Painting Fire on the Beach with Acrylics - Paint with Ryan

[Music] hey there I'm Ryan and today we are going to work on an acrylic landscape lesson all of the tools and materials will be listed in the video description and if you'd like help with the drawing process I love the traceable up over on patreon along with the reference photo for color matching with that said let's jump in [Music] we're going to begin here today by taking a one inch flat headed brush because we want something that has quite a bit of surface area to grab paint and we want something with a relatively sharp edges like this to work around our flames now before I grab any page I'm actually going to dip the bottom third of my brush here in some water and wipe off the excess this is essentially going to extend the wet life of my paint and help me blend with it for a longer period of time but it's worth noting that we want it simply damp not wet which is why we are currently wiping off the extra water we're going to begin in the background here that way we can layer our fire and water of topit and for this I do want a really dark sky that way all of the oranges and yellows from the fire and the sparks it creates can really pop so I'm taking quite a bit of Mars black about half that cerulean blue and I'll also grab a hint of titanium white the titanium white is going to thicken it but it's also going to brighten it just to the point where you notice the blue and that way you have a bit of a cool background so take this and we're just start applying it on the top left hand corner and working our way over here to the right now it's worth noting that because our brush is damp at this point you may get slightly more thin pigment and that means that you'll have to go over this maybe twice maybe do two different layers but if you don't have much water on it if you're okay with working with less then you may only have to do it once but essentially what you're looking for in this layer is a dark application and not seeing any of the canvas showing through and if you have 10 myths showing through it will simply look a little bit brighter working my way down and as I run out of paint here you can actually see a good example of it then it's essentially a real mixture of water and pigment and that's why it's so thin in this scenario you have to do two layers but again by going over it a couple of times by making sure our brush isn't too wet we can avoid that now as I start to move downwards I'm going to start interjecting it's slightly more blue into the mixture so we'll grab just a bit more and we'll continue working from there we don't want it to be actually blue by the time we get to the bottom but we do want it to have a hint more color and be slightly brighter I'm also going back over the top and just trying to make sure that we're a fairly void of Streep's generally you get the most streaky aesthetics when you apply a lot of pressure with your brush so we're going over it quite softly I'm not applying much pressure at all and I'm just letting it loosely glide the issue with this in acrylic painting is generally that it's difficult to move your paint around a lot when you're not applying a lot of pressure and the way around that is simply to grab more pigment on your brush so you can see that I'm frequently going back and grabbing more frequently mixing more and I'm also consistently changing my mix for two reasons the first is that I do want it to become more blue as I get down towards the flames and I also want to ensure that I'm consistently mixing it because that just builds good habit and it helps you eventually retain your mixes that way if you achieve a color you really like in a lesson like this you'll remember how to achieve it later on in a future different ink time now we are getting quite close to the actual fire and I'm going to work around it with some fairly precise applications using the corner of my brush but I recognize that you're quite far away right now and seeing this detail is probably a little bit difficult so I'm going to move the camera a little bit closer and then we'll proceed together so as you can see we are now significantly closer and I'm just using the corner of my brush to work around the edges of my flame and I'm going to move down to the point of our water then I'll use a myriad of horizontal strokes to create a relatively straight line and I'm doing it in a series of strokes rather than one continuous start because generally we tend to start moving a little bit on those longer strokes and you'll get a bit of a bend so by continuously making smaller ones we ensure that it's consistent so now I'm just moving over here being relatively careful if you do move over the fire that's okay we can redraw it we can repaint it it's just a bit easier if we are more mindful of it from the beginning here you can really see that blue starting to take effect but you'll also notice that it isn't heavily saturated or bright it's just brighter than what we've used in the previous applications of the painting now I'll grab more and I'm going to start my application not over here but beside the flame because when you have new pigment and pigment that is damp then you have your best opportunity to render sharp lines and implications and the more you apply that paint the more your brush starts to dry out and the harder it becomes to render these clean little spots and lines I'm also going to apply a little bit in different portions of the flame for areas that are a bit more transparent and showing the night sky through them then I'll head to those edges and I'll start dragging that paint that we've previously applied over this way but I would also like to note the reason I chose this larger brush again was because it is large and I can cover a good amount