Painting Tutorial How to Paint Feathers Verdaccio Technique

Hey, I got a joke for you. Why did the artist decide to paint chickens? Because. Ha ha. All right seriously though. Here in this video I've got some exciting techniques to share with you. We're going to start things off with a Verdaccio and here I'm painting on a 16 by 20 inch homemade linen stretcher. Now this linen has been adhered to a board. It's a fixed support and here I'm using phthalo green and transparent red oxide. You might have seen this in a recent live stream. I went ahead and finished off the painting. We've cut together this YouTube version for you. So all I'm using are two colors phthalo green transparent red oxide and I'm cutting this down with a little bit of liquid original medium. Now more and more with my paintings I'm playing with colored grounds. I'm trying to establish an overall value dynamic. So I really want to go for a sense of light and dark and get that color down all in the same pass. Now I did apply a light imprimatura so an initial colored ground. It's just a scant amount of raw umber. But one thing I love about this technique is applying that phthalo green transparent red oxide for those darks and then wiping away for those highlights. You can also just apply the color very very lightly and it will appear lighter tonally. So we want to go for a nice sense of light and dark. Again for a little bit more breakdown of the process check out that live stream which you'll find on my channel here on YouTube. But we have cut together a full studio demonstration on the academy which comes in two parts if you want to take things a little bit further. Click that link down below and check out Tisch Academy. Now with the phthalo green and transparent red oxide red and green sit opposite one another on the color wheel. But these are really interesting when combined. The red and green cancel each other out and it forms a beautiful olivey color when mixed at 50 50. Now the phthalo is incredibly pungent as you may know. It goes around knocking the crap out of the other colors that are on your palette. A little bit goes a really long way. But I found that this was a nice mix for some of the colors in the Jungle Fowl's red cape as well as that comb that sits atop the head. Now the trick here with this underpainting is to apply the paint thinly. So I've been using a series of flats. These are ivory flats made by Rosemary and Co. If you want to check out the materials that I use click those links down below. Get your hands on some Rosemary and Co brushes and some Blue Ridge handmade oil colors. Now I did have some really good reference material when I visited Rarotonga a few years ago. And these Jungle Fowl really captured my imagination. Been wanting to paint them for some time. I don't just paint exactly what I'm seeing in the photo. What I tend to do is I recompose and create a design that hopefully tells a story. I love the family dynamic here that's starting to happen with the two hens and a whole bunch of chicks with that proud rooster there in the background. Now you can see here I'm using a little bit of paper towel to wipe away some of that paint and control some of my values. And I'm able to control those edges pretty well with those ivory flat brushes. Now as I mentioned I'm using Liquin Original in my process here. This is an alkyd resin. I use no more than one part medium to three parts paint. This gives me just the amount of flow that I need. But I know that this surface is going to go dry after about 12 to 24 hours allowing for some rapid layering techniques. My intention is to come back here and layer in some detail right over the top of this thin verdaccio. Naturally if I use a little more transparent red oxide it gives that heat that flush of warmth in some of the feathers on my hens and my rooster. Now using Gamsol and a clean flat synthetic brush I can remove some of this pigment and wipe away the excess with a paper towel giving indications of not only feathers and highlights but that jungle foliage just behind our jungle fowl. Now what would jungle fowl be without jungle foliage? I really loved the dynamic of the colors that I was seeing in the reference material and how those reds interacted beautifully with the deep lush greens. Using some smaller flats I can get some crisp edge work and start to delineate between individual feathers where appropriate. Now you might not have seen a subject like this from me in quite some time. I mean why paint chickens? I think as an artist you should only be bound by your own personal interests and hey I love this as a subject. That's exactly why I'm painting it. My recommendation for any new and upcoming artists is just paint what interests you. Don't worry what the crowd wants, what your even your viewers want to see, but paint only based on your own authentic interest. If you think there's a subject there then just go full send and attack that subject. Get into it and see where it takes you. I enjoy painting things other than landscapes every now and again. It gives me a chance to explore some other ideas and expand my techniques and my thinking to broaden my horizons artistically. And you never know you might just unlock something with a different subject. Something that you can apply to your normal studio work. Now I wanted to take some different rosemary and co brushes for a spin. Here I'm using some eclipse combers. I was thinking they might give me a little more of a painterly quality with the foliage. I wanted to also just get lost in the brushwork in this painting and not have everything be so tight and detailed. As you can see I'm using quite a bit of color here as I try and find the exact mixes to create some of that unique plumage. I think a lot about color while I'm painting and how I can use color to strengthen the composition and what interesting colors I can mix on that palette to create something more engaging and impactful. There's a dynamic going on here just like with our verdaccio. I'm using the transparent red oxide and the phthalo green. I'm going to be playing red and green off against one another continually. As we know these are complementary opposites. What I loved was the cool saturated greens of that background and how they clashed resonated with some of the intense saturated reds like here in the comb of the jungle fowl. Now it's been a long time since I've painted feathers. I was a little unsure as to the approach but here what I wanted to do was get some sense of detail but at the same time have the painting appear painterly. I want to be able to see those brush strokes so when you walk up on the painting it appears to fall apart but from a distance hopefully it looks real. Now I was using these extra short synthetic filbert brushes. They were perfect for some of those feather details. I just go one feather at a time and blend and obscure some of those edges as I deposit the paint. Creating a sense of light can be achieved by adhering to a simple rule. Thick highlights, thin shadows. There's a lot of thickness here and some of the brighter marks that I'm making not only to the comb but to the back of the cape of my red jungle fowl. I use plenty of synthetic pointed