How to Paint a RURAL LANDSCAPE - Tips For Mixing Grass Greens, Painting Light and Composition

hey everyone sam here thanks for joining me in this video i'm going to show you how to paint a rural landscape and i'm going to give you some specific tips for mixing greens for grass creating lighting effects and some tips on composition now like some of my recent videos this painting started off as a plein air painting and then i added more detail to it in the studio so the first half of the video is me painting outdoors and then the second part is me adding detail to this painting in the studio and it took on a bit of a life of its own here and the actual finish result of the painting was quite different from how it started but nonetheless i really enjoyed painting this one now if you like this video be sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to my channel now before i start the video i'd just like to quickly tell you about portfolio box if you're an artist or creative and you're looking to build a website then check out portfoliobox.net it's specifically designed for creatives such as artists photographers designers architects makeup artists musicians and more and it's an online website builder that allows you to create a beautiful professional looking website to tell your story and show your work to the highest standard portfolio box is really easy to use and there are lots of different templates and styles for you to choose from you don't need to know how to code the whole program works through drop and drag now if you'd like to try all portfolio box without any commitments then simply go over to their website and create an account and start building your website right away then when you want to take it live simply choose the plan that you would like to purchase now portfolio box plans are very affordable and as a subscriber to my youtube channel portfolio box are offering a 50 discount on any plan for the first year simply by typing in the discount code which i've put in the description box below now i'm really happy with portfolio box in fact i've created my own website to showcase my paintings so if you'd like to see an example of a website that's built on the portfolio box platform then check out my website at samuel fine art.com so it's all there in the description box below a link to their website and the discount code check out portfoliobox.net and start building your website today anyway i hope you enjoyed this video let's roll the tape [Music] okay so i've got my gear set up and i'm about to start painting it is a bit showery today but i'm hoping i'll be able to dodge them if not i'll just have to cover my painting and my camera but we'll see how we get on and this is the view i'm going to be painting i'm set up at the side of the road here it's just a nice simple landscape to paint often simple landscapes look really good in plein air paintings and i think i'll even drop some of these cows in there too so yeah excited to paint this and i shall well see how it goes and then i'll probably add more to it in the studio who knows if it's a real nice painting i might even do a bigger version of it let's see how we get one right before i begin painting i'll just quickly show you my setup here i'm painting on an alaprima pichard box and it's made by a guy called ben haggett who lives in montana in the usa and he hand makes all of these and they're just so nice to paint on so intuitive it's got storage compartments for your paints there's a spare pallet there brush holder and then even inside you can't see it that well but there's uh storage spaces to put your panels um they've also got magnets inside them so i can adjust the height of this as well and it just mounts on a camera tripod so it's really cool really handy for painting outdoors and you can use them in the studio as well um the colors i'm using i try to keep it relatively simple especially painting outdoors but i'm using titanium white um burnt sienna yellow oxide um cadmium yellow cadmium orange quinacridone magenta ultramarine blue cobalt teal and phthalo green um it's not essential to use cobalt teal and i just use it just because it's quite handy but you can get away with a real limited palette which i'd often suggest when you're painting outdoors because you want to be quick when you're painting outside just because the weather changes so much so i'm going to start sketching this out let's see how we get on so i begin my painting by sketching out the composition using a number one round brush now for this i'm just using burnt sienna mixed with liquid which is the medium i'm going to be using and as i'm using oil paint the advantage of liquin is that it speeds up the drying time but it also improves the flow of the paint now when you're painting outdoors on plein air using liquid can be particularly advantageous because your painting can often start drying within the hour especially if it's hot so this can be good if you want to layer in some final highlights just before you finish your painting when using liquid your paintings typically touch dry within 24 hours as i sketch out my painting i'm thinking about the composition there's some things i really like in this landscape like the stream and the stand of torturer trees that are in the mid ground so these are going to be the two main areas of interest in my painting the stream is going to add a sense of rhythm to the painting as it leads the eye towards the stand of trees now what i've done with the stand of trees here is i've placed them off center and to the left inside the composition you should never have centered objects or focal areas in the middle of your painting it causes a displeasing static within the painting and obstructs the flow of the composition so for this reason i've kept the stand of trees to the left of the center the other thing is is i've made the horizon a high horizon so again we shouldn't have the horizon line in the middle of the painting you should either go for a higher horizon or a lower horizon now that i've sketched out my composition the first thing i think about especially when i paint outdoors is painting the dark values and the shadows first now when you're painting outdoors this is particularly important because the