Oil Painting with Sarah Sedwick: Alla Prima in 3 Steps

okay hi welcome to my online mentorship group session for February 2018 today we are going to be talking about my three stage painting process I think of it in terms of three steps depending on the day it can be more like four and a half or five steps but in general terms I break it down into three stages of an ala prima painting the first stage is the under painting the second stage is values and the third stage is color application and then in between you know step 2 and step 3 we get color mixing which really is a phase all of its own but for simplicity's sake I break it down into kind of a block in firming up my values and then applying color so I have sent you all photos of my simple still life that I set up today some orange slices and I'm gonna be talking to you all coming up this month I think about experimenting with using just a few simple objects in a still life but how many different combinations and how many different compositions can you get if you just took three or four of the same object and a light source so interesting cast shadows and I've got that going on here today I have four slices of orange and I'm going to do a little simple demo to show the stages of my process all right so I have my still life set up on my left this is important because I'm a right-handed painter and I never want to put my painting arm in between my eyes and the thing that I'm painting so if my still life is over here down next to me on a low height it's actually a box with a board on top of it and still like I set up on that I will make sure that I orient my body so that my painting arm isn't between my eyes and my set up I can look very easily and just turn my head from still life to canvas to palette my palettes on the left let's look at my palette for just a minute I have titanium white cadmium yellow hansa yellow yellow ochre this is PI R Allred that's one of the new emgrand colors alizarin crimson dioxis in purple ultramarine blue and ivory black so it's pretty much a split primary palette with some bonus colors we got two Reds to yellows two blues every black is the cooler blue in this scenario I guess and the bonus colors are yellow ochre and accessing purple sometimes I'll use a tube of a brown but less and less often lately I've really been mixing my Brown and what I have right here is the color for my under painting it's the color that I always use for toning my canvas and doing the block in which is the first step in the process and I've mixed it from well really any neutral that you're going to get is going to be a combination of red yellow and blue right but if it's an orange it'll be heavier on the red and yellow this is a combination of the pyrrol red cadmium yellow and a little bit of the ultramarine blue to make this neutral mid value orange burnt sienna is also a good option for this and I'm gonna take that and tone my canvas with it so I use a pretty big brush where's my rag here I use a pretty big brush to just wash the canvas with my under painting color this is a number six flat and the canvas I'm working on today is eight by eight it's a masterpiece masterpiece brands canvas that's my favorite brand right now brush is by connoisseur it's white Teflon synthetic fiber I'm gonna switch it up give the canvas a thin wash of my under painting color I like working into a wet tone a lot of people will do an opaque tone right they'll tone all their canvases leave them out and let them dry for a while and then they like to go back and work into that dry tone the reason that I like to work on a wet tone as you're going to see is that I like to be able to push and pull on the drawing on the block in a little bit more as I'm laying it in and I would be able to if the tone was dry when I started and I can pull lights out of this and add in darks rather than just adding in darks as I'd be able to on a tone canvas that was dry that was a mid tone I don't use any white in my under painting I know you're thinking well if the tone was dry you could just add white but then I can't paint all a prima over an under painting that has opaque white paint in it so during this stage of the painting process the first stage to block in I'm not using any opaque white I'm using the white of the canvas to modulate the value at this point this is the only point in my painting process where I use the white of the canvas and modulate the value I don't want transparent paint in the later stage where I'm doing the actual quote-unquote painting I don't want any transparent passages well if I do I will use them but for the most part what I want is opaque color later transparency now so just take a real quick check through my viewfinder again I took photos of this simple still life setup and I sent them to you I'm not looking at those right now I don't like to pay from photos and I don't like to use photos as my viewfinder I like to use my viewfinder as my d finder and so I do that and I also don't really like to draw with one eye closed while I'm looking through a square aperture gives me a headache after a while so what I'll do is I'll use the viewfinder just to lay out landmarks where does this orange enter the composition you know and then if I'm gonna do that background paper where are the points around the square