How To Paint A Backlit Forest In Oil | Paintings By Justin

What's going on, everybody? I hope you guys are doing absolutely wonderful today. I hope everybody is just doing great in life and just kind of living and breathing and just doing your things. And most importantly, I hope that each and every single one of you is happy and I hope you guys feel good. That is the biggest thing that I'm always hoping for all of you guys. You guys leave such lovely comments and you just do, you say all kinds of nice things and send all kinds of nice emails and I like reading them and I like knowing that you guys are doing well. And even if I can't respond right away, I always read everything and I want you to remember that, especially email. If you email me, I read it. So I don't wanna talk too much here right now today. What I'm gonna do is this. I thought that I wanna create a backlit forest, just something maybe pretty, something relaxing. Now, let me say this. I never mix my other job with this because this isn't a job to me. This is my passion. This is what I'm passionate about doing. But earlier today, I went to a customer's house and they were in a situation due to some other contractor that sort of like left them hanging and just really did not do good by them. And the lady, it was a very nice lady that I met. She was there taking care of her sister who just happens to be on hospice. I'm very familiar with how that works. I've been through that twice. And it's a very, it's just a very sad thing. And they're very nice people. And I didn't, I'm not gonna mention any names or I didn't say anything to her, but the painting that I'm gonna do now, I wanna do this painting. And even before it's dry, I'm gonna bring it over and just kind of maybe hang it on the wall for them and just kind of let her sister, the one who is sick on hospice, just kind of give her something to look at. So that's where today's painting came from. That's the idea that I have in my mind. But at the same time, I want you to know that you can do this because it's super simple and it's easy and it's just, and it makes you feel good. I don't wanna tap my chest too hard because I'll hit the microphone. Could blow your eardrums out. And then you might wanna sue me. So no, I'm just kidding. But I want you to know that this is super easy and this is gonna help you mentally. It's helped me mentally. I've had my ups and downs in the last, this year, mainly because of the virus and everything else that's been happening. Every time that I feel like I'm maybe hitting to my bottom point, I paint a picture and it helps me. So I just want you to know it'll do the same for you and it'll absolutely bring you peace and comfort in your life no matter what's going on around you. And just remember that I said that and feel free to reach out and let me know your experience. So let's go ahead and get started. All right, let's go ahead and get started here and see what shall we do first. All right, I put a little bit of clear gel and a combination of a tiny bit of white up here on the top half. It's gonna help me create that backlit effect. Hopefully. I say it will, but you know, I'm hopeful. You know what I mean? So I'm gonna go ahead and do this. Now I have my colors. Let me try to just hold these up real quick in front of the, ooh, that didn't work out too well. Here's my colors right here. I'll link them down below. The same colors I use all the time. All right? All right, so in order to create that backlit effect, you know, I think that it would be a good idea to keep a portion of the canvas actually like a pure white, maybe a tint of yellow, because that'll help kind of help things kind of shine through. So let's do this. I'm gonna take, I have a tiny bit of this Indian yellow color here, okay? And I'm just gonna use a little bit of that. And I'm just gonna kind of put this around a real soft color. Maybe the back, the light could possibly come in, you know, from this area right here. All right? So I just wanna sprinkle a little bit of this color just kind of around the circles, whatever. And it doesn't have to be perfectly blended, okay? Just, you know, don't overwork yourself. All right, there we go, there's that. Let's see, let's take, let's take a tiny, tiny bit of the cad yellow. And I'm just going to just put a little bit of that stuff, you know, somewhere in here like this. All right, something like that. I'm just wiping this off real quick. And I'm just gonna kind of smooth the two of these together. It gives it maybe a good look, I don't know. All right, but I want the back light to come from this particular area, hopefully. And if you want, you could take, you could take a little bit of white, I guess, if you wanted to, and put it in here. But, you know, the canvas is there, so you really don't need to do that. Save the trouble, okay? All right, now, I wanna start, I'll start on the left side. I wanna go, I want to darken the sides. And that's gonna give us, when you darken, you have your light area, when you bring your dark in and transition it, that's gonna help with that back lit effect. All right, so I'm gonna take, let's do this. Let's take a tiny bit of blue, tiny bit of black, and let's see what this does here. Little bit of blue, little bit of black. All right, little bit more black, maybe. Little bit of black right there. I'm gonna work over to the other side, too, real quick. And it doesn't have to be, you know, dark black, you know? Little bit of blue kind of helps a little bit, I think. And if your blue hits the yellow and turns a little green, that's totally awesome. Why is that awesome? Because what color do you see in forests? You see a little bit of green, right? Swiping this off real quick. Let's see here. Let me step back, blend this a little bit, yeah. All right, so