Quick Landscape demonstration - Oil Painting Instruction

So in this video, I'm going to paint this little landscape here, which I did from a AI image that I took, which is in the style of Arthur Streeton, who's my favorite landscape artist. And so I used this source image here to paint the painting from. And if you want to stay tuned at the end of the video, I've got some big updates from Geneva Fine Art Supplies about some new colors and a brush holder being available. But anyway, you might want to listen for that at the end. So I did not pre-mix any colors, as you can see. And it's important that I explain that this is not the method that you would use if you were learning to paint. This is, and I always talk about how my method, and I'm talking about the four workflows that I teach, that is a teaching method. So pre-mixing all your colors is not something that I do in my own work when I'm not doing demos for teaching. But I just thought I'd show you this painting just to kind of show you where this teaching method leads you. And the big thing that my method teaches is the ability to look at colors and have a sense of how to mix those colors on your palette without spending a lot of time. And I did very little measuring. You could see me doing a little bit of it there with a proportion divider. But my source image is the very same scale as my painting. So it's real easy to take measurements. Now, I'm working dark to light, which is something I always basically try to do and teach my students to work dark to light. And I think I'll always work dark to light. And there are some exceptions. In fact, when you see me start to paint the sky in a minute here, you'll see that in this particular painting, there are parts where I didn't work necessarily dark to light. But in general, I work dark to light. And I'm just mixing these colors as I go. And I'm not really, I'm literally just mixing the individual colors that I see. And in fact, in this painting, it's about as loose as I get when it comes to how I work. And a lot of the colors, I won't even mix on the palette. I'm just diving into some red or some yellow or whatever it is and just kind of mixing it on the canvas. But there's a frame of mind that I have when I'm doing something like this. And it's really landscapes especially lend themselves to be just kind of, you just kind of go for it and not worry about verbatim trying to copy the pattern of the trees or the bushes or whatever it is. And so I'm just putting in the basic shapes. And as you can see there, I'm just grabbing red, grabbing yellow, and just letting it mix on the canvas. And this is something that you can do once you understand how to mix colors, which is what my method teaches. So if you want to understand how to mix colors, and it's not just a matter of knowing how to match one color to another, but having a sense of what the value is or whatever so that I can look at something on a canvas and then go to my palette and just mix it on the fly, just kind of like have a real sense about it. But the only way to develop that sense of understanding color is to actually mix and match colors for, I say, at least 20 paintings. And so I recommend, almost as a curriculum, or if I'm teaching somebody, I say paint 20 paintings, following my method to the letter, and no deviation at all. And then when you're done with those 20 paintings, it's time to go off and do whatever you want. You can even do modern art or whatever it is. But in this case, I'm painting a very quick landscape and just kind of mixing the colors as I need them. And you'll notice that in the end, I really didn't mix nearly as many colors as I would have if I would have actually mixed rows of color. And that's because when you're mixing rows of color, as an amateur artist or somebody that's trying to improve your work, have a sense about color, it's really important that you always know what you're doing. What I mean is that, and you'll see this here as I start to mix these blue colors, is there's parts on there where they're very blue, and I decide to go ahead and paint them blue or purple or whatever it is. And then if I don't like it, I know exactly what to do. In the case of purple, add a little yellow. By the way, burnt umber is just dark yellow. It's the easiest way to think about burnt umber. So mixing up some sky colors. And I am doing some checking and comparing on the image. I don't show that because I didn't have a camera set up for it. But for the most part, I'm just kind of winging it and just going with the color and just deciding. And in this case, and when I say this case, meaning painting my own way, if I put something on a canvas and I decide I don't like the color, I can easily adjust it on the fly. But again, that's because I understand how to mix colors instinctively almost. Now, here's a case of where I'm going backwards. In other words, I'm painting in this sky color. And in order to see what I'm doing, I need to put in the lightest part of the sky because that part of the sky that I just painted is actually the shadow, meaning it's the mountains. It's not the clouds. But when you look at it, before I put in some light sky color like I'm about to do, that looks like sky. It doesn't look like a mountain in the distance. And so I'm going ahead and putting in this light part of the sky just so that my brain can understand what it's looking at. So putting in the lightest part of the sky even before I finish the dark mountains just so that I know what the heck I'm looking at. Because otherwise, it's very confusing. When you look at something that's supposed to be the darker part of what you're painting and it's on that dark stain, it looks like a highlight. It doesn't look like a shadow. But now that I've put in that light sky, you can start to visualize it as a mountain. So that's why I kind of didn't paint dark to light perfectly. I went ahead and put in that sky so I could see what I'm looking at. So as you'll notice, I'm just taking that. If I want some orange, I just go grab it and just work it right into what I'm doing here. Always trying to maintain an abstract brushwork. And abstract is just not a perfect pattern. And it's real easy, no matter what you're doing, to put in more of a pattern than is actually there. So I'm just kind of creating somewhat of a mess on