of the canvas where that comes and goes right I find the landmarks the cast shadow is going off the canvas over here you where is that happening and what do the negative shapes look like and then I'll put my viewfinder down once I have sort of marked off those spots around the edge of the canvas where things interact with the picture plane and then I won't use the viewfinder anymore after that I'll take it back up if I have to but generally I don't like to do the whole drawing while looking through the viewfinder so I'll just get the basic layout with it and so then what I want to do is block in the composition you you you I don't do a ton of measuring when I paint but I do a lot of comparing so it isn't like I'm doing the thing where I hold up my paintbrush you know with a locked elbow and I'm measuring although that is helpful especially with portraits but I do a lot of comparing I'll do a lot of looking at negative shapes the way that angles and lines interact with each other zooming out from drawing let's say this piece of orange wedge by itself to squinting and looking at the piece of the orange wedge and it's cast shadow as one big shape together judging the angle of a line I'll hold my paintbrush up along that angle of the line to try to get a better idea of what that's doing and I'm always looking at negative shapes this little light shape right here there we go that's key for me and that means that I don't get to do a lot of editing as far as the layout of objects we just talked about editing in landscapes how you go out in a landscaping can't just go move that bush around you can't you can't pick it up and put it somewhere else but in your mind you can move it around and you can use that lighting information in color information that you're observing in the world even though you're moving that bush from one spot to another when I'm painting a still life I can move it around I have that luxury entirely available to me and so if I decide that I just don't like the placement of something I'm gonna change it in my actual still life because I if I don't and I just say all right I'm gonna invent I'm gonna move it in my mind from one side of the table to another I cease being able to use things like this negative shape of light to help myself draw the other pieces does that make sense everybody because it's pretty important for me as far as why I do not change things [Music] that's a little longer I don't change things with my mind and if I feel the need to I just go ahead and change them in the world now measuring is really important when I'm trying to decide how long to make this piece of orange I'm gonna hold my paintbrush up close what I and hold it up along this bottom edge of this particular wedge and look at where it hits on this one it's about here so maybe I'm about right the way that I've got this coming down and where does the top hit well the top is actually higher so maybe this is really lower bit lower and you can see already what I mean when I say that I like to work on the wet tone because I can push and pull on the drawing it's a lot like charcoal a charcoal drawing in that way because I can erase and I can add in that's higher and then that tire but this guy is not going to go off the top not and this is my favorite part everyone has their favorite part of the painting process right some of us love the finishing touches that last mile of the race some of us love that non-committal middle part where you're just cruising along and for me the end I find the end very stressful because I've got something to lose at that point you know I feel like I've got yeah it's uh it's mine to screw up at that point and I don't like that pressure I like this stage where everything is possibility and I also just enjoy this pushing and pulling process and the drawing I love to draw I love to draw with a paintbrush okay so I've been kind of switching into the second stage already so I better explain once I get my block in established once I lay out the position of the objects for my painting the next step is to come in and start pulling out lights and putting in darks and I just do that with the same brush I've switched over from that number six flat that I toned the canvas with and now I'm using a number two round same brand connoisseur same bristles white tack on synthetic number two round this is my favorite brush that exists I would paint all my paintings exclusively with this brush if I let myself but I don't because I get a looser more rich and just just nice effect from using a flats the Lund and larger brushes I think we should always aim when we want to bring more looseness to our paintings more abstract looseness to our brushwork we should shoot for using the largest brush that we feel comfortable with for the size of the canvas and maybe pushing that a little bit maybe a little bit larger for the size of the canvas but for a block in I love just number two round this is my drawing brush so the next step for me is to come in and start pulling out some lights so the really the first thing I need to do is stop and ask myself where my lightest lights I'm still working on the drawing but now I'm gonna shift over to working on the drawing from the standpoint of seeing big value shapes so if I switch the brush around in my gamsol and then I wipe