20 Minute Painting! #9 - Pink Peony in Oil with Anna Rose Bain

Hi everyone, I am full swing into peony painting season. It's just my favorite time of year. And so I wanted to share just a quick 20-minute tutorial with you guys. Many of you know I've done full-length videos highlighting how to paint peonies. Some of them are two hours long, some of them are 40 minutes, and you can find those on my learning site. But for today, this 20-minute demo is just to demonstrate how much you can get done in a short amount of time, working with a single bloom, and it doesn't even have to be a perfect one. This flower that I painted right here, it was already kind of at the end of its life, but I was still able to pull some beauty out of it. It still had a lot to give, and so just really excited to show this to you today. As always, the reference photo is included in the description below, but I hope you'll try this for yourself. Get some flowers from the store, from your local florist, wherever you can find them, and try painting them from life. The purpose of these exercises is not to rush, but to really get into the groove so that when you start painting some longer, more time-intensive studio paintings, you feel like you've already got your mojo. And this is great for setting the stage for that. The other reason these 20-minute paintings are so vital to our practice as artists is to hone our skills on observation, to really pinpoint what's important in the subject, to get more intuitive with our design and with our color choices, and of course, just to have fun. And from my perspective, it's always way more fun if I'm being challenged. So I hope this challenges you today. Go ahead and grab your paints and your brushes and join me on this fun adventure painting peonies. Real quick, before we get started, I wanted to show you this, the difference between a cell phone shot of my setup and a shot on my larger DSLR. Now, ideally, you'd be painting this from life. So the colors that you're going to see me using for the demo are going to look a little different than the photo. But I also wanted to bring to your awareness just how different cameras can be and how the photos appear different. So in the cell phone shot, there's a little less contrast. It's a little bit cooler. It's probably truer to the color, but you're seeing all this detail there. And then in the big camera shot, we've got more of the blurred background, tighter aperture. And so with the big camera, I'm able to focus in on the flower a little bit more than just the entire setting altogether. So just something to think about when you're looking at how to shoot reference photos. I take pictures with both my cell phone and my camera and compare the colors and the values between each of them. And then I compare that to the real thing and make my choices based on that. But for this demo today, I'll be painting the flower from life. And that's what I would recommend that you do as well. So looking at my setup, yes, these peonies have definitely seen some better days, but the pink one here still has some pretty decent color going. All of these colors are Sennelier, except for my lights. This one is warm light yellow from Michael Harding, and this one is warm white from Utrecht. But the rest of these are Sennelier. So this one is called greenish umber. It's a really, really dark, cold green. I've got cadmium yellow light, permanent rose, quinacridone magenta, cobalt violet hue. And actually, I lied. This one is not from Sennelier. This is transparent oxide brown from Rembrandt. And that should be all I need for today. If you're interested in learning about some of my other paints that I use for different pinks and peonies, I recommend checking out the tutorial that I have on my learning site. And that one covers three different types of pinks. So lots of good information there. But this is what we're going to use for today. When I'm first starting out on a floral painting, I have to make a few decisions right from the beginning. First, am I going to use a toned canvas or a white canvas? For this one, I'm using a white canvas so that I can dive right in with some of my brightest color from the beginning. The second decision I make relates to that first one. Do I go in first with more neutral colors, like the muted shadow colors I'm seeing in the petals? Or do I start with more vivid hues and knock those down as I go? Well, for today, I'm going bright right off the bat. I'm using my quinacridone magenta and some of my cobalt violet hue, and I'm laying that in, watered down with just a bit of Gamsol to block in my drawing on the white canvas. I'm doing this knowing that it's got to get grayed down eventually once I start adding my lights and my darks. But I'm really treating this bright color as my mid-tone, and I'm also using it to do my drawing. The brush I'm using for this I'm planning to use for the whole painting. It's a Rosemary & Company Pure Sable Series 77 in a size 8, and I'm using it on a linen panel, so I know it's going to go on pretty smooth because the panel's so smooth. I wouldn't normally be able to block in my painting with this soft brush if my canvas had a lot more texture than this, so that's always something to think about or consider when you're choosing your materials. Personally, I like the path