sunlight moves and that means the shadows move now shadows are the easiest tools for creating a three-dimensional effect in your painting so you want to get those in first because you don't want to find that an hour later the sun's moved and the shadows have disappeared altogether so i paint these in first and i apply the same principles to a studio painting as well so dark values in first but what are values values are how light or dark a subject is and i consider it more important than getting the colors right now if we can sort out our shadows to begin with it's going to make it much easier to paint those areas in light afterwards this means it's also going to be easier to create the atmospheric depth in the painting and make it look realistic so i start with the furthest zone away and that's the sky and the first thing i do is paint those cloud shadows now this time of year in northern new zealand we get a lot of squally showers and sudden downpours we get some amazing looking clouds that are great to paint but probably lots of fun if you end up caught in a shower in one of them here these clouds are backlit because the sun is behind them so we're getting some quite dark shadows within them i mix the cloud shadows with a combination of ultramarine blue with a little burnt sienna which takes the saturation out the blue and then i get the value that i want by mixing in titanium white now ultramarine blue and burnt sienna form the basis of my palette they're probably my two most useful colors and you can create some beautiful natural looking grays with burnt sienna ultramarine blue and titanium white another thing to keep in mind with skies is they're generally some of the lightest values you'll find in the landscape obviously there's some exceptions with stormy looking clouds for example now in this particular landscape we don't have any elements that are too far into the distance we've mostly got a foreground and a mid-ground here really but we still need to pay attention to our values in order to create the atmospheric depth that we want in the painting now the main thing to remember with values is that we'll find our darkest and our lightest values in the foreground yet as land forms recede into the distance the darks are not quite dark and lights are not quite light as that value scale narrows and by sticking to these principles we can make our distant hills look further away so the next thing to paint here are these shadows in the trees and what i've done here is i've mixed a combination of ultramarine blue with a little yellow oxide now the yellow oxide itself will also adjust the value of the color because yellows are much lighter in value than other colors on your palette so by using more yellow oxide i'm going to make the value of the color lighter but i risk increasing the saturation which is something i don't want so for those more distant tree shadows i'll mix in some titanium white now i'll find my darkest tree shadows in the foreground and another thing to remember about trees as they are some of the darkest values you'll find in the landscape so for those trees that are closer to the foreground i've just mixed ultramarine blue with a little yellow oxide now i'm using yellow oxide here you can also use yellow ochre yellow oxides just a tiny bit punchier now after painting those tree shadows i next paint in these shadows in the grass grass is generally a much lighter value in the landscape now you must make sure that your grass is much lighter in value than your trees otherwise your trees are not going to stand out in your painting so the shadows here just form the bones of the painting and gives us something to work with so once i've done that i go straight back to the sky and i start painting those cloud highlights and here i just use a simple mix of titanium white with a little bit of burnt sienna now as burnt sienna's a dark orange it gives the highlights a nice orange glow to them and it also helps the clouds to sit back in the landscape as titanium white is the lightest value we're going to use in the painting it does have a tendency to leap forward so the burnt sienna just helps it sit back because i've used burnt sienna in the cloud shadows as well as the titanium white those two colors are gonna combine nicely if i want to blend them in a little bit now following that i start painting the sky this is also a light value color and this is a mix of titanium white with a little ultramarine blue and i've mixed in just a little bit of cobalt teal cobalt teal is a really nice color it's like a turquoise blue that's really useful for skies and painting grass within the landscape now if you have difficulty getting cobalt teal you can actually make a color similar to it by mixing ultramarine blue with titanium white and a little bit of phthalo green once i've painted the sky i then move on to the grass in the fields which covers most of the painting i want to make those more distant fields sit back a little bit in the painting so what i've done here is i start off with ultramarine blue with a little yellow oxide and then i mix in some cobalt teal and some titanium white i need to keep my greens a little more desaturated here so that they sit back in the landscape now part of the reason i'm using yellow oxide in the mix is because the color itself is not as high in chroma as say something like cadmium yellow and chroma is another word for saturation now as we look at landforms in the distance we'll see a lot more low chroma colors or desaturated colors and this is because greens and yellows in particular don't travel well over a long distance and they tend to fall out so we need to desaturate them in order to make them sit back in our painting if we were to use saturated greens it would leak forward in the painting and then we would lose the atmospheric depth and the painting would look flat now as i've worked towards the foreground in this painting i've started increasing the saturation of the green by introducing some cadmium yellow into the mix and even a little phthalo green which also helps to increase the saturation now if the mixture is looking too green then i usually round off the color with something that contains red which is opposite to green on the color wheels i