Tutukaka Dawn 5×10 – Live Painting Session

Transcript and Key Insights

This is basically a sky painting. The hills in the middle distance are from Tutukaka over there, so that’ll add some interest for those folks.

We’re gonna do the drawing today and then I’ll come back tomorrow and do the rest. We’re using HDF hardboard primed with three coats of house paint, and we’re doing our underpainting color with some Burnt Number, looks like it’s got a little bit of Mars black in it.

The Concept

I was gonna do this as a 7 by 14, but this is a 5 by 10. I thought, you know what, this will be fine. It allows the gallery to have a little more affordable painting. I feel like that’s where the sales are right now.

I went out and did some videography—there’s a little stream here. I have a babbling brook, but it’s only a minute or two. You could certainly loop it though. This is the big thing I get—some of the grits in here come in handy. That’s been composited for a month or so, maybe longer.

Drawing the Composition

I normally wouldn’t use the three for something like this because I’ve been babying it, but I got other brushes. I’m accentuating the dip there. Otherwise it’ll be too stagnant.

Never hesitate, even if it’s a real place, never hesitate to change things. Having that one solid band across—that’s not good. A lot of times, like if it was more foliage, I probably would have used the burnt sienna instead.

We got these long diagonals, and we’re gonna need to vary things. We don’t want to be too consistent.

The Sky Reference

This is what you saw me do—I made it very light. What’s cool is I was there when the sun was coming right over the spot where I have it here. So I know I’m good. I know it’s gonna just as easily on another morning bend the sky.

Building the Drawing

That’s not brilliant. I want some control. The big issue with the reference is there’s one giant mass here that’s gonna need to be broken up. We’re not gonna worry about that today. Today we’re gonna do the drawing and then I’ll come back tomorrow and do the rest.

Color Mixing

Now, what’s going on here? That’s the old blue. I don’t want to take the new blue. There’s plenty of blue in this. We’re going to add some gray and titanium white.

Titanium white, titanium buff, cad yellow, yellow ochre, mars yellow, raw umber, mites green. That’s acrylite yellow mixed with ivory black. Cadmium orange, cadmium red hue, cadmium red, that is burnt sienna, that is rose madder, deep burnt umber.

That’s permanent green light. Diox purple—could happen, could happen. Don’t see a lot of purple, but we might even bring some in blue, I don’t know. Prussian blue. Ivory black, mites gray. That’s ivory black mixed with a cheaper titanium white. It’s been adulterated with zinc, unlike this one, which is pure and bleached.

Did you know that? Titanium white, when it’s not bleached, is this color. And that’s mars black. Not gonna be used in this painting.

Palette Strategy

A lot of times I’ll wait to get into the buff because it does have a tint to it, and things can get away from you. I got a skin on the titanium white. Ivory black with a skin. It doesn’t get used as frequently as it used to.

I like having a slight amount of rose madder in there from when we made our underpainting color yesterday. I put a little bit of rose madder. I’ll remember that. Will I remember 20 years from now? I don’t need to, because I got it in the video. That’s great.

If I start off with things too far apart, by the time we get over here, we’ll be out of space. Even if you don’t see it in the reference, it’s always a good idea to have cool gray. That would be awesome.

Color Mixing Technique

I was gonna bring in some yellow, but I think instead I’ll bring in the Mars yellow because it doesn’t have as big a tendency to go green. A big bunch of—that color’s right on the money.

Is it enough? Did you do enough? Just working on it. Some sort of almost skin going there. That’s nice. Nice little progression of grays. Getting into some yellows. Now they’re orangey a little bit.

You know, you start messing around, we’re gonna get some greenishness. You can counteract that with a little bit of the Cad Orange. That’ll do it. We could have also gone with the Mars. See if that looks like it’s too screaming. We’ll just tamp that down with the raw umber.

