Painting a Colorful Landscape in Oils

1. Introduction: Would you like to be able to paint a colorful landscape such as this one? Well, I'm going to show you a step by step process in this class to be able to do so. Hi, I'm Andrew Ser and welcome to Painting a colorful landscape. In this class, I'll review what materials are necessary for completing your class project. A landscape like this one. The role of the concept of values as it relates to color, the type of palette I used to achieve colorful paintings, and a step by step process for completing your class project. 2. Materials: For this class, you'll need a small sketch pad such as this one. I recommend this spiral bound sketch pads because they open so easily and they also lie flat on most surfaces. You'll need an H B or number two pencil, they're the same thing. You'll need a white eraser. I prefer the white ones to the red ones. I find that the red ones leave smudge marks on your paper, and you'll need a pencil sharpener. You'll also need a plastic palette box such as this one. You can find a plastic palette box like this one at your local art store or online. This box measures 12 " on its short side by 16 " on its long side. In addition, you'll need to purchase a pad of palette paper of the same size that fits into the box. And this becomes your Palett, where you're going to mix your colors. When you're finished with a sheet, you just pull up the corner, tear out the sheet, and throw it away. It's very convenient. However, if you don't finish using all of your paints in one sitting, one painting session, or you have some mixtures left over that you want to go back to and finish your painting. These plastic pop boxes are wonderful for preserving paint. They come with a lid. When you're finished, you just place the lid on top, you seal it. Place the box in your refrigerator. And your paints will keep for up to a week or two. When you're ready to use your paints again, take the box out of the refrigerator, allow the paints to come up to room temperature, and you should be good to go. You will also need a set of brushes. I recommend the brand Rosemarying company brushes. You can find these brushes on line. They're very well made and they're very durable. They'll last you a long time. If you take care of them, you will need a rosemary company. Classic Long Flat. A rosemarying company, Classic Filber. One, each of each of the following sizes. Size eight, size six, size four. Now, in addition to these six brushes, you will need a number two rosemary company ivory rigger, and a number zero rosemarying company, Ivory Filbert. Now with this brand, those brushes that are referred to as classic brushes are made of hog hair. Those brushes that are referred to as ivory brushes are synthetic. I find that the synthetic brushes hold up longer and the smaller sizes. That's why I get the synthetic brushes and the smallest sizes. However, I have found that the hog hair brushes hold up better with the large brushes. Now this long flat brush is my go to brush. I like the wide flat surface at the end of the brush. It allows me to scoop up quite a bit of paint at the beginning of my painting. Allows me to cover large areas of the painting in a short amount of time when I'm just massing in the different areas of the painting. That large flat surface also allows me to pick up quite a bit of paint to make nice impasto brush strokes. Can also turn the paint brush on its side and make narrow brush strokes. It's a very versatile brush, It's my go to brush. In contrast to the long flats, the Filbert brush has a rounded edge. I use it for areas of my painting that need softer brush strokes, such as the sky or edges of my clouds. I may use it for the foliage of a group of trees in the distance. Now the ivory rigger brush, the bristles are very long and narrow. I use this brush for painting tree branches. I may use it for painting grasses in the foreground of at the number zero ivory filbert. This is the brush that I use for making the drawing on my canvas. You will also need a set of paints and I recommend gambling artist oil colors. This is a well established brand. The colors have a lot of pigment, so they're very saturated colors. And also the paint has a very buttery consistency, which I like. You'll need to buy 150 milliliter tube of titanium white. I ask you to buy the large tube of white because it's the color that you'll use the most. You'll need to buy two reds. A 37 milliliter tube of cadmium red light, and a 37 milliliter tube of a lizard, Crimson, two yellows. A 37 milliliter tube of cadmium yellow deep, and a 37 milliliter tube of cadmium yellow light. Now some other brands this color and other brands, they may refer to it as cadmium yellow medium. If you're using another brand, make sure that you get the color that is a yellowish orange color, two blues, a 37 milliliter tube of ultramarine blue and a 37 milliliter tube of thalo blue. If you're an established painter or you see yourself painting well into the future, go ahead and buy 150 milliliter tubes of paint over the long run. You're going to save money and you won't have to make as many trips back to the art store to buy tubes of paint. You'll also need a medium. I recommend gambling solvent free gel mediums help your paint flow more easily. Say on a cold day, your paints may become a bit stiffer than usual. And if you'll put a little bit of solvent free gel in them, it will loosen them up. This also has the effect of helping your paints dry more quickly if you want. That effect comes in a tube, it's very convenient to use. You just squeeze it out on your palette a little bit, will go a long ways. You'll also need a couple of palette knives. I recommend a medium sized palette knife and a small palette knife. I primarily use the palette knives to mix paints. However, from time to time, I'll use a palette knife to create a certain effect in my painting. I may use a palette knife to create the grasses, paint grasses in the foreground of a painting. And I've used a small palette knife to paint a telephone wire, which requires a delicate touch and a very thin brush stroke. You will also need mineral spirits. I use Gamblin, Gamsol. Odorless mineral spirits. They really are odorless. They keep the fumes to an absolute minimum. I don't even notice them. Great mineral spirits to use. Maybe in a small space where you don't have a lot of ventilation. Now the idea is that you place the mineral spirits in a canister such as this one. You'll need to buy a canister like this. You can find this at your local art store or online. These canisters have an inner canister that comes out, you can see that it has holes in the bottom. The idea is the following, I'll show you this. I'm going to put a little bit of paint on my brush and I'll show you how you clean your brushes with that, I'm just going to pull a little bit of cad yellow light on my brush. You can see it there. So I'm going to put my brush in the canister, swirl it over those holes, wipe the excess mineral spirits from my brush on the edge of the canister, and then I'll squeeze the bristles in paper towel, and you can see that it's taken out most of that yellow paint. You will also need paper towels. I recommend the Vivo brand. These are very absorbent paper towels also. They come with sheets that are perforated in the middle. You're actually getting two sheets in one. Oftentimes, I'll take that half sheet and tear it in half, and so I'm getting four sheets out of just one. You'll also need a canvas, a nine x 12 canvas such as this one. And you can purchase this at your local art store or online. And finally, I would buy some latex gloves. You don't absolutely have to wear clothes. The gambling brand of paints do not contain toxins. However, if you don't wear a pair of gloves, you're going to get paint all over your hands and it can be difficult to get the paint out. 3. The Concept of Values: In his well known book, Carlson's Guide the Landscape Painting, John Carlson identifies the four major planes of a landscape, and he assigns each plane a value. First, there is the sky plane, which has the lightest value because it contains the Sun, the source of light. Second, there is the ground plane, which is the second lightest value because it directly reflects all of the light from the sky. Third, if there are any slanted objects, such as a ridge or mountains in the distance, they will be of a darker value than both the sky and the ground because of their angle to the sun. Then finally, there's a plane with upright objects. And those upright objects will have the darkest value. That plane will contain the darkest values because of those objects angle to the sun. In my previous class, students and I identified Carlson's four major planes in this reference photo of a landscape from Central Arkansas. Then students as their class project focusing on getting the correct value for each plane, painted the scene in tones of black and white, with the sky having the lightest value, the ground having the second lightest value. The ridge having a value that is darker than both the sky and the ground. Then of course, the plane with the upright objects, namely trees, in this case, having the darkest value. In this class, we'll be doing something similar. However, we'll be painting the same scene from the reference photo in color. In addition to focusing on getting the correct value for each of the four different planes, we'll also consider our color choices and the values that we associate or give to the different color choices that we make. If you recall in my previous class I mentioned that if you can get the different values, the overall value correct, for each of the four planes that Carlton speaks of, then you're going to have much more freedom with respect to color choice. And why is that true? It's true because the values are the underlying structure of your painting. And you can think of color as kind of icing on the cake. Once you've established the different values and you've got them correct for the four different planes, then you can really make the painting sing with your color choices. 4. Using a Limited Split Palette: I use a limited split palette because it offers me a broad range of warm and cool variations of the three primary colors, red, yellow, and blue, as well as a broad range of the secondary colors, orange, green, and violet. I live in central Arkansas, a part of the United States that experiences all four seasons. So it's important to me to be able to mix a range of greens, some of which I use for spring vegetation and foliage, and others for summer, fall, and even winter vegetation and foliage. I also like to paint the contrast between light and shadow in my paintings. I need to be able to mix a broad range of warm colors that depict light, as well as a broad range of cool colors that depict shadow. The impressionist found that by juxtaposing warm and cool colors in a painting, they created a certain color vibration. I strive to create that same color vibration in my paintings. For example, in this painting, you can see that the foreground is made up primarily of warm colors, these warm earth tones, and these warm yellows and yellow greens. However, I've also placed some brushstrokes of violet in the foreground. And it's that juxtaposition of the warm and cool colors that allowed the impressionist to create that color vibration in their paintings. And it's that same color vibration that will capture the viewer's attention, excite the viewer's eye, and lead the viewer into your painting. 5. Layout for Limited Split Palette: To show you a sample of the variety of colors I can mix with a limited split palette, I'm going to do a quick color mixing exercise. As I mentioned before, a limited split palette consists of a warm and cool version of the three primary colors, red, yellow, and blue. These warm and cool colors allow me to mix a broad range of secondary colors, orange, green, and violet. For my warm red, I use cadmium red light, which is warm because it has some yellow orange in it. For my cool red, I use a lizard. And crimson, which is cool because it has some blue in it. I use titanium white for my warm yellow. I use cadmium yellow deep. It's warm because it has some red in it. For my cool yellow, I use cadmium yellow light. It's cool because it has some green in it. Finally, for my warm blue, I use ultramarine blue, which is warm because it has some red in it. For my cool blue, I use thalo blue, which is cool because it has some green in it. You'll also notice that I put a little bit of solvent free gel my medium off here to the side just in case I need it to loosen up any of the colors. 6. Mixing Greens: Now let's look at the range of saturated and muted secondary colors I can mix with this palette. To mix a range of vibrant and muted greens, I use my warm and cool blue in combination with my warm and cool yellow to mix a vibrant spring green, for example, I use a bit of thalo blue. I can just use a bit because it's a very strong color. So just a bit goes a long way. I mix it and it already has some green in it. And I mix it with my cadmium yellow light, which also has some green in it, and I get a nice, vibrant spring green. You can see here, I'm going to put just a little bit of white in with it, so you can see the color better. I might use this vibrant green for spring foliage or even for summer foliage. If on the other hand I want to mix a more subdued, warmer green, I'll mix ultramarine blue, which is my warm blue. It's warm because it has some red in it with my warm yellow, cadmium yellow deep. And it's warm because it has some red in it. And I get a nice olive color green. And it's much more subdued and muted than the green I mixed up previously, the spring green, and I'll use this green for late summer foliage, when the leaves start to turn kind of an olive color and into the early fall. 7. Mixing Oranges: Let's also take a look at some oranges I can mix with this palette by mixing cadmium red light, my warm red with cadmium yellow. Deep my warm yellow, I create a vibrant, warm orange. So I'm going to take a little bit of red light. This is my warm red because it has some yellow orange in it. And I'm going to mix it with cadmium yellow deep. It's my warm yellow because it has some red in it. And I'm going to come up with a very vibrant orange. I'll put just a little bit of white in it so that we can see the color. I might use this color for trees whose leaves have turned a bright orange in the fall. Likewise, I can mix a Lisarin crimson, my cool red with cad yellow light, my cool yellow to achieve a more muted orange. So I'm going to take just a little bit of a Lisarin crimson will do you. It's a very strong color, just like thalo blue. So I'm going to take it and I'm going to mix in a bit of my cool yellow, cadmium yellow light. You can see that I come up with an orange. That's a much more muted orange. Okay, And I could add maybe a little bit of a lizard and crimson back in a little bit more. And this gives me a nice reddish orange color. Kind of an auburn color, that I might want to use for, say, the color, the auburn color of a barn. 8. Mixing Violets: Finally, let's take a look at the violets. I can mix with this palette by mixing ultamarine blue and alizarin crimson, both of which contain blue and red. I get a very vibrant violet. So I'm going to take some ulta marine blue and crimson red again, Crimson red is very strong. A little bit will go a long ways. Now this color is really dark. So in order to see it better, I'm going to fold in some white. And you can see that we get a nice vibrant violet. May need just a little bit more red. Here we go. If I want a more immuted violet, I mix my thalo blue, just a bit of my thalo blue, which is my cool blue because it has a bit of green in it. I mix that with my warm red cadmium red light. The green in the thalo blue green is the complement of red is going to mute the red. I'm going to end up with a very muted violet. Now, this is a dark color, you can't see it that well. I'm going to add some white to it so we can see the true color. But you can see that this violet is much more muted than this one. 9. Muting Colors: In fact, if you want to mute any color mix in its complementary color, for example, the complement of green is red. If I want to mute my spring green mixture, I fold in a bit of Cad, red light, which desaturates and mutes the green. Let's go ahead and do that. Here I have my spring green mix. I'm just going to take a little bit of Cad red light. Immediately, you can see that the color becomes less vibrant, less saturated, and more muted. 