found that a color like quinacridone magenta or cadmium orange or burnt sienna works really nicely with this now when i come to paint those areas of the torturer trees that are in light i keep in mind that they have an olive yellow cast to the foliage so here i've mixed ultramarine blue with some yellow oxide and a little titanium white but i've mixed in more yellow oxide into the mix i've placed that large monterey pine tree on the right side of the painting in the distance to help anchor the composition it's in shadow and also there's a rain shower in the distance so the colors here are low in chroma and what i've done is i've mixed ultramarine blue with some yellow oxide and titanium white next i paint the cowls and i'm not worried if they're too accurate because i'm going to be working on them a lot more in the studio but i just want to mark in their basic forms so most of these cowls are in shadow with a few highlights on them and i've mixed ultramarine blue with some burnt sienna and a little titanium white i've gone heavier on the burnt sienna seeing as the cow's fur is generally a reddish brown colour for the areas of their white coloured fur i've mixed titanium white with a little ultramarine blue and burnt sienna and then for the highlights where the cows face for example is in the full sunlight it's just a mix of titanium white with a small amount of burnt sienna now the one thing you may have noticed with this painting is that i've set up my pershard box so that the painting is in shadow the reason for this is it helps to reduce the glare from the direct sun reflecting off the linen surface and also because it helps with the overall tonality of the painting keeping those colours lighter so i'm back in the studio now and i'd actually had this painting sat on my shelf for a few weeks and i was looking at it deciding what to do whether to just finish it as is or maybe make some changes to it i went through my photo reference as well and i decided to create some more dramatic lighting effects within the painting so i decided to change it completely now the clouds here from when i was playing air painting i was reasonably happy with so all i did was start adding more detail and i was using the same colors that i used when i was painting outdoors so for the cloud shadows a mix of ultramarine blue with a little burnt sienna and titanium white then for those cloud highlights titanium white with a little burnt sienna and for the sky ultramarine blue with some cobalt teal and titanium white there are heavier looking clouds in the sky but i make sure that the clouds in the sky are not too dark now with some of my photo reference here you can see that there was some showers happening in the distance that was creating some cool effects with the tonality of the scene so i decided to paint some spot lighting effects within the mid ground of this painting to add a lot more drama and atmosphere to it so the first thing i did was to paint those distant fields as if they're in shadow and what i did was i mixed a combination of ultramarine blue with some yellow oxide then some cobalt teal and titanium white i also introduced a little bit of quinacridone magenta just to harmonize the green a little bit the red that's in the quinacridone magenta is also going to help to desaturate that green now i've painted a lot more shadow areas in the grass in the mid ground here but i want the main areas of light to be near the stand of torturer trees in the mid ground [Music] once i've painted the grass shadow areas i then restate the shadows in the trees and for the mid ground trees i want those to come forward a bit the trees that the main focal area of the painting so what i've done here is i've mixed ultramarine blue with a little yellow oxide but those trees that are more in the background i want to fade them out a little bit more to make it look like perhaps it's raining a little bit in the distance so what i've done here is i've mixed ultramarine blue with some yellow oxide but a lot more titanium white to make the value lighter and this is going to make them sit back in the painting now i've also done the same with that monterey pine tree that's on the right side of the painting now when it comes to painting those highlights in the grass that are in the full sunlight to create that spot lighting effects is i've taken my existing grass shadow mix and then i've introduced some cadmium yellow which is going to really increase the saturation of that green i then made the value lighter by mixing in some titanium white and then i can readjust the mixture by mixing in a small amount of ultramarine blue and some phthalo green which is going to increase the saturation if the green's looking too cold then it can be warmed up with a little yellow oxide or by mixing in some chronic magenta [Music] now vary the mixtures of my greens here and i cover the rest of the painting the cow that's on the left side of the painting in the foreground i want that to be in the full sunlight so i've made sure to paint the grass around it with my grass highlight mix which is lighter in value and more saturated the rest of the foreground is going to be in partial shadow as a cloud has just passed over now as i paint that grass in the foreground the one thing that was bugging me about one of those cows there was i felt that it was obstructing the flow in the composition where the stream leads the eye towards the stand of trees so that needed to be moved once i'd worked on the foreground i then returned to the stand of trees in the mid ground and painted a few more highlights on them by introducing some more cadmium yellow yellow oxide titanium white but then also a little bit of cadmium orange and quinacridone magenta and this is because the foliage of the torture tree tends to have a more yellowish olive cast to it [Music] the whole time i'm painting these highlights i'm keeping in mind the value of this color at this point i allowed the painting to dry so that i could then add some more detail to it now i'll let it dry for a couple of days and whilst i was looking at it in my studio i noticed that the sky was perhaps a little bit too dark so i decided to make the value of those cloud shadows a little bit lighter now i'm still using