it on a rag of a rag in the left hand brush in the right hand gamsol on the table a clean brush that's been dried off just a little bit is like a magic eraser on this kind of surface I can pull that nice wet paint right up and apply it somewhere else and I start pulling out my lights and adding in my DARS why is this important well it's the next stage in the drawing process but why is it important to have a tonal under painting at all couldn't I just do a contour line drawing and then mix up my colors and launch in you could why do I like to have a tonal under painting well so if I don't do a preparatory black and white study or at least a thumbnail sketch this is the part that helps me decide whether I've got a good composition going when the composition is based on big value shapes and it always is so if I've especially if I've bypassed those preliminary studies the black and white study the thumbnail sketch this stage shows me my big value shapes and how they're interacting to create that composition but more importantly having a tonal under painting gives me a foundation it gives me a foundational structure for my finished painting I've got light canvas under the lights in the painting I've got dark canvas under the darks so it's really fundamentally my base layer of my painting it's the underpinnings of you know what is to come and those lighter passages of canvas really do make I think anyway and then it's the idea those let having those lighter passages where I've pulled out the paint from underneath having that under my lights in the finished color end-products really does make those light parts more luminous that's the idea and many of you heard me say this even even those of you who have just been watching my videos have heard me say this that the longer I'm painting the more time I spend on this part of the process the underpainting really getting the under painting just right really making sure those of you out there know who you are that I'm talking to really making sure that I'm happy with my drawing and my composition and my layout before I launch into color not just saying oh it's good enough I'm gonna make those decisions when I get to them in color as far as how I'm gonna handle this area up here let's for example is this area up here gonna be lighter or darker than the foreground well no I'm not gonna make that decision when I come to it later something will happen but it will probably be a default or it'll be an accident or it'll just be whatever it is but it won't be a conscious decision I think about it if I don't if I say I'm gonna think about it then when I get to it I won't because I'll be caught up in the color application phase I'll have eight balls in the air you know form edges mixing all of that and I won't think about it I won't make that decision later I make the decisions now and so I spend more time the longer I'm painting in this under painting stage and also doing my preliminary black and white sketches studies whatever making those decisions so that what I'm quote-unquote painting in color I can just paint no just not just color in that's not what I mean but I mean just give myself over to the color seeing the color mixing the color applications of brushwork those aspects and fully be present with those aspect because I've already decided where my lightest lights and darkest darks are gonna be I've already done that work okay so as you see me darkening just a bit what I'm doing is the paint is getting thicker I'm building up layers of paint to darken but I'm trying not to get too goopy with the paint I don't want really sick paint that isn't gonna set up quickly because this is all a prima wet into wet all at once painting I'm not going to wait for this to dry I'm gonna paint right over it I want that to be very implied so you're gonna you're probably thinking like well this is oil paint it's just gonna dry how are you gonna just work on it well it isn't gonna dry but this thin paint that's really just diluted with gamsol is going to sink into the canvas raw white canvas primed with gesso is perfectly situated to absorb thin paint it wants to kind of suck it up and what I do is I get this under painting established and then I let it sit and get sucked up by the canvas while I do some color mixing step two and a half right now I'm in the second step which is values firming up my values putting in my darks pulling out my lights right now I'm just pulling out lights but do you see how the painting is starting to emerge so if I'm not getting enough lights out with my brush and I'm not really you can come in with a rag I love these blue shop towels they don't shred up and get little pieces of fiber in the canvas the way that your normal kitchen paper towels do so I recommend them you can dip a little corner in the paper towel and gamsol it's a wonderful painting tool in and of itself start pulling out those lights look at how the negative shape defines the form you know it's this combination of light shapes and dark shapes on this canvas that is making this painting happen in your eye it isn't the fact that it's Orange is it isn't the way I drew the oranges it's the layout of light and dark shapes that is what you're gonna see from across the gallery and go oh I want to go over there and look at that painting that's what