oh man i've got the pokemon hat on you know it's a serious video when i bust this thing
on uh actually it's a mess in here i've been going through my art studio and cleaning up everything
to get it ready for this mid-november when it's my birthday and i'm gonna do a live stream with
all of you but as i was cleaning up the giant mess that is in my room i came across a painting that
was behind my door and you know what i actually think it's a good looking painting because it has
one huge key element in it that i love and it's the highlights on my mountain and the reason i
love them is because it has actually reversed highlights now what is reversed highlights well
i want to talk about that really quick but i think it's best that i show you it's actually
going to be really really hard to show this which is probably why you don't see much artists talk
about it because the colors are so similar but don't worry i'll show you pictures at the end to
illustrate my point to make it better but if we go to my easel here i'm going to block in some color
just some bright red phthalo blue and then i'm going to block in two mountains that i'm going
to try to make look very similar on my left hand side and right hand side the colors don't matter
don't pay attention to that now when you make your normal wet on wet mountain you normally will take
your snow color which will be titanium white mixed with a little bit of your sky color my sky color
is red so i'm going to introduce a little bit of bright red just a little bit mix it in but
leave it a little bit speckly and marbly then you just follow the shape of your mountain and you're
gonna have beautiful snow paint breaks that look like it's grabbing a little bit of your sky color
and pushing it onto your mount making it look real which is what we want then we're just
going to drop in a little bit of shadow color here which is a little bit of titanium white
and phthalo blue to get that visual pop and it looks like a mountain but we can add a specular
highlight to our mountain what is the specular highlight the best way to kind of describe it
is when light intensely hits a surface area and reflects back to your viewpoint so intensely that
it actually blows it out and becomes a pure white color you can think about this kind of like when
you're driving a car and there's a car in front of you and the light hits perfectly against their
back windshield and it goes right in your face and it's a big bright white light that's a specular
highlight okay we can take a pure titanium white from our palette and go on our mountain on top of
our snow break color that we have and just put in a few beautiful specular highlights think where
your mountain is getting kissed by the light that's being a little more intense you can be
heavy-handed here if you want if you want to push those specular highlights a little bit more into
your mountain and this is how you get more of a dimensional mountain that has more characteristics
and will stand out to have a focal point but if you want to make your mountain look a little more
surreal or have a little bit more color pop or have what i consider to be unique viewing points
that pulls your eye into particular elements of your painting which i think is awesome we can do
reversed highlights to do reverse highlights we're going to use the same mountain and instead of
taking our mountain mixture highlight color which was our titanium white and a little bit of bright
red we're actually going to take our pure titanium white and we're going to push just a little bit
harder so it mixes in with that mountain color and come down and make our paint break okay drop in
your shadow side which again is titanium white and phthalo blue then when we come back to our
highlight sign we can take our mixture of titanium white and bright red and put that on top of our
snow which was our titanium white and again treat this like a highlight think of where the sun is
kissing certain elements of your painting and drop in that mixture color of bright red and titanium
white and just let it hit certain spots the knife and the canvas will grab what it wants and this
creates a more focal point now i know it's hard to see on camera because the colors are so similar
but when you see it with your eye it's going to add so much depth and unique characteristics
hardware to say on camera to your painting and not one is right and not one is better specular
highlights are beautiful and reverse highlights are beautiful i think everyone out there should
do this exercise paint two mountains do a specular highlight mountain and a reverse highlight mount
try pushing with different pressures try blending different colors try breaking different things in
certain different elements the reason i like adding at least three highlights whether it's
a specular highlight or a reverse highlight is because it actually makes things a lot easier
and it allows you to to be honest to cheat i'm not a great painter i make a lot of mistakes
and when you do something like add an extra specular highlight or add an extra reversed
highlight it allows you to go over your mistakes and correct your mountains or errors or anything
like that plus it adds a lot of texture to your painting which in my opinion i think is one of
the awesome benefits of oil painting that makes it look beautiful this video was just something
i wanted to bring to your attention there's not a lot of details not a lot of fanciness here i just
want to get you out there and aware of reversed highlights and specular highlights and how you can
use them both at different points experiment play around have fun see what works for you and if you
like this type of video and you want kind of more raw videos just like this i literally just slapped
this together to illustrate a point for you so that way you can improve your arsenal of tools
that you have for your art game hey let me know in the comments down below and while you're down
there do me a favor hit subscribe like i love the comments that you guys have it makes me feel good
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over there to see more of my beautiful face minus the pikachu hat and all that but i will see you
guys all next time and i'm gonna get ready for that live stream so be ready to see that peace