of space easily but also because it does have those sharp corners and edges which did let me work around that with relative ease just something to consider I know a lot of people like to do backgrounds with larger round headed brushes mop brushes things of that nature but when you want to work around a heavily detailed sharp edged subject using something like this can really be ideal and here you can see I'm blending it up into the previous application it is starting to drive with the water in my brush is giving it a bit more of a life when I touch it and it's helping me just continue now my water is essentially out on the brush so I'm not able to do too much more we'll make sure it's damp we'll grab more pigment and then we'll work over here once this is done we're going to take three to five steps back look at this from afar move around the room and make sure that it's the color and value that we want just make sure if it's you know as bright as you want as dark as you want as saturated as you want all of those different things it's generally easier to tell from a distance and I recommend moving around the room because right now the paint is wet and therefore reflective and it'll look a little bit different from different angles so just something to consider before you continue but once we get that look we will continue down into the water so I took some steps back and I'm actually a big fan of how this turned out and I don't feel like I need to do any dish the layers but something I noticed that I think you should probably also take a note of this line right here is straight is horizontal and it is even on both sides however we have the water rushing up on shore and that itself is not a perfectly straight horizontal line it has this bend in it and it's actually higher on the canvas here and lower over here which can kind of give you a bit of a confusing perspective you might look at this from afar and say oh no this isn't straight because it's not straight with this when this is actually not straight and it's not supposed to be so just something to consider when you do take a step back now I am going to stick with that one inch flat head brush I'm going to make sure that it's nice and damp and we're going to move on to the water so the water is going to be brighter than the sky here and I'm going to start by mixing he's slightly more blue more bright mixture than what I just had so I'm mixing it right beside that initial mixture I'm actually mixing it a little bit on top but that's only because this is already dried and I don't have to worry about that blend happening and here I'm just looking for something a little bit brighter so we are almost there I think we'll make it a bit more blue good I will take this and then I'll start working it over on the right-hand side on the horizon line because again we always start in that area and then I'll use the corner of my brush to work around all of the detailed flames as we do so far so good just like that if you feel like you are starting to run out of pigment and you're no longer able to create a sharp line along the edges do not continue go back make your brush damp and grab new pigment then once you have what you want work from there I'm also going up and fixing that horizon line I'm bracing my hand my canvas with my pinky finger this is going to allow me to create a bit more of a sturdy stance and ensure that I'm less shaky with my brush so if that's an issue you have and you just feel like you have a hard time getting things straight or detailed find a dry spot on the canvas and brace your hand with your pinky finger now I'm going to make this slightly darker for that right hand side create a slight vignette effect just like that not much to it just trying to draw the eye in and as I get down here we'll probably go with more of the initial blue could I've done that initially when I had the color the first time yes I could have would have been a perfectly fine thing to do but in remix in it again we get better at color matching and that's a great skill to have later on when working a lot more complicated subjects there we go now I think I'm going to brighten this just a bit and I'll carry that color on over here I want the left-hand side to be brighter and I want that because we want to balance the painting and you know what we'll just start in here it's going to blend with our previous mixture so it's not going to be as bright or blue as what we have on the palette but that's okay it's nice and subtle and then we'll move over here but as you can see it's a bit chalky you can see the tooth of the canvas and that means we need more water and more pigment but as I was talking about I want to balance the painting right I want to make sure that the eye can move back and forth from each side that it doesn't stay on one side and essentially just become stagnant or bored so the fire is our main subject that's where we want the eye for the most part however we want secondary subjects secondary sources of light and value to bring the eye to it to move the eye around it and so with that in mind because this is primarily on the right hand side of the canvas I'm adding more light in the water to the left-hand side of the canvas and this is to balance it out this is to make sure that you don't feel like the paintings a little lopsided then it'll just feel a lot more natural now something interesting that's happening here is my paint is a little bit more thin than it has been in the rest of the painting I just had more water on my brush than I normally do and it's semi-transparent and it's definitely going to require a secondary layer of slightly more thick paint now when you do apply too much water sometimes you can just go back over it with new paint but sometimes you do need to let it dry