10. Tinting Colors: You can also tint any color with white. Tinting any color with white makes the color paler and cooler. Because white has a little bit of blue in it and it also lightens a colors value. Let's just take a little bit of white and we'll mix it in with the muted green. And you can see that that green becomes more of a sage colored green. I'll take some white and I'll mix it in with the muted spring green, and that becomes cooler and paler. Let me go ahead and mix in some white with the other colors so that you can see them. This was our muted orange. It becomes paler with white. This was the auburn color that we mixed up and it becomes paler and lighter in value. I'll add some white to our vibrant orange. It becomes paler, and then I'll do the same with our violet. And finally, with our muted violet. You can see that by tinting these colors, they become paler. A little bit cooler, you can continue adding white. You don't want to add too much white because it'll take on a chalky color. But you can always tint a color several times with white to make it paler and lighten its value. 11. Limited Split Palette Summary: In sum, a limited split palette allows you to mix a broad range of cool and warm colors, Both primary and secondary colors. The variety of warm and cool colors you're able to mix will allow you to more accurately depict light and shadow, as well as the contrast between the two. And by using a limited number of colors, you'll more easily achieve color harmony in your paintings. Because you're not introducing colors outside of those. You can mix with the primary colors. Also with a wide variety of warm and cool colors. At your disposal, you'll be able to create the same color vibration as did the impressionist. Finally, by limiting the colors on your palette, you gain the confidence of being able to mix any color you want from your warm and cool primary colors to boot. Over time, a limited split palette will save you money. 12. Thumbnail Sketch: I always start my painting process with a thumbnail sketch since that allows me to work out any composition or design issues before I begin painting. Also, I never use the edge of the sketchpad paper as my picture frame, since a clearly defined frame for your drawing will help you with the placement of the major shapes and objects of your scene. Additionally, this sketch pad is a square and the shape of my paintings are usually a rectangle in a landscape or portrait orientation. So it wouldn't make sense to use a square shape to frame my drawing unless I were using a square shaped canvas panel. Since we'll be using a nine by 12 canvas panel, the ratio for which is three to four, we'll want to make a picture frame that is 3 " in height by 4 " across. This doesn't have to be perfect, the lines don't have to be perfectly straight. But I do want to come close to that dimension. This is the picture frame that I'll use for my sketch. I'll start by placing my horizon line in my picture frame. As a rule of thumb, you don't want to place your horizon line in the middle of your drawing, whether it has a vertical orientation or a horizontal orientation. In fact, you never want to place your object of interest or your focal point in the middle of your drawing because it makes it too symmetrical and quite frankly, a bit boring. If you place the horizon line in the middle of your drawing, you'll be splitting your viewers attention between the top portion of your painting and the bottom portion, making it difficult for him or her to be drawn to a particular area of interest outside of the center of your painting. What we're looking for in a composition is asymmetrical symmetry. In other words, we want balance, but in an uneven way. Normally, you'll place your horizon line in either the upper third of your picture frame or the lower third of your picture frame, regardless of whether your painting has a horizontal or vertical orientation. Looking at my reference photo, which is the color version of the same black and white reference photo I showed you earlier, I can clearly see my horizon line is in the bottom third of the picture frame. So I'll go ahead and draw it accordingly. For my design, I'll be using what is referred to as a steel yard composition, where you place a large heavy object along a horizontal axis, which in this case is my horizon line that is counterbalanced by a smaller lighter object opposite it. On the right side, I have this large tree that is counterbalanced by this smaller tree on the left side, which is a more pleasing composition to the eye than two evenly spaced trees. Now this reference photo naturally lends itself to a steel yard composition. However, if I needed to re, arrange some of the trees from a different reference photo to create a steel yard composition, that would not be a problem. So now that I've shown you what a steel yard composition is, let me go ahead and redraw the trees. I just want to get the gesture of the trees. So here's my horizon line and looking at the grip of trees on the right hand side, I can see that there are two tree trunks that are visible and they go below the horizon line. So I'm just going to give an indication of them and I won't show all of these tree trunks the painting, but I just want to get them in here to establish where they are. Let me go ahead and just get the gesture of the tree just to try to get the basic shape. It's actually two different trees, but I'm going to make it look like it's just one tree and the foliage will come down here. Then to my left, I've got this group of trees that's ticking out from the side. The line of this tree goes below the horizon, line two, not quite as far down as this one. Then you'll also notice, let me make this a little darker so you can see it better. You also notice that there is a line of trees on the horizon line at the base of the ridge. So I'm going to indicate them. I don't want to make my line straight, I want to make it uneven, which will make it more interesting. Here I have my large tree, group of smaller trees on the left hand side and this line of trees in the background. I'm going to go ahead and take the opportunity to just do a little bit of shading to indicate where the shadows are, so I don't forget. Actually this tree is mostly in shadow. The sun, the sunlight is coming from this direction. I see a few shadows at the base of this group of trees, and then some of them that come up. Then with the trees along the base of the ridge, there are also some shadow lines. Again, I just want to make them uneven to give an indication that the sun is coming from this direction and shining some light on these trees. But there are also some shadows now to get the proper angle of the top of the ridge, I extend my arm out straight and I align my pencil with the top of the ridge and maintaining that same angle, I bring my arm back to the sketch pad where I will draw the ridge line. The ridge comes up to about right here at this angle. A little bit of a dip here. Then it comes up, there's another dip here. It comes up a little bit, and then there's yet another dip. I do I want to avoid making a straight line. I want the ridge line to have some character to it. You may have noticed that there is a shadow under the tree, which I failed to indicate when I was doing some shading earlier. So I'm going to go ahead and put that in. You may have also noticed that that shadow line appears to go all the way across the painting. It doesn't. That's just a road back there of a darker color and it coincides with the shadow. It appears that the shadow goes all the way across, but it doesn't I don't want it to go all the way across because I want to reinforce the fact that the sun is coming from this side. You may also noticed that there are some diagonal lines in the grass, in the foreground. Those, I believe are there just because of the angle at which they cut the grass. But I'm going to use those lines and take advantage of those lines and act as if they were furrows in a field. Why? Because they serve as a really nice device to lead viewers into the painting to get the proper angle of the diagonal lines. I hold my arm out straight, I align my pencil with the lines and maintaining that same angle, I bring my pencil back to the paper and to the sketch pad. So I'm going to go ahead and put just a few of those in. And as we move to the right, the angles are not as sharp, quite as sharp. But these will serve as a really nice device to lead the viewer into the painting, up this tree, and then along the top of the ridge and to the left. However, the viewer won't be taken off the edge of the painting because we have the small group of trees here to stop the viewer's eye so the viewer's gaze will rest somewhere in this area, which is where we want it to be. We want it to be off center. Finally, I'll make some indications of the clouds in the sky. We want to avoid making our clouds the same shape and size. And remember that clouds in the distance will appear at the bottom of the sky or near the horizon line, or in this case just above the ridge, and will be smaller and flatter than clouds that are nearer to us and higher in the sky. Looking at the reference photo, I see some clouds here, some smaller clouds. Again, I'm just giving an indication of them. Then there are some larger clouds here higher in the sky. I also see some over here. I see a smaller cloud here. Then there are also some clouds here. Okay, so this is our thumbnail sketch. We'll want to continue to look at our thumbnail sketch as we complete our painting, because I've made choices here with respect to the composition and design of the painting. And I want to stick to those choices as I complete the painting. 13. Toning Your Canvas: This is an example of a nine by 12 canvas panel toned with a lizard and crimson. But I'll use a clean panel and just a bit to show you the process. I almost always tone my canvas before I begin the painting process. Toning your canvas places a thin layer of paint and mineral spirits on your canvas that will make the surface a bit smoother and thus easier to apply paint to. And it provides a background color that can peek through parts of your painting and add interest. I live in the state of Arkansas where there is plenty of green foliage year round. So oftentimes I'll tone my canvas with just a little bit of a lizard crimson or permanent rose, both of which are shades of red and therefore the complement of green. The parts of the canvas that end up having the pinkish tone show through serve as a nice complement to all the different shades of green and is pleasing to the eye. I can show you the effect of which I'm speaking by zooming in on the Demova painting I completed earlier, which is the same landscape that you'll be completing for your class project. You can see the pink tone of the canvas showing through the grasses in the foreground. And as I make my way up into the painting, you can see that same pink tone showing through parts of the sky, parts of the large tree on the right. And even in the lower right hand corner of the painting. Now those pinks are part of the family of reds. Red is the complimentary color of green. Everywhere you see that pink tone showing through the final painting. It's serving as a complement to all the shades of green that you see throughout the painting. Now, you may have also noticed that there's some orange peeking through parts of the painting. Like with the trees in the distance on the top of the ridge and even through the large tree on the right. That orange is the color that I used for the drawing, for the painting. And remember that orange is the complimentary color of blue. It's serving as a really nice complement to the blue of the ridge and the blues in the sky and adding a lot of interest to the painting. Overall, I'll take just a bit of Alizarin Crimson from the dab that I put in the corner. And I'll spread it on my palette paper so that I have a thin layer. I'll take my paper towel and dip it in my mineral spirits, and I'll swirl it around in the Alizarin Crimson. And this is what I'll use to tone my canvas. This is enough. As it is. I'll be able to cover the entire canvas with this paper til with a little bit of Alizarin Crimson on it. And I'll fold my paper towel over to take some of that off because I've got too much on to take just a little bit more off. I'll grab a clean paper towel and I'll dip it in the mineral spirits. And I'll continue to wipe it. And it will take off some of the Alizarin Crimson that's already on the canvas panel. Let me wipe it. It doesn't have to be perfectly even, but I usually try to get it to be just a faint tone, pinkish tone. There you have it. Here is our toned canvas. 