How To Paint a Boat on the Sand Part 1. Easy Oil Painting Tutorials

hello everyone welcome back to a new tutorial i hope you are keeping very well out there um we have a nice tutorial for you today it's a beautiful scene of a kind of a sunset with a boat on a beach a boat is kind of stuck on the sand and beautiful sunset sky coming down uh from the sand up so really nice really nice photograph and the boat going at an angle and i think you learn a lot from this i will simplify it i'll keep it simple for you but you will learn quite a bit in this sky most of this painting is sky um i don't know if you can see i have masking tape across here about About a fifth of the way up. So most of this canvas will be just the sky. So you will learn a nice little bit about skies, about mixing colours and about avoiding greens. So we're going to be mixing yellows with blues and trying to avoid any greens. So it could be tricky, but I'll teach you how to do it in a simple way. So I hope you enjoy this video and this lesson. Do subscribe if you haven't done so already. Please do subscribe, you're missing so much. I have my colours laid out. I'm using a 20x16 canvas upright. It's just a canvas board. A simple canvas board will do absolutely fine. I have a cup of coffee. A cup of coffee. Let's have a bit of fun with this painting and see what we can do. Let's see if we can create something nice. Don't go anywhere, I'll be right back. Okay, my friends, this is it. Here is the canvas, here's my palette. I'll tell you what colours I have. Titanium White, Naples Yellow, Magenta, Cadmium Yellow, Burnt Sienna, Phthalo Blue, Lamp Black and a little Cadmium Red. Cadmium Red. Now what I'm going to do is the first step I'm going to do, I'm going to just cover this entire sky with linseed oil. Now there's the reference photograph. Isn't that lovely? It looks complicated, you know, but we're going to have a bit of fun with the sky. We'll worry about the boat last. We'll just imagine the boat is not even there. Let's just concentrate on the sky. I'm going to take some linseed oil and a little bit of tissue paper, okay, or cloth, anything you have. And I'm going to cover that sky with a layer of linseed oil. That's the key to getting nice, soft skies. A little thin layer is all we need. Let's put plenty of this on now. Don't be shy. It was very warm all week in the studio I couldn't do much really it was just too hot outside Let's see what we've got here. and the problem is if I put on fans to cool me down in the studio it creates a lot of background noise so it's just not practical that's why I have to wait until very early morning to get the tutorials done. We're having a bit of a heat wave over here in Ireland at the moment but for us it's a heat wave for most people it's probably not. but we're not used to this kind of heat at all it's been up in the 20s for the past two weeks maybe three weeks and we're just not used to this kind of heat you know what i mean and it just becomes frustrating when we can't paint in the studio it's just too hot so let's just put this all the way around a nice thin layer of linseed oil you can use liquid clear if you like as well absolutely i haven't used liquid clear for years i just find it a little bit too oily too wet I find the linseed oil just gives it just enough slippery, you know what I mean, to help the paint move around. It's just enough, it's not too much. So that's it. I've got a nice thin layer on there now. Let's go straight into painting. I'm going to start with, I'm going to start with a nice blue up here and I'm going to keep these warm. I'm going to go for a warm side of blue. All right, so a mauvey kind of a blue. Let's just dampen my brush now and dry it. I'm using a large brush, Any lounge brush will have soft bristle, okay? Let's take phthalo blue and we need to mix a nice bit of this now so a tiny bit of thinner just to thin it slightly. Some white, a little touch of magenta. I'm going for a deep, a deep purpley blue up in the top corner so I'm using the white really just to thicken it as a kind of a base just to thicken the paint to make it nice and thick and chalky. It's not to tint it to make it brighter or anything like that, it's purely just to thicken the paint. Because if you use Phthalo Blue on its own, and Magenta on its own, it'll be very transparent. It won't cover the canvas very well. So I'm using the white just as a filler, basically. Now keep taking some phthalo blue and magenta as you need just keep going and going until you get darker and darker and darker. That white just helps keep it nice and thick and I'm taking a touch of black in there as well but I'm pulling plenty of magenta so I want it and darkish and that's probably still even too bright. Now that looks brighter because as the camera goes up The lights in the studio are reflecting down on top of the canvas, on the top part of the canvas, so it's creating a bit of a sheen. So you can see the difference, okay? That might be a little tricky. I don't know if I can lift the board forward for you a little bit. You can see that kind of helps a little bit, doesn't it? So maybe around there. Now the angle might be slightly off on the canvas, but I