How to Paint Reflective Surfaces - Painting Demo

so this is the finished painting here that I wanted to show you even before we began and it's a little brushy you know you're seeing it very large but when I painted this painting I decided that I would leave it a little bit brushy like you saw it so it's not total SuperDuper tight realism it's kind of what I like and here I'm putting in the penciling I don't do a lot of you know penciling I don't take a lot of time with it I just put in a few marks and I'll do that no matter what I'm doing even if I'm doing a landscape you know but this is just enough so that I can kind of see you know a few marks I always put a line down the center whenever whenever I'm painting something symmetrical so you see the line there and that is hugely helpful when you're doing some symmetrical because everything centers on the line like you can see there some putting in those marks so just a little bit of light penciling just enough so that I don't have to do a lot of thinking when I paint I can just you know jump into it so mixing up colors on the fly as I go this is the way that I paint and it's the way that experienced students of mine paint not all of them but I would say most of them but when you're starting out and I always have to say this at the beginning of all my videos where I'm not following the workflow to the letter and that is that if you really want to learn to paint you don't want to paint the way that I'm painting here where I'm mixing my colors on the fly I highly recommend that you go to you watch the three videos that explain my workflow for first-time students or for people that are trying to learn to oil paint and that workflow is that draw mix paint calm it's all free it's just the YouTube videos but it gives you direct links so if you go to draw mix paint calm and look in the long list of free videos all my free videos list in there you'll see three that are highlighted that are different color than the rest and those are the ones that it's how to draw a proportion how to mix colors from life and then I think the last one is how to paint in oil and that's where you go to learn to paint and to learn the workflow so here I'm you know just mixing my colors as I go as you can see and I think it's much better for first time students to do that all ahead of time so you can focus on your colors first and painting second etc but anyway I'm just laying in I'm not I'm not I'm putting in my values basically where they go and keep in mind that this source photo that you're looking at is not exactly what I'm looking at you know I wasn't looking at at this image you're looking at I was looking at a you know a much better the colors were different I try to match the photo to what I was looking at as best as I could but in the end you know with video cameras and everything colors get off so I always talk about painting abstract and as you can see in this background if you look into my brushwork you know maintaining the abstraction it's not just stroke stroke stroke all in a simple pattern it's mixing it up like I'm doing and I'm not really trying to paint verbatim but I am trying to put those basic values and I really like the orange brown glow on the wall behind this reflective I don't know what you call it it's the bottom of a lamp is what it's been made into but I don't know what it was originally used for so I always paint background around an object first or not always but I try to and it's something that I insist that my students do if I was trying to paint this we'll just call it a vase even then I guess it's not a vase if I was painting this vase without without looking at you know when I'm looking at the source and I see all these reflective surfaces and I see it all all I'm thinking about is value and you can't judge that value on bare canvas you've got to have your background put in so I highly recommend that you paint a little background around your object first you know like you even now where I don't have the table put in it would be much better if I had those table colors put in first I guess I'm just trying to get my blacks down but having the background around an object is just critically important if you want to judge how the values are on the edge of your object and everything else you know if I if I lay the edge of that vase up against them on a bare canvas that it's gonna look just completely different than if I put it in its proper context with the background painted around it so that's really important and then the other thing I always talk about is I try not to do a lot of blending when I'm painting I'm just covering the canvas and it's really my focus my focus is not looking at the vase and trying to decide what what I should how to make this look like a vase instead I take my mind out of that that you know trap and I change the the complete context of how I'm thinking about it so if you look at this base and as I'm putting in these colors I'm not thinking about making it look like metal or anything else I'm simply saying to myself get the canvas covered with the proper values and I just go about doing it don't I don't worry that it doesn't look like metal or it doesn't look like silver because until I get those reflections in this thing is never gonna look like a reflective surface you know you and you'll notice I'm gonna hold hold off and and not put in those lighter colors I'm working dark to light and working dark to light is really important because it allows you to see the the shape of your object sooner and everything else but until I get those reflections in this is not going to look like metal it's not going to look like a reflective surface at all so it's really important to just hold off on your reflections but also again as I'm putting in these colors I am not thinking about make this look like a reflective surface because it never will until I get there the all the lighter colors in so at this point I'm just judging my values and it's one of the reasons I paint on a stained canvas is because you can judge your values so much better you know like for instance right now if I was putting this on on a white canvas those colors would look much much darker than they do and so it's easier to see and if you look at what I'm painting it now and just think about how important it is that I've put the background in there so that I can see what that edge really looks like so one of the things that I you know make a big deal about with my students and this is you know I I have private classes here in Austin that I teach and the thing that I find myself saying over and over and over again is to focus on values and what that what I mean by that is it doesn't matter if it looks wrong it doesn't matter if it doesn't look like metal at this point I'm just putting in my values and I'm you know not worrying about how it appears to the eye and I'm not working perfect order like I should I'm jumping around a little bit but I try to work dark to light and especially encourage my first time students are people that are learning my method for the first time to always work dark to light and not to jump around the real you know magic and painting if you want to call it that is that you can if you lay in your values right and you put