14. Drawing and Placement of Horizon Line: So as you can see, I have placed my reference photo on top of my easel so that I can constantly look at it while I'm sketching and painting. You'll also notice that I put my thumbnail sketch and taped it to the easel. Remember, I made certain decisions when drawing my thumbnail sketch. And I want to remind myself of those decisions so that I incorporate them into the painting to get the color that I normally use for my sketch. I take yellow deep about that amount. I'm going to put it in the lower right hand corner of my palette because I'll need the rest of the room for mixing the other paints. And then I grab a little bit of Cad red light. If you will recall, by mixing these two colors together, we get a pretty vibrant orange. So vibrant that I'm going to have to mute it a little bit. And remember that the way that you can mute a colors by using its complimentary color, the complimentary color of orange is blue. I'm going to take a little bit of ultramarine blue and I probably need a little bit more. I'm also going to add a little bit more of Cad yellow deep into it. It's gotten a little too much of a red tint to it. Okay. I like that. And so now I'll just need to put in a tiny bit more of ultramarine blue. And I think I will have my color, tiny bit more of ultramarine blue. You'll notice that I'm cleaning my palette knife trying to avoid contaminating my piles of paint. Okay, this is the color that I want, so I will put it in a nice little pile and I'll begin my sketch. The first thing I want to do is put a mark at the halfway point between the top and the bottom on the right hand side of my canvas. Just so that I'm marking the midway mark, it's about 4.5 ", falls about right here. And I'm doing this just so that I can better gauge where to put the horizon line. And remember we decided that our horizon line will go in the bottom third of the painting and why? Because that's what the reference photo calls for. Also just going back to good principles of composition and design, you never want to put your horizon line in the middle of your canvas because it will equally divide the viewer's attention. We want to lead the viewer in and around the painting and have the viewer's gaze rest on a focal point. There is my midway mark. I'm going to put the horizon line in the lower third. I'm going to place it about right here. And I will try to make as straight a line as I can, but it doesn't need to be perfect there. I have my horizon line now. I will get started with the tree on the right. 15. Drawing the Tree Plane: For the tree on the right, remember we're starting with the plane with upright objects. For this painting, those are trees. And remember that this is the plane of which Carlson speaks that will have the darkest values. I'm starting with this tree, large tree on the right hand side. The first thing I want to do is put in the trunks, it has a split trunk at its base. It's actually three trees, but I think I mentioned this before. I'm not going to show this one shooting off to the left because it would just distract viewers. I'm going to make it look like one tree, but I will put the split trunk at the base. I have one trunk that's below the horizon line, comes out like this. The other trunk is also below the horizon line and comes out this way. Now, I won't show all of the trunks that we have here in the final painting, but I do want to establish their position for now to continue on. The foliage comes to about right here. There's a little field in the back, dips down, just trying to get the gesture of the tree. As we get higher in the tree, you'll notice that the tree thins out. I'll try to show that the tree comes out a little bit over here. Then some of the foliage actually almost comes down to the ground. You bring us out a little bit more. Now, I'm just taking a look at the tree, making sure it's got a decent balance and some irregularity maybe this can come out, may need to give it a little more volume over here, but I think that's a good start. I'm satisfied with this tree as it stands right now. Now I will move over to the left hand side of the canvas and I will put in the tree on the left hand side, I want to see where the top of that tree comes up on the tree on the right. I'm holding my brush up to align them. I can see that this comes to about right here. I just want to make this shape irregular. I'll bring it below the horizon line. Now to complete the plane with the upright objects, I want to put the row of trees in the back. I'll go ahead and do that. What I want to keep in mind again, is just keeping the shape irregular. It's got some humps, it may flatten out in parts and then it may dip down, But we just want to make things somewhat irregular. I'm going to take the opportunity to do some shading. And I'm doing this just to remind myself of where the shadows are. The left side of this tree is almost completely in shadow. So I'm going to indicate that. Remember that with our brush work, we want a variety of brushstrokes, some horizontal, some vertical, and some diagonal. Just for the sake of variation, you'll note that the tree thins out. I mentioned that before. I'll let some of that background colors show through at the top of the tree, then it comes down here. Okay, I think that's good enough for this tree. Now, I will do a little shading on the tree on the left. I'm squinting my eyes and I see a nice shadow here. It's a little one here. I think that's good enough. I'll bring this down to the base. Now. I want to put the shadows in on the row of trees at the base of the ridge. The sunlight is coming from this direction. I want to show that the row of trees at the base of the ridge is being lit by the sun on the right hand side. Some of those spaces, I'll just let the background tone color show through. And then later I'll put a warm color there to show that the light is hitting the right sides of these trees, some of them are shaded. I'm just trying to make this as irregular as possible. Okay. And at the same time, showing that some of the right sides of these trees are being hit by sunlight. That is my midway mark, so don't get distracted by that. That's not part of the tree line. Okay. So I have one more thing to do. I want to put that shadow under the tree, if you will recall. And if you look at the reference photo, it looks as if the shadow of the tree goes all the way across and out of the left of the canvas. It doesn't. That's a paved road and it's a dark color. So it just looks like the shadow carries over. So I'm just going to put the shadow here and carry it over to about here, and I think that will be good enough. Okay. So we have completed the plane with upright objects, namely the trees. And so now I want to move on to the plane that has the second darkest values, and that is the ridge plane. 16. Drawing the Ridge Plane: I'm going to start here. The ridge comes up to about here on the tree. I'm looking at the angle again. Then we have a little bit of a hump here. It dips down a little bit, and then we have another hump. And then it straightens out at an angle going down there. We have our ridge plane. Now I will be moving on to the ground plane. And remember the ground plane has the second lightest values. 17. Drawing the Ground Plane: If you recall, When I was drawing my thumbnail sketch, I decided that those lines that I saw in the grass that just looked to be there because of the angle at which they cut the grass, could be viewed as thin furrows in a field. By putting them in the painting, it would be a nice device to lead viewers into the painting up this tree across the ridge. But they wouldn't go off the painting because we have this tree stopping their view from going off the side of the page. That's what we want to do. We want to keep viewers engaged in the painting. Just as I did with the ridge. I'm going to align my brush with the lines that I see in the field, and I see one right here. And I'm going to go ahead and draw them in. Align my brush with the line, and then I bring it down to the canvas. There's one. I see one above it. Let me go ahead and put that one into that ones at above this angle. And I see a couple more over here. Let me go ahead and get those in. See one roughly about here. And let's see, just one more roughly here. Okay, well, be a little bit more like that. Okay, so that is a ground plane. So now I will move on to the sky plane. 18. Drawing the Sky Plane: With the sky plane, I primarily want to just give an indication of where my clouds are. Remember with clouds that clouds that are closer to the horizon, in this case closer to the top of the ridge will be smaller and flatter on their bottoms. Those are the clouds that are further away from us, farther away. Then clouds that are closer to us and higher in the sky will be a little more amorphous. You can see that there's a blue sky peeking through a lot of these clouds. Let me go ahead and get just an indication of some of the clouds. I'm squinting my eyes, I see that nice dark bottom to a shadow that runs from about here, goes up a little bit and it comes to about right here. So I just want to now put a little bit of that shadow in and just get the top of that cloud just being very loose, has a little top here and then trails off up here. Okay, I'm just grabbing a little more paint from my palette and I'm taking a look at the sky. I see where there's another mass of clouds here and the dip down like this at the bottom of it. And then we have a little bit of sky peeking through here. This line carries across. We have a little bit of the top of a cloud here. Again, some more sky showing through here. And I'm going to jump over to the right side of the canvas. Got a small cloud here that I just want to get an indication of. And then you can see faintly some clouds here, but we also have some sky peeking through. And there's some sky peeking through here too. Again, I just want to give myself an indication of where the clouds are. That is good enough for the sky plane. For now, this is our sketch. And now I will be moving on to what is referred to as the wash in where I'm going to paint the major shapes in the four different planes. And I'll be using a little bit of mineral spirits with my paint to do that. Because I want to cover a fair amount of canvas in a short amount of time. Also with each plane, I'll probably be using just two colors. I just want to get the basic colors and even more so I want to get the correct value for each of the planes before I go back in and use less mineral spirits and more paint. And then also start to add colors and multiple values in each plane. 19. Pre-Mixing Colors for Wash-in: I don't always pre mix my colors. But I'm going to go ahead and do so for this demo because I think it'll be very helpful for you to listen to my thought process as I'm mixing the colors for the four different planes. So we're going to start with the plane with upright objects. Those are the trees and they have our darkest values. Just as I did with a sketch. I'll begin with a tree on the right. And when I look at that tree, I see a lot of dark blue and an aisle of color with it. So I'm going to start with my ulti, marine blue. Remember that if you're mixing up a dark color, start with the predominant color. And for this color, the predominant color is this dark blue. I'm starting with it and then I'm going to grab some Cad yellow deep. That may have been too much and I'm going to mix it in and this will be the shadow side of that tree. That's pretty dark. I think this is about right. That tree also has a lit side, so I'm going to take just a little bit of this mixture and put it up here. And I'll fold more Cad yellow deep into it. May add a little more cad yellow deep. But this will be the lit side of that tree on the right. Okay. So those are the two colors for that tree. When I look at the tree on the left, I see more of an olive color. So this time I will start with my Cad Yellow deep, and I'll fold in just a little bit of ultramarine blue. I may even use a little bit of white to bring the value down. I'm going to put in just a tiny bit of white. Okay, I think that's a nice color for that tree on the left. Now we have the row of trees at the base of the ridge. And that row of trees will need to be cooler in temperature. And it'll need to be lighter in value to show that it's in the distance. By cooler in temperature, I mean that it's going to have a little more blue in it and it's going to be a lighter color value wise. To get the shadow color of the trees at the base of the ridge, I'm going to start with ultramarine blue. And just to give myself more room on my paletteI'm going to put it up here and I'll grab some Cad yellow light that is definitely looking like a cooler green. It's pretty intense. So what I need to do now is put a little bit of Cad red light in order to mute your greens. You can always fold in a little bit of red, the complimentary color of green. Okay, I'm making sure that I wipe my palette knife off. I'm going to grab a little bit of white to bring the value down on that. That may have been too much, I think it's fine. Then we have the lit sides of those trees and I'm going to take off just a little bit of the pile that I mix for the shadow side and I will take some cadulolight and mix that in that may be too warm, but let me put some white in it. Okay. Maybe a little too warm, I mean. Okay, I think that's it. So you can see that these two colors are cooler than these colors. These trees are more in the foreground. They need to be a warmer color. These trees, they're the row of trees at the base of the ridge. They need to be a cooler color. So now I want to mix up the color for the ridge, that is the plane with the second darkest value. If you look at the reference photo and squint your eyes, I think you can see some of the blue that I will be mixing up here in just a minute. You will likely also see some tones of green, but I may put just a little bit of bluish green in the ridge. But I'm going to stick primarily to blue because it's going to help push it back into the distance. And if I painted the ridge and tones of green, there would just be an awful lot of green in the painting. And I want more variation. I want a more colorful painting to get the blue. I'm going to take some ulti, marine blue. Again, this is the dominant color. That's why I'm starting with ulta marine blue. I'm going to add just a little bit of d, red light to dole it down. The complimentary color of blue is orange. But I can also use red because it's got some yellowy orange in it to knock this color down. To mute it a bit. Okay, I may need to mute it a little bit more. We'll find out this color is very dark. You can't really see it without putting white into it. Let me take part of this, because it's so dark and so strong. And I'll start folding white into it, and we'll see what color we get. So that's too dark, may still be too intense. Let me add some more white. Okay, I think this is about the right value. May need to be just a tiny bit darker. Okay. I'm going to add just a little more blue and I'm going to add just a tiny bit more cad, red light to do it down a bit more. I do want to vibrant painting, so I don't want to dole it down too much there. I think that's the right value. And it's muted just enough. Okay, so this is the color that I'll be using for the ridge later in the painting. I may incorporate a couple other colors into the ridge for the sake of variation. But for this stage of the painting, the wash in this is the color that I'm going to use for the ridge. So now we need to move on to the ground plane, which if you will recall, has the second lightest values and so the greens that I'm going to mix up for the ground plane, actually I'm just going to mix up one green and then the color of the furrow, the red Earth color. But the green will have to be much warmer and much lighter than these greens. Why? Because it's in the foreground and it's in the ground plane. That's the second lightest value of the painting. It's receiving all that sunlight from the