Oil Painting Tutorial - How to Achieve Really Vibrant Colour

welcome back everyone alex javaris here in this video i'm going to be showing you how to achieve really vibrant color in your paintings to do so i'm going to be completing an allo prima oil painting of these bright orange tangerines the colors i'll be using are titanium white cadmium lemon cadmium yellow yellow ochre cadmium red alizarin crimson transparent oxide red viridian and ultramarine blue all by michael harding i'm going to start by placing a warm ground made with transparent oxide red and ultramarine mixed with solvent but before we get really into this i'd just like to apologize if it's been a while since my last video i've been having to focus on my patreon channel as the demos on there are all filmed in real time so they take quite a lot longer to make and most recently i've been working on my essentials of color course which is what made me decide to make this video because i'm going to be talking about a key principle for achieving really vibrant realistic colors that i cover on that course broken color here i'm taking one of my smaller soft head brushes and some of the transparent red oxide and i'm going to start mapping out my subject with a few simple lines placing the top bottom and sides of the whole subject then the main areas of light and dark notice how i'm ignoring the glass bowl and i'm not drawing each individual tangerine i'm treating this as a visual impression so i'm looking at light and dark shapes not objects next i'm going to use one of my larger brushes to mix a warm dark color made with transparent oxide red and ultramarine which i'm using to mass in all of the darks with the same even tone establishing the overall light and dark pattern and here i'm gently wiping over the darks to even them out and remove some of the brush marks with the darks masked in i'm next going to mass in the lights starting with the brightest most intense color that i see the light side of the tangerines this is a really warm orange made with cadmium yellow and cadmium red that may be just a little too intense so here i'm neutralizing it ever so slightly with the touch of ultramarine once i'm happy with the color i'll use it to block in the rest of the tangerines after the tangerines i'm next going to mix a color for the grey cloth in the background i see this as a neutral gray violet so i'm using ultramarine blue titanium white alizarin and some transparent oxide red to neutralize it i'll start by placing some of this background colour next to the edges of the topmost tangerine and the tangerine in the foreground these are the two most prominent edges in this whole painting and the areas of greatest contrast notice how blue this grey appears when placed next to the bright orange i'm now mixing a much warmer neutral color which i'm going to use for the foreground made with ultramarine transparent oxide red and a little yellow ochre i can also see a gradation in the foreground as it moves closer to the light source so here i'm mixing a cooler lighter version of my foreground color containing more yellow ochre which i'm using to make the foreground lighter as it moves towards the right next i'm going to start mixing a color for the cast shadow behind the bowl on the left i see this as a much darker version of the violet background colour and it's also warmer containing more red here i'm mixing another color for the background which is a value in between the cast shadow and my original background color i'm using this new color to add a gradation in the background moving from the lightest part in the middle just above the tangerines towards both the left and the right where it gets darker i also want you to notice that as well as a shift in value there's a subtle shift in color from a more blue-gray violet in the lightest part of the background towards a warmer colour that contains more red as it gets darker here i'm making the lighter middle part of the background even lighter with the background covered the only parts that still need to be blocked in are the shadows on the tangerines despite being darks the shadows on these tangerines are still really colorful so here i'm mixing a very warm orange brown which i'm going to use to mass in the darkest parts of the shadows that i see of the tangerine in the foreground and the tangerines in the bowl right here i'm mixing a greener version of my shadow color and i'm going to place some of this cooler color within the shadows of the tangerine which brings me to the point of this video that it's impossible to capture the exact quality of a color like the shadow of this tangerine using just a single mixture if you look closely you will find several different colors in fact what usually happens is at first glance you'll see one color orange and when you look again you'll see another green so the color appears to vibrate so for a colorful object like this tangerine to appear lifelike you will need several different colors placed next to each other within each value this technique is often referred to as broken color here i'm mixing a warm orange color which is a value in between the shadows and the lights on the tangerines i'm using this middle value for some of the edges in between the shadows and the lights on the tangerines in order to round their form and now i'm mixing a much cooler greener middle value which i'm going to use for the edge of the shadow on one of the tangerines so i now have two separate colors a warm and a cool version for both the shadows of the tangerines and the mid-tones in between the lights and the shadows and there will probably be more colors not only in the shadows in the mids but also in all the other values but before i start looking for more variations in color there's one more