How to paint with PERSPECTIVE | Siena Street Scene | Oil Painting Tutorial

hi how's it going andrew here with another painting tutorial and this week we're gonna paint a little italian street scene with a lot of texture and some depth given by linear perspective [Music] now this demonstration is going to be a little bit different I'm working on a very small panel about 8 by 12 inches and I'm gonna try and pack a lot of detail into a small area now as I mentioned we're gonna focus on linear perspective and I'm really inspired by a recent trip that I took to Italy now I never considered painting a street scene before this trip to Italy but there was so much amazing beauty going on within these streets that they just had to be painted I found the architecture fascinating and these intricate details in the buildings just impossible to resist on my Italian trip I spent most of my time in Florence just taking in the buildings and that light which had a profound impact on me now Florence was an amazing location I was getting a lot of interesting ideas from walking around but what I was really taken with was Siena [Music] I took several reference photographs of this amazing little town what I really loved were these arches these doorways and openings that just seemed to draw the viewer in these rough stone streets had some amazing details that would create an interesting problem to get around with paint and these ancient textured brick walls I could just see impasto medium being used here to communicate some of this rough surface I really like some of these curved streets and how the building's weren't laid down in a rigid grid system and some of these doorways with this weathered brick would make an interesting subject and I knew somewhere within this painting I'd want to include a little destination for the viewer and I thought this restaurant might make such a subject so my goal here with this painting is to draw on this experience and create something with a lot of light in it but a sense of depth that draws the viewer in now as I said this is only going to be a little panel 8 by 12 inches so this is a lot of information to try and cram into such a small area so to start off on the right track I'm gonna choose my favourite bit of reference material it doesn't necessarily have all the elements that I love but it's a starting point for me to be able to add those elements that I really like to this little sing this one single piece of photographic reference is going to be the anchor for the painting it's going to be my light reference and it's also gonna have some visual cues that will inform the texture in the buildings as well as some of the perspective I really like how we're looking down the street in this thing and I can see a place to put that restaurant that I really like so let's get started on this project and we'll analyze a photograph in a little bit more detail so here's my reference material and I really love this photograph for a number of reasons it's got a really nice narrow aspect to that Street the buildings look amazing with all of that texture but I really love the light that's pouring in and casting shadows on the street as well as the building over here on the left-hand side there's also a nice warm glow to the building on the right now the first consideration when we're trying to do anything with perspective is working out where our horizon line lies this is the horizontal where everything above this line is going to dip downwards to meet it and everything below the line is going to angle slightly upwards to meet it it's the horizontal line that you can see running through here that matches that brickwork nearly matches the windowsill as well as some of the lines on the buildings on the right once I've established this line I can then pick out some vanishing points I've chosen one over here on the right this seems to be the place where all of these lines for the building on the Left seemed to terminate you notice the roof the sills of the windows and some of the aspects in the lower portion of the building all seem to line up and match at this point on the right now as usual I'm not gonna follow everything in this bit of photographic reference I'm gonna take some things out and I'm gonna add some things in this architectural detail that you see in the bottom left-hand corner is not going to make it I'm going to remove that the ballast rating in particular I find a little bit distracting as well as this detail here on the right hand side I'm gonna remove this too and open up the right-hand portion of the little street now I'm going to choose another vanishing point at the corner of the windowsill here where these lines on the right hand side seem to vanish too I've noticed that the roof line as well as some of the other lines amongst the windowsills and the gutter line seem to align to this point now they're slightly different of course than the building on the left which means that we're getting a little bit more of a funnel aspect to this painting already the orientation of the buildings on the left and the right are slightly different now here's my palette and I'm gonna be mixing up some dark tone to sketch this in but before we get into color let's just look at all of the different materials I have here on the pallet I'm going to start here with olio gel on the left the is a great medium will improve the flow and consistency of the pint I have burnt umber burnt sienna nickel azo red gold Errol IDE lemon titanium white pyrrol red quinacridone magenta deoxys in violet ultramarine blue cobalt teal and phthalo green and I'm sketching this directly onto my 8 by 12 linen panel with a bristle number 2 filbert brush this is allowing me to get some short and sharp lines now remember the most important line here is going to be this horizon line so everything on the left is going to come up to meet that vanishing point as we discussed in the photographic reference but to allow these lines to be a little bit straighter and to aim them correctly