sky. So this time to get my green, I'm going to start with Cad yellow light. That's my cool green. I'm sorry, my cool yellow. And I'm going to take a little bit of thalo blue, just a tiny bit. That's my cool blue. And that's going to give me a really nice vibrant green. It's pretty intense. So I'm going to have to dole it down a bit with some Cad red light. Remember the complimentary color of green is red. I can always dole down my green by folding in some red. Let me go ahead and do that. I'm putting a bit of white in to bring the value down, but I also need to put in a little bit of Cad, red light. Okay, the ground plane is covers quite a bit of the canvas, so I'm probably going to have to mix up a little bit more than I have here. I'll put in a little more of the yellow light, a little more white again, you can see that the value of this green is much lighter than the value of these greens that I'm using. For the plane that has the darkest values, this plane, the ground plane, needs to have a lighter value. Okay, that is the green. I may have to fold in a cadmium yellow light or a little more white. We'll see once I get the paint up there. But I have my green for the ground plane. Now let me mix up some of that nice earth tone that has a red tint to it. I'm going to start with Cad, yellow deep. Then I'll fold in some red light. That may be a little too much. In order to get this to turn to more of an earth color, a brownish, reddish color, I'm going to fold in ultramarine blue. Remember, you can always doll down orange by folding in blue. The complimentary color of orange is blue. Let me grab a little bit of ultramarine blue that dolls it down quite a bit. I've lost the red Earth tone to it, so I'm going to grab a little more red light. I want a little bit more of that. Okay, I think I've got enough red in it, but now the value is a little too dark. I don't quite want it that maybe just a portion of it that dark. I'll leave a bit of the pile behind, but I'm going to grab a little bit of white and mix that in. I think that's about the value that I want. If I need to tweak that, I can tweak that later. Okay, so now we move on to the sky plane and it has our lightest values. Now that's not to say that there won't be any darker values in the sky. We have a lot of clouds in our sky and the undersides of those clouds are in shadow. So we will have to mix a color that indicates that the bottom portion of the clouds are in shadow. In order to do that, I'm going to start with my Alizarin Crimson. I'm going to make the shadow color of those clouds a little bit. More on the lavender side rather than like a gray or bluish Again, because I want to push the colors, I want to really colorful landscape. I'll fold in just a little bit of ultramarine blue. Maybe a little bit more. I'll grab a little more Alizarin crimson and just a little bit more of ultramarine blue. Now, again, when I mix this up with just these two colors, you can hardly tell what the color is. Let me put some white in and we'll see where we are. Okay, this is pretty red. I want it to be more of a lavender color, so I'm going to have to put more ultramarine blue on cleaning off my palette knife. And maybe a little bit more blue and even a little more blue yet I haven't quite gotten to where I want it. I think this might work for me, but the value is really too dark, so I'm going to have to fold in some white. So let me fold in some white. Okay, that's still too dark. I'm going to have to fold in a little more white. I think that's about the value I want, About the value. It may need to be a little bit lighter. I'm going to take part of this pile and put a little more white in. But if I need to go darker, I can fold in that darker value that I've got to the right here. Okay, I'm going to go a little bit lighter. In theory, this should be about the same value as the ridge or maybe even a little bit lighter. The other color that I have for the clouds is the lip portion for it, I want to use a really warm color. I'm going to start with titanium white. I'm going to grab from a pile that doesn't have any pain in it at all. And I'm just going to fold in a bit of Cad yellow, deep. Sometimes you'll have paint left on your palette knife and I don't want to waste that. I'm going to take my other palette knife and scrape it off. I want to grab just a little bit of cad yellow deep. That may have been too much. I'll take some of that off. That's a nice color for the tops of the clouds that are being lit by the sun, but I want to make more of that color again. I'll just grab a little bit of Cad, yellow, deep. Let's make just a little bit more of this color because there are quite a few clouds that are being lit from the top. So I don't have much room left. But I do need to mix a couple more, three more colors. And these are sky colors, so where the sky meets the horizon, or in this case where the sky meets the ridge, the sky tends to be warmer. In order to get that warmer kind of bluish color, what I do is I take some titanium white and I'm going to put it right here and I'll fold in just a tiny bit of ultamarine blue. That may have been too much. Let me okay, I think that's the right amount. May need a little bit more ulta marine blue. But let me see first now. This is pretty cool. It's lighter than a baby blue color. So to warm it up, I'm going to grab just a tiny bit of cad yellow light. That may have been too much, it's going to turn it kind of a greenish color. But this is the color that we want at the base of our sky. Because on a sunny day, even a cloudy day with a lot of sun on those clouds, the sky tends to be warmer at the horizon. This will be the color that I use for the sky just above the ridge. Now I want to mix up a couple of blue colors. The blue that is showing through the clouds. For the sake of variation, one color of blue will have ulta marine blue in it. And the other, I'm going to clean this up a little bit. The other will have thalo blue and that'll give me a nice variation in the blue that I'm using for my blue sky color. Okay, so I think that's a nice blue color for just above the warm color. I may have to put a little more Alta Marine blue in there. When I get to that part of the sky, we'll see. But now let me do the same thing with thalo blue, but I probably don't need as much thalo blue. It's stronger than aultamarine blue. So just let me use that amount and I see how strong that is. It's a darker value than the Altamarine blue and white that I mix. So I'm going to take just a little bit of that and I'm going to mix more white into it. I'm trying to get the same value as this color right here. I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to take a little bit of this. I feel like this value is just a tiny bit darker. And I'm going to make that other pile of blue with ultramarine blue in it. A little bit darker too. I'm going to grab just a little bit of ultramarine blue and fold that in. Let me grab a little bit more. Okay, now I think they're about the same value. Let me mix this up a little bit more. You have to be careful when you're going back and forth between these blues to make sure that you're cleaning off your palette knife or you'll contaminate them fairly easily. Okay, so these are all the basic colors that I need in order to complete the washing. 20. Wash-in for Tree Plane: Okay, to complete the majority of the wash in, I'm going to use my number eight Rosemary and Company Classic Long flat. Again, the wide surface of this brush allows me to cover quite a bit of canvas in a short amount of time. And that's what I want to do during this phase of the painting. Let's start with the plane with the upright objects. I'm just dipping the corner of my brush into the mineral spirits and I'm may dab it a bit on a paper towel. I want to start with that plane with the upright objects. And I'm going to start with the tree on the right. And let me put in the shadow color again. I'm going to dip the corner of my brush in the mineral spirits. So let me start with the shadow color. And remember that just as I said before, we want a variety of brush rukes that is pretty dark. I'm probably going to have to lighten that a little bit. Let me take just a little bit of this. That's the color that I mixed up for the lighter side of the tree and folded into this color. And I think that is enough just to bring this value up a little bit. So let me wipe off my brush. Make sure that you're cleaning your brush between brush strokes, especially if you're going from one color to another color. So again, I'm just dipping the corner of my brush into the mineral spirits just to make the paint full a little bit more. Okay, let's try this. Still pretty dark, but I'm going to go ahead and go with it. Can always go back and lighten. It's easier to lighten something than to have something light and want to make it darker again. We want a variety of breasts strokes, some horizontal vertical. This portion of the tree sticking out a little bit. Some of this foliage comes as I make my way up the tree. As I said before, the tree becomes lighter and I want to indicate that with the amount of paint that I put on, Some of that dark value carries over to the right. Okay. So now let me grab the warmer and lighter color that I will use for the lit side of that tree. That's this color. It just looks like I need to add a little more cad. Yellow, deep to that color, I may need to use just a tiny, tiny bit of white. Let me use this color and see how that looks. Again, dipping the corner of my brush into the mineral spirits. If you feel like you have too much mineral spirits on your bristles, either dab them on a paper tile or you can slide this across the edge of, of the container to take out the mineral spirits at the edge of the canister. That's what I meant to say. Okay, that's still pretty dark. I want to be, I wanted to read it as being lit by the sunlight, so let's put a little more yellow and a little more white. Didn't want to do that, I'm going to have to put out some more white. I'm getting low on white. Okay, let's try this. Okay, I think that's about what I want. I'm just trying to make this really loose, some irregularity. There's a part that comes out here. Okay. So that's all the paint that I'm going to use on the tree on the right. Now, I'll move over to this tree on the left, and I already have my pile of paint mixed up. It is a warmer and lighter version of the greens that I've been using for that. The right. Okay. So I'm just dipping the corner of my brush in the mineral spirits. Okay. Again, I want to gauge how far up this goes about right here. I just want to make this shape irregular and I want to make it come down below the horizon line. Now this tree also has some shadow. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to use the color that I used for, for the lit side of this tree and see if it works as my shadow. It's not dark enough. I'm actually going to have to go into the shadow, the color that I use for the shadow side of this tree. It's got a little bit of the lighter color mix in. I think it'll work for my shadow. It does. I'll bring this down and there's a little shadow up here. Okay, so those are my two trees in the foreground. Now I will paint the trees in the background at the base of the ridge. And remember that, that row of trees do use a green that is cooler and lighter to show that it's in the distance. So let's see how the color that I mixed up will work. So this will be the shadow color. And it looks pretty intense on my brush. I may have to, I kind of like it. So this is the shadow. Remember, the trees are being lit on the right side. But I just need to put some indications of shadows in. And I'll come back later with a lighter color, the color that I mixed up. And I'll try to indicate the lit portions of these trees. Okay? The shadow here. Okay? So let me now grab a lighter color that I mixed up to show that the right sides of those trees are being lit by the sun coming from this direction. I may have to go in and put a little bit of that shadow color there. I want to leave some of that orange showing through. It will serve as a really nice complement to the blue color of the ridge. Now, I want an impressionistic look to this. I'm being fairly loose with my brush work. It looks like I'm going to have to go back in and re, establish some of the shadows because I've taken some of those out with the lighter green that I just used. Let me go ahead and do that and I'll put some of those shadows indicate some of that. Now, I'll have to re establish the trunk, but I can do that later. Again, I just want this to be as irregular as possible. Okay. I'm satisfied with that. Breaking this down just a little bit. Okay. I may have to cut up into this. I may have brought that down too far, but I think I like what I see that this 123 looks too uniform. I'm just going to break that up a bit. You always want to break something up that looks too uniform. Okay, so this is the plane with the upright objects, the trees. I may need to cool this down a little bit more. Go ahead and do that right now. For the shadow side, I've got some bluish green left over on my palette knife. But I can use this and I may want to make it a little bit cooler than it is, and I'll add just a little bit of white to it. I want to make sure that that row of trees at the base of the ridge reads as being in the distance. Okay, there we go. This warm color that I used may be just a little too warm. I may need to cool it down with a little bit of ultramarine blue. And then I'll just take the value down. I want to, don't warm it up just a tiny bit. Those values are pretty close. I'm going to grab some of this darker color and mix it into this. Now I'm going to use a smaller brush because I want a little more control for this section. Now that I'm going back into it, I will use my number six Rosemary company, Classic Long flat again. I just dipped the tip of the brush in that mineral spirits. Okay, I'm just going back in re establishing some of the shadows. It still looks a little too warm to me, so I'm going to have to put a little bit of thalo blue in and then I'm going to need to lighten this with white. Okay, I think this is more of the color that I was looking for because this is going to read as in the distance, it has more blue in it. Okay, let me grab some of this. Let's just see what that looks like. Yeah, has a little more blue in it. It pushes that row of trees back a little bit further. So let me go ahead and finish this out. The row to the left. Okay. Now, let me put the lip portions back on, and this time my color should be a little bit cooler than it was before. Let's see if it's cool enough. I think it is. Okay. I'm going to warm it up just a little bit more. Let's see, a little bit of that here, a little bit here. And I can cut into this tree and make it look a little more organic. Okay? I think now this row of trees is the colors cool enough and pale enough that they read in the distance. 