How powerful is that? Still a little strident. Let’s try the little burnt umber. Yes. Nice. I kind of lost that little taint of the orange, which I think is nice.

I want chroma, but I want it in proportion to the painting. This is the place where painters starting out struggle. They go, “Oh, I want the chroma.” But they’re not tamping it down sufficiently. That’s why I think these color mixing sessions are valuable.

There is some brighter yellow, and this is gonna green up big time. It’s okay. I’ll grab some of that with this more chromatic color.

Finishing the Palette

I haven’t used the wrong knife. I’m so sorry. I won’t stop. I’ve been trained by the viewership, which is good. That’s pretty much everything we gotta do. There’s other grays, there’s white. Might be nice to do the white. Maybe, okay, you talk me into it.

There’s not tons of other colors that need to be mixed. This is a sky painting. Sky and water. There’s probably enough bits of this and that on the palette. That’s good. Of course we’re going to modify that as we paint, which is going to start now.

Starting to Paint

I might get this painting done this morning. Alright, is this a non-grid version? Yes, good. I was thinking six, but it’s a bit large for some of. I got these eights. I got a ton of these. I got two because I ordered a bunch.

Look at the jump in size between their four and their six. That is a lot. I think the taper on that is gonna be where I wanna go. I got, like, six number eights. I wanted to use an eight. I left at home, and then I double ordered when I went home, not realizing they were on the table in the kitchen.

This is a treckle. It’s a hogs bristle filbert. It’s gonna be lovely. I do like a little looser spread. The treckle’s a bit more like that, where the DOS is a bit more like that. That’s what you want. We want it loose.

Painting the Sky

That’s pretty good. That looks nice. I don’t want to go too thin. That’s actually a bit darker in the reference, but I think it’s dark enough. I’m gonna add a little more gray here. Maybe I went too far. Just wanted it a little different. That sort of move—that’s why I like the DOS. I like the DOS.

This down here changes quite a lot. I was thinking of the yellow ochre, but then I thought about all that green it’s gonna do, and that’s okay in a typical kind of sky. I’m gonna probably lighten that up. That’s kind of nice. It’s pretty.

That’s greenifying. Don’t question your painter of residence. I minimized that shape. It’s actually pretty good. And then even lighter here. That’s nice, kind of fresh. Like that.

Now, blue in the water. You’re saying, “What about that?” Like, cause you said you wanted to. Yeah, I did. No, I don’t think we get away too light. Also, we’re gonna wanna dull it up a bit. There we go. I’m seeing some here.

Blue is in, in mostly. You see that little raggedness there? That’s why these are good for skies. Might not be as great for other things. You can make them work, though. In fact, as they get broken, they work quite well.

Using Complementary Colors

We’re gonna actually reset this with some complementary color science. That kinda looks green, but that’s okay. It’s okay if it’s a little bit bluish. This is the sky. It’s not bad. It’s a definite hum of brownishness in there, which I might resist if it was actually a dramatic sky in a tree scene because I’d be duking it out.

That’s nice. I’m gonna try and keep things from being too calumny. Not calumny. I’m always saying that. I’m in row—too row-y.

I want the gray up there. So I just want to get a little bit of this in. We’ll get back into that tone. Wiping off our brush pretty good. Okay, now the cool gray. Which is just plain old everyday mics gray.

Maybe it’s a little dark. I think it’s always good. Like in the reference you see a little bit of cool grays. I’ll play that up a little bit more. I don’t really want it quite that light. But hidden in the brush you can see there’s secret blue, which is good.

Building Warmth

You wouldn’t know it but most of this is going to come off as being very warm. And very much like my painting I did a couple weeks back with the blue-orange. This is blue-yellow and orange-ish yellow. Kind of that same dynamic. It’s dramatic.

You remember this color now. It’s lovely. Start with a little darker version. Week burn number. I constantly have to help it along, but you know the tube’s going. I use a lot of burn number so we’ll work our way through it.