we're doing where's my lightest light the lightest light and dark is dark and before you move on from the underpinning there are some questions to ask yourself one of them is where's my focal point is it also my area of strongest value contrast where is my strongest value contrast so in this painting what is my focal point I'm pretty sure that the focal point is going to be this guy right here this area we talked about the rule of thirds we've talked about it before and we'll talk about it again we're going to talk about it every month until the end of time ladies the rule of thirds the basic idea of composition you divide your canvas up into thirds vertically and horizontally there was a line here on the line here and then thirds line here and a line here the intersecting points of the lines are called the sweet spots those are good places in the painting to put focal points they don't lead the eye out there inside the painting so this isn't a good spot for a focal point but it isn't just that it's because this is where my area of strongest value contrast is gonna be my darkest darks next to my lightest lights because I see my lightest light in the painting being this highlight on the orange here but also this piece on the ground this is blue this is over the strongest lightest heading there's strong light over here but it isn't so much strong contrast because this part is light this is the shadow side of the orange the calf East UK shadows and so the next step in this process of putting in lights and pulling out I'm sorry pulling out lights and putting in darks is to put in a few darks so I come to my pallet with this warm neutral orange that I've mixed up and I start pulling in a little bit of alizarin crimson and maybe a little bit of the ultramarine blue into that orange the paint is you saw very thin still there's a fair amount of gamsol in it I'm not thinning the paint with oil or mediums at this point just gamsol just the paint Center the solvent it's the fat over lean principle fat over lean and oil painting means paint that has more oil in it or paint that is just thicker goes over paint that is thinner more transparent that's mainly well there are two reasons for that adhesion getting paid to stick to paint and drying time sticker paint fatter paint paint with more oil added to it dries slower and you want you want slower drying paint over faster drying paint in the layers okay so I'm adding in my darks where my darkest darks this cast shadow and here's the thing about rinds peels when we're talking about citrus we've all got this idea this old idea this kind of core concept that rhymes and eat and all cut faces of citrus are very light but they really are not and the even the white part of the rind here if I squint at it it's almost the same value as the cast shadow and the white part of the rind is actually darker than this outer part on this side so you know okay what you see not what you know that's what that means we don't know much when it comes to the visual world we don't remember much we just keep relying on perception as we go about our day serves us well as survivors as humans living doesn't serve us so well as painters painting we need to have beginner's mind looking at the world so that we come with fresh eyes and see like artists I read something this week that I loved I don't know where we're about where but the person was talking about seeing like a painter and she used the phrase purposefully act to see which I thought was like a little poem you okay so adding in darks I'm still drawing I'm drawing pretty much at every phase of the painting which means that I'm making comparisons I'm looking at shapes positive and negative and clean the brush off and I can continue to pull out light it's like a magic erase board let's erase those little lines I made for the rule of thirds it's really easy everything is fluid depending on if you're outside and you're doing this this is gonna dry on you fast you might even start to think wait that I bring my acrylics today because you know this paint will gamsol will evaporate the paint will sink in faster if you're outdoors if the weather is warm or if the air conditioning has turned up really high so anytime it's dry temperature conditions will affect this and make the underpainting setup faster not necessarily a bad thing but you won't be able to pull out lights forever so I like to pull some of them out first and then add in the darks and it's not like it's you know drying up before my very eyes or anything how's that line and this comes a little closer I don't know what the deal is here with this drawing part yeah that's flatter but the longer I'm painting the more time I spend on this phase I love doing the under painting I love playing around with it but the more time I spend here very often more successful my finished painting becomes and really the faster the less time I have to spend on the rest okay so that's it that's the first two stages the block in and the light and dark values now I'm gonna do the next so now we want to move on to adding color but first we have to do some mixing I'm a big fan of pre mixing my paint nah my brush goes into everything and as I'm working and as I'm painting I generally every time the brush goes back to the palette I change what's on it a little bit