21. Wash-in for Ridge Plane: Now we are moving on to our ridge plane. I'm going to use my number eight Marin company, Classic Long Flat. I want to make sure that it's clean. You'll notice that there's a little bit of a green tint to the mineral spirits. That's okay. It's still clean enough to use. I want to dip the corner of my brush into the mineral spirits. I want to get a little more on the tip of my brush. Let's put this blue up here and see how this works. It may be a little too dark, maybe a little too intense. We'll see, I think I like it, it's pretty intense. But I want a colorful landscape. So I'm going to go ahead and go with the intensity for right now. Remember, you want a variety of work brush strokes. Some will be horizontal, will be vertical. I can carve into this tree a little bit to give it a little bit more of an organic shape. I'm just continuing to fill out the ridge plane. The majority of my brush strokes will be at a slant because that is the direction of the ridge. But again, you want to try to use a variety to break things up. I may even want to dip down into this tree line a bit, which I've just done. You may want to dip into the tree. I'm also going to put some sky holes. Sky holes. We refer to sky holes as the holes or the gaps that you may see at the top of the tree with the sky showing through or in the case of the middle part of the tree, a little bit of the ridge showing through. If we can allow some of the ridge to show through, it just gives the painting a little more of an airy look to it, a bit more of an impressionistic look. Let me complete the ridge over here. I have a little bit more of the ridge to put in. I ended up using most of the color that I mixed up for the ridge. I thought I might have some left over. Okay. And I can cut into this tree on the left again. It just gives it a little more of an organic feel. A couple spots that I need to go over. I just a tiny bit of the pink undertone show through in parts. Let me take a smaller brush and you can see where there's one spot where the blue came up. I'll just wipe that out with my paper towel. So this is a good teaching moment. If you need to wipe a section out, just dip your paper towel into the mineral spirits. Just make sure you have a hold of the canvas. I want to use my right hand to do this. I can just swipe that across and that takes that out. Okay. So I said that I wanted to show some sky holes in the tree. I'll have to wait to put the actual sky holes in, but the areas where I can show the ridge peeking through, I can go ahead and do that now. Typically a sky hole will be just a little bit darker than the color, the rest of the color that it comes from. See if this is too dark. So I just want to judicially, I have to go thing with sky holes is you have to go back and them look a little more organic. Okay. Now let me clean some of that blue out and just make a few marks like this. But I think you get the idea, I may eliminate one or two of these, but it just gives more of an airy feel to that tree. The color of the sky hole tends to be a little bit darker than the color around it because the color is coming through the trees and it's got shadows affecting it. Typically, your sky holes will be a little bit darker than the actual sky color that it represents. Okay, so that is the plane with the ridge, now we're going to move on to the ground plane. 22. Wash-in for Ground Plane: Okay for the ground plane. I'll go back over that shadow with a lavender color, but I want to put down some of the local color. The local color is basically just the color that is there and it's grass, so it's going to be a darker green color. The shadow would be a darker green color that's a little too dark. I'll have to add a little bit of white into that. I'm going to have to clean up my white and put a little more white out. Let me grab a white and put this color up and see how that works. Okay, I think that's better. Again, I'll incorporate some lavender into that color primarily, just so that it complements the lavender color that I'll have up in the sky as the bottom shaded side of the clouds. Okay. The first thing I want to do with the ground plane is I want to put those furrows in. I'm going to use my number six Rosemary and Company Classic Filbert. I'm going to start with this value. I don't want to make these super thick, I want to make them somewhat irregular. I'll go back and put a green in. They won't be quite as thick as they look right now, but I also want this color to be, to represent Earth showing through the grass. It's not just the furrow, some earth tones showing through here. Okay, Now I want to put in the green color that represents either some type of growth, green growth between the furrows or even grass. Okay, let me clean my brush out. I'll use my same brush. The number six, Rosemaring Company, Classic Filbert. I'm not sure about this green. I think it's the right value. It may be a little intense, I think I like it may be a little intense. I'm going to just fold in a tiny bit of red and that will take some of the intensity out. And I'm going to add just a little bit of white. Okay, let's see what this looks like. I'm going to clean my brush and I'm going to switch brushes. I want a little more of a harder edge, so I'm going to go back to my number eight Rosemary Company, Classic Long flat. I'm dipping the, just the corner in the mineral spirits. Sometimes I'll flip my brush over just to get the side that's not contaminated because some of that green is running into the Earth tone. I'm cleaning off my brush, I'm going to grab a little bit of our solvent free gel. Remember, we want a variety of brush strokes. Those furrows are still a little bit, a little bit thick. I don't want them to stand out that much, but I do want them to show through. I'm letting a little bit of this canvas show through an area of interest. Okay, let me bring this up. I see the shadow may be a too dark, but I will deal with that later. Now, there is this strip of another field that lies behind the foreground and I want to make sure that I get that in. It's a lighter color than I used here and it's a duller color. I thought maybe I had mixed some of that up, but maybe not. So let me go ahead and mix some of that up. I'm just going to use some of the greens that I already have. It needs to read as green, but it needs to be pretty dull. And I think I have that color right here. That's about what I want. I think I'm going to lighten the value just a little bit more. I think I'll use a little smaller brush just to get a little more control. I'll use my number six Rosemary Company, Classic. Long flat. I'm just dipping the brush, the corner of the brush into the mineral spirits. Let's see how this looks. I think it needs to be of a lighter value. Just so that it reads that it's completely in the distance, I'm going to squeeze out just a little bit more of my titanium white. Before I do that, I'm just going to clean that area up just a tiny bit. I'll wipe that area clean and then I'll put down my white again. I just want lines, there we go. Let me put a little more white into that. Bring the value down, yet a little bit more. And I'll hold my palette knife up to the canvas to see. Sometimes that's a good way to check if you have the right value or not. And I think it's about the right value. I'm going to add just a tiny bit more white. So let me clean my brush. Okay, let's give this a try. Okay, I think that's light enough. I can even go up into the bottom of the trees. I think that is the right value because it's reading as a field that's in the distance being lit by the sun. But it value is much lighter. It's, it's not as warm, it's a cooler color. I see a little bit that I have to put in here. I'll just put a little dab there between the two tree trunks and I'll go back and re, establish those tree trunks in just a second. Okay, so there is the ground plane for now. So now I will move on to the sky plane. 23. Ground Plane Adjustment: It's always a good thing to take. A few steps back from your painting, you may see something. I notice this line probably needs to be brought down. It comes up to about here and it should be a little less prominent. I'm going to eliminate some of that right now. I may need to do more later. The furrows in the grass are still a little bit thick, but they won't be as thick. By the time I finish with the second phase of the painting, however, I'm going to have to mix up some of that ground color again. How did I get that? I took Cad, Ello light and a little bit of thalo blue and then I mixed in some white to bring the value down. I want to make sure that I'm cleaning my palette knife. I think that's about the color. I think I doled it down a tiny bit with red light. Let's see what that looks like. That looks pretty close. It's a little lighter, but I think it'll serve the purpose for what I want to do. Okay, I've cleaned my brush. I'm dipping the corner in the mineral spirits. I'm just going to bring this back a little bit and indicate that there's some field here. Then I can bring the top of this one back a little bit too. 24. Wash-in for Sky Plane: For this plane, I'm going to use my number eight Rosemary company, Classic Long Flat. And I've been using it quite a bit with my green. So I want to make sure that I have it cleaned out. Well, in order to do that, I swirl it around in the canister and then I apply quite a bit of pressure and squeeze out as much green as I can. I think I've got it pretty clean. When you squeeze and you're not getting much green on your paper towel, then you know that your brush is clean. Okay, let's put that lavender color up there. It may be too intense, it may be too dark. But we will find out. Again, I'm squinting my eyes looking at that line that goes across. I like the color. I don't think it's too dark. I'm just getting that shadow line And that shadow comes up here. It's a little bit here and there's a line going across this way. Remember I said that the clouds that are closer to the horizon will have flatter bottoms and we'll have more shape to them. I see a little bit of shadow here, some shadow here, and a little shadow on the bottom of this large cloud. Maybe a shadow or two here. Now, since I put this lavender color in for the undersides, I wouldn't want to just put it over here on the left hand side. I need to have a little bit of it throughout the painting. Okay. And you can see that it's really thin coat of paint. You can probably see a sheen on the canvas. Okay, So I just wanted to indicate some of the shadow portions of the cloud. Now let me indicate the lit portions of those clouds, the top parts. Since I was using this brush to paint those shadow colors, I want to make sure that it's cleaned out. Again, I'm applying quite a bit of pressure and just getting the paint out of those bristles. I want to be just as loose with the top portions of the clouds as I was with the bottom portions. I'm just giving an indication of the clouds here. We can see that this one's being lit on top. Remember I said that sometimes I just flip my brush over. It gives me a little portion of the brush. Let me go ahead and continue with this. See a little a lip color carrying over here. And I could even dip down into the shadow portion. I see where this is almost connected, some more lit portion up here. Let me scoop this up. I'm getting as much as I need. I may need to mix up a little bit more of this. This white with Cad, yellow, deep, that's indicating the top of the clouds here. And then we have Lit portion. I'll use just a little bit more. Again, I want to indicate this little cloud over here a little bit here. I can cut into the tree just to make it look a little more organic looking. And then we have a little bit of this lit part coming down here and I can make it cut into the tree. Okay, I think I have enough of the lit portion. Now, I want to put that warm color that I mentioned earlier where the sky meets the top of the ridge. So let me get my brush cleaned out as well as I can. Just dipping the corner of the brush into the mineral spirits. And this is the color, the warm color that I mixed up to be at the horizon. I eat just a little more mineral spirits and you'll see when I apply it that it's just a light, almost borders on a greenish color. And this is a nice opportunity for me to cut into the top of that ridge a little less uniform and just not to have as hard an edge because things in the distance, their edges get soft. Let me continue working with that. There's a little dip here, then it comes up again, and then it dips down again here. Let me go to the right side again. I'll do this later too, but sometimes it is glide my paint brush where the sky meets like a ridge just to soften that edge of the ridge. Okay, Maybe that helps. Okay. Now I want to put in some of the other blues that are peaking through. I'm going to use the same brush and my brush work will be light and fast, just giving an impression of the clouds that are there. I'm going to start with my ultramarine blue. I'm squinty, my eyes, this blue hair looks a little bit warmer. So I'll go ahead and use some of this ultramarine blue to indicate the sky peeking through here, and there's a little bit peeking through here. Okay, let me continue to look and see if there are any other sections where I need this blue. And I think got quite a bit of mineral spirits in it. And then above the lip portions of these clouds, we've got a little bit of the blue that will need to be darker. I'll darken that in the last phase of the painting. Let's see if there are any other parts here. The more I can allow some of that blue to show through the arerier, the sky is going to look and the better it's going to look. Now I'm taking similar color. It's blue, but its base is thalo blue. And I have a feeling it's going to be a little bit darker. It is, that's fine. I see some of that thalo blue up in this corner. Let's just take a look and see if I can see it anywhere else, primarily here. Okay, Now what I want to do now is this is always kind of a push and pull. I'm going to mix up some more of that warm color that represents the tops of the skies, I'm sorry, the tops of the clouds. And I'm going to put a little bit more of that color on. Okay, there I have some more mixed up. I'm going to clean my brush out because I was using both of those blues with ultramarine blue and thalo blue. I want to make sure I can get my brush as clean as it needs to be. I'm dipping the corner into the mineral spirits. Taking a step back and I can see where there is some of this here, it trails off over here. Let's take a look and see if there are any other places. There's just a little bit of this. It's a little lighter color, lighter touch. I don't want the lines in my clouds to be really hard. This line right here is a little too hard. You can cut into that tree as I did before. Okay. I think I'm satisfied with the way that looks for now. I even have some of the pink showing through and some of the drawing of the clouds, that orange peeking through. And that is just fine. The orange serves as a nice complement to the blue of the ridge and the red, pinkish color serves as a nice complement to the green, all the tones of green in the painting. 