think you can see the shade a little bit better, can't you? So let's get more black and a bit more blue. I'm going to go nice and thick with this now, nice and rich, a deep purpley blue, very, very dark, very rich, just a little bit too much, a little bit more magenta in there, and the oil is really helping, you see how the oil, it just gives you that lovely base, and the colours just float around really nicely, that's why I love using oil in a painting like this, with a big sky, it just makes life so, so much easier, it really does. If I was painting this on just a normal dry canvas, I would be dragging the paint and dragging the brush constantly, trying to cover the canvas. But the little bit of oil, it just makes life easier. That's all it's about. It's about just making life that little bit easier when you're painting. That's all it is. Now, I'm going to start making it a bit warmer as it kind of comes down. So, a bit more of the magenta going into the mix. I'll stop around there now and I'm going to make it warmer as it comes across as well and we could also add a touch of cadmium red with the magenta as well and maybe a hint of white so you can see we're going into a more of a warmer pinky mauve all right so I'll pop that layer just across where they meet and again and add in little touches of thinners just to thin the paint ever so slightly that's all I want to do now we do have a beautiful kind of a rich blue don't we coming up here it's a very kind of it's almost like a greeny blue a turquoisey blue coming up i like that i'd like to get it in um but i want to be careful i don't want to make the painting too greeny blue if you know what i mean so i'm just going to go into some phthalo blue i'll take the tiniest touch of cadmium yellow then a little white but i do want this a very bright very bright bright blue okay a rich vibrant kind of a blue. Let's take a look at that. That's not bad is it? I think I'll go with that. Let's pop that in and as it comes down a bit more white, a bit more blue. So you can see the process now it's just adding bands of colour as you go along. I'm going to soften these in together where they meet. Just flick the brush left and right just to get them nice and soft. As it comes up I'm going to start adding more Phthalo Blue on its own. Let me grab some phthalo blue. I need to purchase another tube of this. It's going down very quickly but this is such a strong color it will last you for months and months probably. Let's get more phthalo into that as it comes up. Goes into a rich blue up here doesn't it. Look let's try it and see. When you soften those backing together just make it all nice and soft. Take a bit of white perhaps a little bit more blue and another touch of cadmium yellow. So lovely kind of a turquoise blue. It's more blue now than turquoise but the tiny touch of yellow it just warms it up slightly doesn't it. It gives it that kind of tropical feel. I'm going to stop there because this is very important this next step. Okay I'm just going to soften all of these together. Let me get a soft brush. I'm going to take a soft brush okay a blender brush and this one is old. I have a new one here look a simple makeup brush. I'm going to soften, just soften the brush strokes away. Nice and soft and gentle. You can kind of leave a little bit of the direction from the brush strokes in there if you like. I think it kind of looks quite nice doesn't it. It doesn't have to be completely flat really. Some people like having the brush strokes on there a little bit. I think I will just leave a little bit of it there. Look just the tiniest bit. And now we're moving on to kind of pinks down here and yellows. And this is what I wanted to show you. This is to probably the most important part of this painting. We're going from blues down into yellows. What you don't want is any greens and that's the worry. I don't want any greens so I'm cleaning this brush now very well. I'm getting all the blue out of the brush as much as possible. You can just switch to a different brush if you like but I kind of quite like using this brush now at the moment. It's quite nice so I'm going to continue on with this brush. It's relatively clean. We have yellows down here so I want to put a band of pink across between the two of them okay. I'm going to take some white magenta maybe a touch of naples yellow and let's see it's a very soft pink. You could use cadmium red as well with white and you see this kind of pinky shade. I'm going to just put a nice soft pink across where they meet first. So let's try magenta cadmium red. Little touch of white and let's just squeeze a nice little bit of pink in through that blue look. You can soften them together. Now on the photograph it goes from a blue directly into a yellow doesn't it? But there is a slight hint of a soft pink in between. If you just kind of stop for a moment and take a look you'll see there's a very soft pink just in between the two So, again, Cause I'm red. A little Naples Yellow just warms it up slightly. And as you come down then, as you start coming down with the pink, you start adding a little bit more Naples yellow as you come down more and more. So let's take more Naples