Hello my friends and welcome to another Tuesday of tutorial!
I am Leonardo Pereznieto and today we will paint a still life
using a knife.
First we tone the canvas, so I rapidly put some paint
on it with a brush, and smooth it out with a rag.
I did this with acrylics so it will dry fast.
The oil paint holds well to the acrylic medium, and while it dries I prepare
the subject.
An orange and an old container to boil water.
I start the painting by marking some dots, that indicate some key spots
of the outline to then, make my line.
I´m using Burnt Umber, for this.
And although the painting will be done with a palette knife, the sketch
I do it with a bristle brush.
The surface is already dried.
I tone it because it is hard to see the colors, against the white canvas.
After we have the outline, we fill in the areas that are in shade as well
as the cast shadows, with the same color.
We can do corrections with a rag, and a little solvent.
By the way, I will upload a long version of this tutorial, to my Patreon account.
The link is below the video.
Ok, good! let´s begin the fun!
The first thing I will do is paint the highlights.
We grab some Titanium White with the tip of the knife,
and lay it on the canvas.
You can use either the tip, or the long edge, usually on the
down side of the knife.
Now I mix yellow and orange to paint the orange [laughter]
how original!
And we lay it on the canvas.
Very good!
We lay it little by little, like so.
I actually switched my palette knife for a thiner one, because
this painting is so small.
We mix different tones and lay them on the orange.
The most intense orange will be in the upper part, like here
and then it will be a little bit more yellow, and toward the bottom I will add
more green.
I am not copying the orange and the container exactly, fully realistically because
I want it more artistic.
I may change the colors and give it a more surreal look.
Now I´m laying the base color for the area in shade.
A lot of people say when they see a nice painting,
they tell the artist, that it looks like a picture, as a compliment.
While for us artists, if someone tells us that our art looks like a picture, it is
more like an insult than a compliment [laughter] because with strive to create
our art, much better than a picture.
And more attractive than reality.
So I mix the colors on the palette with the knife, and grab them
with the tip or the edge of it to apply them on the canvas.
And once the color is on the canvas, I may mix it a little bit more, right
there… more so than when I paint with a brush. We apply the paint
little by little and let´s put a highlight here.
One thing that it´s important is to always wipe your knife
clean, when you change from applying one color to the next one,
wipe it off completely.
Very good!
Now let´s start doing the background.
I will do it some sort of purple.
With the knife it can be done fairly rapidly, actually.
We do the shadow, the orange and the vessel, and we add some
of the texture to it.
I don´t want it to be smooth like it is right now, I mean the container,
so I will be adding little strokes to give it a nice texture.
In this way, it will be much more interesting, I think.
We give it some light reflections with the Titanium White, but
also some spots reflecting the orange and some dark ones.
Very good!
¡Excelente!
It does take more patience to paint with a knife than with
a brush.
And the technique and the feel, are a little bit different… so
please do not get disappointed if it doesn`t come exactly the way
you wanted it, the first time you try it… or the second one.
With some practice, you should be able to get very beautiful
results!
The palette knife has its own language, its own expression
which is unique and wonderful.
Let´s add this strong highlight over here
and do the handle, add it a tone.
Al right!
At this point I like how the container is looking.
Now let´s give a better feel to the orange.
To accomplish this we apply smaller dabs of paint,
in the direction like following the curvature of the fruit.
That starts looking much better!
And we don´t do just one color, of course, but we add
a little bit of yellow… and green, and a brownish red for the shade.
And there should be some reflected light bouncing from the surface.
So let´s add some grayish down here.
We reestablish the cast shadow underneath… and I want to add
a sort of glow, above the fruit.
Al right!
And let´s add some reflection on the surface as well.
Of both, the orange and the vessel, of course.
Also the darks should be reflecting.
I hope you can join me at Patreon for the long tutorial, with all the
detail and information.
But for now, I hope this was helpful and that you enjoyed it.
If you would like me to make more like this, please let me know
in the comments.
We give it the last details, the last little touches, and it´s ready!
If you enjoyed it please give it a LIKE! share it to your friends
and subscribe to Fine Art-Tips and to Patreon.
You know where to follow me, the links are below.
And I will see you on Tuesday ;)
Subtitled by Grethel Trejo