Where Shadows Meet Light 7×12 – Live Painting Session!

Transcription & Key Insights

This is a row of trees with a little path coming through. One, two, three, four trees here, then one, two, three, four trees there. There’s a bunch of masses I’m gonna have to pull off, and one tree that’s going right there, I’m gonna open that up a little.

I’m really into this 7×12 proportion. I just primed this board, though I’m not sure I got it quite right. You can see the fleck of the hardboard, but I kind of like that. Next time I do these, I’m gonna put more house paint on.

Finding the Intervals

The good thing about the underpainting stage is that’s where we can experiment. To me, each tree has like an attitude, there’s a certain attitude conveyed by the arc of the tree itself.

With this kind of painting, it’s all about the intervals of this kind of painting, the spaces between. I’ve compared it to music in the past, and I think that’s out. You gotta get the intervals right. When you have established this spacing, you’ve got to make sure that it’s not exactly the same spacing again. Your reference will be, I can go closer, or I can go farther.

The Grid and Composition

I’m getting my bearings from the grid. The good thing is I can experiment here. But when I establish spacing, I don’t want that exact same spacing again. I don’t think it’s opened up enough. Also, this tree’s not gonna be fat, so the idea is that we’re gonna see some of this field back here. This all closes up over here. I’m inventing here, I don’t really see that in the reference. That’s okay.

You’ve got to listen to your inner sensibility of compositional placement. Feel. It’s all feel.

Losing the Grid

Now it’s time to officially lose the grid and dry things off a little. The path isn’t designed to be super distinct. There’s shadows on the ground, and we’re gonna re-anonymize those.

That’s opened up sufficiently now. Yeah, that’s like that. I think this drawing is done.

Color Mixing: The Foundation

Before you start painting, you know, you want to have your piles topped up. If you got to mix them now before you start painting, it’s the time. Not after.

The Gray: I’m gonna need to make some mics gray before we even start. Gray is gonna be a player for sure. Not real light grays either. This is what we use for the mics gray.

The Sky Color: Wow. We don’t have very much of this. That’s a lot of flack. That’s a nice heaping helping of mics gray. I could have gone darker, which is this painting. Not every painting I’m going to want a darker gray. That can be not good.

Building Depth: I’m gonna bring in some yellow. This will green it up a little bit. We have that reddish, slight reddishness from the burn number in there, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue. That’s nice. That’s a nice, slow gray.

The Burn Number

I am happy with this. This is painted with the gesso, which I added a little diox to. Since this is such a brown painting, I’m going to gold. There’s going to be gold to nice things in the ground and reds, and it’s going to be beauty, beauty, beauty.

So that would be a green, but I’m going to take a little of this. Watch this. It’s pretty magical. That’s what cad red can do for you. Do you need the matter on your palette if you can do that? That’s really nice.

Mixed Formulas for Foliage

I’m going to do one of my formulas, which is alternate for the foliage, reddish tones, and green tones. You know, when you’re dry. In a sense it is barely green, I’m aware, but definitely greener than that other color.

Building the Palette

From here we’re going to pivot into Mars yellow base. That’s probably too much. And we’re going to go for, like, the opaque version of the burnt sienna. It’ll be a bit light with all that Mars yellow I started with. That’s okay, because guess what? Just going to tie it all together as the burn number again.

I’m using cad to make my green. The raw umber has the green tendencies. It’s going to bring it in even more. One or two more colors. We got these real golds. I can do just about anything I need to do with the natural scene of my palette.

The Trail: Let me get in some real golds now. I’m going to do a grayish tone for the ground. I probably got a lot left from here. Let’s bring a little life into it with the Mars Opacity Life Red, and then this is going to chill it out. More Mars. There we go. That’s kind of more attractive. That’s going to be our trail.

On Color and Supplies

If you love a color, you love a brush, you know, you really love it, buy a lifetime supply. If you did buy that lifetime supply when you run out of a tube, buy another tube right then and there.

You don’t want to be without raw umber. You might think, “Oh, I don’t need raw umber.” You need raw umber. You always do.

Painting the Sky

That’s right. I’m happy with this drawing. Sky brush. The board color is going to be kind of like a lot of the leaf colors, so I can see the pictures poking around. It’s definitely cooler feeling than the reference, but I like it.

This is my yellow and it isn’t very yellow. I’m laughing because I’ve made it lighter when it was the right color. It’s not as yellow as the reference, but, I was a bit cold, so that’s kind of my way of adjusting for that.

I want to make sure there’s not too much regularity in these. I want quite a lot of white, or light down there, but I don’t want it to be all one color, so I’m doing some bits and bobs.

It’s actually pretty bright, just be aware. We are actually going to go a little brighter down towards the bottom there.

Yeah, I went yellowish. I didn’t go strong yellow as in the reference, but I do like that.

Building Depth with Darks

Time for the darks. I got my glasses on too. I can see a few things I might want to do.

This bead is not black enough. I can see the moniker. I can see that.

I like painting this kind of thing. I like painting period, you know, but it’s probably my favorite kind of thing to paint.

The reason for the long filbert, I don’t like these very much, but sometimes I do. I tried these first and I thought, wow, yeah, a long filbert. And they do have their uses, their excellent uses.

Since the board’s already read, it looks very good. I think that’s enough for this deep red.

The Final Layers

I’m loving this long filbert. And really it’s going to be more reds, but really a lot more golds.

I’m going to want to go more of another green, which is going to be kind of merging into a gold green. Nice color. Actually, either what I want is more like this. That’s the color. Is that my road.

It’s a bit bright, but I killed it with the white, the color. This has been a really fun painting. I mean, I’m close to done.

Let’s see if anything jumps out at us. If nothing big does, I’d say we’re done.

Brushy, expressive painting. I really mean it loose. I believe it loose. I don’t have to, I could tighten this into something else. I think the more I tighten it, the worse it’ll be.

We’re going to call that done. I’m happy with that.

Take good care of yourself. Stay out of trouble. And fight the power.

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