break out your pocket watch and your paint brushes! It's time for episode 8 of
10 Minutes To Better Painting! I am your ethically questionable host, Marco Bucci.
let's get into the lesson. Champion boxer Chris Eubank senior said: There is a
simple explanation when one moves aside all the things that distract from the
point. This episode is about art improvement, which falls under the
category of study. You know, the intern and I, we have ... *ahem* ... okay! We've put together
many different things for you to study. each episode gives you a single thing
that can improve your paintings. Today we'll take the next step and look at a
picture using not one lesson not two lessons but every lesson!
Ah, Venice, so much potential for painting. Our episode wheel here will keep track of which
lesson I'm pulling from, and intern! Wheel us to Episode 2! In Episode 2
we looked at ideas for clear visual communication. I'm seeing an opportunity
here for a C curve. A simple directional path that can curate this composition. It
leads us through all the major elements and arrives at a focal point, which I
think can be these structures up here. I'm choosing them as my focal point
because there are three types of contrast that play there. First: most of
the picture is rectangular shapes, making these round shapes feel special. Second: a
contrast of busyness. Lots of busyness here, with less busyness up here. And
finally: it's an area of clear value contrast. These structures silhouetting
against the sky. Your focal point is a kind of payoff element, and a path can
lead the viewer to it. Here's Joseph Zuh-buck-vich doing the
same thing in this painting. This time it's a single point from which paths
emanate and take us through the composition. Zuh-buck-vich also pays off
the image with a high contrast focal poin-- ah what do you want? What?! Ze-BOOK-Vich?
How do you know that?? You're reading youtube comments? Oh, dear God! Anyway
Joseph's Zbukvic is using the same language here as
I am here. We're just rearranging the words for different meanings. And I'll
probably crop this to make sure my delivery is clear. Of course, I can still
borrow elements where I need them. All right
intern! Wheel to episode 1, please! In episode 1 we talked about
simplification. Venice like many things in real life is beautiful ... but also
absolutely assaults you with information. Everywhere you look, shapes that demand
attention. This poses a problem. I want the most attention to be directed at my
focal point ... not this tangle of stuff. So I'll do a quick pass with my special
merging shapes brush! And we're left with something that still delivers all those
docks, boats and reflections - but in a way that's less incidental and more
digestible. For instance in this one area the original had one two three four five
six seven eight nine shapes! Such a minor area I don't think needs nine shapes! I
think I can do it in one shape. Also keep in mind you can merge together entire
objects too. Instead of showing the complete silhouette of every post here,
I'll go the opposite way and kind of melt them all together. The shapes that
break up that melty-ness give you the necessary clues to solve this area. It's
fun to paint and it's like a mini mystery that engages the audience and
allows for a more active viewing experienc-- ...oh great another youtube comment. Please
enlighten us. ... I sound ... what!? I have no idea what you're talking about.
Just spin us to episode 3 would ya? Episode 3 was about varieties of
edg. Taking different shapes and values and softening them to various degrees.
Different edges make for different visual interactions. We just looked at
some of the benefits of the lost edge, so now let's look at its opposite: the hard
edge. Where lost edges create alluring mystery, hard edges make for clear
readability. And you can use them together. Anders Zorn is using lost edges
here to merge the darks into nearly a single shape. Meanwhile the hands, beard
and highlights on the glass, as well as this part of the silhouette, draw
attention with relatively harder edges. and you don't even need a fancy brush to
do this! Check this out. Let's bring in some
hard edged shapes. Those edges are so sharp you can cut yourself. But watch
this: if I just compress the value range ... the whole thing looks, or perhaps feels,
softer, despite the physical edges being unchanged. And here's Walter Everett
putting this into practice. The figures feel sharper than their surroundings
not because of brushwork; it's the value organization. So I'll plan to use a
combination of these techniques in my Venice painting. I really enjoy working
with soft and lost edges ... they just give you a ... what's a good way of saying it ...
they give you ... what?? ... Yeah! Low resistance, that's totally it!