I want the dark to remain at the edges the most. You know what I mean? At the edges, all right? And this totally looks not good at all, and that's the idea, because it's not supposed to, because this is a background. Backgrounds are all kinds of different things going on, okay? See, I'm going, light pressure here, very light pressure. I'm kind of blending the two together at this point, see? Creating a area, you know, of interest or whatever you want to call it, backlit area. You can take your brush and go like this, see? Create little thingies down here, all right? Just like that. And there's the beginning to a backlit area. Now, I'm gonna try to make this painting super easy for you guys, because I want you to be, I want you to be interested in this, okay? So let's do this. I'm gonna grab a filbert, and I'm just gonna, for the sake of being easy, I'm gonna take some of my black. Now, this is midnight black that I'm using here. A touch of blue and black, all right? And I'm going to, let's keep it real. Let's keep it real, I'm gonna start putting, I'm gonna put some stuff here, look. Something back here, maybe, I don't know, little hills or something, all right? I'm gonna get it in with the filbert, just get that line in like this, all right? You see, something like that. This is gonna be our background, and our foreground is gonna be coming forward, all right? I'm gonna wipe this filbert off here real quick, and I'm gonna take a little bit of the green, little sap green, and I'm gonna kinda just scrub into the black here, you see this? See, I'm scrubbing it in. I just wanna create, you know, little, I don't know, maybe these are bushes or something, or, you know, they're not really meant to look like anything just whatever you may think they are is what I'm thinking. See, a little touch and turn and twirl and twist and just do all kinds of little stuff, see? Okay, little area of something going on right there, and if you want to, if you really want to, you could just take this one-inch brush and wipe it off, and you could really just sweep across this like this, and this'll really, or do circles, and this'll push, this is gonna push that back, so it kinda looks like it's a little bit more in, you know, the background at this point, all right? All right, so I'm gonna sketch this out real quick. I'm gonna just take some black, some blue, black, and some green, all right? Blue, black, green, and I'm going to figure out, I want this to kinda come down like this. Oh, that's a wicked-looking color right there, huh? I want this to come around, and this is, yeah, this is gonna be like a little path, I guess. Maybe I'll have it come this way, all right? And then there's some ground here, and this kinda works its way right off like that, so this is maybe just like a little trail that kinda works through, and you know, the forest or whatever, and you can fix this as you go. This is just a, this is just a little guide, you know? Little hill here, but you see, the color that I'm putting down is a really interesting, weird color, but I'm not really worried about that whatsoever, all right? And I don't think you should be worried about it either, but I do wanna show you how easy it is to create something, you know what I mean? Because everybody thinks it's, oh, so much time, it's so much this, so much that. That's not always the case. All right, so let's do this. Take some blue, black, and a little bit of the green again, all right, and I wanna start putting in some of this dark here. I'm gonna take some alizarin crimson and mix it in there because that shade is just kinda getting to me a little bit, so, all right. Just putting some of the darker areas in. All right, just scrubbing away. I'll probably use the one-inch brush to fill in some of these areas here, maybe. We'll see. Well, maybe I'll start with the filbert. Maybe I won't listen to my own self. That crimson and dark. See, you want your area in the front to be the darkest. That helps with contrast and things like that, you know? And I just have to say this, too, like, you know, I'm sure there's been a lot of you out there that have dealt with the whole, like, hospice thing. I have an extreme soft spot for that because I've been through that, you know, and it's a very hard thing and it's very admirable to see, you know, the people that step up to make sure that everything is, you know, taken care of and not to mention, you know, you spend the remaining time with that particular family member. It's a lot of work and it's hard mentally. All right, now I'm just smoothing this out real quick. This does not have to be perfect at all. See, I can touch into the white. I just want to get this color distributed down is all I'm looking to do. And look, I'm going to even go like this. I'm going to take this and I'm going to tap some stuff with this here. See that? I don't know. This is like maybe background leaves and things. You see? Background, let me hold this. See that? I don't want to kill all the light area because I know I want to do something there, make a little backlit something, but see? Just little indications of things. It could be anything. Those could be branches way back in the woods, but like I said, I'm just really trying to show you two at the same time how easy, you know, this can be to do something, all right? Okay. All right, so let's take some brown and just drop some brown in here, just like this. All right, we have a little dirt road going on here. See? Brown, let's get some black in here to mix with that. See? Now I'll just take this one inch brush and do this. I'm going to swirl this around. Just kind of, it just moves the color around pretty good. And this can all be changed as you go. Angles, you know, everything. All right, you see? So the bottom half is sort of blocked