I'm going to use the brush handle as a straight edge I'm gonna line it up with that point on the right hand side and draw these lines down to meet it the same goes for these lines over here on the right I'm gonna line them up to a point on the left now it had been the windowsill in my photographic reference but now I'm just gonna use this point that I can aim for on the lead edge of that building on the left now we're starting to get that tunnel-like appearance here within the composition where our eye is being led in by these lines of perspective now one of the aspects that was not present in my photographic reference was an arch and I just love some of these architectural details I'm gonna put one in now as an artist you can make decisions like this to just make the painting a little bit more interesting it's about the painting at the end of the day not about the photograph now every painting needs a destination or a central focal point I think this little trattoria at the bottom of the street here would work really well as an inviting destination for the viewer we want to travel down this street and have a splits a parole at the bottom of the hill or a cappuccino whatever's your thing so the compositions sketched out and it's time to Block in so for this I'm using a combination of burnt umber and ultramarine blue to establish some dark tone I'm gonna add the slightest amount of deoxys in violet to give it a little bit of a violet tinge to work with some of their shadows I'm gonna block this scene in using a rose Marinko ivory dagger and you can find these brushes by following the link in the description below so I'm manipulating and adjusting some of this dark tone with the slightest amount of burnt sienna as well as ultramarine blue and titanium white the goal here is to establish the darker tones first and I'm gonna leave some voids within this block in for the highlights now as is the case with most of my paintings I'm working with a formula of blocking in modeling and then detail so this is a process of establishing the whole tonal dynamic and covered the entire canvas first and then manipulating these layers over the top to get more of a sense of detail as we progress with the painting it's really important for me to resist the temptation to go into too much detail too early there's going to be a time for that detail now with some of these colors you can see here that I'm just manipulating the pile of paint that's on my glass palette just a little bit at a time by just knocking and kickin tones around with slight adjustments in titanium white ultramarine blue and corn acridine magenta now the highlights here where the Sun is striking the building I'm gonna leave slightly cool and the reflected light that's showing on the undersides of some of these buildings and walls I'm gonna make these colors a little bit warm hopefully this gives me the illusion of heat sinking down into the scene from that open sky above through the space and the buildings in the past I tried to communicate this direct sunlight as being a warm color at midday the sunlight appears to be slightly cool the direct light that is that's hitting this building as well as the street below by having this contrast between warm and cool I'm hoping that's gonna make it a much more dynamic and interesting painting now time to knock in these little windows here in this bridge and already I'm getting the feeling that this bridge might be a little bit too low but we'll see how it looks as I progress with this painting now for the marquee for the roof on our little restaurant here at the bottom of the hill are going to be using a short-handled ivory dagger this is allowing me to get some really precise and sharp marks and for this color I'm going to be using plenty of ultramarine blue a little bit of titanium white we're trying to keep that tone nice and dark we want this to read as if it's in the shade down here at the bottom of the hill now during this block in stage to make my life a little bit easier before I get into modelling I'm going to knock in a few of the greens here that are gonna be the foliage of some pot plants that are lining the edge of this little restaurant of course they're probably gonna be sitting in terracotta pots so I'm gonna get this color in here too with a little bit of that nickel azo red gold and burnt sienna one of the most important things about this is just covering all of that background color and manipulating our edges so that it makes our life a little bit easier before we get into the modeling stage I don't want any distracting marks or textures so I go and flatten down some of my edges now in the blocking stage that's smooth around some shapes now I've allowed the painting to dry for a day before carrying on with modeling I don't really want to lift up any of that block and layer this allows the strokes of color here in the modeling stage to be laid down easily we need to increase the complexity of some of these tones and colors here on this brick wall and get a little bit of detail and an indication as to where we're going to layer those really sharp details in the detailed part of the process the third stage but as I'm increasing the complexity of some of this brickwork what I'm doing is I'm adding slightly more titanium white as well as that pyrrol red and some of the burnt sienna and Nicolaes Oh red gold I'm applying this with the edge of my brush with short and sharp marks and dragging the bristles in such a way that it fragments The Strokes towards the edges I just love some of the texture that I'm seen here in this brickwork from the photographic reference and I know I'm gonna have to build this up layer by layer so the gaps between the bricks I'm not paying any attention to right now it's the overall tones that I'm seen as patches of color so again the process here from the block into the detail we're starting off really really general and working our way towards something specific so here this will be right in the middle stage of the process where