrangeas, I wanted them to have
a different blue to the green tones. Sorry, this is actually
little wash of cerulean blue with a touch
of phthalo blue in it. I think actually a little touch of alizarin crimson as well, just a little bit
more purple because I don't want it to be the same
fellow blue as the leaves because it would've lost I coordinated to have a bit
more of that purple tone so they don't get lost
in amongst all the green because I do
paul pack, why debate? At the moment, I'm just
doing like a really low sort of wash of mostly cerulean blue and yellow. A little bit of the
Alizarin crimson, and a little bit of
phthalo blue, as I said, just a really thin wash
just to get that color down and to block it in to get rid of the white so that I can get the values
of the arteries. Sit in place. Sorry, adding a little bit of a shadow where I think
the shadow is needed. I do vary up a few of these hydrangeas to
make some a little bit more purple than the others. Again, that just to get
a bit more variety, but I sort of changed that up
a bit more towards the end.
5. Painting Flowers: Sorry, the final
color that I'm adding to this initial underpainting, I guess you could
say is a mixture of the Naples yellow with
the titanium white. This is a really,
really large value. It's not as large as
it's going to be, but it's pretty close. Icon want to get it as close
as I can the first time. But it's still a thin wash, so it's not super thick
paint at this stage. Later on I will come back with I figured version
of this color to really pump up that
contrast with the white. But for now I'm just loosely
blocking in this pale, yellowy want to get the
background value in place. You can see that I'm also
using it to add in some of those light holes that I
was talking about earlier. But I just want to
get a lot value in some paint on this area because at the moment
there is no paint at all on this area. So once I block this block
and then start coming back on top of everything again with a slightly thicker paint
and adding in more detail. Now that the
underpainting is done, that you've got a really
good idea of the layout, composition of the
artwork, the values, and where everything sits, even though it's not exactly
correct at the moment, that's where these
layers come into it. I've got it pretty close. It's at a point
where I can clearly see what's in the foreground, what's in the background where
the hydride is our answer. Now it's a matter of
building up these layers. And with oil paints, you start with quiet, thin
layers to begin with. And then as you add detail, you've put in a lot
more thicker layers. At the moment, I'm still
not using any medium. I'm just using water as my medium when I
was thinking it down. But at the moment
this paint is just straight out the tube with
no additional medium. If you need your paint
to be thicker, again, you can mixing a
thickening paste or some kind of medium to
make the paint a bit more GC, but I found I didn't
really need to do that. I just painted it as it was
stretched out the tube. Now I'm going through and
adding in some lighter areas. I'm bringing out
some highlights. This would lack a
lighter green yellow. This is the cadmium
yellow and phthalo blue, just with obviously a
lot more yellow in it. Slightly tinted green but
it's not straight yellow. I'm just going to go
through and adding the little details
I'm sort of giving, looking at the reference photo and seeing where the
light's coming through, and seeing where it needs a
bit of a pop of lightness. This lots of color onto some of the leaves as well
because some of the light is hitting a few
of the leaves in the foreground and brightening them up compared to
everything else. I add that in now. A little trick if you're
finding that your paint is kind of smudging a
little bit and not really. We're moving itself
from the brush easily. Try and hold the
brush a bit more flat against the
paint, the painting. And so it kind of comes off.