the canvas there, leaving it abstract. And then now I'm starting to work in some of those darks. So I'm showing most of this. This video is almost 30 minutes long. But it actually took me when I, and this is just because I had the cameras on, I was able to understand how much time I was actually painting. And so this one actually only took me about an hour and 15 or 20 minutes to paint the whole painting. And that's about as quick as I get. This palette is actually the new Geneva palette. We have replaced the Pyro Rubine with Permanent Alizarin. And that's what you see on my palette right there. These cameras tend to lighten up the colors a little bit so that Alizarin is actually darker than it looks on my palette. I don't know what it is with these cameras, but reds especially, they always look lighter. But in person, that's a blood red. It's a little bit darker than it looks there. Just laying in these colors. And the general rule when you're painting a landscape is the further things are in the distance, the more they approach the sky color. So if you have something that's even, say, twice as far away, a mountain that was twice as far away as it is in this image, it actually almost you can't even see it because it just almost becomes the color of the sky. So basically, things in the foreground can be black, black, black. But anything beyond 100 yards or whatever will start to get some milkiness into it. And the further you go, the more milk there is in your paint. The more close it approaches basically the sky color, whatever the sky is. And that's because you have that much atmosphere between you, your eyes, and the far distance. And that whatever it is, not fog in the air, but just there's always something in the air. It's very rarely crystal clear. So as it goes in the distance, you start to see more and more sky. So you'll notice when I'm painting, I try not to. I do it often, but I'll put in a pattern that's pretty simple, like those greenish yellow spots there in the middle. But I'll come back and mess that up and abstract it up some. But learning to paint with an abstract stroke is something that you really have to work at. And it's something I did a lot of in the beginning. So here I'm painting absolutely pure color. And knowing that I'm going to come back in with some blues or whatever and dirty that up, it's real easy to make a color more dirty. But I was kind of inspired by this source image. Oh, by the way, this source image, I didn't tell you, it was created in Midjourney by AI. And in my prompt, I said in the style of Arthur Streeton, who's my favorite landscape artist from Australia. And this particular version of Midjourney does an incredible job at reproducing Arthur Streeton paintings. And interestingly enough, I think this was version 5.1, which is now going on three years old. And it did an amazing job at doing Arthur Streeton style landscapes. And the newer versions of the Midjourney just are horrible, don't do a very good job. Although I haven't tried the very latest one. But anyway, I'm not trying to copy this source image exactly, as you can tell. I'm just kind of doing my own thing. But for the most part, I'm using the composition that it gives me. And it's a lot of fun to paint like this. When I used to do portraits, I would do landscapes like this all the time. Because when I was painting portraits, it was just so much work, so much detail. I was painting pretty highly realistic portraits. You have to have everything exactly right, especially if you want to get a likeness in the person's face. But with a landscape, you can just get away with anything almost. But you do want your values, in general, to be in line. And you also want to always, I mean, if I were to put something dark, like a black or almost black, off in the distance, it just would not fit in at all. So it's important that you, anything beyond so many feet or miles or whatever in your landscape can only get so dark. So those little purple spots running across the middle there, which is going to represent some trees or bushes or whatever, those spots are not black. But that's kind of what black would look like at that distance. So that would be like if those were big trees and you looked at the shadow of those trees in the foreground, that would be black. But at that distance, which is a half mile or whatever, it's quite a bit lighter than black. So this sky is pretty light. And I think I might have darkened it ever so slightly. It was a little bit overexposed, I thought. But it was interesting because when I was painting this painting, I remember I had my cameras running, and I was just sitting in my chair. And I actually let this painting dry. I kind of covered the canvas with paint, and then I put it in a hot box and let it dry, kept my colors in the fridge, and then pulled it back out and did a second layer, which you'll see later. But I'm still working wet and wet on this first layer. And when I painted this, I was not happy with it at all. I was just kind of going for it, not really thinking about whether it was turning out well or not. I thought I'd just get the canvas covered. And I really, really thought it was maybe a big failure. And it wasn't until I turned off my cameras and got back from 10 feet away that I decided, oh, this actually might work. And so I got more excited about getting it finished. And actually, when I first started, I wasn't planning on letting it dry and then painting more. But then I just started realizing that a lot of the work that I wanted to do was going to be a lot easier to do if I let this first layer dry. Painting wet on dry is great, but you just got to know how to do it, especially in landscapes. It's really nice. It's just a lot of fun to go in on top of this dry painting. And it's also, you definitely want to, if you can, keep your palette wet. Not only will it save you a lot of money on paint, but it's just wonderful to have all those colors. So when I got this covered, now you can see I'm oiling it out. So now it's dry. I had let it dry for several days in a really warm area. You can put it in the trunk of your car out in the sun or wherever. But I put it in. I've got a really warm spot that I dry paintings in. And then I kept my palette in the fridge. And now this is all wet on dry, which this painting really lent itself