I'm just starting to add a little bit more complexity to this wall now you can see that I'm contrasting some of these warmer gold colors with a violet II blue color paying attention to some complementary opposites I want this wall here to sing with color from that reflected sunlight now that the block ends dry I can establish where the lines of these windows are gonna go with sharp marks given by that bristled dagger once I have these in place I can then establish the green shade of these shutters of course this color is going to be two different tones one for the sunlight that's hitting the shutter as well as one for the shadow area I'm using a little bit of cobalt teal here and phthalo green but plenty of titanium white and the highlight and a little bit of ultramarine blue in the shadow at this stage I'm not going to saturated with these greens I'm going to save that saturation and intensity of color from my detail stage and I'm gonna work my way up to that ultimate saturation right at the end so not only are we working our way towards ultimate saturation in our color but also our tones as the process progresses I'm getting lighter and lighter with my tones remembering to save my tonal best for last I'm also working with texture so the initial layers are going to be a little bit thinner in terms of texture and then as I'm layering I'm going to increase that tooth to the paint and get a little bit more impasto as the painting progresses these colors that you're seeing here that are laid down in the bottom of the street are going to be a little bit cooler in the shadow and intense and light in that sunlight now the building on the right has lost to those guidelines of perspective so I need to reestablish those by using the handle of my brush and drafting these across with another ivory dagger once I sharpen this up then I know where that detail has to go and those more precise lines of the brickwork along this building and once I have these guides in place it makes it easier to find the placement of these windows hey I'm really sorry to interrupt we'll be back to the demo in just a minute I had to let you know about something important have you subscribed through my website yet at Andrew Tischler com my subscribers get these videos 24 hours before they go on YouTube as well as that I send regular emails loaded with techniques and information to help you with your paintings it's absolutely free so follow the link in the description below or go to Andrew Tischler comm slash subscribe and sign up for my bonus newsletters I look forward to seeing you over there soon thank you for letting me interrupt now back to the demo now I'm really having a good time here trying to work out what details I want to add to this painting and I think what's needed down here and the bottom left is gonna be maybe an urn or a giant vase or a pot of some description not too sure about the shape but for now I'm just gonna make it nice and tall around about hip height and something here just to catch the light and to provide a little bit more interest in this area of the painting now these narrow cns streets have got so much character I can't just paint them with one monotonous zone of color so I'm manipulating my levels of titanium white and ultramarine blue and burnt umber to make a nice dark gray tone and then by adding more or less ultramarine blue I can manipulate the cool that's coming through for some warmer violet I'm using a little bit of deoxys in violet and then balancing this out with cobalt teal so you can see I'm starting to get a little bit of a mottled surface that will accept detail quite well once I have these marks in place then I can go about making some sharper marks to separate between some of these stones the perfect brush for this is a number zero synthetic round it seems to find those grooves really nicely and by just applying a few marks here and there I can really get that texture down now with a little bit more heat and warmth over here with the building's on the right we need to get a bit of the glow from the street below to shine on this building so I'm gonna adjust and make that lead edge of the building a little bit sharper and this will separate it from the background and already we're starting to establish a three-dimensional space where before these buildings had looked quite flat this in combination with the lines of perspective are hopefully going to give us some sort of depth here within this little street scene I need to check my perspective though to just make sure I'm on the right track and make sure everything's lining up to that vanishing point once I'm happy then I can go about sharpening some of these lines there's some really cool colors in these buildings within my photographic reference and I want to try and communicate some of this alternation within the buildings here on the right so I'm gonna mix a cooler color slightly cooler and darker than that warm yellow that's coming through this is going to have a bit more burnt umber and some ultramarine in it with still plenty of that arrow lied lemon and Nicolaes Oh red gold I'm then gonna apply this in a very patchy way now the technique is a little bit laborious but by adding just one brick or one stone at a time we begin to build up that texture and that illusion that this is masonry if we lay it down in the correct way in terms of perspective and paying attention to our vanishing points the effect can be really cool but I've realized something this arch has got to go it's just not working with this painting and this is one of the things that I love about painting is some of these decisions that we have to make to make the painting better I decide I'm gonna lift it and open up this space here in the background so first I need to establish the underside of the arch and we're going to be seen underneath this thing so it's gonna have quite a deep shadow here as it curves upwards to meet the top edge of the painting but that's also going to mean that this stuff that I've just paint is