Soft and lost edges, then, provide easier passage through areas of a picture! Ha,
YouTube comments can be useful! Any other good ones there? OK... who is Yong Yea??
Sigh, copycat artist. Wheel to Episode 4 please. Episode 4 talked about how
paintings are made of many shapes. to have a painting that reads clearly, each
little shape should be as readable as possible. These shapes look like the
result of accidents rather than intention. They're prone to become
muddled and are less quickly readable. A better home for those shapes might be ...
yeah. So what I do is kind of think about where a shape is headed and then design
it the rest of the way there. Your own design sense is important here!
well-designed shapes will stay quickly readable even when shrunk way down. so
with our Venice scene, not only do I want the overall shapes to be well designed
but I will apply that scrutiny to each tiny shape as well.
shapes are like little worker ants they can't do the work alone but together are
able to achieve something complex. also check for some variety in the negative
spaces. variety is usually more interesting than repetition. In fact,
variety is at the heart of so many of these lessons. it just seems to be one of
those basic human preferen -- OKTHAT DOES IT! INTERN! BRING YONG YEA TO ME. ALIVE!
So let's put some color to this, using episode 5's color wheel to chart the
progress. I'm beginning by putting down colors from both the warm and cool sides
of the color wheel but keeping everything close to gray. my overall plan
of attack here is to branch outward into saturation. like right now I'll add
some more saturated blues and reds into this field of neutrals. You don't need a
lot of saturation just for things to look colorful! Against a foundation of
neutrals, even the most slight move towards saturation will feel colorful.
because - episode 5 - colors talk to each other and create context! Of course I
hope you're also tracking all the stuff we talked about in part 1. Color simply
lays on top of those foundations. looking at the color wheel you can see how I'm
systematically hatching my plan to move this way. now when I add a color I try
and see if I can carry it through multiple areas of the painting,
not just relegate it to one spot. That keeps the palate feeling connected and
avoids that coloring book or local-colory look. And it helps that this scene is
washed in a diffuse type of light rather than a direct sunlight or
something. color tends to weave together much more freely in a diffuse lighting
condition and I do often use this kind of approach when I paint diffuse or
ambient light. When you paint direct light like a sunset oftentimes your
colors come in two families: a warm family and a cool family - and you can
start your color conversation by blocking that out. You know, maybe I'll do
a future episode comparing direct and diffuse light! Anyway in episode 7 we
talked about color notes. episode 7 really goes hand-in-hand with episode 5
by the way. And one thing I like to do is with the overall color trajectory in
mind ... that is this direction I'm following ... I can choose to exaggerate
those trends. You know, break free of the main color conversation that's currently
happening and kind of go out on a limb. Watch the color wheel here: I can add,
like, that red also here I can accent the cyans like this. Color notes can be a
bit disconnected like that but they still make sense because they're
extensions of the logic that's already in place. you could totally take the
opposite route, start saturated work in toward gray. Though I do find that method
slightly harder to control. so a few notes of purple another boat and our
Venice study is complete! You know, if I have to sum up this whole series in a
single word that word would be: "design." In order to design, you have to select, and
to select, you have to be, well, thinking! A lot of what a good artist does really
well, I think, is they effectively remove stuff that would otherwise distract from
the point. The elements that remain in the picture then carry a real purpose. A
purpose that allows them to add up to more than the sum of their parts. And
that's a fundamental characteristic of what I would consider good art.
HA! YONG YEA! FACE TO FACE AT LAST! YOU'VE BEEN IMPERSONATING ME ON YOUR CHANNEL, YONG!
ART THEFT AND PLAGIARISM RING ANY BELLS? MY INTERN SAID HE'D LIKE TO DO
UNSPEAKABLE THINGS TO YOU. AND THEN, YOU'LL BE BANISHED FROM THE YOUTUBE ART COMMUNIT --
game news videos? ...but the YouTube comments sa--
oh boy. So ... how about those Bioware microtransactions huh?? What are you doing?
(I don't even think he sounds like me)