because it just becomes really difficult to work with so that's something to gauge something that you'll learn over time naturally but it's something to consider if you're just having a really hard time working on it don't worry about it just let it dry it shouldn't take more than 5 minutes 10 minutes to the acrylics and then you can come back and have a much much more easy time of working through it so I'm just starting this side by painting it entirely with this slightly brighter blue but we are going to make some changes and make it a bit more interesting so to begin we noticed that this side is darker the backs a little bit darker so we'll make this slightly darker as well just like that nice and easy going to apply this to the top and back of our water just like that and then I'll blend it down via a series of horizontal strokes and I do recognize that this lesson is drawing most people in because it is a lesson on painting fire and it seems maybe a little strange to spend this much time working on a background but if your background isn't right if you rush through it it's not going to matter how good that fire looks because you will notice that background it won't be what you want and it will hinder the painting as a whole here you can see I'm taking that color moving it over there just to make it more cohesive and there's a slight dip of a darker pigment right there which is kind of making it look less horizontal we can go back and fix this in a little bit but just something to consider make sure your horizon line still looks fairly straight with that set as you move closer to the shore I'm going to make it even brighter so more white more blue more black and again we're mixing beside our previous mixture is to make sure that things are consistently getting brighter and more saturated that should be the brightest and most saturated pigment we've created this far it is but something interesting happened because our initial mixtures were so thin you could see the white of the canvas showing through the water and that made the pigment look a brighter so this is actually a brighter pigment than anything we've used but it looks slightly darker than what was there because the canvas is no longer showing through something else to consider and this is why we always go back and do thick layers that way we actually get the application the color we want once we have the majority of the water painted in the way we like with our gradient from dark to light and darker on this side then this side I'm going to switch to the round pointed brush I'm going to make sure that it is nice and damp then I'm going to create a brighter blue than what we've previously created so starting with blue titanium white and then a hint of Mars black just so it's not too saturated or bright then I'm going to head down to this bottom left hand corner and I'm going to softly incorporate some strips build up a bit of a highlight kind of right here that way again it balances all of the light that we'll have right there and it is something that I see in the reference photo but I did amalgamate reference photos to make this so it's kind of partially by my design there we go I am leaving in some strokes give it a bit of a dynamic movement here but very very subtle and then we'll also take a hint of that move it from there and over here it's very watery right now so it's quite transparent and if you feel like you apply too much you can just use your finger soften that and we'll run that along the bottom right here where the water is rolling in that'll catch some extra highlight there we go looks good so from there we are now going to paint in some little land masses in the background now I'm going to stick with the quarter inch round pointed brush for this because it's very detail-oriented and I'm going to create the darkest mixture thus far so I'm going to make it just above our previous darker mixture here on the pallet that way we can compare and trust I'll use point a bit of Mars black maybe about a quarter of that in our blue and then a hint of titanium white again from there I'm going to start by working on the edges of this and what I can tell right now is that my brush actually is quite a bit of paint on it and this happens when you initially mix your pigments and when that happens it becomes quite difficult to render small sharp markings because you just have so much paint it's difficult to move around them so I'm going to do I'm going to tape all of this pigment off my brush make sure it's nice and damp again then we'll go into our mixture and grab some fresh paint just on the tip and this this will give us a much more easily controllable application yet again because we're working with detail on grounding by hand on the canvas to eliminate shake now that I'm creating these rock structures I'm just checking my reference photo making sure that they're always evolving and different one of the worst things you can do in a painting is simplify your subjects to the point where they look very similar or Sami because it's at that point that the painting becomes a little unbelievable and feos more like a cartoon so we're just going to try to continuously iterate on this and make it something that's always evolving it's the same subject over and over again but we want to make sure that we have different peaks and valleys different descents and slopes here you can see my mixture it's quite watery because you can see the canvas through it so I have to go over this again but when you're just plotting these out figuring out where you want them to go that's not a bad thing it's worth going over the second time to make sure that it's the way you want it the first time we'll just do a couple little ones over here looks good while I have this mixture and a bit of water on my brush