going to have to be wiped out to accept the next layer of paint without lifting any of that color and muddying my palette so I'm going to use a clean cloth here and the just the end of my finger to rub this out it's a tough decision but I think it will end up making a better painting I have a feeling that this was the right decision because it's allowing more detail in that background to come through and have a little bit more of a destination for the viewer which is going to allow for a little bit more of a sense of depth it also means we're gonna get to see some of those tiles of a little bit of a roof and sunlight here as well as some sky poking through I've decided to change the perspective of this building over here on the left and shift the vanishing point from here to here this is going to make the angle of the street a little bit more extreme and we're gonna be sighting down the edge of this building here on the left which will provide a little bit more of an intimate space this ofcourse is also going to change the sunlight that's being cast down the side of that building so I go about readjusting my lines and pointing at this corner of the window which is the new vanishing point once I'm happy with this I go back to work on that building and get a little bit more of that texture in there and establish where those windows are gonna go this time I'm gonna use a synthetic attack lawn round to establish the green color again cobalt teal and Thaler green with plenty of titanium white for those Louvre windows in the Sun and then with a little bit of texture and alternating pink and yellow tones we're gonna get the masonry work that's in the sunlight here on the side I want to establish plenty of texture here at this stage to be able to layer over the top and this might indicate a little bit of that rough masonry in the sunlight also by adding a little bit of texture here we're gonna have a physical lump that is going to cast a shadow as well as have a sharp and intense highlight so I'm using the texture of the paint to mimic some of this masonry work and now it's finally time for just a touch more detail here on the shadowed side of the building and I'm using a small synthetic round number zero along with the number two filbert brush to knock in some of the darker color allowing for some of that lighter under painting to show through in the gaps this will appear to be mortar showing between bricks I can go back and reestablish some of those lines of mortar later on in the detail part of the process but I guess we're edging up to that detail stage now and sometimes the lines between modeling and detail are blurred with this type of painting it's about just getting a little bit more complicated color out some pyrrol red some burnt sienna and some burnt umber this might be getting a little bit on the dark side of things but I can go back and adjust with a little bit more gold and smush it down some of those high points on the brush marks to make sure I don't have too much of a distraction there and make sure it's not too modeled but you can see here as I get a trimmed number zero round I can go and work those fine lines of mortar down between those bricks and start to create the illusion of that masonry now again I'm alternating sum of these warmer colors with just a little bit of cool given by quinacridone magenta ultramarine blue and titanium white I can then go back and add some darker marks again and just alternate in transition between light and dark warm and cool it's providing lots of interest here in this wall what we're trying to achieve here is this effect of many different layers of texture and color of centuries worth of work that's gone on in these masonry walls one of the things that I love about painting is this illusion of detail that you can create by just filling in a few little bits and pieces here and there the viewers brain will then fill in the rest of the detail all we have to do as artists is just state a little bit well and they will complete the picture so we don't need to paint each and every brick just a few will do but here maybe I'm getting a little bit over the top but I'm certainly enjoying where this detail process is taking me for these exposed bricks in the Sun we're gonna have a shadowed surface on the underside of bricks and an equal opposite highlight so every time I lay down a shadow as a sharp line I then make sure I go back and apply a sharp highlight we're getting very close to pure titanium white here and I'm also allowing a little bit of texture and that mark to come through this in itself will catch a nice highlight it's the alternation between this light and dark that is leading to this effect of texture now I've never spent 20 hours on an 8 by 12 painting before but I certainly have here so forgive me for skipping ahead a little bit on this little restaurant but I just wanted to show you how far I went with some of the details here and applying a little bit of that extra touch with some glowing lights as well as some sharpness in the foliage you can see the way that I'm applying the brush loaded with paint to just add one little mark at a time I'll take the brush away every now and again to reload I'm not expecting the brush to go too far with any one color I'm continuously reloading that brush now we need a human element in this painting so I'm going to have Anandi here shaking some ciabatta crumbs out of a tea towel as she's leaning out the window just this touch of life I think will add a little something else to the painting and make it appear a little bit or real incidentally compositionally speaking the lines of perspective are leading directly into this open window where we can see this figure coming out this I think is going to add an enormous amount for such a small little detail now let's apply a little bit more texture here on the right-hand side buildings as a general rule of thumb for heavy masonry texture I start off with some dark outlines and then work in the center between these dark outlines