rounds. The ivory rigger is my favorite. I also use a double zero pointed round for some details for the face. Now shout out to Sarah from the academy who gave me a really interesting idea for mixing a blue. Turns out if you mix phthalo green with a little bit of quinacridone magenta you can achieve a beautiful iridescent blue and that's what I've used in some of these tail feathers. I try to think about the shape of the brush and how it can mold to form the shape and orientation of individual feathers. These flat synthetic eclipse brushes have worked really well for achieving that dynamic. I have several brushes on the go as I progress with my painting. This helps keep cleaner mark making. I've got a few brushes for those reds and browns that we're seeing in the cape and also for some of the darker feathers. I bring things up to a particular point and then move on knowing that I'm going to come back after that layer is dried and apply yet another layer of detail. Now I'm going to admit I kind of struggled with the grass because lawn and grass is not something I paint often especially not like this. Whilst in my reference this is a mowed lawn that's just not very interesting to paint so I tried to break up the pattern where I could. One thing that helped was having some sense of gradient spotlight effect as if we're looking at these chickens that are illuminated by the sun gently filtering through the trees above. I needed to adhere to that gradient so the light gets more intense towards the base of the chickens and there's a gentle fall-off with that light to the left and the right. One thing that helps me carefully control those tonal values is lead white. It's also incidentally a pigment that I used a bunch in the feathers. You can see here how I'm working over the top of that verdaccio creating those crisp and clean edges. I'll apply a few feathers and then mark between these with some darks applied with a flat brush. Now even though I don't have the exact pattern that I'm seeing in my reference I felt an indication would be okay but what I really loved was that rounded form of this hen's back as we went from highlight into shadow and the light was reflecting off feathers in interesting ways. Flatly lighting the face towards the top of the back and then just catching those crisp edges as the form rounds and turns towards us. Once I've got my feathers down I add that central quill to just a few feathers here and there. Now there are four things that I talk about continually in my extended academy videos. These are the fundamentals of representational painting in my opinion and they form a hierarchy. A kind of list of considerations. Things that I'm juggling in order to achieve realism. That is line and shape. The drawing must be sound. This is where all painting starts with all of those linear components. From here I consider value carefully. How light and how dark certain things are. Now I would think that contrast would be a consideration of value and so I'm looking for a dynamic within my paintings of light against dark and dark against light. Continually interrupting the pattern and creating visual interest. The third component on my list is color and there's so much that we could talk about with the color but I'm thinking about areas that need to be muted and desaturated. That is to say chromatically not as intense and some areas that have bright punchy color. And finally edge. The way one edge meets another. So that's all I have on my list and that's all the things that I'm juggling and thinking about when it comes to painting realism. That said this isn't photo realism per se. At the end of the day I still want it to look like a painting. Finding that balance is a little bit tricky. Especially if you're out of your comfort zone and trying a new project such as this. Now it's been a few years since I've been to Rarotonga. I had gone once as a young boy but I went back recently with my family and I gotta say the landscape was mind-blind. But there was a quiet moment in the garden where I saw these jungle fowl just milling around doing their thing pecking at the grass and I thought wow what a phenomenal subject for a painting. That thought is all the encouragement I need to get into a painting project. Again just being limited by your own interest. So just a little tip keep that underpainting as thin as possible because strategically slowly but surely we're going to build that texture up. If I went with any textured paint application at the early stage and let's say I decided to move something then I'd have to overcome paint over all of that heavy texture. It's always going to show through unless you scrape your painting down and sand it back. It could be a problem down the track. So once I know exactly the location of some of the elements in my painting like the beak for instance and highlights that are going to show up prominently along that lead edge catching the sun then I'll just apply a little bit more paint. And it's interesting these zero pointed rounds can work really well for applying a little bit of texture. Now here we're just applying reflected light and so I'll still keep this area that's in shadow nice and thin along with this leg here of our rooster. Just applying it with a series of short sharp chisel like marks given by a synthetic flat. Often with my landscape work I'm quite formulaic. I like to work with the distance and bring the painting forward. I didn't really do that though with this painting of the chickens. I kind of bounced around from element to element. As things would catch my eye I would just go ahead and detail that area. Then I'd move on to another spot in the painting as my interest and attention span diminished. With these tail feathers I had to build them up with a series of marks thinking strategically. If I tried to go too far with a brush load of paint and thin out that paint too much then I could have ended up blending. And there is a little bit of blending across those edges but for the most part I'm applying only a few strokes per brush load of paint. This is helping me create some cleaner color and some broken marks. Preserving those areas of highlight reflecting that iridescence. I'm also thinking about moving in the same direction that the feather is growing from that central quill and working back into this with some more saturated notes of phthalo blue along with that quinacridone magenta phthalo green combination. There were so many techniques that I was working on in this painting project. And as I mentioned at the start of this video we've got a full version waiting for you right now over on Tisch Academy. So if you want to have a go at painting this or something similar then click that link down below. You'll not only get access to this demonstration but over 450 hours of premium painting content. Not to mention access to the exclusive community, weekly live streams and a whole lot more. So jump in and get started today and see that dramatic improvement in your painting. Well there you have it. There's my Red Jungle Fowl of Rarotonga. I hope you've enjoyed this video as much as I've enjoyed your company. Thanks for joining me and I'll see you again in the next one.