Oil Painting Tips || Patreon Highlights

Hi! I'm back with another video and this time I'm gonna play a couple of short clips from the videos I post on my Patreon page. Thanks to every single one of you who supports me on Patreon or in any other way. You're the best! And without further ado let's get into the video. In my experience most pre-stretched canvases or canvas boards come with not enough primer on them, like one or two very thin coats. That's why I recommend priming it more yourself with gesso or any acrylic primer. I like painting on more of a smooth surface. It's a personal preference, find what works for you. But I like when there is just a little bit of texture and the surface is quite smooth. For this reason I use some sandpaper to smooth it out. I always work on toned surfaces. I believe I addressed it before in some videos. I mix a little bit of black and brown acrylic paint into the primer to achieve that light neutral gray color. I like painting on surfaces that have some medium neutral tone because it helps me to identify the values correctly as I'm painting. Value represents the lightness or darkness of a color. I usually do about two three layers. Now we are ready to mix colors for the painting. I use a limited palette which consists of five essential colors cadmium yellow pale, cadmium red, burnt umber, ultramarine blue and titanium white. I want to stress that no matter what skin tone you are aiming for the principle that I'm showing you is the same for every single skin tone from very dark ones to the light. For darker tones I add more burnt umber and ultramarine blue to the mixture and for lighter tones I do the reverse. As tones get lighter I add less and less of the colors I just named. You can compare the colors. Let's continue. Painting from a photograph can sometimes be a good alternative to painting from life. I recommend taking your own reference photos but you can also look for pictures in stock photo sites or royalty free sites. Surely there is a third option which is to contact a photographer or the owner of a certain picture that you'd love to use and get permission. However for the purpose of just practicing you can use pretty much any photo from the internet of course. By the way the photo I use for this portrait will be available to you. I will post a link to it somewhere. Now I want to make quite an important point. When you choose a reference picture make sure it's a good quality picture and it's as close to real life as possible. Meaning it doesn't have any filters applied, it's not too pixelated and stuff like that because otherwise it'll only create some unnecessary problems for you. Here I've actioned the mental role of it. In painting value represents the lightness or darkness of a color. Simply speaking how light or how dark the color is. And the role of it is tremendous. Values bring dimensions. They create the 3d form that we see. So needless to say that I pay very close attention to values when I'm painting. My process at this point is basically looking at the reference, identifying how light or dark a color in some area is, like the skin here for example close to the eye and putting the color in the right place exactly where I see it. And I just keep repeating it. If you can't see values super well and it's not really working for you just yet I suggest looking at the black and white version of the reference picture. This way you won't be distracted by different hues and tones of colors. So like I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Sometimes it's hard to tell how much one color is darker than another especially if these colors are quite saturated and chromatic. You get distracted but with a black and white version you won't be confused. You'll just see the values alone. What's lighter and what's darker and exactly how much. It works particularly well for beginners because surely after a while of painting and practicing you will train your eye to differentiate values a lot better and you wouldn't need a black and white version of the reference anymore. I believe with practice you train yourself to see colors better. I'd say focus mostly on the values at first. That's what creates dimensions and that realistic look in a painting. Then you have to try to get those color shifts correctly. You know some areas are more pink, others are more greenish or yellowish and so on. To do that you have to always compare the progress you're making with the reference picture and just pay attention to these little subtleties. Next thing I want to share with you is something more specific and it is no matter how white you think the white of an eye is it's never even close. And in this case right now it's kind of even lighter than usually because I took the reference picture in a very good lighting and we can see some pretty big reflections in the eyes as well that can distract us. But back to my point the white of an eye is never white ironically. It's much darker than you think and it can shift in hue to red to blue green etc. You have to make sure and see what these colors are by closely looking at the reference and comparing these colors to it. It's a big deal because it's a common mistake among the beginners and actually if you do it right it can take your painting so much closer to realism. Continue pre-mixing colors if you run out of some of them. It's not easy to guess exactly how much paint of every color you need. Even with practice you can have some leftover mixes whereas you ran out of a certain one color pretty quickly. Another advice you can apply is try looking at the painting from a different angle. Especially if you think there is a problem with proportions, positions of the facial features, values etc. It can be as simple as stepping away from the painting and looking at it from the distance. It can be turning it upside down. Anyway so I think everyone has their own personal preference and style for that matter. I'm just showing you what I like doing. The truth is most of what I show in these tutorials is not a must or rule. It's simply me sharing my approach and things that work for me. Some of which you can also try and implement hopefully getting better results as well as improving your painting skills. Okay now we're gonna give it some days to dry and in short glazing is an oil painting technique and it's basically applying a thin transparent layer of paint on top of a dry opaque layer to add some color and saturation to certain parts of a painting, adjust hues at depth and so on. I personally love this technique and I believe it's quite underrated. For me the biggest benefit I find is its ability to bring more color, life and realism to the subject. I use paints with transparent or semi-transparent characteristics for glazing. These are the best for glazing. But no matter what paint you use you need to make sure that you're applying a layer that consists mostly of medium or oil and just a little bit of pigment. And if for instance you want to do some drastic changes of color right it's much better to do a couple of consecutive thin glazes rather than one loaded with pigment. For many reasons but mostly because doing it in a couple of sequential thin layers will give you a better and much more even coverage. Here I'm showing you some results. As you can see it makes a real difference and sometimes even if it's very subtle you added a little more rouge to a cheek or brightened hair color, whatever it is, a little can go a long way. It might be just a little touch but it can make a big difference. First of all how you should go about blending completely depends on your personal taste, preference and even a style of painting. Some artists like to leave visible brush strokes, others like to really smooth it out. There is no right or wrong here. I like when the skin looks more real and smooth but not too much though because if you blend it way too much the skin will look unnatural, more like a porcelain doll rather than a real human. So I like to leave some brush work as well when it's needed. One more time I want to say a big thank you to everyone who supports me on Patreon. Thanks for watching and I'll see you soon!