with some mid-tones I try to alternate the mid-tones and have maybe two or three shades of color there to just provide enough interest as I work these textures back and forth more physical texture will appear and really give us the illusion that this is a rough surface catching light from multiple angles towards the tops of some of these bricks it's going to be catching a cool tone from maybe some exposed sky above and towards the bottom that reflected street light is going to come up underneath some of these masonry stones the Sun is no longer shining down here on the bottom of the street so I decide to do away with the market umbrella and simplify this zone also this is a good opportunity to check my perspective and make sure that that detail I've applied on the masonry building is all lining up to the correct vanishing point I have two different vanishing points now as I've decided to change the angles here on the right hand side so I'm using this vanishing point here on the corner of the window where the figure is protruding out that window and another vanishing point here on the left-hand side for the far right hand building this change in angle I think will add just a little bit more interest to the scene and also reflect some of that Sienna character where not everything lines up along the same grid pattern once I'm happy with my perspective I go right back to detailing this time with some chunkier red brickwork just establishing those dark lines between the bricks and then adding some reflected lines from the light above as well as some light marks for the exposed mortar between the bricks I'm gonna allow for some sharper detail to occupy these spaces closer to the viewer and bring this area ford dealer towards the foreground and less detail has the illusion of traveling further into the background you can see with the accumulation of these sharp marks that were really starting to communicate that texture it's all about creating that illusion and just going slowly and steadily again I saved my total best right towards the end of the process and we're gearing up towards that intense highlight that is shown on the left hand side here from that sunlight just spilling through the opening in the building's the first step to this though is to apply a little bit of that shadow the shadows here are going to be nice and warm to communicate a little bit of reflected heat from opposing bricks these going to be applied again with the zero round and once I've established the dark marks you can see how the lighter highlights key right in there I can alternate between a highlight brush and this mid tone shadow brush to just increase the texture the highlight that you see is a mixture of titanium white nickel azo red gold and aerolite lemon this gives me a nice orange a yellow color for that highlight and some intensity and heat within that sunlight the more titanium white I add to this though the cooler it will go and I want just a little bit more cool to come through some of that Sun as we're discussing earlier so I'm going to save some of my warmth for whatever is reflected light and this illusion of light is about having plenty of variation between our highest light tones and our deepest dark tones as well as that variation of warm and cool now down here some of these bricks are going to be very reflective indeed and I'm gonna allow a little bit more sharpness and a little more brightness to come through in these marks and this is going to be nearly pure titanium white and you can see just how far ahead of that opposing wall just behind where the figure is coming out that window just how far that is coming forward that contrast is everything to creating this illusion of spice a few final marks here on the cobblestone street and we need to get a little bit more texture coming through I find those darker marks and I put a little highlight adjacent to the dark mark to increase the texture a few cool highlights here on the shaded part of the wall and this will increase the difference and the contrast between that shade and that light but also give a continuation of a similar type of texture so there's continuity across this surface now you would have noticed that I don't use black but I can mix a near equivalent with adding burnt umber to ultramarine blue this will make a really dark tone indeed and allow some of those dark marks to come further forward towards the viewer if I apply these in a really sharp way like I'm doing here it will increase that sense of detail and focus right here in the foreground and allow these spaces to come closer towards the viewer with a couple of last-minute touches here to this urn the paintings finished this has been a really fun project and something that's quite different for me I never go to this level of detail but I think for an 8 by 12 painting it certainly has got a lot of information packed into it my goal for this painting was simple I wanted to create something that was inviting to use linear perspective to draw the viewer in this little painting was so much fun and I look forward to doing more little street scenes just like it you well I really hope that you've enjoyed this video and if you did then please hit that like button for me if you want to come back for more and see more tutorials just like this one then make sure you're subscribed to this channel as always you can find me on Instagram and Facebook but also make sure you're subscribed through my website at Andrew Tishler dot-com I look forward to seeing you again soon so on

Channel: Andrew Tischler

Views: 388,701

Keywords: italy, italy painting, landscape painting, painting in oils, oil painting, how to paint in oils, how to paint landscapes, landscape painting tutorial, landscape painting in oils, how to paint a landscape, perspective, how to paint perspective, linear perspective, colour, colour mixing, art, artist painting, studio, studio painting

Id: 736EHKQWjGY

Length: 31min 23sec (1883 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 22 2017