in, all right? I want this to stand out right there. So I'm going to darken that up with some blue and black, a little bit of crimson. I want to make sure that this particular area, just a little darker than what's behind it. You see, I'm not really doing too much here. I'm just kind of flopping this old filbert around here. And I want this one here in the front, okay? Blue, black, crimson. All right, something like that. And that can mix right in with the road, see? Not worried about that at all. Now this is what you're seeing is just the blocked in, you know, the blocked in colors is actually what you're seeing. So you're not seeing, you know, this is the part where I would say you'll get frustrated. So right now I'm taking a little bit of burnt umber, white, touch of blue. I want to put some background trees in, just distant background things, see? Just dropping a few things in. This is going to give all kinds of little detail or whatever in the background, see? And it doesn't take much. It really doesn't take much. You see that, that took about three seconds to do. Okay, okay. All right, so we're going to jump right into this now. We're going to jump right into this. I'm going to start off, I'm going to make this super easy. I'm going to put maybe two trees in here, two bigger trees. I'm going to start right here with some burnt umber and a little bit of the black, burnt umber, black. There might be a little blue in there, I'm not really sure. Not really worried about it. All right, so here we go. I want a tree somewhere over here. I do want one in this vicinity right here. So I'm going to start here. I'm going to work my way down like this. See that? It's kind of growing right on this hill right here. Kind of goes right down the hill. All right, and maybe we'll do, just for the heck of it, I'm going to put something right there like that too. This guy grows right down, right down the hill, just like that. Maybe I'll put a little one back here. This one goes right off the canvas, right back there. And he's just there because it looks probably better. Okay, more brown, more black. And I'm going to jump right over to this side. A little bit, I want a bigger tree over here. I'm going to start here. I'm going to come right down. This guy comes right down like this. You see how like, I'm just like get, you know, whatever. I'm not like worried about how, you know, the brush moves or anything. I'm just kind of getting it down there using whatever angles. Making this tree a little bit bigger. And I'm going to make a separate tree right here. This one's behind him. But he's on the other hill. Trees are fun. Let's give a little branch there. Little, little branches. I'm not worried about too many details yet. Put a branch there, right up off the canvas. Just a little whatever's. Let's have one come right out like this. Oh yeah, that's interesting, right? But do you see, you see here? Like it's, we're already starting something, okay? I'm trying to make this easy. I want you to see how easy this actually is, all right? Now, let's grab, I'm going to get some white and get that white right onto my brush here. A little bit of brown's already on there. So this will just be a lighter color. Maybe a touch of the Indian yellow. I don't know, we'll see. All right, and I'm going to just real quickly drop it on. Light's coming this way. I'm going to drop a little bit of something here, okay? A little bit of highlight on some of these trees. So you can kind of see where the roots go. I'm just holding the filbert brush, bringing that right down. Maybe that root goes all the way down there like that. All right, and this side here, maybe the light's hitting a little bit here, so I don't know. But just for the heck of it, I'm going to put the highlight on this side here. Not as much though on this tree here. And definitely on this side, on this guy back here. See, just kind of spread that out like this. A little bit more up here. All right, but you get the idea, right? You get the idea. Okay, now I'm going to wipe this brush off a little bit real quick. And I'm going to take some black, straight, just straight black. And I want there to be some contrast in this tree here. Now the paint, I got it, it's pretty thick. See, dark, nice and dark. I don't want to go too high because I'm probably going to put some leaves up here. I just want to put a little bit of dark color here just so it's somewhat noticeable. And you know what, I might as well do some here too. Little tiny bit back there maybe. Okay, I think that's pretty good so far right there. All right, now let's get busy. Let me move the filbert out of the way real quick. I'll wipe that off. Let me just take a quick look at this. I'm going to wipe the one inch brush off. And like I said, I'm trying to show you the easy way to do this. All right, all right, here we go. One inch brush, see, it's kind of dirty. See that, right? I'm going to take, I'm going to first go into some white. Straight up, it's kind of ripping off of the page and that's fine, some white. I'm going to come over here and get some green, white and a little bit of blue and maybe some yellow if it permits me to get it. All right, all right, so this color is predominantly yellow. All right, here we go. Now I'm going to come back here and I am going to do this. Look, I'm going to drop in just some, a little bit of a grassy area back there. See that? You know, and this hill kind of comes right from behind these trees. You see that? And it starts to work its way down into that little road area right there. Okay, and we have one here. Kind of goes off the canvas, sort of like this. I'm going to drop some of this color in here. I'm leaving some of that dark in there, see? All right, but do you see that sort of gives you somewhat of a background, okay? Now