of least resistance, meaning I really do want a smoother canvas with less friction between my brush and the surface. So I'm using a soft brush on a smooth canvas, plus it's watered down with solvent, and that makes for some really speedy blocking in as you can see. So now I'm moving right along with some grayed down shadow tones for these petals, and I'm using Transparent Oxide Brown and some Warm Light Yellow because they aren't all the way dark. Normally I try to avoid white in my shadows, but you can really get away with lots of white in flower petals because they're transparent. So I'm grabbing some more Quinacridone Magenta here, and I'm using that to sort of shape these petals, or at least some of the darks within the petals. And then as you can see, I used some of that yellow in the center of the flower, still watered down, mixing with the real thin wash that I put up there initially. I'm using the tip of my brush to shape the edge of each petal and give it sort of that feeling of roundness. Each petal is kind of like a dish, you know, the way it cups and scoops, and so I want it to have a shadow, I want it to have a lighter side, and then the round edges on either side, which I haven't quite gotten to yet, but I'm still shaping it here. And now I'm going for the Greenish Umber and just kind of testing it out on my palette first. I want to see how dark this is on the canvas, and really it looks like it's almost pure black when you start except when you start mixing some other colors in there. But it's nice to put up some really dark darks just to see how much lighter or darker I need to go with my peony. And if I add some of that Cad Yellow in there, I can start getting some nice greens going, or here it's mixing with the reds in my brush, so let's put some yellow in there and see what kind of greens I can get. I want it to be really dark because all of that is in shadow pretty much beneath the flower, and so mostly I'm just using it to shape and draw the outside edges of the petals. I'm not really concerned too much with the vignetting here, but I'll take my paper towel just to knock down some of that texture and glare and make it feel a little bit thinner and more transparent. Fighting with my tape here because I've just got tape holding up the canvas, but that's all right. All right, let's grab some more yellow and go in and just start blocking in the other side of the flower. My brush, I don't have a lot of paint on my brush so I keep having to go back and reload, but just again because it's such a soft brush and the canvas is really soft and smooth, I can get away with that. So this is pretty much just whatever was on my brush, the greenish umber, some of my cadmium yellow, and some of the red that is still just kind of lingering there in the bristles of the brush, and then when you dip it in the Gamsol, you can really get it to a spreadable texture. Makes it really easy to spread around, and of course I can knock that down. You can see the timer on my watch. I can knock that down with paper towel as well. Totally optional. I'm just kind of going by feel and I'm not sure that I'm going to stick with this, but that's what I'm starting with for now. And then I'm laying in a few more darks here for those leaves. Still not entirely set on their placement, but with only 20 minutes, it's like I have to be rather intuitive and just go with the flow. If I don't like it later, I can always move it or change, you know, a little bit here and there, but as I mentioned earlier, what this is really about is making split-second decisions and hopefully making good decisions, and the more you do these, the better you'll get at that. I'm still far from perfect at this, so I can tell you right now I'm not going to be super happy with those leaf shapes, but because of my time constrictions, I have to keep moving. I have to move on. So I'm going to go back into the flower here. I'm adding some white and some warm light yellow into the mix, and I'm going to start blocking in the lights on the petals. Now as soon as you add white to a red, that cools it down. It makes it more of a almost a purple red, but that's what I want for this particular flower because that is what I'm seeing, and that's actually why I chose the the specific reds that I did. So knowing that when I mix white in, it's going to turn into this pinky purple color, that is important to plan ahead on. If your flower happens to be more on the orange spectrum of red, then you're going to want to lean more towards like a cadmium or cadmium pale, or even cadmium orange mixed with white can make can make a really lovely pink, but that is definitely not what I'm going for here. And as I'm doing this, I'm thinking about value first and foremost. Yes, I want to get the color right, but I want to also make sure that I'm not going too light with those lights, because if I do that, it's going to create way too much contrast, and the flower is not going to look real or natural. It's going to look garish, and frankly it's going to look amateurish, so I need to be careful to keep my values really subtle. Now there here you can see that greenish umber really taking over. When you mix it with white, it turns into this lovely cool green, and of course there's still some of that purple on my brush here, but look at that. It's