yellow and a touch of magenta. So now you can see it's going into more of a yellowy, peachy sort of a shade. So we then soften those in. You can add some white now as well. You can add a little bit of thinners if you like as well, just to help it flow a little bit better. But you can see now how we're avoiding They're going to be kind of green. hues in the painting by adding this layer in between and you can kind of filter and filter them into each other then you see so i'm grabbing some of the blue and bringing it down and i'm grabbing some of the yellow and i'm kind of bringing it up into the blue as well so you're just sort of creating a nice soft transition between the two and i'm giving it a slight angle as well. It just gives the sky a bit of character, doesn't it? So now I'm going to start, I'm going to put a nice warm pink down the bottom down here. So a Naples yellow, touch of cadmium red. That gives you a warm peachy, you see that? Kind of a peachy shade down here, across the bottom. I'll stop around there, and I've just picked up a bit of yellow by accident there. My brush touched the yellow, so I'll just soften it back out. Sometimes a happy accident can make all the difference. Then we go into some rich yellows. Let's go into some cadmium yellow and A tiny tiny touch of magenta, the tiniest touch that gives you just sort of a rich dull kind of yellow, almost like an orangey yellow. A bit more, you just keep adding it as we need until you're happy with the mix. Okay, soften that across there. Then we come up, perhaps a touch of cadmium red, that would almost suggest some clouds couldn't it, off in the distance look. Now I am going to add a touch of burnt sienna into the yellow as well. And I want to create these little wispy clouds coming up from below. Alright, and then they kind of level out and they disappear. It's just a little nice touch of that warm, orangey, browny kind of a yellow just up in the sky. Very, very subtle, but I think they create a lovely effect, don't they? It's just simple. And let's just leave that taper off. Okay, I'll give my brush. I keep cleaning my brush in between each of these. And that's very important, to keep cleaning your brush. And. keep using fresh clean tissue because at the moment you can see my tissue has a lot of blue doesn't it and when i start cleaning yellows on this i'm going to go green starting to go green already look so i'm just going to change the tissue put down a nice fresh piece of tissue paper there for yourself and let's go into some cadmium yellow and white and let's get a nice whitey nice whitey yellow down here now first i'm just going to soften that across into some of these Let's soften it down. Then I'm going to clean my brush again on the clean tissue then go right into some white on its own and let's just put pure white in there nice and thick look nice and thick and then mix that white up into the pink overhead so it almost just disappears look just leave it disappear there and the trick is just that you can tell where the white where the yellow stops and the pink begins so it's nice and bright nice and white and you can kind of see drag it across them in between some of those clouds as well. to add some more brightness it's giving the impression of clouds way off in the distance isn't it very very bright and you know you can leave it at that if you like if you're happy with that you'll leave it at that i'm just going to go up here and just create one or two little dabs of cloud very bright white cloud and i am going to just very quickly deepen the color down at the bottom i'm going to take some cadmium yellow and some burnt sienna and i just want to darken ever so slightly just down along the bottom of the horizon line and that gives you A lovely effect there so cadmium yellow and burnt sienna gives you this beautiful rich browny orangey kind of a yellow it's really it's a lovely color really is and then you can kind of add little touches of red perhaps into it as well that just gives it a nice base it separates it from the sand nicely and it just gives you a really nice horizon you see just be nice and gentle with your brush and there we are now i will add a touch of pink over on this side Just to vary the colour ever so slightly that's the only reason just to vary the colour rather than having just the same colour all the way across you could just maybe add a little bit of pink to one side just to you know capture the eye and all that kind of thing to make it slightly different on one side and I'm going to call that finish up to now then we have these lovely pink clouds coming up here and this this is where it might get tricky okay you don't want any Greens. So we're going to be trying to put pinks up here what i would suggest is if we try and put pinks on top of this it's going to mix into that blue very quickly isn't it so what i might do and i'm only trying this now i don't know if this will work i might take a bit of tissue and dampen this with some thinners okay tiny bit of thinners i might try and scrape off some of the blue where i think the pink clouds are coming so i think that might help what do you think I think it might make a bit of a difference just to