25. Modeling Stage Intro: We've reached the final stage of our painting, the so called modeling stage. Modeling just means that we're giving further shape and form to the objects of our painting. One by using thicker paint, which will create more texture in the painting. And we may be able to include some impostobrushtrokes, which always enhances the texture of a painting. Two, by adjusting our values, and that entails using multiple values within a single plane, and lightening and darkening some values as needed. Three, by tweaking our colors. And that may include making some colors warmer in temperature, some cooler in temperature, some darker in value, some lighter in value, and some colors more intense, and others more muted, all as needed. And finally, by juxtaposing some warm and cool colors in certain areas of the painting to create that color vibration I mentioned previously. Now allow me to explain how I'll make some of the adjustments of which I just spoke to this painting. So starting with the plane with the upright objects, those are our trees. And remember this is the plane with the darkest values. And with oil painting, we always want to start with our darkest values and move toward our lightest values. I see where I've placed some of the sky holes too close to the center of the tree. Realistically speaking, that's where the foliage is thickest and where the trunk is. So the sky holes are going to be concentrated more on the outer edges of the tree. Also, the color of the sky holes is too similar to the color of the ridge. Typically speaking, the color of sky holes is going to be a bit darker and a bit more muted than the color it represents, in this case, the blue of the ridge. Why? Because as that blue is passing through the holes of the tree, it's being affected by all of the shadows and by all of the different shades of green of the leaves of the tree. So I may make an adjustment or two to the row of trees at the base of the ridge. Temperature wise and value wise, I'll definitely warm up the right side of this tree just to further underscore that the sunlight is coming from this direction. Moving on to the ridge plane, I really like the nice saturated blue color that I have for the ridge, but it is a bit monochromatic. I may include a brush stroke or two of violet just for the sake of color variation. You can also see where the clouds have created some shadows on the left side of the ridge. And the right side of the ridge is being lit by the sunlight. I may try to warm up this side of the ridge, the blue of this side of the ridge just to indicate that. But we'll see, moving on to the ground plane, you can see that the green of the grasses and the reddish brown of the earth color. They're about the same value I will to enhance the notion that this is the foreground. I'm going to warm up some of these grasses with more yellow and maybe lighten their value. But I'm also going to include some cool greens to juxtapose the cool greens with the warm greens to create that color vibration that I've been speaking about. In addition, I will include some strokes of violet among the grasses and also in the shadow of the tree. And that's going to do a couple of things. It's going to further enhance the color vibration because of the cool nature of the violet color and the warm nature of the green, yellow color of the grasses. And then also, it's going to enhance the color harmony of the painting. Why? Because those violets among the grasses are going to pick up on the violet in the shadow of the tree. It's also going to pick up on the violet in the ridge. And finally, it's going to pick up on the violet in the shadow. Portions of the undersides of the clouds. That color or similar colors are going to be spread throughout the painting, creating color harmony. Now finally, moving on to the sky plane, I'll make three main adjustments. I'll probably use a little more of this violet shadow color on the undersides of some clouds here and here. I'll also include some in pasto brush strokes on the tops of the clouds as highlights. And then I'll also darken the value of the blue at the top of the sky just a bit. Typically where the sky meets the ground on a sunny day and you're going to see that the sky where it meets the ground, or in this case the top of a ridge, it's warmer and lighter than the rest of the sky. As you move up in the sky, the blue of the sky becomes darker and cooler where you live. If you went out and you took a look at where the sky meets the ground plane, you're going to see that that portion of the sky is lighter and warmer than the rest of it. And if you tilt your head up, you're going to see the blue as you move toward the top of the sky is going to become cooler and darker. And if you tilt your head all the way back, you're going to see a very deep and dark blue at the top of the sky. So what we're doing is we're trying to incorporate all of that variation that you see in nature, in a sky, into a thin band that represents the sky on our oil painting. But if we're able to do that, that's what makes the sky of an oil painting so beautiful and so lively. Without further ado, let's get started on the final stage of our painting. 26. Pre-Mixing Colors for Modeling Stage: For this final stage of the painting, I decided to use a clean palette so that you can see the color mixing process again. Now, many of these colors that I mix up will be similar to the ones that I use for the wash in. But I will be mixing up some new colors and I want you to see that process. Also, I'll be relying more on my solvent free gel, my medium, rather than mineral spirits to loosen the pain. If I need to loosen the paint at all, the paint that I apply in this stage of the painting will be thicker than the paint that I applied in the wash, in just as I did with the wash. And I'll be starting with the plane with the upright objects, the trees, and remember that is the plane that has the darkest values. Let's go ahead and start mixing up those colors. I'm going to mix up a color very similar to the one that I used for the shadow side of the tree on the right. To get that color, I used ultramarine blue and I used a little bit of cadmium yellow deep. And I'll just use a little bit to start with. If I need more, I will grab more. I think that looks pretty much like the color I want. What I'm going to do is I'm going to mix up a mid tone just in case I feel like I need something a little bit warmer than the shadow color that I mixed up. Okay. So I like this color. And now I will make a color for the right side of the tree that is being lit by the sun. The sun is behind it. It's not casting a lot of light on that right side, but it is casting some light. And I want to indicate that. So let me try to mix up that color. And what I'll do is I'll just add a little bit of white to this mixture. Okay, I think I like that color. It may be a little bit light, I may need to fold in just a little bit of the darker colors. I think that's about the right value for that. Okay, so these are the colors that I will use on the large tree to the right. Now let me mix up a color that is going to show that the light is hitting the right side of the tree on the far left. So this time I want to start with my Cad meu yellow, Deep. Remember when you're mixing colors, start with the dominant color. The dominant color here is going to be olive green. So I want to make sure that I start with my Cad yellow deep. If I started with my blue, the color would take on too much of a blue tint to it. Too much of a blue hue. Okay, I'm going to add a little bit more of the cadmium yellow medium. And I think I'm just going to add a tiny bit of white. And I should have the color that I want. Okay. I can tweak any of these colors as needed. Okay. There I have my color for the lit side of the tree on the left. Now let me mix up some greens for the row of trees at the base of the ridge. And if you remember, we used thalo blue. I'm going to try to economize and use as much space as I can on my palette. So I'm going to mix up some of the shadow side. I may have used Cad yellow light last time. This time I'm going to use Cad yellow medium. That's pretty dark. I'll have to lighten it a little bit, it's pretty intense. I'm going to mute it just a tiny bit by folding in a little bit of red light. As I said before, it's a little bit dark. Let me lighten the value with just a little bit of white. Now I will mix up a color that will read as a green that is being lit by the sun. A part of the tree is being lit by the sun. Let me start with my cad. Yellow, deep and I'll fold in just a tiny bit of a lizard. I'm sorry, thalo blue. I remember thalo blue is very strong. And I think this is probably about what I want. Again, it's pretty intense. So I'm going to mute it just a bit with some red. Okay, I think that's the color I want. Again, if I need to make any adjustments, I can do that along the way. So that covers the trees of the plane with the upright objects. Let's move on to the ridge plane. And if you will recall to mix that blue. I used quite a bit of ultramarine blue. I'll grab a little bit more and I muted it with just a little bit of D, red light. Let me put just a tiny bit more of red light. And then I'll mix in some white and we'll get a good indication of exactly what color we have here. At this stage, it's a little bit dark and difficult to see, that's too dark, so I'll need to continue to fold in some white. I think this is going to be about it, but the blue still looks pretty intense. I'll have to fold in just a tiny bit more of I'm sorry, of Cad red light. Let me do that. I think it needs to be lightened just a bit. Actually, I'll set some of this aside and I can, since this is darker, I'll use that for my sky holes. I'll add a little more white to this. I think that's about the value I want for the ridge. Remember I said that I was going to add a couple of strokes of violet. What I'm going to do is I'm going to take some of this ridge color. I'm going to add just a little bit of Alizarin Crimson. Hopefully we'll just get a shade of violet that I can put on the ridge that will be just different enough from the original color that I had on it that it will allow for some color variation. So I'm just going to put a little more Alizarin Crimson. You can see where this value may have gotten a little bit darker than this one, the value of this pile of paint. So I'm going to go ahead and put in a little bit of white. Need to be careful not to use too much, and I think this is the color that I want for the variation of the ridge. Okay, now let's move on to the ground plane and I'll begin by mixing a green that is a little bit lighter and a little bit warmer than the green I already have there. I want to start with my Cad yellow light. I want this to be a summer green and the predominant color will be yellow. So that's why I'm starting with my Cad yellow light. I'm going to fold in a bit of ultramarine blue. Let me see where this gets me. I have a feeling I like this color. I'll probably fold in a little more Cad, yellow light to warm it up just a bit. And then I'll bring the value down with a little bit of white. Let me add a little more cad. Yellow light and a little white. Okay, I think I'm going to need a little more white just in case this color is a little too intense. It may be too intense. When I get it up on the palette, I'm going to fold in just a tiny bit of Cad red light. And that will mute it just a tiny bit. Okay, When I put in that Cad red light, it seemed to darken the value just a tiny bit. So I'm going to go ahead and put some more white back in. Okay, If I need to adjust this color, I'll go ahead and do so. You'll also recall that I said that I was going to put a couple strokes of violet in the grass that will read as shadows among the grasses. I'll start with ulta, marine blue, and I'll fold in some Alizaring Crimson. Remember a lizard? Crimson is really strong. I'm probably going to have to mute this quite a bit, and this color is really dark. So I'll have to add some white to it to see exactly what we have. Okay, that's a really nice violet color. The value is too dark at this point. I'm going to have to lighten it. I want to mute it. If you will recall, the way that we mute violet is by adding a little bit of yellow. It's complimentary color. Let me do that. I'm going to grab my cad. Yellow light. Okay. Well, I hope I didn't dull it down too much. I'm going to fold in a little more ultramarine blue. Going to fold in Alizarin crimson. And the value has gotten quite dark because I folded in those two colors. So I'm going to have to lighten that. So let me go back to my white. Okay, a lot of this color mixing is by trial and air. And it may even look too dark or too light. When I get it up on the canvas, I may have to make further adjustments later on down the line. Okay. I think I'm pretty satisfied with that color and I'll probably use the same color to incorporate into the shadow under the tree. Now, I also mentioned that I would put some cool greens in the foreground just to juxtapose them with the warm greens. So actually I should start with my ultramarine blue, because that's going to be the dominant color. I want it to be a cool green. So let me fold in just a little bit of cad, yellow light. I'll probably need to fold in some more. I have a feeling that this color will be pretty intense. I'm probably going to have to add some red to it to mute it just a little bit. Let me go ahead and fold in some white. And you can see where this is, a very blue green. I'm going to add some more yellow to it. I think I'll add a little bit of Cad yellow light. And Cad yellow deep. Now I'll fold in some white. We'll see just how cool this looks. I like it, it looks pretty cool. But I'm going to have to lighten the value. Let me go ahead and put a little more white in. Okay, I think that's close to this value. So we're going to have that juxtaposition of the warm and cool greens. And I may need to lighten these. We'll see when I put them up. Now just in case I need to re establish some of those earth tones, I'm going to mix some of them up. I'm going to try to leave the ones that I have there intact. But again, if I need to re establish some of them, I'll have the color already mixed up to mix that color. I started with Cad yellow. Deep, folded it in a little bit of cadmium red light. Now I'll fold in just a little bit of ultramarine blue and that's going to give it that brown. I think I need to fold in a little more red light. I think my value of the Earth tone in the painting is a little bit lighter than what I have here is I'm going to fold in a little bit of white there. I think I have that color if I need it. Okay. I want to mix up one more color in case I need it. And that is the bluish green color that is just in front of the row of trees at the bottom of the ridge. I'm going to start with my ultramarine blue. I want it to be a fairly cool green. I'm going to use my I'm Cad yellow light which already has some green in it. I'll fold in a little bit more. It needs to be muted quite a bit. Remember that colors become more muted as they recede in the distance in a landscape. Let me fold in a