main value that i need to add the highlights on the tangerines i see these as having a pink color which i'm making with titanium white and cadmium red with the highlights added i now have a total of around five or six main values from here i'm going to start refining these larger value shapes by finding smaller color notes in between them for instance i see a really soft edge at the top of the uppermost tangerine where it's almost completely lost against the background this means that there is a value transition in between the light side of the tangerine and the background behind it and there will also be a colour shift within this transition here i'm mixing a warmer pink violet color and i'm placing some along the edge of the tangerine as i add these different color notes i'm trying to be really careful to maintain their tonal value i don't want to start mixing too many values in fact if i could summarize this video in one sentence it would be keep the value simple use as few as possible then look for variation in color within each value right here i'm scraping back my palette as you can see my colors have all started to get mixed into each other and are turning into mud if i want clean colors i don't want this mud to end up on my canvas so a big part of keeping your colors clean is keeping your palette clean which i'll usually do several times during a painting session once my palette is clean i'll start mixing fresh colors here i'm mixing more of the bright orange for the light side of the tangerines when you remix colors it doesn't matter too much if they aren't an exact match as long as they're the right value a slight difference will add to the sense of variation and as you search for different color notes you can actually be quite bold if you think you see a note of pink or green add a touch of bright green then see how it looks if it's too much remove some of it or try to balance it out with a more neutral version or a note of a warmer color like the orange there's really only one way to get the hang of this and that's to experiment here i'm mixing a really bright green that's the same value as the light side of the tangerine made with viridian and cadmium yellow i'm going to place some of this green in the light side of the tangerine in the foreground but that's a little too much so here i'm going back over part of this green note with some of my bright orange i'm now placing a slightly darker version of this green next to the warm mid-tone in between the shadows and the lights and do you see how this interplay of green and orange blends together optically to create a more vibrant color which makes this tangerine appear much more colorful if i were to use just one orange mixture for the lights on these tangerines they wouldn't appear as realistic in order to capture their true quality i need to use a combination of colours this idea of having several colors working together is really important if you want to accurately represent colorful subjects like these tangerines here i'm mixing a warmer version of my lighter background color and i'm placing a few notes of this warmer color in the background just above the tangerines to add some variation you don't necessarily need a lot of variation sometimes all it takes is a note of a cool color within a warm shadow or a warm within a cool but if you want you can also really push it and add a lot of variation using some really strong colors as long as all your colors are the right value and you achieve the right balance between warm and cool and intense colors and more neutral colors right after adding some of the different colors that i see within my large value shapes and refining the edges in between them i'm now ready to start working on the details in the glass bowl here i'm mixing a really light pink highlight color which i'm using for the brightest highlight just under the rim of the bowl i'm now mixing another green highlight color made with viridian and titanium white and i'm placing some of this green in the highlight on the bowl so even this lightest highlight will still have some color variation within it as i continue to place small details in the bowl i'm being really careful not to include every single reflection that i can see in the glass i don't want to distract from my main centers of interest the hard edges on the tangerines i'm now taking some of my warm orange mid-tone and i'm placing some notes of orange in the foreground where it's being reflected back off the tangerines next i'm going to add a bit more variation in the background particularly in the cast shadow behind the bowl where i see a definite color shift from red to blue as it moves away from the bowl and finally i'm adding a few last details a refraction in the glass that i can see just below the edge of the top tangerine and a really subtle reflected light in the shadow in between the tangerines inside the bowl and with that i think this demo is just about finished so i hope you enjoyed it please remember to like and subscribe if you did and check out my patreon channel if you want to see more demos like this one that have been filmed in real time so you can see exactly how i did them until next time good luck with your painting and thanks for watching you

Channel: SIMPLIFY Drawing and Painting

Views: 152,277

Keywords: oil painting tutorial, how to mix vibrant colors, how to mix colours for painting, still life painting, color mixing tutorial, oil painting, painting tutorial, alex tzavaras, color mixing oil paint, mix paint colors, alla prima oil painting, alla prima oil painting tutorial, broken colour technique, broken colour painting techniques, still life painting in oil colour

Id: vIQR5A7fdY0

Length: 17min 5sec (1025 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021