Hello and welcome back to my studio.
Today I'm going to be talking about transparency of paint and how this is
important to give you rich colour in your paintings.
I'm going to give you a little demonstration as well,
just to show you how I use transparency in my paintings to get some rich colour
and some good contrasting colour notes as well.
Stick around and enjoy the lesson coming up.
Okay, now, transparency of paint seems a rather obscure subject and perhaps
something that beginners are really not considering.
But I'm going to show you a very simple and important reason why transparency
should be something that you think about right from the start.
Now, in various tube colours, in this case I'm using oil paints,
you'll notice that there's a little symbol on the tube.
In most cases, it's a little square.
And in colour that is strongly opaque, that is not transparent at all.
It could be a black square, completely blacked out.
And you'll find this a lot on your
cadmiums, for instance, and also your titanium white.
Most colours are going to have sort
of a semitransparency and the block is partly white, partly black,
and that indicates that it is somewhat transparent.
So if you put it on quite thin on your canvas, you should be able to see through
that, maybe the white of the canvas below or another colour.
And then, of course, you get colours that are entirely transparent.
And probably alizarin crimson is one that I use a lot.
And the little square is white, indicating that it is very transparent.
Now, when I'm painting, this is not my primary concern with transparency.
I'm not glazing colour like in an old Master painting where I'm making very thin
glaze of transparent paint and putting that over,
so you see the bottom colours come through and are influenced by that glaze.
That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about transparency
in the sense of trying to emphasise the colour and keep out the most powerful
opaque medium on your palette, and that is the white paint.
So, for example, you'll see in the coming up little demo where I make the trees
and the shadows the strongest colour without any white paint.
Keeping those colours relatively transparent and making them richer as I
layer colour over each other, it could be transparent like alizarin or
semi-transparent, like maybe ultramarine blue.
Those semi transparent colours are
increasing the richness and the vibrancy of those colours.
Anyway, this short demonstration will show
you the differences that I'm talking about.
And try this in your next painting and see
if it really boosts the punch and colour in your painting.
So I'll start the scene with the darks
and using a transparent layer to get those darks in very quickly.
In this case, I'm using a bit of ultramarine and burnt sienna.
Applying the layer very thin as well and mixing colour into colour, wet into wet.
Some of the colour mixes on the canvas and creates those greens as well.
And as you can see, it's not too opaque. And building up these layers
now to get even richer colour.
These are medium value colours. Still transparent and so nice and rich.
I've actually used a bit of cadmium orange
there and you can see it's not that opaque.
Certainly nothing like when you get white paint in. Now a bit of red and alizarin to get
some orange notes and then some green notes as well.
Building this colour up so that it is nice and rich, as you can see.
And by rich I just mean deep, vibrant, almost a luxurious look to it.
It's not cold even compared to this.
Now you can see with the light of values,
I'm bringing white paint in to create opaque colour.
Very strong.
But it really stands out great against all of those rich darks.
Now I've still making a shadow, but quite a light one with some white
added and it is not as rich as that colour up there in the trees.
And that's the influence of white paint,
of course. And now cool transparent shadows.
There's a bit of cerulean blue
in that green as well, giving a nice cool colour, building up richness.
You can paint one layer over the other.
Very little influence except nice and rich. Opaque lights,
paint that straight over your darks.
Now with the highlights, use them quite sparingly.
Don't lose all that rich colour you've built up.
Nice strong shadows, warmish green, but it looks cool against
the really warm oranges and yellow colours.
And when you get into the opaque lights,
contrast those with the shadows and they really stand out even better.
Quite a bit of white in that yellow.
And look you get that lovely, thick,
impasto. Juicy colour notes really standing out because of your darks.
And there we have it.
A good combination of rich colour and transparent colours.
Well, I hope this little lesson gives you
something to think about and makes you more conscious of what you're doing
with your white paint especially. And what you're doing with the shadow
parts of your painting and how long it takes you to bring in the white paint.
Try to keep the white paint out for as long as possible to give you the best
chance of really emphasising the strong colours.
Now there's a lot more to this subject
and I cover colour and colour mixing in a lot more depth
in my painting courses. You'll find a number of courses to choose from,
from oils to gouache to acrylics, even watercolour and pastel.
And to get you started, I've got a free course in the description
and you can also find one in the link up here.
So try that out.
And I hope that you have subscribed
to this channel so you don't miss the next video.
Well, until we meet again, happy painting and cheers for now.