I'll grab something a little bit different I'll change it up but I do like to premix to make sure that I've got the fundamental building blocks of the color scheme of my painting and that means I mix up something for the light parts and the shadow parts of all of the main things in my painting so it's orange I don't have a tube orange I don't know I'm not a big fan of tube orange I don't know I'm a big fan of tube purple so it's not like I don't like the secondaries in a tube I just orange has not been one that I've found has been helpful to me it's so powerful cadmium Orange I like what happens when I mix orange so I want something real saturated you the thing is you get with these oranges you get more saturation on the shadow side generally and lucky me I've already got this kind of like dull mid-tone neutral orange mixed up from my under painting I can use that to darken things a bit I need to think about using your alizarin crimson rather than your warm red the alizarin crimson has blue baked in yeah I need something for a light orange so I'm gonna use both my yellows maybe probably mostly alizarin crimson with both the yellows maybe a little yellow ocher so greenish it really dulls it and then you can compare right on the palette as you're mixing how much lighter is that what's the value difference there you know it's a little lighter and I don't have that much value difference between the light side and the shadow side of my orange slices it's very subtle if I squint I definitely see it but it's pretty subtle so I think that that's good and the rinds of course are pretty dark I'm just gonna go right into this under painting color add some more red to it that was way too much red this pyrole red is a beastly bully I really like it but stronger than I expect and then we need something for those rinds the white parts they're white those of you who have been studying with me for a while red finger those of you who have been studying with me for a while know that I like to approach anything that's white by starting from a flesh tone I just do it's it's that pretty much whenever you want to mix anything white it's gray and when you want to mix the gray you pick a complementary color pair and mix up a neutral from it and then add white to it my preferred start point is blue orange right and so that's a flesh tone what is a flesh tone but a neutralized orange with white in it so I start from kind of a fleshy tone place and that's pretty much red plus yellow plus white and then I'll neutralize it with blue until I get it to start feeling like the quote-unquote white that I want and this white is kind of yellowish really I'm looking at the whites around the edge of the rind they're yellowish I can always add more white later if it's not light enough and then on the shadow sides I see them being almost green they could be I do see them as being kind of green in spots so I'm gonna take some of this and some of my tone color and I'm gonna take some purple and yellow together will their compliments they'll neutralize each other but they make a greenish neutral I know this because I've done my color charts I kind of like that the truth is you can get away with a lot color wise as long as you match the value that may not be dark enough that's pulling some yellow ocher - purple yellow little warmer add some alizarin crimson as I was saying you can get away with a lot color wise as long as you match the value color gets all the credit and value does all the work as far as creating form in a painting so give yourself a break if you're having trouble mixing a color or if you can't figure out what color something is just match the value and take a guess at the color I can just see all the YouTube comments jumping all over me for saying that but I said it feel it all right no we need a couple more things and you know this is just a starting point all right something for the light parts of the orange something for the darker parts of the orange something for the rind sex they can already tell that's gonna be too saturated let's add some purple to it a little purple a little white give me a little blue too much one thing I want to point out is that I'm mixing the paint with the front of the palette knife this is the back of the palette knife this is the front of the palette knife I'm mixing between the front of the palette knife and the surface of the palette so I'm pushing I'm not doing this pushing the paint I flip it over and I push it it's like the scooper part of the spatula I'm pushing it against the palette with that okay I don't know it's way too dark lighten with yellow always try to lighten with yellow especially when we're talking about warm colors white will blue it down yeah you might want that you might not or maybe just a little bit but you can always add more white later white and color mixing is like salt and cooking it's real easy to add more at the end but it's pretty hard to get it out once you've overdone it and I want something for the negative space that blue maybe a little ultramarine I think I'm gonna use mostly ivory black to make that blue I use black on my palette almost all the time and I do not think of it as black and I do not paint black things with it oh you think of it as a blue plum ivory black is a dull dark neutral blue so I use it