I'm going to take that over here take some extra cerulean blue that way it's a mixture of this and the water and I'll create a slight reflection for it so using again horizontal strokes I'll come underneath this structure I'll apply it right on that edge and then I'll start moving downwards letting that paint run out and getting a wet or too dry blend so as you can see I finished up the second layer in these just think in that pigment and I also went ahead and added just a little bit of a reflection a bit of a shadow right down here into the water for this and these too so with that we are now going to jump down into the sand and then we can start the really exciting part which is building the fire we're going to begin mixing our colors for our sand with our one inch flat headed brush and as you can see we actually don't have a brown here on the palette we're going to mix something close to one so we're going to start with some of our cadmium yellow dpu cadmium red light hue we'll mix those together to make a nice orange generally when you darken and desaturate Orange you end up with something that looks a bit more Brown that is if it's more red dominant than yellow dominant if it's yellow dominant Orange then it'll probably look a bit more green so just something to consider and here you can see we have a nice brand however we want it to be significantly darker and we want it to be a bit more blue because it's getting reflective blue light from the ocean and the sky so thereby throwing a little bit of blue in there we do make it a bit cooler we'll make it a bit darker like that and then I want a hint more titanium white to the mixture as well then we'll take this and here you can see what that pigment looks like when it's spin it looks more Brown when it's thick it looks a bit closer to black now I actually want it to be a bit brighter up here so I'm going to go with a more titanium white heavy mixture we can re-inject Brown in there by including more red and yellow and you can really get a lot of different colors and shades of brown I think what a lot of people begin they think they need to use burnt umber or something of that nature but it really isn't necessary you can make so many beautiful variations that match your painting in its atmosphere so so easily with just a red a blue and a yellow so here you can see I'm taking this pigment I'm working that around here and I did make a mistake admittedly I should have started working around the fire like we did before in the sky and that I should have moved out to this edge so there I just took all of the extra pigment off my brush made sure it was damp now I'm using the corners to work my way around those edges and again I'm working with a bit of a brighter orange right now or Brown rather and as we get farther down we will make it darker and darker now you can see that because I am working with so much water this is relatively thin you can see the canvas there and that's okay I've accepted that I'll do a couple of layers here and I'm also just going back and softening things by doing a consistent stroke all the way across with a very minimal amount of pressure I'll also take this just so I have a good color match later on I'll apply it right here I'll do a slight blend down again I'm not too worried about this we'll have to go in and fill a little bit more water in there but this is not meant to be a finish layer over on the right-hand side I'm just applying this so that I know what color I want later on now this is still wet and we're going to start adding to it in the form of Mars black red yellow and we're just making a slightly darker version of that initial mixture you could have mixed this beside and compared to contrast but I can still see the initial mixture around the edges and this looks like it will work great so I'm going to start by just blocking in some of these edges as we do like that and now instead of filling in this area I'm going to go back up and blend with our previous application because it is still wet and I want to get this down while it is so there we have a good transition and we can take a bit of this and just work that over here for later if you want you can blend it up into the top but again this is something I'll probably go back and do it a couple of times then from there we have that mixture we'll grab more Mars walk work that in come down to the bottom and just continue darkening the look I'm not going to get as much reflected light over here then we want a heavy contrast so that the fire of really stands out so now I'm just making my way over to the other side of the canvas and I'm going to fill this in in that same so darkness friends at the bottom mid-valley browns right here and brightest up there though none of them are really bright they're essentially just bright relative to what else is on the canvas at the time and remember we work edges first and go from there soft strokes to remove strictly aesthetics once we have all of our sand implemented we're going to a soften the shoreline like I started right here we're going to do that with the smaller rounded pointed brush again this is about a quarter of an inch I'm making it nice and depth then we'll create a relatively bright blue probably essentially what we had for the brightest blue right there so I'm taking quite a bit of blue quite a bit of titanium white a hint of Mars black not much though we do want this to be amongst the brightest colors and values we've implemented so I'm just slowly interjecting more Mars black and we'll start with this now I'm going to go to that edge and I'm going to work and down and I'm going to do a soft blend up into the water so I'm going both ways vertically up and down and I'm starting by just creating the soft gradient from the brown into the blue then