to do that. It's real easy to kind of overdo it. And you don't want to go in and just repaint the whole thing. And the nice thing about when you're painting wet on dry, it's easier to leave a little texture on the surface. And that's a little bit harder to do when it's all wet and wet. But I noticed after I had finished it, there's the foreground as it goes further and further in the difference. There's like four sections here, the foreground, which is right in the bottom, and then the area right kind of in the middle that's real yellow. Then you have the next part of the landscape, not the mountains, but before the mountains. And then you have the mountains. This is where you've got to be really abstract. You've got to be careful because it's so easy to start to put in a pattern. But boy, this was a lot easier to do when it was wet on dry. Like here, if I was putting in these dark spots and it was all wet, all this black would get all milky. One of the things about black is that it's 50% blue. So burnt umber is about half of it, and then ultramarine is the other half of black. But when you have all that blue in there, and you put black on top of some wet paint, any white that's in your painting will just turn to gray. You get all these grays. So a lot of times people say, oh, my colors are milky or my colors are washed out or whatever it is. And a lot of that is because black is mixing with some color and just creating these very boring colorless grays. Now, here's where wet on dry really shines. You can see me putting in these delicate branches and trees off in the distance. And that would be so much more difficult if it was wet and wet. So I'm just trying to abstract up this foreground. I'm not happy with it. But it'd be so easy to fix if I decide I want to change something. And you'll see me even taking my fingers and smudging things up. You can also take out a cloth and just wipe it off and repaint. Now, I did oil this out. And I have a whole video on how to oil it out. Just type into YouTube search, draw, mix, paint. Three words, not like a website, but draw, mix, paint. And then whatever you're looking for. In this case, oil it out. Draw, mix, paint, oil out. And it'll show you the video on how I apply oil. The reason I oil out the painting before I do the second layer is because the, see there, I'm using my fingers. You can't do that in wet. Well, you can do it in wet and wet. But it works a lot better. But the reason I oil out paintings is because as they dry, the dark areas especially will become matte and flat. And you can't really see what you're looking at. So I probably could have got away without oiling this out. You don't have to do it. But there were some dark spots that had sort of turned gray as the paint dried. And I want to be able to see what I'm looking at. When you oil out a painting, it does exactly what varnishing does. It brings everything back to the high gloss where you can see your values and your colors. And the only reason that you use varnish to finish a painting is when you oil out a painting, it will eventually get flat again. But you've got at least a couple of weeks where you can work on it. And you never want to varnish a painting instead of oiling it out because you don't want to paint. You never, ever, ever paint on top of varnish with oil paint. See, that was too much like dot, dot, dot, dot, or stroke, stroke, stroke, like with a little space between. I'll try to break up that pattern. So yeah, again, if you want to learn how to paint, don't follow me in this video. In the description of this video, if you expand the description out, you will see links to my main videos on how to paint in oil. And there's three of them. There's how to do your penciling, how to do your color mixing, create your rows of color, and then how to apply the paint to the canvas. And it is a teaching method. This video is really just to show you where this can lead you. Once you do enough color mixing and you paint enough paintings using the method, you will eventually be able to just have an instinct for how to mix colors. That's what it's all about. So I've got to be real careful here. I don't want to make those areas too dark. Those purples that I'm putting in, got to make sure that they don't get too dark, especially in the far distance. And that's why I'm going over that in the far distance. Because if anything gets too dark, it'll just look completely out of place. A few little touch-ups. I don't even remember what I was trying to do here. I finished this painting about a month ago. Well, maybe not quite. But I finally got a chance to edit it into this video. And again, I wasn't trying to copy the source image. As you can see, the difference there. And I never like my paintings as much as the source image. But I believe that's from the artist's curse. I'm not sure. You guys can comment and tell me what you think. But basically, many people have told me they like my painting more than the source image in some of the ones I've done in the past. So I'm not to be a judge. But anyway, there it is. Here's the finished painting. Put my signature on it. So we have some big updates at Geneva Fine Art Supplies. We are now selling brush holders again. We've had a lot of requests for that. But we finally have that back in production. And they've never been made better. We also have Sap Green coming out in one week. And Sap Green is a very dark, rich green that you cannot mix with the Essential palette. We're also going to be adding Permanent Illusion Crimson to our Essential palette. And so these are the five colors that I recommend. And before, we had Pyrrole Rubine as our red, which is still a great red. And we're going to continue to sell that. But I have a slight preference for the Permanent Illusion Crimson. And so we've decided to swap out Pyrrole Rubine for the Permanent Illusion in our Essential palette. Easels are now, again, for sale, made to order. So go check that out. And also, one last thing, we're going to be introducing Phthalo Green in about 30 days. So a lot of updates at Geneva Fine Art. Go check that out. And if you're interested in taking private classes from me here in Austin or online, email me mark at drawmixpaint.com and I'll send you information about my classes. Thank you again for watching. And we'll see you in the next one.