to darken other blues I use it to mix greens I use it to me relize oranges I use it to make violets every black reeks beautiful violets with lizard and crimson by the way but I do not use it to paint black things okay my finger keeps going in the red means I've got that must mean I've got a larger scoop than I'm used to it's just my day to have a red middle finger and I want a couple different things for the blue too and I need something for the cast shadow mm-hmm okay no let's start with IRA black and then I'm gonna put some of that pyro red in it we'll make a violet with the ivory black and the pyrole red and then lighten it and see what happens okay beautiful black in red beautiful violet way well why do you want it's too light I mean dark too dark it's really important to have something mixed up for the negative space and just something for a cast shadow I can change the color I can change the color temperature of the cast shadow but getting the right value relationship is key and I can look at it together on my palette I like to mix them near each other here's the cast shadow and here's the light part that's way dark that's way purple hmm if I wanted to be less purple put some yellow in it put some yellow ocher in it maybe okay good starting points so try to wipe the red off my finger a little bit before it gets all over my face my body and I'm gonna switch over to a brush I'm gonna switch over to my number four flat in the paint this with a number four flat this has been my favorite recently Princeton Summit Series number four flat also synthetic green handle and where do I want to start a lot of artists especially portrait painters like to start with the darks shadows that's pretty helpful when you're painting a portrait I've already shown myself the value of my darkest darks in the under painting so I don't have to start with the darks in order to establish that value hierarchy because really we want to get everything relative and we want to capture the relationships so if I hadn't done this under painting it would be a good idea to jump in and show myself my darkest darks right off the bat and I could do that but I think what I want to do is start with my most vulnerable colors which are gonna be my cleanest brightest and most saturated colors or you can just go for an easy win you know something that you definitely know what to do with start there and then judge everything against that that's a that's always good well you really know what something should be but the reason that I say start with the saturated colors is while the canvas is clean while your paintbrush is clean while your gamsol is clean like if you're painting a lemon start with that bright saturated yellow if you're painting a daffodil start with the brightest cleanest lightest yellow and get that on there before everything else gets dirty it really increases your chances of keeping it clean alright so I'm going to come in with this saturated nice mid-tone Orange that I mixed up which is basically for the darker sides of my oranges you and I can compare it already to the cast shadow value a bit because I have the cash shadow blocked in and if I want it to be a little darker I have some of that mixed up too I can just pull my brush in to some of it that's a little darker and I I don't think of this you could think of this as a color-block in I don't I think of it as painting from the general to the specific meaning that I don't want to get in and start painting the little orange segments right off the bat but I just want to be squinting and getting the big shapes of color and value and then I can get more and more specific with it as I go along you you I paint a lot of whole oranges but I don't cut them up that much you so this is a nice treat you you all right notice how I'm doing a little bit of work and then I'm moving around I'm letting the whole painting come up together I don't finish one area before moving on to another area almost never so the next step is I'll come over here to this orange and I'm really gonna squint this is the piece that I have that's got the clearest distinction between light side and shadow side and I really want to show that now I'm not being that precious about my under painting lines I want to make sure that I paint over and across my under painting lines I want to obliterate those if I can I don't want to save them for anything okay and when you're doing that mixing that color mixing step make sure you make enough paint I already didn't what's wrong with me it's so sad do you need more paint because it means that you paintbrush down and pick the palette knife back up and that's hard to make ourselves do time spent mixing is time spent painting but once we've already got the brush in the hand it can be difficult to put it down and pick that palette knife back up but believe me it's the difference between a successful painting and a failed painting most of the time because what happens is when we run out of that thing that we needed and we aren't willing to go back and mix more what do we do we grab the next closest thing and it isn't right I know that you guys do that because that's what I do and it does not serve ok shadow side there's a really red that shadow side that far shadow side more greenish that's why I love having yellow ocher around