I thought that was going to be darker. I want that much darker. I’m going to sneak in the black there. We went and contaminated that pretty good. Back to the palette. That orange was a good move. That was good.

Sky Composition Details

The reference—probably someone’s award-winning photo. Sky got tapped in. I don’t worry about it too much because I’m just using it with a serious amount of artistic license.

That’s going to be a light color and I don’t want to get too crazy. This is also going to be lighter. But I’ve learned it’s good with these areas where you’ve got light coming over something like that blue. That’s going to be a big value shift. You want to temper it a bit. I think we’ll do that here too.

Yeah, I’m really glad I picked this—the sixth. The sixth I envisioned. I was thinking it was too big, but it’s doing a good job. The four could have worked as well. It would have been more effort. Probably not a better result.

That’s nice. Reset. This color is pretty good. Again, I think we’ll sneak in some more orange, get some chroma in there. Maybe even you can back it up.

Now before I had orange in my palette, I had burnt sienna. I mixed burnt sienna with yellow and get a very beautiful orange. So don’t sleep on that.

Going a little lighter there. Let’s shift too. Okay. Shift into some little more pinkish reddish. That’s a look bud.

Adjusting Values

Does that seem right? I actually want to gray it. Because they’re kind of like some of these. Overall, when I look in the camera, the sky definitely seems very dark. So we can definitely improve that. Even more gray.

We picked up that blue. Oh. Not the end of the world, but. So here we’re wiping off our brush. Just going to deal with these edges real quick with no real pigment. Nice. Okay.

I intended for that to be lighter, but we’ll start with that. We might be getting to a good point. It’s time to change brushes, frankly. The big brush is great. You know, stick with it as long as you can. But make your move when it’s time to make your move. And that will be now.

This is the same sort of loose feel as the six. This is a four. You got a bit much oil in that. You might want to move into the lighter color there.

Happy with that. Happy with that. There’s a ton of little fancy stuff going on down there. Generally, maybe if it was a bigger painting I might go after it. But down in here, we’re going to keep it simple.

The Horizon Challenge

I would say an area where I still feel challenged in my painting—the bottom of the horizon, the little skinny clouds. It’s always a bit of a challenge. Things get really dark there, but it’s feeling pretty good.

I was thinking I was going to have a lot more chroma there, but reddish amber-y. That’s somewhat better. Now, you see that? You gotta get them. Don’t leave it. It will wreak havoc.

Fine-Tuning Details

Actually, we might just stop right there. Yeah, we’ll finish this after lunch. We’ll be back.

Here we go. Now, that’s pretty good. Not too contaminated. I’ll warn you, it’s going to seem pretty bright. Well, I don’t know if that was a good idea.

Could be brighter, but I think this should be nice. We’ll deal with that later.

So many things you can do with these brushes that are just perfect for skies. With that looseness that could be a real drawback otherwise. Looking good in this house again, that’s soft. Perfect.

Back to the blue. I don’t know if I need to do a lot up there. I think that’s probably good. Now the dark bits kind of look at me.

This too could use a little relief, I think. That’s me trying to break out of roll mode. Oh, that’s breaking that up a little. That’s nice.

That’s it. I’ll probably do it. I don’t want to get carried away I think. This is pretty successful.

Adding Darks

We’re going to go in with our darks now. Oh, another thing. That needs to be a whole one color too. I think I got enough of it right here.

Alright, I’m happy with that. We’re just going to leave that. Now that’s good. That’s good. Oh, except I see a big problem. And it’s in the reference too. You know, I copied it right over like I’m always telling you not to.

One, two. One, two. So we’re going to need to break that up a little. I think the solution is extend it. So they’re not like that. So they’re not like the same size. That’s helping. That’s helping. Also, we’re going to diminish the other one a bit.

We can find a pigment. Yep. Yeah, that needs to be actually stronger. That orange was a nice idea. At this point too, I tend to look a lot on the camera.