so pretty, and this is one of the things that the photo reference just doesn't tell us. It doesn't tell us about all these cools that are showing up in those middle values that are they're coming into the light, and that is something that I'm seeing just from direct observation. So if you're doubting my choices here, that would be why. It's just not the same as working from life. So we're only about halfway in, and I'm just like going at this guns blazing as fast as I possibly can. Here I'm pulling from my cobalt violet hue to get that darker rounder edge of the petal as it turns away from the light, and it's it looks like a really intense color. So if I add some of my transparent brown, I can sort of knock that down, and then of course quinacridone magenta straight out of the tube is actually quite dark in value. So to get some of those darks and the dark reds furthest into the petals, you can use some of those reds almost straight out of the tube, and if they feel like they're still way too vibrant, tone them down a little bit with some of your earth tones. You know that that's what the transparent oxide brown is there for. It really comes in handy for that. You can also use the greenish umber if some of those shadows tend more towards the cool. Here I'm just using what's left on my brush, but eventually I'll probably want to go in there and knock that red down just a little bit, make it a little bit cooler so that it's not the same as the shadow colors that are directly above it. But these are all, you know, of course decisions I'm having to make split second, really really fast, and they're not always going to be the best decisions, but I'm hoping that the more of these exercises that I do, the better I'll get at this, because eventually, you know, you want to work from being able to speed paint an individual flower to hopefully being able to block in an entire bouquet or an entire still life, and so this is the foundation for that. It's a great way to start. Right here I've got pure white almost, but it's mixing with what's underneath it, so it's not going to end up being entirely pure white, but notice how contrasty that looks compared to the other values that are next to it, and it really is. That to me, when I squinted down at my subject, I was noticing that that was the most contrasty section of the entire thing. Now whether or not I want to keep it that way is yet to be decided, but as I move to the other side of the flower, you know, obviously it's further from the light source, and so I don't want those highlights or lights on that side to be quite as bright as that one, which could end up being, you know, the focal point in this whole thing, so I want to make sure those are not competing. It can be really, really easy to equalize all of your lights, so that's where squinting is just invaluable. Make sure that you're squinting down and comparing one light to another, so as I'm painting these, I'm looking at the other lights surrounding them and comparing, oh, is this one lighter than this one, or is it darker, does it need more red in it, does it need more of the earth tone so that it's less pigmented, what can I do to make it look like what I'm seeing, and that's really what it comes down to. We're just trying to make it look like what we're seeing, so here I put up some earth tone. I'm not sure I like that. I'm going to scrub that out. When that happens, it's better to go back and reload your brush with a color that's more accurate rather than trying to wipe it out or or worse, keep going with the color that you know is wrong, so just be really, really aware of that. Don't let yourself zone out or go in there with brush strokes that are just going over the same mistake over and over again. Catch yourself in that moment and stop and take a split second to be like, wait, was that right, or what can I do to make that better, so it's a mental game almost. You know, painting is so much more than just technical craft. It's a mental game. You're fighting with yourself. You are competing with yourself, and that's what this is all about, so here going back in with some more white mixed with some of that greenish umber again. If you're seeing those cools in one part of the painting, chances are you'll see them in others. Okay, and the great thing about this brush too, you know, besides the fact that it slides along the surface of the canvas really well, is that with a nice soft flat brush, you can use the tip of the brush to get some pretty specific details, so depending on what you're trying to go for there, you know, the corner of the brush is a great part of it, the flat side of the brush, and of course the edge, so lots of things you can do with a soft flat like this. I'm loading on some of those lights. I realized I could take that one a little bit further, and when you're working wet on wet like this, it's so important to keep reloading your brush, because if you don't do that, you are going to find yourself sliding the paint across in a way that it over blends or picks up too much from underneath it, and then you're finding, you know, bare canvas again, so be really, really light with your brush pressure. I know I say this all the time, but with alla prima, it's just so important to have total control over the pressure of your brush, and that's one of