Detail Painting in Oils Painting a Rural Landscape Brush Techniques and Process

How's it going? Andrew here with another painting video and in this video we're going to be talking about detail techniques. Maybe a little bit too much detail. Now in this video I'm going to carry on with one of the en plein air studies from the last video and I'm going to apply some detail techniques here over that loose base that I achieved working out in the field. I think one of the things that I'm trying to do with my paintings is convey some sense of reality. Whenever we try to do that there's a tendency to try and pour everything we can into the picture. Often there's a line that we cross and I feel I may have crossed it with this painting but it did form an interesting situation where we can talk about some detail techniques and maybe pushing that line a little bit too far. Now I'm going to be continuing with this subject of a barn in a place called Waitahuna in the South Island of New Zealand. I love the different textures and shapes in this structure and I really love this warm light cast by that afternoon sun. Now here's my en plein air study. A far cry from that light that I see in my photographic reference. So I'm going to try and use some of these pictures here to capture some of that character and get it into my original painting. One of the things that I'm really interested in here is that low angle light. So I'm going to try and capture some of these colors with my palette and on this palette I have burnt umber, burnt sienna, yellow oxide, titanium white, cadmium yellow, cadmium red, quinacridone magenta, deoxazine violet, ultramarine blue, cobalt teal, and phthalo green. Now as you would have seen from some of my other videos I have a particular method of working. I always like to start with whatever's furthest away from the viewer and then work my way forward. This is to achieve a sense of depth from the outset and also I find it easier to add saturation to my colors as I bring these layers of depth forward. So here with my sky I'm going to begin with things really loose and blocky working directly over what I had there initially from the en plein air study. I'm using a filbert brush number four. Now I'm using a combination of colors that is pretty simple indeed. The vast majority of this combination though is titanium white. To this I'm adding quinacridone magenta and ultramarine blue, being very careful not to get too much magenta in there and going too purple. I also have plenty of cobalt teal in the mix as well. I just love this low-lying cloud bank that I'm seeing in the photographic reference so I'm trying to get some of this character into the sky region. Now once I'm happy with my sky I turn my attention to those distant hills and here I can see some really interesting character as that low angle light cuts across the forms. So I'm going to begin here with my shadow. Burnt umber and ultramarine blue form the majority of this combination with a little bit of yellow oxide. Now when it comes to getting greens to recede I always start off very slowly. I don't go for my most saturated yellows and greens right off the bat. Rather I mix my greens to be desaturated. This way I can add saturation later in the process. So I'm beginning here as I said with my shadows and I'm going to try to make these a little bit more interesting. Not just one tone or color and bounce maybe a warm green off a cooler one. So for this I'm using cobalt teal in conjunction with yellow oxide. One of them is juxtaposed against the other and I'm getting this rattling effect between warm and cool. I'm using a wide variety of brushes here most of them hog bristle in a variety of shapes. I really love these filberts but I absolutely adore these bristle daggers. I'm going to be talking more about brushes in the next video. Time to bring in some of these highlight areas and again I'm going to be using plenty of titanium white. I'm constantly paying attention to my saturation. It's really difficult with this light angle and this time of day everything has a tendency to become a little bit too intense. So I'm constantly desaturating and for this I'm using plenty of burnt umber in conjunction with ultramarine blue. These two mix together to make a near black and then with the addition of titanium white I can create a gray. So this gray paint I'm using to desaturate some of my combinations to keep some of that intensity out of the background because we're going to want to reserve that for the immediate foreground. Now one of the things I love about these bristle daggers is the versatility of the marks that we can make and here you'll notice I'm using just the ends of bristles of that sharp point to just flick on little bits of paint here and there to communicate these trees catching that late afternoon sunlight. Now there is so much going on within this scene and now that I'm done with the sky and the background hills it's time to focus on the next layer of depth which is going to be these trees here that stand either side of the barn. Now I'm going to be going much darker now for my shadows. The darkness here will allow this zone to creep forward another step and I'm going to begin with my darks in this zone just flicking that color in there to communicate some of the texture of these old pine trees. Once my shadows have gone in I then go on with some highlights. I flick this across the surface. Now I've got a little bit of a darker tone here to bring into the foreground. This phthalo green in conjunction with burnt umber to avoid some of that saturation will make a nice shadow base to then add to. Now I've already got a really good base with my on plane air study but I need to add a little bit to the complexity here. So I'm thinking about my shadows but I'm also thinking a little bit about my highlights. Now I'm not going to go too bright with these highlights because again I want to be able to add that crisp detail over the top and I want those detailed marks to register against the neutral base. So here I'm just trying to provide a little bit more interest and