your your colors in and when I say value just in case you don't know value is strictly speaking about the darkness and lightness of the color not not so much whether it's yellow or blue or or the color itself but the but the darkness and lightness of it and that's really the important thing even more than the color so those colors for instance that I'm putting in you'll notice they look much darker probably to your eye and they look as if they're too dark and that's because they're sitting on that canvas instead of on the you know surrounded by the proper colors that are in the metal and so one of the things that I you know tell all my students you know you're supposed to be checking all your colors when you're starting out it's not something that you have to do for your whole portrait or painting career but when you're starting out you're really checking your colors a lot you're checking everything and that means checking your values so you put in your values you don't worry about it and you get the canvas covered and that's step number one and that is your you're getting the canvas covered but you're not making judgments about whether it's working whether it looks good whether this you know you don't want to look at those values if you've checked your colors and you've put them in and you you know wiped it on your photo and made sure the value is right or if you're working from life you're using a color checker but you're checking your photo your colors and you're just laying them in and you're not questioning whether they look right or wrong it's point that comes later once the canvas is covered with paint and once you've put in all your values and you're only thinking about values then and only then do you go in and start to play and to start to fix and to start making it to make adjustments because once all your values will put in and you can see just like how those shadows look wrong sitting on that you know stained canvas those big shadow colors they're in the middle of that vase those colors once they get the proper colors around them they will no longer look too dark they'll look just right and your eye will be able to judge it so you get your values in and then once the canvas is covered then you have the ability to see where your values are wrong or right but right now you don't have that ability and I'm speaking to somebody who's starting out or doesn't have a lot of experience with with color checking see I'm kind of jumping ahead and I really ought to have all those dark values in before I start putting in those light ones I need to follow my own rules it really helps I got really lazy with that in my own career where I just kind of I don't know I just didn't think about it like I should have been then when I started teaching back in 2001 or whenever it was I I started realizing the importance of working dark to light and then when I was doing paintings I had to demonstrate that properly and I'm talking about the ones where I'm really trying to demonstrate the workflow step by step and I was forced to sort of follow my own rules and I realized how much easier it was to paint and how much you know it really made sense even for me to do it so you'll notice you know there's some blending that goes on and that's one of the nice things about working wet and wet like I'm doing is that the colors will naturally blend as you lay them down but I'm not intentionally blending I'm not intentionally you know going in and fixing and poking at it and playing I'm just laying in these these you know colors and making sure the values are as right as they can naturally some blending will happen but I'm sort of you know trying to keep my abstract brush stroke going meaning I'm not just painting a regular stroke I'm mixing it up I'm twisting my brush um you know painting in a little bit of a you know an abstract pattern as I go and that's something I naturally do and have a video that I just published a few weeks ago about that you can go watch about a painting abstraction or maintaining the abstraction but even now I mean if you'll just notice like the pattern that I'm putting in it's always got a little it's a little bit irregular you know it's not just a simple one stroke it's it's twist its turn it's a little bit of this a little bit of that just to give it a little bit of abstract so it's not you know this perfect little shaped brush stroke so as I paint in the reflection there I'm really that color is not nearly as bright as the final reflections gonna be and and I always do that I always try to make sure that I've put in a foundation for the reflection before I start painting the reflection itself so this is about as strong as an orange as I can you know or it's like a yellowy orange and this is another example of you know the source that I was looking at was different than the photo that you're looking at there and so I think in my source that orange is a little more intense a little bit of white just bringing it up a little bit it's not the purest yellow white light color that I can mix but it's pretty close see how the abstractness see how I'm twisting and putting a little bit of this and that and messing it up a little bit that's what I mean by painting with an abstract stroke that's so important it's not just going up and dashing it off it's a little bit of twist it's a little bit of this a little bit of that and you can see me demonstrating it right there as I put the reflection in so that is the foundation for the ultimate white reflection which is what I'm painting now so now I'm getting pure white and I've even cleaned my brush a little bit which I didn't film and now just putting that right in the middle of the reflection that I've already painted and that having that little step makes all the difference instead of just trying to paint that whole thing you know completely like a white rectangle or something and now I'm doing the same with the the yellow side and what's happening with this vase is it's sitting in my in a room and on one half of the room there's incandescent lights and that's the orange color reflecting on the left side and then the other reflections are coming from windows that are more of a blue light and so I think that's what kind of made it interesting was that that color shift I had started to paint a different couple of objects for this video it was right before I you know cut my head and had to get stitches which I mentioned in another video but anyway and after I had started it I decided I didn't like it and so I saw this this space here and I decided it'd be a much better subject for this video you see the grace that I'm putting in those are really important that's what makes the yellow so nice it's real tempting when you paint these really strong you know colors like orange and yellow colors to just you know go in and put in only the strong and orange and just paint the whole thing like over over overly orange overly strong yellow you know it's you're gonna have those strong colors in there but you got to get that base in there first one of the nice things I like about this stain color is that it you know it ends up coming through and poking through and there's little bare places of canvas that if you look hard enough you can see all over the place