I’m messing things up. Certainly messing things up. That’s always a sign my fans. It’s a sign. Okay. Now I think this could do the job with the darks. That’s my drawing brush from yesterday.

Dark Pigment Strategy

I’ll pause this and I’ll be right back. I think I’m going to do that first. Wipe the paint off my finger.

Right. Now, thinking about this. The color there is nice, but I’m thinking I want to top it up before I even start. There we go. Remember, I can top it, but I can get there without. Then it’s going to dry.

So I got all that raw umber. I can get there with the raw umber if I need that sort of tone. In fact, I can mix raw umber with this burnt sienna I just put down. And that’s because I got all that Mars in there—Mars black. There is Mars red. There is a bunch of Mars colors.

I really want us to put on this. It’s not redding up. Now you’re going to find out why is that on your palette but I never see you use it. Because I want to make something redder. That’s my magic bullet. That’s what I was trying to do. Get that burnt sienna.

I cleaned it yesterday. I’m lucky because I didn’t actually soap clean it. I just oil cleaned it.

These glasses are pretty nice for painting. This is nothing though. Because you get that kind of cupping thing with the Robert Simmons. By the way, they aren’t cheap. They’re not cheap. I don’t think they’re cheaper than the Silver Grand Prix anymore.

I’ve got to get that more umber feeling across, but I can’t do it without some opacity. There’s our burnt umber tone. Mostly it’s going to be dark, but I’m going to put some of this in there.

Nice. That is nice. I want more of that umber-y feeling. This is my dark brush. Did you know that? That’s kind of a precursor to the dark. It’s going to be a lot darker. Heck, a lot darker. But I wanted that in there. And we can do because we’ve got quite a lot of opacity in here too. There’s a decent amount of paint there. We can just put some notes on top if you want.

And now we’re just going to go wipe our brush off and jump right into the dark darks. See what I mean?

The Value of Dark Richness

Now, you know, a lesser experienced painter might think, “Oh, it’s just dark. I’m just going to get black. Done!” But now it’s an opportunity to bring in some more richness. We need every opportunity we can to make and engage in painting.

I chose not to do much modulation. It’s modulating is what I did. Nice. Over there in the little dark area. Oh, this kind of thing too. It would be very difficult to do with the ivory black.

Mars black gives me that ability to come up with some opacity. It’s got a little less too much with it. I’m happy with that. It’s a little random, but it’s a variated, right?

Final Touches

Let’s go ahead and get our T-square out. Nice. We’re not that far from done. This one went a bit thinner. I could have wondered maybe why I didn’t put these darks in first. But I just saw an opportunity with the sky color. My brushes are kind.

That’s not brilliant. I don’t want to get too carried away with this blue color. We already did a lot. A little bit greenish. I hope this brush does a good job. It might be too.

Some tricky stuff. It’s not smaller. So as we come here, I kind of want to go more almost blue.

I want that to read like a grey. It’s almost a long color to light. It’s still too light. Holy cow. I kind of like that board color. I think we could get there just with a bunch of this.

Yeah, I think that’s pretty good. Maybe a little too much blue here. And it might be good to get some orangier. A little bit of orangier. There’s a few notes.

I do want a few more darks in there. Oh, that’s my two. I was thinking of a three. Doesn’t need to be like really thick. Just.

I can get by without the burn over. I have trouble getting by without the mars black. It’s my opaque fire. Even though I’m doing this gray. It’s darker now than it was before.

When you consider the original reference images, it’s all completely dark. Not as dark as those mountains or hills or peninsula in the back. Whatever you want to call it.

The Finish

Just one last thing I want to do. I knew it.

Something needed to happen and then something did happen. Red. Beauty. That really makes it. Love it. I’m done. Thank you.

Oh, I do see one thing. I don’t want to paint. I want to soften this. Oh, that’s too soft. Thanks for joining me. We’ll see you later.

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