create a nice fragmented painterly surface to layer that nice detail over. For my shadow greens I have a lot of phthalo green in there with ultramarine blue and burnt umber but for the more highlight colors I'm using a little bit of cadmium yellow here. Now I wasn't using much phthalo at all or cadmium in those background layers and that's what's hopefully going to allow these foreground tussocks of grass to come all the way to the front. Now I just love this bristle wedge as I've said because I'm able to knock in these deep highlights and make them quite broad strokes but then with just the ends of the bristles flick on more blades of grass and much finer marks. This is allowing me to create a little bit more texture and a little more interest here in the foreground. Now I've been putting off the barn until now. It's sitting out here in the middle of open space like a bit of an anomaly. Its colors don't match the background or the foreground at all. So now I want to just try and redefine some of those edges that I may have lost and then think a little bit about how I'm going to paint this texture of the structure. One of the first things though that I need to consider is the light that's going to be hitting this barn. In order to have any kind of light dynamic at all we've got to focus really closely on the shadows. Shadows really communicate just as much light as highlights do. So here I want to have a nice cool almost violet shadow for that orange light to be able to react against. Now I'm using an ivory dagger here to get in some of these more angular strokes and a bit more precision for the roof lines. I'm using plenty of ultramarine blue and that deoxazine violet in conjunction with cobalt teal and quinacridone magenta. I'm trying to be careful not to have it go too blue or too purple but just enough to get a little bit of coolness on the side of this barn. I just love the textures that are in this structure. In particular this horizontal wood cladding that's on the side of the barn. This is going to be really interesting to paint. It's not a continuous surface at all. In fact it's made up of many tiny horizontal strokes of various shades. I've got a little bit of cadmium red coming through here with a bit of burnt sienna as well and my darks are mainly ultramarine blue with burnt umber. I'm just going to adjust some of these shadow colors slightly but overall I'm pretty happy with the texture that's coming through and it's starting to fit with the rest of the scene and I'm also noticing that that barn's roof line is starting to stand proud of the background. Now again it takes the highlights and the shadows so I'm focusing just as much on those shadow regions. Now I'm getting a little bit more heat and intensity into the side of this barn but I'm doing it in a way that you might not really expect by painting a bit of cool tone into the side here that a warmer color is going to react against later. Now the rust streaks that are on the front of that cladding are a combination of cadmium red and burnt sienna with a bit of yellow oxide and then I'm just adding a little bit of strokes here and there to just start to add and build to that front surface. We've got a lot of texture that's going to be communicated on this front side of the barn. The edge of the ivory dagger with a little bit of ultramarine blue and burnt umber works really well to communicate the edges of these sheets of corrugated iron as they meet together and cast a little bit of shadow. I also love using these Now in the year 2000 and ever was cyclone Tishler which didn't happen which came across and caused some severe damage to this heritage listed barn. The locals were not in priest. However I felt that a little bit more damage to the side of the structure might provide a little bit more visual interest and add a little bit of something extra to the overall scene. Sometimes you can go overboard with this so I made some repairs on the side of the barn and just opted for one hole in the side of the structure. Now I'm going to focus a little bit of attention to this fence here that resides in the front mid-ground of the scene. Again I'm using a very small bristle dagger to communicate some of the lights and the darks and get just a bit of shape in this fence line. One of the things I noticed though is that the fence in the photographic reference is pretty flat so I've tried to paint a little bit of a curve into it to make it a bit more interesting. And once I have this most of the way knocked in I'm going to focus now on the next pass of detail on the foreground grasses. Now you can see here because I've been holding back with my colors and tones I'm now able to add more saturation. We can overdo it in the beginning so that these marks don't actually register over that initial base. But if I've gone desaturated enough and held back enough then these marks will stand proud of that surface. So here I've got a bit of titanium white, yellow oxide, but most importantly cadmium yellow now coming through into my green mix. There's a fair amount of phthalo green in there as well so I'm trying to balance this out with a little bit of cadmium red. The green and the red are complementary opposites of course so these have the tendency to cancel each other out. The heat in that cadmium red though is really handy and just giving a little bit more of an afternoon glow. Now again with this area here I'm just brushing over the top with titanium white, burnt sienna, and yellow oxide to get the tops of some of these grasses. And the weeds that are growing up through the grasses are going to break this zone up and provide a nice bit of crispy detail to bring right into the foreground. Now I'm just starting to focus on the way the light hits these individual tussocks here in the foreground. With just the end of the bristle dagger I just knock in where that light hits the front and then create somewhat of a shadow on the back side of individual tussocks. Once this is done I can then go at it with a double zero round or an ivory round in this case. I'm focusing on the highlights as well