This photo and this painting were both captured at the same time in the same place. But how are
they different? The photo has more detail, but the painting has more color. I want to get into
how the human eye sees differently from how the camera sees and how we can learn from that as
painters. This is Trinity Church in Newport Rhode Island I think there's a view looking
back from the harbor side where it's Edge lit and looking interesting in the Morning Light
I like the fact that the white church is lit from behind so it's darker than the sky
I'm going to start with pencil on the board to work out the proportions
now let me break them for a second to show you my easel and tripod and
Art Supply setup since it's a little bit different from what I've done on previous
videos what's in common with earlier videos is I'm using a tripod mounted easel but this one
mounts on here on top of a quick release plate and it uses a Furniture slider clamp a little
bit different than the friction hinges that we have on the other standard setup for sketchbooks
now on to this mixing area I've made a special palette area using just polyethylene coated
paper that I've cut into the right size glued onto an edge of a piece of cardboard
and that just drops in here this works for oil acrylic or casein which is what I'll be using
the panel is acrylic primed board you can use plywood or Masonite
and that attaches up on these gripper clamps at the top and then I put on a Rag and a clamp
and one of the things that's nice too is a shelf this is a tripod shelf which you can make yourself
they're also commercially available and it's got these little cutouts at the top Edge the back Edge
which fit over the legs of the tripod so that you have a shelf right here right below your whole
painting area then I put on a little water cup because I'll be working in the water-based medium
and I usually put some brushes here I have a variety of different brushes that fit into a
small handled set so that when you fold this up it's very small one of them is a filbert brush
which you can see has been cut way down from its original length and I just typically hold it like
this and it gives me just all the control that I really need but I don't need all that long handle
bumping against myself one other thing that's nice to have is a tupperware with a hook on the
back of it and that fits right here on the Shelf so that you have a place to rinse out your brushes
in between painting so now let's go ahead and squeeze out the colors
now this is casein paint and here are the colors I'll be using titanium White cadmium yellow light
cadmium Orange cadmium red Scarlet which is a warm red rose red which is a quinacridone a cool red
ultramarine blue deep Cerulean blue and ivory black now if you mix Ivory black and yellow
together you get a very interesting green so you notice I don't have Greens on the palate
but I can mix greens with various combinations of yellows with these blues and this black
I start with the light warm colors in the upper left white yellow red blue and then black in the
lower right I'll Focus just on the central part of this scene I like the way the trees frame against
the building and let me just start by putting the dark values down for the core of the trees
and some of the cast Shadows underneath them this is using Black and Yellow I like the way
this path goes asymmetrically toward the side of the church not the middle of the church
and to get this tone and texture of the grass I'll use a mixture of yellow and blue transparently as
a green that I can just wash over lightly thinly delicately transparently over the background
and some of that red and pink kind of underpainting color
will come through and give some variation to the grass because nothing is even in flat
same thing over on this side now I may cover this up with another layer
but if it serves my purpose and matches the value and color and texture I should be fine
the surface has some canvas on it over which I gessoed it before I left home
so some of the dry brush textures pick up that canvas texture
now what I'm doing is using that green color over the underpainting darks
the top Fringe of any tree or plant is lighter and warmer usually as it meets the sky
so I can paint over these darks they're dry now because this is casein
and I'm using that filbert brush a filbert for those of you who are not familiar
has a curved tip but it's still got a flattened quality to it
so it's a nice brush to use for figure painting or really a lot of purposes you can use it on
the edge kind of flat like I'm doing now or you can get a small line with it if you want
I haven't done the sky yet or the church
because I just want to get these big masses down quickly first now the church it's a white
church so slightly off-white in local color but it's backlit because we're looking into the sun
so it's picking up the blue of the sky and that's why it's a cool gray color
one of the biggest differences between how a camera sees either an analog or digital camera
and how a human sees is a human can see much much more in a range of values or light and dark
tones so you can see the color in the sky and the color in a deep dark of a shadow underneath a bush
with a camera on a sunny day if you expose for the Shadows the sky will
go Pure White and if you expose for the sky everything else will go black
while this stays wet I can come back and paint a cloud layer in front of the sky
for that I'll mix some white and some warm color
I'm using a more of a flat brush now
there's no color in this scene that's pure white it's all conditioned by some kind of color
now since this blue is still wet I can blend into it and keep that edge fairly soft
it's okay to make a sky fairly detailed but it's important to keep the values simple
and to make them lighter than you think
most skies are lighter than people paint them by keeping the sky fairly soft and unified and
light in tone I can put detail elsewhere in the picture but where in the picture there's a lot of
detail visible in all the leaves and the grass textures and all the stones on the Cobblestone
path leading to the church if I spend all my time focusing on each Cobblestone I'd never get to the
steeple so you have to distribute your attention around the scene to put down what's important
my goal is not to capture infinite detail but just the essential Center points of my attention
I'm interested in that silhouette edge of the tree the complex filigree of leaves along the edge so
I'll try to include that with dry brush but when it comes to the details on the church itself
the ventilated details on the cornice and the hands and numbers on the clock
those I can downplay by painting them softly and let the viewer's brain fill in that detail
now that dark that I put down for the trees on the left I need to lighten that with a green and
save the darkest dark for the very base of those trees where the light doesn't get in too easily
to maximize the distance between me and the church I want to resolve the middle ground details
alongside the walkway put in the low wall on the left a little curb along the road
[Music]
foreign
the Cobblestone path leading up to the church are big rectangular slates obviously I can't capture
every one of those stones but I can suggest them and although they all look an even gray in the
photograph when I look at them there's a lot of variation of warm and cool variation and tone
and I can also work on the steeple which includes the tower which has the clock
and then the lantern with the two arch top louvered Windows I'm painting now
above that is the Belfry where the Bell is contained Trinity Church was built in 1726 and 27.
and the steeple has remained all this time without being blown over the one in Boston
that it's based on of the famous Paul Revere's Ride that's been blown down about three times
this one is all wood so it's quite a testament to the people who engineered it they did a
good job of making the internal structure strong enough to stand up to wind storms
now the spire the very top using a ruler to balance my brush keep it straight
the busy sidewalk behind us has people who come and go over the three hours that we spend here
The Sun Also comes and goes occasionally it's overcast as a cloud goes in front of
the Sun so I try to remember what effects I want to capture that brilliant lighting
this is a popular place for weddings
so many weird random things happen when you're out painting now I just want to get these uh lanterns
in the place would be beautiful at night time everything leads to the focal point back here
and what do I need in the focal point how about a couple of figures facing away walking into the
scene a guy at a woman you really don't need that much detail in a picture like this because if you
provide a few characteristic details the viewer will supply the rest with their own imagination
and the painting will seem complete not because you included a lot of photographic detail
but because you allowed the viewer to be involved with the process of evoking the scene [Music]
so what's the takeaway from all this for us as painters the photograph and the painting
interpret reality in very different ways the photograph captures all the detail but it lacks
the color information that the painting provides why is a painting look so different well you're
limited by the materials and the brushes but also by the fact that the painting is reality filtered
through Visual perception through our minds and hands and that's what makes it magical I think too
both photography and painting are legitimate ways to capture the world if you work only
from photographs it's good to keep in mind how much you're missing in terms of color
but if you work on location it's good to know that the photograph can be a great
way to capture information to use later in a painting it all comes down to knowing the
difference between the two and knowing the limitations of each way of seeing the world