little bit of cad, red light. Now I need to lighten the value of this quite a bit. Fold in some white to lighten the value that may be a little too light and a little too blue and needs a little more warmth in it. I'm going to take a little bit of my cad Yellow deep and warm that up just a tiny bit, but I think this is about the color that I want. It's pretty muted. May need to add just a bit of white. I will try this out. I can see that it needs to be lightened a little bit more. And it may need a little bit of Cad, yellow, light. Okay? Think this is about the color that I need. May need to lighten it just a little bit more the value, because it is in the distance, so it needs to read as being in the distance. And colors become more muted and lighter in value as they recede in the distance, they also become bluer. Okay, so now let's turn to the sky plane. And I said that I would use a little bit more of the shadow color under the clouds to reinforce some of the shadows under the clouds. So let me start with my Alizarin crimson. I may have used too much there because the violet that I mixed up for the shadows on the undersides of the clouds have a little more violet in them than these violets that I just mixed up. So I'm going to add ult marine blue. Let me put some white in there right away to see what we have. Okay, I think that's a pretty similar color to what I have. It's pretty intense, though. I'll have to mute it a little bit. Remember, we mute violet by folding in a little bit of its complimentary color, which is yellow. I'm going to mute that. The value is still too dark. Let me lighten the value by adding some white. Can also refer to this as tinting the color. Okay? Still a little bit dark. I'm going to add a little more white. Okay, I think that's about right. And I'm even going to take some of this aside and lighten the value a little bit, so let me grab a little more white. I want to bring the value down even further. I think that's about right. This value may be too dark, may have to adjust it when I put it up on the canvas. Okay, The last two colors I want to mix are for the sky plane also. And those are the blues that I want to use at the top of the sky. So I'll start with my sky color that has ultramarine blue in it. It's going to be a little bit of a darker, Ulti marine blue. I'm going to start with Ulti marine blue. And I'll start folding in a little bit of white until I get it to the value that I want. This is still pretty dark, too dark, so I'm going to have to lighten the value with more white. I think this is about the value I want. Again, when I put it up on the canvas, I may need to make some adjustments, but I'm pretty satisfied with it for now. Now I want to mix the same value of this color, but I want the base to be thalo blue. Remember I would put it down here, but I don't have much room. I'll have to put it up here. Just a little bit of thalo blue goes a long way. This value, this is a little too dark. I'll have to fold in a little more white. Okay, there we go. Um, I'm gonna fold in just a little bit more white. Still looks a little too dark. Okay. Okay. I also need to make the warm color on the tops of the clouds. And for that color, I used primarily white. And I'll mix that up here, try to be careful not to get into the colors on each side of it. And I used a little bit of Cad Yellow deep. This time I want it to be more of a highlight. So I'm going to fold in more white. And I think that's about what I want right there. If I need to adjust it, I can adjust it later. Okay. So I'm kind of going through the painting in my mind and I'm asking myself if I need to mix any other colors. Okay. I thought of one more color I would like to mix up. And that's that warm color of the sky, just where the sky meets the top of the ridge. I feel like the color that I have up there right now may be a little bit too light and not warm enough to get that color. I'm going to start with the dominant color, which is white. And I'll have to put it down here, and I'm going to fold in just a tiny bit of ultramarine blue. I'm going to fold in a little more white. Now I'll fold in just a little bit of Cad yellow light. And that's what's going to warm this up. Let me a little bit of Cad yellow light into this. May have put too much Cad, yellow light. Let me put a little more ultramarine blue back in there. And then I'll have to lighten the value with white. Okay, let me put some white in here and see what that looks like. I may need to make some further adjustments. Okay? It needs a little bit of Cad, yellow, light, and it needs more white. Okay? Now I've got the color that I want. Okay? All right. So I think I have all of the colors that I want to start with. 27. Modeling Stage: Tree Plane: Okay, so let's go ahead and get started the plane with the upright objects and the darkest values. I'm just going to dip my brush into the mineral spirits to wipe it out. To make sure I've got any of the excess paint in it wiped out, I'm going to grab a paper towel this time around. Like I said before, I will rely more on my solvent free gel as my medium. So let me grab a little bit of this in parts of the tree. Remember I said that I was going to eliminate some of the sky holes in the middle. I will do that. That value is pretty dark. I think I'm going to dip into this mid tone that I mixed up. And I said that I mix this up just in case that value is too dark. And indeed it was. I think it needs a little bit of cadmium yellow deep. And it may need to be muted just a little bit, so I'm going to add a little bit of cadmium red light. So let me clean my brush off and I'll use a little bit of solvent free gel. And let's put some of this up. Okay? Some of these sky holes toward the middle of the tree need to be eliminated. Okay, I want to bring this tree out just a little bit down here. I cut into it before and that lost a little bit of its shape, and some of the foliage almost dipped down to the ground. Let me bring this out just a little bit down here and fill some of this in down here. I want to bring that down just a little bit further. The foliage on the left side, because some of the branches looked like they were dipping all the way down. Okay. All right. The top of the tree is still a little bit dark. I feel like I need to fold in a little more cadmium yellow deep to lighten that up just at the tree is going to be a little bit lighter on top because it's receiving more sunlight. Let me put a little bit of this up there and see what that looks like. Okay. I like that color. Okay. Now, let me grab some of the color that I mixed up for the lip part of the right side of the tree. And it looks like I may need to add a little bit more of cadmium yellow deep to warm it up a little bit more. I'm going to grab some of this paint and see what it looks like. Okay, I like that. If you will recall, I said that I was going to push some of the darker color, the shadow side of the tree over into the lit side and vice versa. So let me do some of that now. I'm going to take a step back, take a look at that. Okay, I think I'm satisfied with that. Now, I'm going to warm up the right side of that tree on the left. This is the color that I mixed up for that. I'll go ahead and get a little bit of medium. I'm just going to the right side of this tree now. That is pretty similar to the color that I have there, so I'm going to have to warm it up a little bit more cad, yellow, medium. I'm going to lighten its value. I think this should do the trick. This should read is warm enough to show that it's being hit by the sunlight there. I'm going to try to make the shape a little bit irregular. I think I need to re establish that shadow. I'll go ahead and do that now. Let me clean my brush out Again, to clean the brush out, I swirl it around and over the holes in the canister. Wipe off the excess mineral spirits, and then apply some pressure and squeeze the paint out of the brush. Okay, let's do this. It's a nice shadow color. Let me get a little bit darker shadow color. I'll bring that down. Okay. I think I'm satisfied with that. Now, I'm going to make some minor adjustments to the row of trees at the base of the ridge. And to do so, I'm going to use my smaller brush. This is my number eight Rosemary Company classic. Long flat. For this row of trees, I'm going to use my number six Rosemary Company classic Long flat. So let me grab a little bit of thalo blue and I'll grab a little bit of yellow deep. And that's pretty dark. I'm going to add a little bit of white a little bit more. It should be cleaning off my palette knife. Okay, let's try this color again. You know, a lot of this is trial and error. You have to keep tweaking your colors until you get them right. So let's try this. Okay? I think that is cool enough and I think it's dark, may need to be a little bit darker. I'm going to grab some of the shadow color and mix that in. A lot of times I'll use colors that are of the same hue but may be of a different value. For example, this shadow color, I've gone ahead and used some of it by using paint that I've already mixed up. It helps with color harmony because you're not introducing new colors into the painting. Okay, I'm just putting some of those shadows and I think the value is dark enough now. So over here. Okay, Now let me go over the portion. Going to have to cool it down with a bit of thalo blue. That was quite a bit there. Let me lighten the value again. Remember, these trees need to read as being in the distance. They need to be fairly cool. I think I've got this fairly cool. I'm just going to add a little bit of warmth to it. Okay. I think that's about what I want. So let me go ahead and clean my brush. Let me add this color and see. Okay. I think that's about right. So I'm just adding some highlights showing that some portions of this tree are being lit by the sunlight. Remember, the sun is coming from this direction. It's coming from this direction, so I want to indicate that. I think that's good enough. 28. Modeling Stage: Ridge Plane: Okay, for the ridge plane, I said that I was going to add a bit of violet color. I'm going to use large brush. My number eight rosemary company, Classic Long Flat. I may also use my number six, but I'm going to start with my number eight. I'm cleaning out the bristles to make sure that they're clean. And I'm going to grab a little bit of this violet color that I mixed up. And let's just put some of that up and see. Okay, it's a little bit lighter than, it's a little bit lighter than the ridge color. But I'm okay with that cut into the tree a little bit. I'm just going to put a few strokes there for the sake of color variation. Now if I feel like I need to go back and change that, I can go ahead and do so. But I'm pretty happy with that the way it is now. I do want to work a little bit on the top of the ridge where it meets the sky. I feel like I lost a little bit of that. Let me use a little bit of this color that I've mixed up some of the ridge color. I'm going to clean my brush out, grab a little bit of this color and just come up a little bit. I feel like the ridge is actually a little bit higher than I have it. Remember there's kind of this hump here. And I can soften the edge of the ridge. It needs to be softened. Okay. And I can cut into this tree a little bit. Re, establish some of the blue of the ridge. Okay, I'm going to put just a little bit here re, establish that blue color of the ridge. Okay, so I think those are the adjustments that I'm going to make to the ridge plane for now. So let's move on to the ground plane. 29. Modeling Stage: Ground Plane: Okay for the ground plane. I said that I wanted to put in this color, which should be a little bit lighter than the green I have up there now and a little bit warmer. But when I hold my palette knife up to the green that's there, it looks pretty similar. I'm going to warm it up a little bit. I'll start with yellow light, but I think I'm also going to mix in just a little bit of Cad yellow medium. Then I will lighten the value. So let me go ahead and lighten the value. Now let me hold my palette knife and I'm going to switch back to my small palette knife because I don't have a whole lot of room here. And it's easier to work with a smaller pallet knife when I don't have a whole lot of room on my palette. Okay, that's different enough that it's going to make a difference when I put it up there. So let me go ahead and put a few strokes of this up. I'm going to clean my brush because the last color that was in it was that violet. So I want to make sure that I've got that cleaned out. Okay. And I'm going to grab a little bit of medium. I want to be judicious with my placement of these. I don't want to overdo anything. Okay? And I want the warmer colors toward the front. It could stand to be a little bit warmer. It's too close to the warmth of the green that I already have there. And it's really too close in value. I'm adding both Cad yellow light and Cad yellow deep and I'll add some white. I think this is going to be different enough that they'll serve as highlights. Let me wash some of that green color that I mixed up previously from the bristles of my brush. I'll grab a little bit of medium and let's see how this looks there. Okay, that's all I'm going to do for now. Now let me go back and work on that color, this field that is right in front of that row of trees at the base of the ridge. And looking at the color that I mixed up, it looks like it may need to be a little bit lighter. But let me put some on my palette knife and hold it up. I do think it's going to be a little bit lighter. It may need to be a bit warmer. It is in the distance, but that field is also being lit by the sun. It has to have a little bit of warmth in it. I grab some Cad, yellow light. Now let me put my palette knife up there. I'm going to fold in just a tiny bit more of Cad, yellow light. And I'm going to lighten the value just a little bit more white. Okay, let's put some of this up and see what it looks like. Again, I want to make sure that I'm cleaning my brush and I think I'm going to move to my number six, Rosemary and Company Classic. Long flat, just because the field is pretty narrow And I want to use a little smaller brush. I grab some medium. Let's see how this, okay, it's about the same color. I'm going to warm it up just a tiny bit. Let's put a little bit of Cad Yellow deep in a tiny bit of Cad yellow medium. I'm going to put a little more of Cad yellow light. And let me hold my brush up. I'm going to add a little more Cad yellow light. I think in addition, I will add a little bit of white. Okay, and this should work. Let me clean my brush out. You always want to clean your brush out between brush strokes, because if you leave the color in your bristles that you used before, you want to use a new color, it's going to create problems. Okay. Still needs to be a little bit warmer. Let me put it in a little. There we go. I think this should do it again. I'll clean out my brush. Let me grab some of this. Think there's enough mineral spirits and medium in the bristles that I don't have to put anymore. Okay, I think I like that I'll need to re establish those tree trunks but Okay. Now the shadow under the tree, I'm pretty much out of my shadow color for the right side, the left side of the tree. So I'm going to mix up a little bit more and it looks like I'll need to grab a little more ultramarine blue. So let me put a little more ultramarine blue on my palette. Okay, and I'm going to grab some Cad yellow medium. A little more Cad yellow medium. And I'll have to lighten this. The shadow under the tree isn't as dark as the shadow on the left side of the tree. I think that's about the right value. So I'm going to put a little bit of this up, but then I'm also going to incorporate a couple strokes of a violet color. Okay, I'm going to bring it out here. I feel like that color needs a little more blue, the shadow color. Okay, there. And I'm just going to bring it out here. Now. I'm going to fold in a little bit of a lavender color. And this is the color that I mixed up for the shadow under the tree. Let's see if this okay. I'll like that there. Okay. I'm going to let that go for now. I am going to eliminate that dark bit of paint there. Okay? I like that. Okay. I felt like maybe I need to blend this field into this just a little bit. The line is a little too sharp at points there. I like that better. Okay. The only thing I have left is to put in a couple strokes of lavender in the ground plane. Let me take a look at the lavender that I want to put in the ground. I'm going to go back to this lavender that I put in the ridge. I'm just going to put it in a couple spots. I may take a little bit of this and add just a little bit of Alizarin Crimson. I want it to be a little more on the red violet side. Let me grab a little more Alizarin Crimson. Now let me hold that up there. Okay, I'm going to use my number six, Rosemary and Company. Classic. Long flat. I don't want these breast strokes to be really wide and I don't want them to be very big. I'm just going to, we may be here. Okay. I'm going to let that go at that for now. So moving on from the ground plane, we will now go to the sky plane. 