as the shadows again to just create a bit of that texture. Now as I mentioned in the beginning of this video I have the tendency to go overboard when it comes to detail. I just don't know where the line is. Ordinarily I probably wouldn't put this much into a painting because I just feel it's too much information. But once I start it's very difficult to stop. So I've decided to just keep going the whole way with it and see where I ended up with an accumulation of these very fine marks. I'll come back to these grasses again before I call the painting finished. But time to get back to that barn and just add a little bit to the highlight on the front now that that first layer is dry. Here I'm using a double zero ivory round again to clarify and clean up where the edge of the barn is. With a bit of thicker paint here I can also get a bit of that corrugated texture. Notice now how whatever was underneath these new brush strokes is starting to react against the new color that's being deposited over the surface. That difference in tone and color will communicate a little bit of the texture that I'm trying to show here in this structure. I'm not pressing too hard because that would defeat the purpose. Rather I'm just brushing over the top of the texture that was left by the Belgian linen. As the tone gets lighter and lighter I'm noticing that the side of the barn is standing proud of that background. But I've noticed I'm starting to lose some of those edges so I'm going to redefine them again with an ivory round and using a mall stick to steady my hand I'm going to get some of these lines back in there and just define where those edges of corrugated iron are going. This will add a new level of sharpness to it. But I'm not going to stop there. I decided maybe it needed a little bit of that shadow that is in the individual grooves of corrugated iron. Now we're really crossing the line. I'm not too sure what my thought process was here with painting each individual shadow in the side of the barn. It was my hope that it would communicate a little bit more texture but I feel if I had the opportunity to do the painting over again I might go for a little bit more of a sophisticated approach. So now being thoroughly over that part of the painting, not through, just over it, I'm going to carry on with the foreground and get a bit more light here amongst the grasses. Again with a dry surface working directly over the top of it I can lay down some brighter marks. Again always I'm holding back with my tones and colors so that if I want a bright mark to register against a nice diffused surface it will because I've planned ahead. Just a little flick of this titanium white with cadmium yellow and phthalo green will provide a nice little highlight that's catching the front of the blades of grass. It's almost tempting to paint every single blade here. I'm enjoying the differences though in the it's starting to communicate a little bit of this grassy texture. There's only so far I can go with my mark making before I have to stop and reload the brush. So if you're going to attempt this kind of detail make sure that you constantly reload that brush and get a nice accumulation of paint on the end of the bristles to deposit a clean mark. Now I've been neglecting this horse. Time to communicate a little bit of that light that's shining on the back surface. Sometimes you can have the tendency to just focus on the shadow as one shape of dark tone. We need to focus on ambient light that's shining to communicate the form on the back surface. Now this will inevitably lighten the tone overall of the animal so I'm going to try and be careful for this because I do want the horse to come into the foreground ahead of the barn. So whatever highlights and colors are going on the front side of the animal that's catching the sun this has to be more intense and sharper. I'm using a bit of cadmium yellow burnt sienna and cadmium red along with plenty of titanium white and I'm trying to vary that tone in the highlight. Now in this painting we began with that on plein air study made out in the field and then I worked with whatever's furthest away bringing the layers of detail forward to meet the viewer. I build up the complexity of the paint surface layer upon layer sometimes waiting for my layers to dry before I go back and paint over them. There was very little blending that happened in this painting rather it's an accumulation of very fine marks. Whilst it's not normally the way I work I did enjoy some aspects of this technique and it's certainly something that I'll be working more with in the future along with the subject. I really do like this subject. It's got so much interest and character especially in that barn. So I think next time I go to Waitahuna and have the opportunity to paint this again I'll try and focus on this technique and see what else we can do with it. So perhaps I put a little bit too much into this picture. As I said there's a line and sometimes we don't quite know where it is until we've crossed it. My personal philosophy is cross that line. You have to know where that boundary is. Now even though this one went a little bit too far for my liking I did pick up a few interesting things especially when it comes to painting some of these structures which I've never done before. Now in the next video I'm going to carry on with this theme and finish off one of those en plein air studies that I made out in the field. I'm going to focus more though on this loose brushwork that I'm trying to capture and talk a little bit more about detail but implied detail. So that's going to be a lot of fun. Don't miss that one. Now if you like this video then hit that like button for me and if you want to come back for more and see more painting videos just like this one then make sure you subscribe to this channel. Also click that bell icon so you're notified when I upload another video. Also you can follow me on Facebook and Instagram but also most importantly follow me through my website at www.andrewtichler.com Thanks so much for hanging out. I'll see you again next time.