and and I let it show through because it actually works really nice with it with the other colors there's even a little bit of canvas showing through around the yellow that I'm painting it so this is like a really super shine almost pure white not quiet so you know this video is all about repainting painting reflective surfaces and I'm demonstrating that but I really should say and I should say this and you know all of these videos where I'm talking about painting fabric or painting or reflective surfaces and I'm going to have several more that are coming out painting hair fur and painting water and all these different videos that I'm gonna be making over the next several months but I everything that I paint really is painted in exactly the same way you know there's some some little you know this and that that I can mention about you know painting reflection reflective surfaces is it's even more important to just laying your colors without you know overthinking it not worrying about it that it doesn't look right till the shines put in you know but all of those things are true for any object really but I say that you know even people who come and take my private class most of the people that want to take my portrait class I talk them into doing the still life class first and that's because you know that there's not laying in your colors should be you shouldn't play you shouldn't fix you should just lay them in but painting a portrait is just like painting anything else it's all the same the only difference on the portrait is that you have to be so perfect about here you know the location of the nose the width of the nose the location of the eyes I call them the key points but on a on a base like this you can miss it by a mile and nobody cares you know even like the way I'm painting this top little whatever you call it on the top of this vase it is definitely not verbatim you'll notice I'm just putting in a suggestion of this a suggestion of that I'm holding off I'm putting in my reflections in you'll notice all the colors that I'm working I started with the dark pretty much painted the whole thing and I'm just laying the colors on top but I'm nowhere near those reflection colors I'm laying in the foundation of those reflections but I'm just putting in a suggestion and then I'm gonna come back in and put the Krispies you know real shiny bits like I'm doing now all it takes is just a little hint and you'll see it's definitely not verbatim but when you step back nobody will ever know the difference you know this is like painting pearls or or anything else little reflective pearls where you have a little shine and a little glow on the on the shadow side or whatever it is and as long as you just put a little suggestion of all that in there it works and it's really thinking about value so you know even now like what I'm doing right now I've got my base in you know those reflections it wasn't worth leaving a little blank spot of canvas where those reflections are gonna go so I'm just kind of building it up you know wet and wet even though it's wet and wet it's really like painting layers but it's always so important to have that foundations you don't want to just go get that reflection and just paint it all over the place you'll notice even now there's a little bit of an abstract way that I paint I've got a you know sort of mess it up a little bit you can't leave it to regular so painting reflective surfaces is like painting anything else that's the truth it's just almost even more true that you should just lay in your values without thinking now look how I paint these handles obviously I wasn't going to just well I say obviously it would be really difficult to paint the background all around these handles and make it look perfect without it making it look like you painted something around something else so I'm just putting I'm just looking for the you know for the the different values I put in the little dark bits now I'm putting in two sort of medium colors I'm gonna hold off till the very end for the reflections but it's not gonna look right these handles will not look right until I get that reflection in and I want to make sure I'm finished with everything else it's always I always try to make it be the last thing that I do and I did not want to spend a lot of time on the bottom here I was tired of working on the vase at this point so this vase took me about four hours or a little over four hours to paint and that's just you know taking my cameras and adding the time up that was a lot of cleaning brushes on paper towels you know doing this doing that I am only showing you a small portion of the painting I jumped around a lot as you can see when the painting skips I had a little fun on this table I saw some yellow I saw some purples in the source that I was looking at it's harder to see and the photo that you that you're looking at but and I took maybe a little bit of liberty and kind of separated out that yellow in that purple yellow and purple being complements being opposite colors so down in the tablecloth I like the complement of the yellowy gold parts and the back right and the purple parts over on the left and in the front that's all all those oranges there that's all reflection coming off of this shiny brass vase onto the shadow of the tablecloth it's the only reason it's got that yellow in it and this is sort of like the way I painted the handles you know I'm not getting all verbatim painting this base I'm not staring at those little lines and thinking about that I'm just laying in my broad values you know putting in a little gray where it needs gray it looks like I didn't dust the bottom of this thing off properly I think that's what the gray is is is the dust but it actually kind of helps so you'll notice I had everything all my values put in before I put in their reflection and now I'm just trying to be a little bit more abstract with it and I had a very Wiggly hand when I painted this it's one of those too strong cups of tea on an empty stomach the caffeine makes my hands shake so there it is there's the finished base and then I've got this this is a proper photo that's not taken from a funny angle you know when I film I gotta take it from an angle and here's some close-up shot so you can see the brush work up close so you can imagine if you were painting this up close you'd want to fix all of that but there it is thank you guys for watching and by the way I have my own art supply company right here in Austin Texas and we manufacture all of our own products we have a whole line of paint and brush holders palettes color checkers all sorts of things so go check that out if you haven't at geneva fine art calm

Channel: Draw Mix Paint

Views: 98,502

Rating: 4.9618835 out of 5

Keywords: mark carder, carder method, oil painting techniques, realism, fine art, learn to paint, how to paint, brushwork, artist, geneva, geneva fine art, geneva fine art supplies, geneva paint, color mixing, limited palette, paint, painting, paintings, mix paint, mix color, mixing color, mixing paint, color theory, color paint, color painting, oil paint, painting demonstration, reflective surfaces

Id: hbkhDX1kkwg

Length: 27min 16sec (1636 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 07 2019