clean the canvas a little bit for us, doesn't it? And then it goes up like that. So this might be a nice base for us to work on. What do you think? I just think it might help if we have a bit of a white canvas there, it might help us get that colour a bit easier, wouldn't it? And that's one way of helping yourself along because you could be hours trying to cover this with pink and the paint will just It'll just constantly mix together over and over again. And it'll just make. Life, very, very difficult, won't it? So at least now we have some of the paint off, don't we? And let's just fill her out. So at least now we have something to work on, don't we? I think that's a big help. So I'll clean this brush. I need to get the yellow out of this brush completely. You might be better off just switching to a different brush, if you like. But the most important thing with all of this is to have a clean brush. And this needs to be nice and dry. And we can also use a palette knife as well if you like. Let's start. Okay this is probably the most trickiest part of this painting and this is probably the most eye-catching part as well so let's do it nice and just take our time. A bit of pink and a bit of white. So I'm using magenta, white and a touch of maple yellow just to warm the pink okay. I don't want it too pink. Just the tiniest touch of yellow, of Naples yellow, but not too much. It's still more on the pinky side of the colour. OK, you see that? It's more pink. And let's just go and dab. I don't want to go into the blue too much just yet, OK? Now, you see as it comes down, it kind of flicks out, doesn't it? I'm just going to allow the brush to flick, flick away gently. I'm going to go darker and richer. It needs to be a bit darker, I think. It's still too, too bright. So more natal yellow, more magenta and we have a nice rich warm kind of pink now don't we. Let's have a look at that. That's a little bit better now isn't it and I'm simply going to kind of come along and I'm going to flick it up here and there and you see what's happening then it's mixing with the blue slightly and that's not a bad thing sometimes that's a good thing but I'm just going to try and focus right now on the lovely kind of warm pinks and you can see I'm kind of I'm kind of allowing this as well, just to... dab around into the blue just to make it a little bit more abstract i don't want this like a solid line i don't want a solid line of color coming down i want you need to soften this in as well i'm going to go more uh maple yellow and i might try a touch of cadmium red instead of the magenta so maple yellow cadmium red that will give us a nice warm pink as well now every time it goes into the blue color i'm just rubbing the tip of my brush that is important Naples yellow, cadmium red, I might even try a touch of cadmium yellow. So we're going more into maybe a deep orange kind of a shade, because where that sun is hitting the centre of the cloud, it's a very deep, like a pinky orange, isn't it? It's a very, very deep colour. So I'm just being very careful now with the cadmium yellow, and magenta and the cadmium red. I'm just being very, very careful with it. Another way of doing this is just by dabbing. You could just try dabbing like this. Allow it to flick, flick away. And it can be quite tricky, this type of sky. This can be very tricky. So I am just taking my time, being very careful. The most important thing I would say is to have plenty of pink in here first, because the pink will mix quite nicely into the blue. If you have too much yellow in the pink, you're going to end up with muddy colours. I don't want muddy colours. See it's getting quite messy now with the blue again so I'll go back in with a clean brush again some magenta little touch of yellow but again a lot more magenta if you see little patches of a greeny hue as well you can just dab over them with the magenta so we're getting there this is all a very slow process I'm going to grab my little blender brush and I'm going to just kind of soften some of these out into the blue just by kind of Switching it around and flicking it and all of that. I just want to kind of soften those in first, making it nice and soft. Just getting rid of some of the brush marks, okay? And you can see it just starts looking a little bit better, doesn't it? Now, that's not bad, it's not that bad, okay? It's okay for what it is. You know, we're getting there slowly. It's all a very slow process. All right, let's just add a bit more of that kind of medium shade. coming out and as well up here it gets quite deep up here doesn't it so magenta and a touch of cadmium yellow but there's a lot more magenta in this now all right very deep rich pink look get some of that up in there as it comes up higher it's going to get darker in shade isn't it as it goes up into that deep blue sky it's going to get slightly darker if you have any green whatsoever mixing on your palette clean your brush immediately that's the most important part of all of this To see any green. You clean your brush immediately. Now, I'm going to go up here and I'm going to soften those back in again. I'm just going to flick it all out to the left. Create a bit of direction