That's hard to explain. Instead of using, at the moment I'm using the tip of the brush, but I find that if you are wanting the paint to
come off a bit easier, sort of hold the
brush on its side and let the pint slide
off the brush that way. That sometimes helps. At the moment I'm using just a, it's quite a soft
oil painting brush. I don't really like
using bristle brushes, but I'm painting
with oil paint or prefer to use soft brushes. I think that's because I use soft acrylic brushes when I'm using acrylic paint as well. So again, what I'm used to And because it's what
I'm used to you, I tend to not really change my y's very much of a
beat of a creature of habit. Because I'm used
to painting with acrylic paint with
these softer brushes. I find painting in oil with the soft brush is
much easier as well. Now it's time to stop putting in a little bit more detail
into the flowers themselves. Again, this is a mixture
of cerulean blue, a little bit of alizarin
crimson and titanium white. And I stopped with a sort
of a dot-com mixture of those three colors to
do the shadow area. Because again, I
still want to work from the dark to light. So I'm adding in that sort
of shutters side onto the hydrangea and
then I will come in and add the
autopod on top of it. I'm just using really
small brushstrokes. I'm not worrying too much about each individual little
hydrangea flower, but they are quite textured, so I don't want it to be
just a flat block of blue. I want to have that kind of
illusion of different petals. So to do that, I'm making sure that I'd make my brush strokes really small. I vary the direction
of them as well. Keep it really loose. I'm really against squinting my eyes when I'm looking
at my reference. I'm just blocking in the shadow tone in each
flower where I can say it. Then I go over all
the flowers into the shadows first
and then I come back and do the ones on top. Sorry. Where the reference
photo is sitting on the screen here for you guys. My reference photo
is actually typed up just behind
these in real life, sorry. That's what
I'm looking at. Sorry, it's brought up close to my canvas and I can
see it really easily. And so I don't really have
to worry too much about January bending over or looking
at a different direction, sitting right up
next to the campus. Sorry. I can sit there. I can squint my eyes and look back and forth really quickly. Sorry. Yeah, as far as placement
because that's where I tend to put it and it's just a colored print
out of the pizza from my mom print up. Anyway, to make this color of the doctrine little
bit more purple, I just add a little bit
more Alizarin crimson and a little bit less
watch obviously. And then once I go through
and make the lighter version, I just add more
water into it and continue to vary the
shapes of my brushstrokes. I think that's the most
important thing when doing flowers like this
sort of hydrangea. Because really when
you squint your eyes, they become just a flat bowl. But when you paint it, you really don't want
it to be that flat. You want it to have a bit
more interest in texture. And sorry, by making
the mocks quite small, blocky little marks in different directions and
paying attention to the brush, the direction of
the brushstrokes, I can create a bit
more texture in each of these little
hydrangea bowls. Yes, sorry. That's about all I really have to
say about odd ranges. You'll, you'll be able
to watch what I do at some little easier to just
watch rather than explain. I'll be back to
make more comments. When I feel lucky, it needs a bit more instruction.
6. Building up Detail: Sorry. Now, the most of the majority of that work is at the point
where I'm quite happy with it. But I was thinking
like looking at it, that it was a little
bit to monitoring, like a little bit too
much blue and green icon. I wanted to add in some pulps of a different color just to add
a little bit of interest in a little bit of on negative difference to
what was happening, if that makes sense, sorry. This is a mixture
of alizarin crimson and I'm not actually sure what might have been the thyroid blue maybe but it's
like rid of vision anyway. It's a bit more mostly
Alizarin crimson. Just to add a pop of a bit of a mole of reddish
brown color. Just to add a bit of difference in amongst all the greens and the blues and a bit of a
pop of something else. Editing there'll be more detail into the firm that
was sort of hanging out around these blue
hydrangeas again, just adding a little
bit of something extra. I just feel like it was a little bit looking a
little bit too flat. Sorry, I kind of
made that decision. And if I look closely
at the reference photo, there was quite a bit
of brown stems and sort of more reddish tones in amongst that
background foliage. Sorry, I kinda wanted to emphasize a little bit
of that here and there. Just to help tie, tie in the background
a little bit more and adding a little bit
of an extra pop of color. Sorry, that's what
I'm doing here. But from this point on, it's really just a
matter of adding in some finishing touches. I sort of make sure that some of the stems and more visible go over a few of the
leaves and make sure that some of the leaves pop
out more than the others. And just little tweaks and interesting little bits
and pieces added to it. This is probably one
of my favorite parts of the whole painting process, but it can also be the hottest part because this is the point
where you can really, really stopped to
overwork the painting. And if you want it to
have that really loose, fresh and expressive
quantum field to it, you want to make sure that
you don't go overboard with the adding of