we're going to go back we're going to mix a bit more of that bright blue and we'll need to do this a couple of times then we'll head to that bottom area and we'll skip a little bit of Brighton and then we'll start interjecting this new blue and here you can see that we already have this soft transition colors but we need to build it up we need to add more now this is something that would happened very quickly if that Brown was dry but it isn't and we're currently blending wet into wet and diluting all of the colors and applications we currently apply which isn't a bad thing just recognize that it'll take a little bit longer to get and will make your applications look more smooth so that's kind of the trade off and eventually it will look more like that side so again blue white hint of Mars black tapping off the extra on my palate and here as the pigment underneath that brown starts to dry you can see the blue is more prominent but the more we work that blue the more I work horizontally the more I move it out in these directions the more soft it gets and that's natural that's how it's supposed to work now let's get something that spit blue white black it's not as bright and I'm working this now in between this and here and I'm just trying to create a nice soft transition from the water into the land and then slowly interject little openings little spaces between the blue that have a bit more Brown and little bits of blue or highlight in between the nares so we're just kind of going back and forth between blue and brown with semi-transparent pigments there we go so now we have this little bit of water washing up on the shore and it's catching light because it's a bit higher and then we have this area that's a bit more thin so you can see the sand underneath it and then again we have a bit of a higher area of water and then it gets lower again and that's when it gets dark so we're just looking for that idea and that progression grab more white more blue something I want to do is make sure that these still line up relatively well so you know what I'll do slightly more over here and then I'll continue this line of uh say okay you know what there so continue right there okay so we have the right areas we just need to let that dry a little bit so I'm going to take five ten minutes let that dry and then we'll come back in and make it a bit more detail-oriented so it's been about five minutes and the pigment is now just about dry so we're heading back to that quarter inch around pointed brush mixing up some of our bright blue with a hint of Mars black and yet again take my pinky finger grind it on the canvas find these lines continue them over here and look at that so much more visually notable than it was before you can soften the ones in the distance using your finger head back in follow this line and just like that we have another neat iteration now I tried to make sure that these weren't the exact same distance apart and when I start to run out of pigment here I can just take that off on a painting cloth or paper towel I can blend the back of this mark upwards and keep the mark on the bottom quite sharp this is going to make it look like the water is rolling in and it's treating it's very thin layer behind it you can also make this look a bit more wet by just working some of that whitish blue right there now we're not going to have as much detail on this side because it is a bit farther away we just won't be able to see it so I'll just throw in a couple more little marks like that we don't want it to be too complicated because we don't want to taking away from the fire that will do quite soon this is just a nice little touch make it feel a bit more real there we go looks great looks really really good and with that we can now start jumping down into here so for this next step I'm switching to a half inch flat headed brush so it's just a bit smaller than the one we used for the sky the water in the sand well that's just because I want a slightly more detailed application so it started by making sure that it's nice and damp then I'm going to grab some Mars black put it up here I'm going to grab a hint of titanium white hint of yellow hint of red and I want this to be the darkest pigment we've used thus far in the painting that's why I'm mixing it right beside that one so I have a good thing to relate it to and once I have something I think will be appropriate I think will stand out just slightly from the rest of the sand I'm going to head into the large that we have at the bottom of our fire and I'm going to work initially along the edges as we've learned to do through the entirety of this process and I'm just going to work my way in now in this process you are going to lose logs things they're going to be amalgamated and you're going to have less detail than what you she had in your drawing as this is initially going to look silhouetted and I'm telling you that now because that is a okay it's what's meant to happen all we need to do right now is essentially fill in these areas with this darker pigment and we want to do so with a relatively thick application here you can see it's relatively thin you can see the weight of the canvas showing through and that's just an indicator that we need more pigment on our brush so yet again mixing more and as I talked about in most of these lessons I try to not mix with too much paint for our first applications because that forces me to mix more it allows me time to refine and because I'm consistently remix it again it just it makes me better at color matching articulating colors and just getting better at that process of refining and it's something I'd heavily recommend there we go so far so good a really nice somber piece in the making going over some of their scenarios the brushstrokes are predominantly