the same colors that i've used all along but i've just added more titanium white into my mix to increase the value that will make it lighter after that i start painting in more of those cloud highlights but this time i'm using fewer of them although again i'm still using the same colors which is titanium white and burnt sienna but much less burnt sienna into my mix i had a few highlights here and there which just adds to the three-dimensional form of these clouds and makes it look like the sun's shining behind them i'm pretty happy with the tonality of this painting so far so now i can begin adding more details to this painting so there's lots of randomly placed bushes trees and shrubs cabbage trees and small conifers and what i'm doing now is building up the form of the painting by adding lighter layers especially in the grasses where the direct sun is shining through the clouds i'm using the same color mix i used before but there will be more titanium white in the mix as i'm making subtle adjustments to the values of my color introducing lighter tones [Music] the brushes i've found most useful in this painting given that this is only a small painting as well is a number two flat brush and a number three filbert brush now the advantage of filbert brushes is you can use the broad end of the brush for gestural brush marks but then the bristles are rounded at the end so you can use those for finer details it's a very versatile brush to use in landscape painting now for those pine trees on the right side of the painting i want to make them look a little bit more like trees so i punch some holes in them with my sky mix to give the illusion that there's gaps in those tree canopies [Music] at this point i allow the painting to dry again and the next thing i'm going to focus on afterwards is painting more details on these animals that are in the painting which are mainly cows and a few sheep now cows and sheep are most definitely good for communicating a rural scene and they add life and interest to a painting so here i'm repainting the cowl that i originally erased from the painting and now i've shifted it more to the right side of the painting so it's not obstructing the stream this cow is another prop within the composition that's going to help lead the eye towards the stream and ultimately to the stand of trees in the mid ground the colours i've used to paint the cows here is mostly a mix of burnt sienna with some ultramarine blue and titanium white i've gone heavier on the burnt sienna because the cow's fur is mostly a brown reddish color i've also mixed in in places a little bit of yellow oxide as well i'm using fine synthetic round brushes to paint the cowls here mainly because they're quite small [Music] i'm using number zero and double zero synthetic round brushes which have got a nice fine point to them now once i finish painting these cowls i then paint the final highlights in the painting adding my lightest values but also my final details as well and i've saved all of this until the very end of the painting so i've painted some shadows in the foreground and the grass areas and then the next thing i work on is the stream in the mid ground now the stream is reflecting these skies so i've used the same colors that i've used in the sky a mix of ultramarine blue with some titanium white and a little cobalt teal and then with a number double zero round brush and a mix of titanium white with a small amount of yellow oxide i've just painted a few sparkles in the water to communicate shimmering water in the sun i also paint a few highlights in those trees as well which just helps to add to the three-dimensional form of them it's the same colors i was using before but with much more titanium white however i need to make sure that the titanium white doesn't desaturate the color too much now the last thing that i need to keep in mind with this painting is that the animals and the trees and shrubs are casting a shadow because this is going to add to the three-dimensional form of the painting and it will make it look much more realistic so i finish up the painting by just adding a few details here and there now if you enjoyed this video and like to have a go at painting this yourself then click the link below to the written tutorial that accompanied this video which can be found on my painting blog on my website and feel free to copy the painting and use the reference photos that i've provided thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed this video and if you did be sure to give it a like and subscribe to my channel also feel free to leave me a comment now if you'd like to learn more about painting then check out the painting resources i have on my website at samuelurp.com there's lots of free written painting tutorials for you to paint along with you can also use the reference photos and i also have full length painting tutorial videos for sale from there as well now you can get instant access to all of those full length painting tutorial videos by subscribing to me on patreon for just five dollars a month where as i say you get instant access to all of my full-length painting tutorial videos as well as a new painting video every month now if you'd like to see what paintings i'm working on at the moment then you can follow me on instagram and facebook and you can also check out my paintings on my new website which is solely from my artworks at samuel fine art.com now as i stated earlier this is built on the portfolio box platform so if you're looking to build a website don't forget portfolio box are offering 50 off any of their plans for the first year and i've put all the links and the discount code in the description box below so thanks for watching i hope you enjoyed this video and i shall see you in the next video

Channel: Samuel Earp Artist

Views: 28,917

Rating: 4.968389 out of 5

Keywords: landscape painting, oil painting, fine art, color mixing, painting lessons, painting tutorials, plein air, how to paint landscapes, color mixing tutorial, oil painting techniques, oil painting tips, mixing greens, how to mix green paint, color theory, mixing green, painting tutorial

Id: 7BzFzJ8Sg7E

Length: 27min 57sec (1677 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 11 2020