it's so greenish I didn't used to understand that yellow ochre was actually a green but I do now oh I'm definitely not gonna be finishing this painting but I want to try to give you the basic ideas and you've already seen the three stages and how I conceptualize that just in the time that I spent mixing the colors just in those few minutes the underpainting really set up I can come in here and rub right on you know the the darker passages of my under painting and yeah I'll get some paint on my finger but I'm not really gonna mess this up too much it's sunk in enough that I can paint this color right over it without much trouble at all oh it I'm coming into the rinds now the light parts of the rinds notice in your mind where they are warmer and cooler maybe they'll be a little more yellowish in some areas and a little bit less yellow in others the more white you add the bluer it's gonna feel you and in between trips back to the palette I'm wiping my paintbrush on the rag in my left hand I haven't really been cleaning it in the gamsol you can always tell when I clean it in the game's locks I was very loud all right you hear it you rattling around in my jar but if I'm just staying in the light values or if I'm just staying in the Rhind I will pretty much just wipe the brush but not necessarily clean it out exhaustively notice how some part this rind or more yellowish and then as they come up and they get more light they change just a bit so they aren't just the same one long stroke across and I don't want to go over and paint over too many times I really want to get it down there and leave it alone as I keep going over this because it'll get smushed into itself and you'll lose that variety can you kind of see how the rind goes from more yellow to a little more white as it goes around and over here the same way it's a little more yellow in the middle and then gets a little cooler as it comes up around toward the edges that's still it's it's messy you know but this is painting from the general to the specific you're blocking in your big areas and some of these will get to stay like this and some areas particularly around the focal point will get more refined maybe much more refined that's up to you okay and some of that refining is done by filling in what's around it so what I want to really firm up that orange rind I can do that by painting the negative painting it's negative space which is this rind that's behind it we our stuff is this thing right that I made is this no it's not you so half the battle is when thing is wrong don't just say oh well and spread it around all over the place go back to the palette and do something different it's okay can be tough to mix and nail it the first time can be tough to mix and nail it the second time the process of trial and error and yeah so even though I just got done saying color gets all the credit but value does all the work so don't worry about what color it is if you can't figure it out just do something what I mean is I didn't have the value right someone's got to be working okay tow its next Oh with a shadow side of the rind remember how I was talking about mixing up those kind of greenish neutrals that's who light probably is yeah probably yes let's go to the darker version it's better maybe to green see me not yeah if it's to green we simply add some of the complement and I have some nice reds and oranges already mixed up from painting the orange stuff I can just pop right in there you you squint and notice either that those rinds are darker than the orange part that's next to them or not and how they compare to the cash shadow to it's a constant process of comparison when we're talking about values hmm it's really orange in there this part good like that some of this under painting is going to be your friend we don't need to cover it all up certainly but just be careful of leaving the lines because when it feels like you painted up to the line on one side no it's like and then you painted up to the line on the other side and just stopped kind of leaving that halo I call it haloing and it feels very tentative and and not very satisfying try to avoid that if you can but leaving the under painting showing in some areas is great when it's a strategy you know so many things in life are great when we do them on purpose and not great when we do them by accident that is my my deep thoughts with Sarah Sedwick so today I'm gonna wrap this up here all right well I will work on this more and I will post where I get but this is how I start and this is pretty much how I start every painting you know start with the parts that you can figure out the most easily and then let everything else fall in line in a hierarchy relative everything's relative but that's it that's the three stages of the ala cream of painting process okay no inspired good well I hope you're all feeling inspired and it's been great to hang out with you this morning thank you for joining me you

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Keywords: art, painting, oil painting, still life, art tutorial, painting tutorial, painting lesson, alla prima, art lesson, art class, learn to paint, painting techniques, sarah sedwick, artist, art video

Id: Rm_QjVmzaWk

Length: 57min 9sec (3429 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 05 2018