30. Modeling Stage: Sky Plane: Okay. Those two strokes of lavender that I put in, I felt like they were too dark, and so I've lightened the value of that mixture of paint. And I'm just going to reestablish them and I'm going to put a little more grain here. Okay? All right. So let's move on to the sky plane. I'm going to start with that warm light color just above the ridge. So let me go ahead and clean my brush and I'll use my number six Rosemary Company Classic Long Flat. I'm going to grab a little bit of medium. This should look a little bit, and it does. I feel like it needs a bit of yellow light, which I'm going to mix in. And then a little bit of white. Okay, let me grab some of this color. I can also take this opportunity to soften the edge of the ridge, which I'm trying to do, comes up a little bit here. I can cut into this tree a little bit, put a little bit on the right side. Okay. And I'm going to take this color and I'm going to try to darken it just a little bit to see if I can get a sky hole or two with this color. The sky holes that I put in previously were more of a bluish color. I'm going to grab a little bit of this color. Let's see. Okay, I like that. I may just tweak the sky hole a little bit. Okay. I'm satisfied with that. All right. So now I said that I would re establish some of the shadows under the clouds. I could probably just use some of this color that I lightened. I may need to separate more, enlighten it even further. So let me try some of this. See, Uh, okay, I think that is enough. And I put a little bit of that lavender color in the warm light color that I have just above the ridge. So I want to go ahead and take that out. Okay. I also said that I was going to reinforce some of the highlights and put some highlights on the tops of the clouds. So I'm going to switch back to my large brush by number eight Rosemary Company, classic Long flat. I'll grab a little bit of medium and I'll put quite a bit of paint on my brush, and just in a couple spots I want to, here and here maybe carry that over a little bit and a little bit there. I think that's probably enough. I'm taking a step back and I'm looking at my painting to see if I need to make any more adjustments. I see where I forgot to put in the cool greens that I spoke of earlier, so let me go ahead and do that. I can see that this green that I mixed up, this cool green, is going to be too dark. I'll need to light it. I'm lightening the value. And I'll hold my palette knife up to the canvas to see if that's going to work. I think that's going to work really. I just want to incorporate a couple brush strokes of this cool green in the hopes of creating some of that color vibration that I spoke of. Okay, now this may be a little too form. I have a line here, line here, and a line here. Oftentimes we'll do that. I'm going to go back to my number six brush without realizing it. And I just realized I did that. So let me break those up a little bit. Okay? And I'm just going to try something. Okay, there. I broke that up a little bit. I'm still looking at the paint and I feel like this needs to be a little bit lighter. The lip portion of that tree, I'm going to go back to the color that I'm mixed up for it. I'm going to add a little bit of yellow deep, and I'm going to add a little bit of white. I think this will work. Let me put a little bit of this color on again. I'm going to clean my brush. Always make sure that you're clean. Your brush between brush strokes, I'll grab a little bit of medium. It's just a little lighter in value. I think it's going to better read as sunlight hitting this side of that tree. I'll bring it down to the bottom here. Okay? And just eliminate that there. Okay. I'm still looking at the painting. Seeing, looking to see if I need any further adjustments. I feel like I may need to warm up the lip part of the row of trees at the base of the ridge. So I think I used all of that paint up. I'm going to take some of the greens that I've already been using, and that helps with color harmony because I've already used these greens. And I'm just going to be tweaking them a little bit. And in doing so, again, that's going to create color harmony because I'm not introducing a bunch of new colors into the painting. Okay, I think that's going to read as a green that shows that the trees are being lit from the sun coming from the right side. Let's just see what that looks like. Yeah, it's a warmer. I just don't want things to be uniform so I don't want to come up. Okay. I think that helped. Still looking. I want to soften the edge of that ridge so I'm going to use that color that I up for the sky color that I mixed up that went right over the top of the ridge. Going to see if I can bring some of that down into the ridge to soften that line. So I want to clean out my brush, grab some of that color. This comes down a little bit, then it comes back up, and then it comes down a little bit more, soften that edge. Okay, maybe bring a little bit of this into here. Now I have one final thing. I forgot about the blue at the top of the sky, that I was going to make that a little bit darker right now, looking at the blues that I mixed up, I can see that they're too dark. I'm going to have to put a little bit of white in with them. And I'll hold my palette knife up. I think that's about the value I want. I'll have to lighten the pile of ultramarine blue with white. I'm just trying to match values here. Okay, so this pile needs to become a little bit lighter. A little bit lighter. Okay, I think I've got about the same values now. Just let me put in a couple brush strokes of this and I think I will use my number six Rosemary Company Classic. Long flat. So let me clean it out. Okay, I'm going to grab a little bit of medium. I'm going to start with the thalo blue up in this corner. I may have lightened the value a little too much because it's not showing up as darker, but I think this will show up as a little bit darker. Let me clean my brush, grab a medium there that's a little bit darker. Now, let me clean my brush and I'll grab a little bit of the ultramarine blue and white. A little bit of medium, that's definitely, that may have been a little too dark. Let me fold in a bit of white. I'll go back over. That. Still may be a little too dark, so I'm going to put in a little more white. Bring the value down. Now let me try this and I'll clean my brush. Okay? Those two middle passages still seem like they're a little too dark, so I'm going to lighten the value and put that color back up. Okay. And I think what I'm going to do is just grab some of the warmth, color and move it back up into the blue just so the blue doesn't stand out so much. And I'll do that with my number six. Remember I put this high on. I'll just re, establish that a little bit so that blue will be less pronounced. I'll just bring this down a little bit. Okay. So again, I'm stepping back and taking a look and I think I'm pretty satisfied with the way the painting has turned out. 31. Modeling Stage: Final Adjustments: Okay, I'm going to grab a little bit of this rich color that I mixed up previously. I'm going to hold my palette knife up and that is about the right color. Let me make sure I get a nice pile of it. To do this, I'm using my number six Rosemarying company, Classic Long Flat. Let me get some paint on there. Now. This is a light touch. I tend to hold my brush like this. I just want a very light touch. Go into that a little bit. I'm going to try to re, establish this little hump that is here, comes down. There's another little hump here that I have. Okay, let me take a step back and look at that. I can see one thing, this. I want a little more of that hump to show. Start a little higher, come down a little bit more, make that a little more pronounced. Okay, a little higher yet. I'm looking at the reference photo and I can see that the ridge line comes up a little bit higher over here. I'm going to indicate that it's going to carry over here and come down here. Okay, there we go. I like that addition. I think I'm going to add a sky hole or two. Let me grab the color that I used for sky holes. I just want to make sure that they've got any color on this brush that I had on it previously cleaned from the brush. Let's put a sky hole here and I just see a little corner here. I want to. Okay, so this roach comes down and then it comes up just a little bit here again and then it comes down. Okay. I like that shape better and I just want to put cation of the tree here. Okay? Okay. I see one more thing. I see the highlights on the trees, the row of trees at the base of the ridge. The highlights may need to be a bit warmer and a bit lighter. I've mixed up a color for it and I'm going to put it on basically, I just use some of the greens that I already had mixed up, and I added a little more cadet light and a little bit of white. You can see that it's a little bit lighter and warmer. All right, and I'm just going to add a little bit of right there. Okay. Again, looking at the painting, a couple more things that I see. It's always good to take several steps back from your painting. You're looking at it over and you're seeing, are there any final touches that will make a difference? I do see that. I feel like this warm color of this green. I need a couple more strokes in this area here. Maybe there, and maybe there. Okay, I want to bring this shadow over a little bit more. The shape of it looks a little odd. I've got that green that I've already mixed up. I'm adding a little bit of blue to it, a little bit more. I'll put that up. Let's just push that a little bit Okay. And include a little bit of shadow here. Okay, I'm just looking the painting over. I see one more thing that I probably need to do and that is to re establish the trunks of the trees. And I've got some of this warm earth color mixed up, but it's a little too light in value, so I'll need to fold in ultramarine blue. I'll need to fold in ultramarine blue. And Cad red light and that's going to give me a dark brown. Let me go ahead and do that. I'll use my number zero, Rosemaring Company brush. My number zero, Ivory Filbert. I'm grabbing a paper towel. Okay. So I'm holding my brush like this. It's just going to be a light tube going up there. And I can see now that really there's exposed canvas behind it. So I'm going to go ahead and fill that in. And I'll need to use this color that I mixed up for that field in the back. Just a couple brush strokes there. Okay, so I think that is. 32. Conclusion: Before closing, I'd like to review some of the major points of this class. If you will recall, this is referred to as a steel yard composition where you have one large mass on one side of your canvas that is counterbalanced by a smaller mass on the other side. This is a tried and true composition and very pleasing to the eyes. You'll also recall that we were working with Carlson's theory of the four different planes of a landscape. And the values he associates with each of those planes. For our tree plane, because of the upright position of the trees to the sun, they receive the least amount of light. So the tree plane will have the darkest values. Then moving on to our rich plane, because of its position to the sun, its slanted position, it has the second darkest values of a landscape. And then moving over toward the lighter values of the spectrum, we have our ground plane. And it receives all of the light from the sky. So it has the second lightest values of a landscape. And finally, we have our sky plane, which contains the sun, the source of light outdoors. And so it will have our lightest values. Now, you may have noticed that I did use some darker values of this violet color on the undersides of the clouds. I did so to give them shape and form, but if you averaged out the value of all of these different colors in the sky, you would find that the sky contains the lightest value. So if you have your values correct, then you can have a lot more freedom with respect to color choice. I feel like my color choices for this painting were pretty bold in some respects. For example, this blue violet color that I used for the ridge. And then in my ground plane, I have some pretty vibrant and saturated green yellow colors and also these earth tones. And then in the sky, of course, I've got some blues using thalo blue and ultramarine blue, and then also the violet of the undersides of the clouds. Why was I able to do that? Why was I able to be bold in my color choice? Because I understood the values of a landscape and had those in the right place. So remember that if you have your values in the right place, you're going to have a lot more freedom with respect to color choice. Well, I hope you've enjoyed this class as much as I have. And please watch the videos as many times as you need to complete your class project in a step by step fashion. And if you have any questions along the way, please don't hesitate to reach out and ask me. I really look forward to seeing your class projects and being able to provide you with some constructive feedback. So I hope to hear from you soon.