going in the direction of the log that way if there is any texture or any brushstroke showing it simply looks like texture in the wood and I can actually add extra detail but I am occasionally going at it from a different angle just to fill it in and then once I have that I'll go back over it with the angle of the wood as you can see here and just interject those little lines should any of them stay again going over it a couple times that way it builds up that pigment and we're about to enter into some larger logs so we'll use more paint there we go and very soon we get to start the fire still working our way around the larger primary flames using the corners of the brush to do so and in this process you really do start to see the form and the shape in the fire yet to be here you can see I'm not working in the direction of the log just because there's easier to fill in that area and now I'm going to come back and work in that same movement there we go now I'm going to let this try I'll come back in do a second layer over all of this wood and then we will proceed together from there so as you can see I did an additional layer I let it dry and in the end the invaluable that I went with was something that was incredibly similar to that which is right down here it is just slightly darker same level of saturation just a little bit darker but with that we are now at a very exciting point we get to start working on the fire and I'm going to do that with the smaller well I suppose one fourth of an inch round pointed brush will grab some of our cadmium red the light hue a little bit of our Mars black a little bit of our titanium white mix those together and we'll start looking for different openings in all of these logs whether it's going to be fire moving and building up we're looking for all of those hot areas and I'm using predominantly the reference photo to find these areas but they're predominantly going to be closer to the middle of the fire as you can see I work them predominantly along the bottom of a log and in this case we have this log right in front of it and then I'll work little flames a little movements upwards and this is just the base weather this is essentially just getting us started but it will turn into something quite special as soon here you can see when it's over white it looks entirely different from when it's over black it's very thin right now and as a result you get a lot of what's under it now I do prefer this for building it up we want to build up to something that is brighter so just something to consider in this process and really just when working with acrylic paints in general they are thin and they are going to be heavily affected by that which is under them especially if you're using a little bit of water now I'm going to go back to the middle portions of some of these applications with more thick pigment maybe make it a little bit brighter and I'll just build that up and the idea is that the area closest to the ground the warmest area the area that has the most fire is going to be a bit brighter and then as it moves upwards that dissipates that light and you get something that's less illuminated less bright less dark and so that's what I'm doing right now I'm applying it to the bottoms I'm moving it up and then I'm leaving that darker area just around the lighter portions that way it looks like there's a bit of light being emitted from that brighter area we can also now move over that previously applied red and then just make that a bit better as well there we go and also start filling in all of this flame we will need to do a couple of letters now well in the end we are going to want this fire to look significantly more orange and yellow if we were to apply that yellow right now and we moved it over top any of our blues we'd end up with the green and we don't want that so what we're going to do we're going to start with a rather thick red base layer for all of this right here and then we can build the oranges and yellows on top of it and that way we mitigate risk of creating greens so let's start with a lot of red I'll add just a hint of yellow we don't want much we want it to be predominantly red based we are going to make this a bit of a darker D saturated red so I'm using quite a bit of black fair bit of titanium white and we're going for something again darker d saturated similar to what we have over the black so not this initial mixture but what it looks like on top of black and we can start it down here really we can start it wherever we want we're essentially going to take all of the white that is currently on the canvas and convert it to this pigment and then once this is applied and dried we can go back on top of it with oranges yellows reds and we can bone it up into something really interesting we are using the quarter inch brush here because that tip is so sharp it'll give us some really nice defined markings but if you apply a lot of pressure as you can see you can create large brush strokes and you can also make things soft using the edge of the brush so it's incredibly versatile and just a great tool to utilize in this scenario because we are trying to do a couple of different things you're trying to cover a lot of surface area which to work around edges but I'll get you a bit closer because I do want to show you a little trick so when we're painting the fire and this base layer of red I'm actually going over the edge of all of the almost black wood with this and that's going to make it look like there's this warm glow affecting that edge it's going to give it this diffused look and it's going to make it look a lot hotter in the end so generally when we're painting detail when we're working around subjects we actually do work around them we try to make sure that the edges connect