those things that's just hard to translate onto camera, but hopefully you can trust me on this and try it for yourself. It's just a little bit of a dance, a flick with the brush to get some of those skinny little petals. The ones that are closer to the middle tend to be real skinny and catch the light, and what a beautiful variety of texture it creates, and that's part of the fun of painting a peony that's been opened like this. You know, I love the stage where they're at, that like melon ball shape, but this is actually my favorite one. They're all the way open, and you get to see the petals and just kind of this chaotic frenzy, and so it's almost like a firework or a starburst of sorts. The central energy is radiating from the middle of the flower and just kind of going out from there, and so that's kind of how I look at this shape overall, and I love that about these peonies. And look at that green I can get with some of the cadmium yellow and the greenish umber and white. I decided that was just a little bit too much, so grabbing some of my earth tones to knock that down again, and I'm just looking all over, you know, squinting at my flower, not squinting at my painting, but looking all over to see, okay, what stands out too much? What do I need to bring back into space? So like this shadow, that edge needs to be a little bit darker there. So there we go, some earth tones to make that shadow edge a little bit darker, make it turn a little bit more, and you'll notice sometimes I do fight with the paint not going exactly where I want it to, so I have to go back and correct it, but that's okay. It's part of the process. So here I talked about this earlier that I might need to go in and cool that shadow down and maybe darken it a little bit more, so that's what I'm doing right now, and that gives it more contrast, makes those lighter petals come forward even more, and just gives it a sense of volume, which is what we want. We want this voluminous looking flower. It's so joyful. You'll notice I've kept some of those initial marks, the quinacridone magenta, pretty much straight out of the tube that I had as my underpainting. I've left some of that alone, and what's happening as I'm going in with color mixtures that have either more white in them or more, just more colors in them, is that that pure pigment really looks even more vivid with these other colors around it, and I think that's important to create that sense of translucency in the petals. So be careful if that's your goal, you know, to have some of that really bright color still showing. Be careful not to cover it all over because once you do, it's really hard to get it back. The reason it works here is because I put it on that white canvas, so pure red or pink to a white canvas is going to be the most intense color that you can possibly get. So here I've pulled in some of that permanent rose. I wasn't really using it too much in the flower, but I decided to add that in the background mixed with some of the umber, the greenish umber, and then some yellow, and it gives it a really nice warm tone to the background, and it makes those purples in the flower pop even more. And you can be real bold with some of these edges. I realize I only have like two minutes left, so I'm just going, just going in hot here, throwing paint up there. This flower is going to end up being more like a gesture drawing than anything, and so as I'm doing this, I don't want all of my edges to be the same. I want some of them to be really hard, like that one along right here. I want some of them to be really soft and have that background sort of melt into them, and then I want others to be lost entirely. I don't know if I'll get to that. It's really one of those things you can do almost after the fact, even after you're not looking at your subject anymore. So if you go back, you know, take a break after this, come back and look at it with a more objective eye, you might say, okay, there's a spot where I could lose an edge, or there's a spot where I could soften or lighten or darken, regardless of how it actually looks in real life. If it's going to help the painting be a better painting, then make that decision. So I decided right here that I didn't really want the bottom of the canvas to be entirely white like that. It just felt too unfinished, and here I am, crazy me, deciding, okay, I'm going to throw in some leaves in the very last minute. I don't know that I like those shapes, so that might be something I change later, but you know, it's one of those like last-ditch efforts at the very end when you're starting to feel the panic a little bit. Why do I do this to myself? I don't know. But here we are, throwing in some pure greenish umber. It looks almost black straight out of the tube like that, but wow, such a nice dark, dark, really rich, and I'll carry some of that over to the bottom of the canvas. I'm just trying to frame it a little bit more, and knowing that I'm out of time, but here we are. So that's it. I hope you guys enjoyed this mad dash of a peony painting, and as always, you know, when you try this for yourself, set a time limit that works for you. 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes, you get to decide. Either way, put in the work, and it's going to pay dividends. So until next time, happy painting.