Hello and welcome back to my studio.
First, let me wish you the best for this new year.
I hope all your painting aims get
fulfilled and that you have a peaceful and prosperous 2023.
Right, now, the last video I did, I showed you three tips to simplify your painting.
In that video, I started a painting demonstration.
And in this video, I'm going to show you
how I took the painting forward to its completion.
You may be curious to see how that painting turned out.
So let's have a look.
This is where I left off in the previous
demonstration and we're going to see if we can get
through the middle stages and then bring this painting to completion.
Now I'm bringing in the features of the building and this is an important
part of the painting to give it some scale and a point of interest.
I'm adding some lighter notes to the building where there is light
getting through and just raising that value on the highlights of the building.
However, in relation to the middle values and darks of the painting, I'm not
really changing too much as far as the value is concerned.
The building is still mostly in shadow, but I've got to bring out a few of the
areas where light is filtering through and hitting the walls of the building.
And that just adds a little more interest to the whole scene.
The traffic light, traffic sign, adding a touch of red there.
Although that sign is not facing this
direction in the reference, I've deliberately changed it around to get
a red color note amongst all of the greens.
And you'll see how adding reds in the form of burnt sienna makes
a real difference to a scene where there's a lot of green.
It just seems to balance things out.
These trees in the left of the painting,
I'm kind of just feeling my way through them.
They're pretty much receding
into the shadows, but it's not as dark as it may seem either.
So I'm working in a sort of middle value range of darks
and I'll come back to those trees as we go and bring in a bit more light.
However, the light in the painting is
creating a situation where there's lots of rim light on the trees.
It's a natural phenomenon you'll see very often, especially with trees like this.
Oak trees that are not as dense, although they let quite a bit of light
through, striking all sorts of parts of the tree.
And you have to try and create that filtered light effect as well.
Doing that, you have a few highlights amongst the darks.
Just a bit of light catching the roofline of the building.
Now into the mountain.
I'm going to raise the mountain little here or there.
Soften the edges, suggest the shadow side of the mountain, but very subtle.
And now take the trees up
and we've got all these branches protruding outwards and some hanging down
and to create this effect in a small format painting and where
you're not doing a lot of detail, it actually is quite difficult.
You got to really decide what do you want
to suggest and what you want to try and describe in more detail.
But you can't get too bogged down in one
part of the painting being in great detail either.
It all has to hang together and look similar in treatment throughout.
Much stronger yellows on the right hand side trees, as these are the closest to us
and must still be set apart from the trees behind it.
The strong yellow against the darks will certainly help to achieve that.
Transitioning the darks into middle value greens.
Now, this is definitely the ugly middle
stage of the painting, and you have to believe in the ultimate result.
So keep pushing forward with these
subtle shadow areas and gradations and transitions from dark to middle to light.
Sometimes it may feel that you cannot seem to get beyond it and
you're going around in circles, but I feel that it's starting to hang together now.
The middle value shadows.
But you can also tell that as I'm bringing
in these middle value greens, I'm also losing some of the strong darks.
So always keep an eye on that.
They've got all of these darks now and middle value darks.
And now I've got to scumble some thicker light colors over that.
And a variety of yellows.
Lighter yellows, darker yellows, more saturated.
Others desaturated.
So there's that constant vibration of color.
And you can see this is a very saturated yellow I'm using over here.
So what I'm doing is playing with the spatial depth of the painting
with a lot of overlapping trees, but all very close to each other.
I've got to try and bring some forward, push others back.
There is this very nice dark at the base of these trees.
A very important dark.
I must not lose it and make sure that I establish that dark and return to it.
If that value relationship has been lost, get it back.
Always ask yourself,
have you got your value relationships in place or have you lost them?
In which case, go back in, put those darks back.
Some more subtle gradations, but still very loose, very impressionist.
Bring in some cooler blues.
Out of the whole painting, I found these trees on the left actually
the most troublesome because I've got to try and push them back all the time.
But as you can see, I've
given a lot of the background mountain has gone there as well.
It's covered with the tree shapes.
So you've got to try and fit everything into a scene that's reasonably possible,
but in a smaller size format like this, not that easy.
This is basically an A-5 piece of paper, oil painting paper made by Archers.
Now, dragging some thicker paint
to get that sense of leaves and branches falling or hanging down I should say.
This area is a little focal point as well.
I want to get those trees just above the roof
of the building standing out a bit more as we go.
Trying to bring in a few more sky holes
so that topmost part of the tree looks
more vaporous, not so hard and oppressive.
All right, it seems to be lightning up a bit more and I'm happy with that.
Dragging in some impasto strokes.
Now,
you can see I've swapped to a smaller brush.
This is a number four, long flat.
Now I'm going to try and scumble some
light onto the grass in the foreground with thicker paint, using a larger brush
and just dragging it over the paint below and getting that broken light effect.
By this stage I'm mixing lemon yellow and deep yellow.
And that already gives me a slight temperature shift in colors.
Now, I've got a lot of darks I need to try and recover with ultramarine and burnt
sienna, also ultramarine and a bit of Alizarin crimson.
Or if you've got a green,
mix a bit of a alizarin into that and you'll get a good strong dark.
Again, touch of cerulean blue,
which doesn't give me quite a strong dark, but certainly a cool middle value dark.
Some branches now.
And this is where I suggested earlier
that the burnt sienna adds a touch of red to the scene.
And Burnt Siena is obviously a sort of red, a reddish brown.
Giving me that complementary color shift between the reds and all the greens.
Repeated in these fence posts and in the road as well.
But don't forget a few strong dark branches to act as a anchor.
You got to just keep the edges of those
branches quite soft, though, so they don't look like they've been stuck on.
Now, some impasto with burnt sienna, deep yellow and white in the road.
Getting some of those direction lines as well.
More light in the road,
some stronger burnt sienna to suggest the edge of the road.
Some added light.
The wire fence helping to bring in a few lights there.
Drop in a few more lights to suggest grass
and highlights on against the dark zero there.
I'm going to add a figure for scale and a point of interest.
Touch of red, a few more dots and dashes.
Also a few darks.
You could add a few dark shapes here or there on the road or on the tree branches.
Now, the shadows are a little too dark.
I'm going to bring a bit more color
into them and that will harmonize with the sky and mountains as well.
A few little sky holes here and the painting is pretty much complete.
But now I've lost a few of the impasto strokes and bring those in.
Also break up some of those branches so I get more of a lost and found effect.
And I feel this touch of bright light
above the building and on the side of these trees adds a little more impact.
So you got to just keep painting for yourself.
Paint until you are satisfied you're getting an impression.
An interesting one perhaps,
but most importantly that the light is coming through.
The light effect.
That's what you want.
Break up those darks once again with a few smaller strokes like this.
And this is it.
This is a balancing act between light and dark color.
Little highlight on the figure.
Sign this off and let's get the tape off.
So there we have it.
A fairly simple painting.
One where you've got to try and make something out of a lot of detail.
Simplify it just enough,
but keeping an impression of trees and leaves and things like that.
More in the mind's eye.
A few little dark accents to finish things off.
And I hope you've enjoyed this.
I've enjoyed painting it as well.
Well, I hope seeing how I got through the middle stages and completed this
painting helps you with your next painting.
Remember, you've got to practice.
Keep on painting.
The best time to start a painting is as soon as you finish.
That's how we learn and that's how these ideas I'm showing you are going to become
practical and important parts of your painting process.
Now don't forget there's a free course
for you up here and you don't want to miss the next video.
It's going to be a busy 2023.
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For more painting courses,
visit my website at malcolmd eweyfineart.com. Until next time.
Cheers for now.