in the cloud. Just like that. Now already that's looking quite, quite nice isn't it? The next step I want to do is go onto a palette knife. I'm going to try a palette knife to get some of those really rich colours in there. So I must get some Naples Yellow. And I will take a tiny touch of Cadmium Yellow. Now what you can see, The Cadmium Yellow on my palette has a little bit of green there, doesn't it? I don't want that, so I'm just going to scrape everything off. Because Murphy's Law. Does anybody know what Murphy's Law is? Murphy's Law means, if it can happen, it will. And I know all it takes is a tiny bit of green, and my mix will be ruined. So just get rid of any touch of green you have on your palette. Let's go into some Cadmium Yellow, and a little white, perhaps. I'm taking a touch of maple yellow and a touch of Maybe a tiny touch of magenta. So this is where I put on the rich, bright, pinky shades with a little bit of yellow in the end. So I'm using my palette knife for this, cadmium red perhaps, and the yellow will just warm it. The yellow just makes that pink a bit on the warm side, slightly warmer. Let's just go up and do this kind of a scrappy technique up here, okay? I'm just kind of catching some areas, you see what I mean? Just what I think it might be, catching the lace. a little more than others now it's very important with this in this stage is not to soften this through with your blender brush too much okay you can a tiny bit if you like but if you start softening this through too much with your blender brush you're going to lose the color all right the color will just start merging back in now then at this stage i'll take my cadmium yellow with some naples yellow and a tiny touch of magenta so it's mostly yellow now at this stage okay a little bit Then you can start adding that touch of cadmium in there, look, to really capture the sunlight, the tiniest bit here and there. So we're not mixing it in, you see, into the blue, it's just capturing tiny hints of light here and there, just to suggest the sun kind of coming up and hitting some of those clouds. I just want to do one or two of these now, I don't want to go absolutely crazy with this, and there's probably too much up there already. I'll swipe it off. And I'll just soften the colours back together slightly, okay? And while we have this colour, take a bit more white and cadmium yellow, and we can come down here and we can just brighten this section as well with our palette knife, just to make it more visible. A little bit of palette knife work down on a sunset, it really kind of jumps off of the canvas, doesn't it? It just looks alive. Or a little bit of that down here as well, and that's fine. So now at this stage, what I'm going to do is take a clean, very clean soft brush, and just make sure this is really nice and clean. And I'm going to very gently dab on that, just very gently. I just want to soften some of those spots away, just very gently. OK, now I think that's absolutely fine. We could just leave it at that. But me being me, I can just want to add the tiniest touch of a white, a whitey kind of a yellow, just tiny little spots, just to kind of suggest the sunlight bouncing off a few of those. You see that? Just the tiniest little bit. I think that's fine. I'm going to leave that. I'm not going to go at this anymore. Because remember you can very easily overdo all of this. I might just add a tiniest little bit of that light whitey colour along some of these clouds. Just scrape it down at an angle. Just to suggest some sunlight catching some of them. And my friends that's fine. I'm happy with that. Quite happy. You know you don't have to keep going at it and going at it. I did notice The tiniest bit of a light pink. I'll take some white and some pink. Just maybe along here. Just scrape a tiny bit of that across. Again, at an angle. Same angle. And that will do fine. And I'm calling this part one finished. I'm very happy with the sky. That's all I needed. That's all I wanted to get. So I'll leave it well alone. I think that's absolutely fine. There we go. So let me just move the camera back a little. And I can talk to you. I'm going to have a look from a distance what this looks like. So there we go, done. And I'm happy with that. A nice simple sky, a nice cloud, cloud coming down like this. this. You know, just be very careful with blues and yellows. Try to avoid putting them together on a canvas and mixing. It's okay if you're pulling them with a palette knife. So I put a kind of a bright whiter yellow there. Kind of almost next to a blue but I didn't blend it together so that's fine. Just be careful. When you're putting a yellow by a blue always put a bit of a pink in between it just makes so much of a difference and just go gently take your time and it will work out I promise. So I'll be right back with part two of this we'll do the sand and we'll do this lovely board coming up at a lovely angle and we'll see how it looks like when it's finished. Thank you so so much for joining me I hope you've enjoyed watching. I'll be right back. Grab yourself a coffee and clean tissue. and maybe clean our palace and we go back to it. I'll be right back. Don't go anywhere.