let's go back to the filbert here and just a dirty old filbert. I'm going to wipe that off and now I'm going to take some white paint and some Indian yellow. You can use yellow ochre for sure, if you want. All right, and I'm going to come in here and I'm going to start to drop in just a little bit of area, right? Where I think maybe some of that light would show on this path, you see? Scooping it up on the filbert and just kind of working it in. All right, you see that? A little bit of light passing through there. All right, I'm going to go right over to the blue now. Blue and white, touch of black. All right, and I'm going to now, just for the sake of looks, I'm going to drop a little bit of this blue in for shadows. You see that? All right, that gives us a good little platform right there. Nice little platform. All right, black, blue. I want to make sure that I define this little hill right here in the front, see that? All right, that's a little hill passing through. Right there. Okay, now, set that down. Now let's go back to the, going back to, I got to rip this paper towel off here because if not, I'm going to get paint all over me. All right, back to the one inch brush, the dirty one inch. I'm going pretty much into the yellow at this point. Okay, I dipped into some yellow. All right, now, so watch this. I am, light's right here, watch this, choo. See that? Watch this, I just want, I want you to know that this is a hill here, see? And this is going to get actually darker, you know, as it kind of goes back here. It's a little light there, but I can work that in to make it darker, hopefully. See? Work it down like this, see? A lot of shadows back here. This will help the viewer just kind of figure out that something's going on there for sure. Okay, let's get some Indian yellow mixed into this mix. And I want to do this, watch this. I just want to add a little bit here. See this? All right, kind of helps us with this land area here. See that? It's growing right up the tree. All right, and then maybe we have, let's do this. Just put a little bit in here, just so you know there's something going on here. Maybe it's a little hill or something, I don't know. See that? But it doesn't have to be, you know, crazy like a lot. You know, and look at this, watch. Put a few little grasses down here too. Because it's, look, it's growing off the tree, see? See that? You see what I got there? You got some stuff happening right there. So now, let's do, let's grab the knife. I'm going to take the knife, some white Indian yellow on the knife. Little bit, right, little bit. Get a little bit on there, and I just want to go like this, watch this. Just want to sparkle, sparkle some of these areas up. Sparkle it up, you see? And that's kind of right where, you know, I think that maybe some light would go. Something like that. I'm going to wipe the, I'm going to wipe the one inch brush off here. And I'm going to take, so I got some green and black, all right? Pretty much, we got some green and black. Just a dark green is what it is. And I just want to dip into this carefully. And I just want to add the look of something. A little bit more black into that green. See, right over the top. Yeah, so we got something going on here, right? Just so you have little leaves or, it's whatever you want, really, you know? Just tap it in. You know, I'm just tapping some stuff in there. I'm not, I'm not worried about, you know, how this looks or how that looks. I'm just kind of, just tapping it in is it. You know, I want it to be leaves. I want, you know, leaves are not in any way, shape or form, you know, perfect looking, right? But I want it to be a little dark here because there's less light. But I want to leave some of the background. And you see how I keep dipping, right? I keep dipping in. See that? That's important that you keep dipping because that'll give you fresh paint, you know, and you need that fresh paint, all right? It's just super important. Just dropping in whatever. Don't be afraid to do it. Now, let me step back, okay? Now I'm going to take my same one inch brush and I'm just going to dip it right into some yellow, just a little bit of yellow, all right? And that's going to allow me to just kind of, you know, just do a few little thingies here, you know, just so there's a different value, a different color. It's not all one color, but you don't want to go crazy with this. You know what I mean? You just stamp it here and there, there and here, and just do your thing. See? And this will give you different colored leaves. You see that? You know, and then if you want to get super crazy, you take some super, super bright yellow and you can just kind of, you know, put it where the light will definitely hit, you know, in your, like there, here, maybe back here. We know the light's going to hit there. You know, stuff like that is how you have to do it. So, all right guys. Well, I hope you enjoyed that video because I just, you know, a couple of things. I wanted to show you how easy it is to create something. So I hope you definitely give it a try because it is definitely worth your time. I can guarantee and I can promise you that. Just don't ever worry about, just don't worry about what it looks like. Just remember how you feel while you're doing it because that's the most important. So, I just want to thank you guys for watching. I need you all to do me a favor. If you're new here, please hit the like button, hit the subscribe button, turn the bell on, do all of those things so you're notified when my videos come out. And if you hit the like button, it'll help YouTube push the video further, which will help me make more videos for you guys in the future. So, I really appreciate it. I love you guys. Have a great day. I will see you next time. Take care.