the detail part. And I know that myself, I really struggled with this. Sometimes I find that
I go way too far and I should have stopped quite a few layers earlier
and I get carried away. But I really just
like the process of painting these details. So it can be hard
to stop yourself. So just remember
to sort of keep, keep an eye on yourself
when you're at this stage. And it's usually a good time at these points as well to just
step away from the painting completely and just give it a wrist for maybe 1015
minutes or an hour. Get a cup of coffee or a cup
of tea, you have your lunch. Just leave it at the
point before you start adding in too
many details and come back to it and having to
move a look at it with fresh eyes because I'll often find that I don't really need
to add in anything else. At that point. It's just like I
feel like I need to know while I'm sitting
there painting and I've got the brush in my
hand and I'm really enjoying the process of putting
down the color, the texture of the paint. I kinda get wrapped up in it. And that's where I find that I go a bit overboard with detail. Whereas if I take the time to
step away from the Canvas, take some time not
looking at it. You go and do something
else for a little while. Once I come back, I find that the
process of putting in details is a lot easier and I don't get as carried away
because I've stopped myself and prevent myself
from getting to that point before it begins,
see if that makes sense. Yeah. If you're like me and
you struggle with that, I just really recommend
when you get to the stage of adding in a bit more detail, you have a break
before you do it, and then come back
with fresh eyes, because you'll find
that you probably don't end up needing to add as much as you originally
thought you would. Anyway? Yeah. Once I started coming in and add a few more
leaves and things, I think it was at
this point I realized that I probably
needed to lighten up the background
area a little bit. Sorry. I think that's what I sort
of think about doing next. Anyway. I'll just let you guys keep
watching and I will come back at the end and wrap up my little
description for you.
7. Finishing The Painting: Earlier in the video,
I was struggling to talk to you about how to hold the brush
to get the paint off. This is a good example of
what I was talking about. See how I'm holding it on an angle towards the canvas that's not sort of straight on, it's actually on
an angle and I'm almost painting and like a cross and the paint
is coming off my brush, off the flat side of the
brush rather than the tip of the brush because it's
smearing off that way. I'm not picking
up as much paint. That's already on the canvas. Oil paint obviously doesn't dry. Well, it does, but it
takes quite a long time. And so if you just
push really hard on the surface when you are trying
to add more color on top, you'll just gonna pick
up what's underneath. And that's why you get a little
blurring and smudging and the calories and very clean by using the side of the brush. And it's sort of
pulling it across the paint in a horizontal way. Less likely to pick up the
paint that's underneath. Sorry, I hope that makes me more sense now that you
can see what I'm doing, I've moved to a slightly bigger
brush as well to do this because it's a big
of a logic area. And just a little
quick as you use these bigger brush and also the paint that I'm using
for this background, lots of color is a
lot thicker as well. It's a bit hard to see it
clearly on this video, but it's got more, a lot more paint and the
brush is really loaded up so that when I do
put the paint down, it's quite a thick blob of
paint that's going down. So usually your highlights
with oil paint are going to be the thickest application
of paint when you're painting in this Alla
prima style of painting. There I have added in
all the highlights and those light holes and things that I was
talking about earlier. And now it's just a
matter of I think I had a few more little details
and that's about it. I decided it's done. So I hope that this has been
informative for you guys. I hope you've
enjoyed watching it. I know I haven't really gone
into a huge amount of detail in regards to exactly what
I'm doing brush by brush. But I find that these
types of videos, you can follow along quite
easily just by watching. I don't feel as though
I need to describe every single decision
that I'm making. But I have hopefully explained
a few of the decisions along the way and talk to you about why
I've done certain things. The main the main tips
I can give you and reiterate is to start, we'd quite loose light layers
or thin layers of paint and work your way up to figure liars against dot
doc and goto lot. So you can see that
I'm now adding in the lightest highlights
at the very end. Go from oil painting, the old rule, thin to fake. Sorry, start with the
paint thin and go figure. Now I just adding a few touches of some broader pops
of color like that. Yellow for example,
am going to add in. Some more people turns to a few of the hydrangeas as well. But this is again,
this is the stage of fiddly stuff that you didn't get stuck doing in and
overworking the painting. I definitely don't want to
overwork it at this point. If you feel as
though you're just painting for the
sake of painting, that's usually a
good sign to stop. If you have any questions
about any part of this process or
this demonstration, leave them in the
comments and I'll try and get back to
you as soon as I can. I hope that you enjoyed
watching it and I look forward to seeing
you guys in my next video. Watch those at the end. Have a great day.
Clair Bremner, Professional Artist