that they're clean that they don't overlap but this this is a very different situation and the first step to building this fire is locking in this red base to that slightly with a semi-transparent application overlaps the edges of the almost black wood so you can really see that along the edge here see that right there creates a bit of a different color and value it looks quite good now I'm going to start working my way back up and continue working on our flames so as we continue to move up we will probably have to mix a bit more of our pigment because we don't mix too much initially and while we painted the water and the sky we probably went over a portion of our drawing and the fire so I'm just kind of re sketching that in with this darker pigment this will allow me to work the yellows and the oranges on top of it but I'm essentially just looking back to the reference photo to make sure that I'm continuously changing and diversifying the flame here you can see that we also skip areas once in a while here I'm going back over this area a second time because I recognize that it is relatively thin and also go over this again as well it's important that we continue basically making sure that there's applications there nice and thick because here you see that that's canvas I'm not showing through now on this layer we're not really going to be able to fix that and that's okay that's something we're going to work towards over time so here I'm just working my way up we have a protruding area over here it's fairly interesting make sure that you have areas that do kind of crackle Edwards you can see that I'm out there jumping around area area quite a bit because I don't want to essentially continuously reuse the same techniques in that same area and create something boring subconsciously we can kind of make things easier by falling back onto pattern and when we do that things are easier we paint more quickly however we generally simplify and do the same things over and over again and something that works really in every painting and every subject is to jump around that way you don't get lazy mmm looks like we'll have some extra fire here that I had lost in the sand and you can see that the more I layer this the more we get this deeper D saturated more maroon esque pigment I'm just going over those other layers and building it up when you want a really sharp edge make sure you apply as little pressure as possible and just use the tip of the brush you essentially want paint on paint you don't want the Bristow to touch the canvas then when you're filling in larger areas then you essentially apply a lot of pressure and have those bristles really create contact now I'm heading up to the top and again a lot of this was lost under the sky so you can just go back to the start of the video see how it was drawn out we draw it out in Conte or in a colored pencil or you can look at the reference photo or you can kind of just make it up but I would recommend if you're doing that again just be very cognizant that you are required to consistently change it this top part is quite playful there's a lot of movement happening going over it a couple times with this darker pigment we're going to have something quite special in probably 45 minutes there we go I'm just going to let the majority of this dry and then I'll go back over it with a secondary layer of this darker pigment and then we'll progress with the next color from there so once we have everything blocked in and that dry we're going to take that same quarter inch round pointed brush we're going to take more of that same red that we mixed and with a lot of water on our brush we're going to create some small little flame effects that are semi-transparent that come off our primary flame effects and the idea here is that these are going to show the blue underneath and in turn show that there is a lot of additional depth happening here we don't want the fire to look like a solid object right so we need a lot of the edges to have these protruding little wisps which show the pigments and the subjects behind it now there are quite a bit coming off these and you don't want to go over too many times because the more you go over it the more opaque you go over it but we do want something relatively full of a body here so it isn't just lines it's a it's a form and then up there we start to move into these more wispy little motions which can go like that or that and you want them to connect with one another and you want it to always be varying so that way there is a great example again this is something that's going to look a little awkward until we get the oranges and yellows built in but this is really the base that we need and we really won't see much of this in the end but the other colors just wouldn't look right and they wouldn't apply correctly if we didn't start by creating these other mixtures and applications I talked about this on a lot of acrylic lesson so the idea that it's a process and that requires patience because you do get these semi awkward areas and that's okay as long as you don't get discouraged and you keep moving through it you'll end up with a great painting so with that I'm now going to head up here and you can also thin the pigment by just using your finger making it more semi-transparent you can see that's working quite well over here and I'll get you a bit closer for the continuation of this process so here we have our awkward looking structure and I'm going to build up some additional fire right here I'll make that a bit more wispy with my finger you can see just how semi-transparent it is I'm just kind of checking the reference photo to see where it's most prominent for the majority of it it's actually going to essentially outline the edges so you can just go over the edges like that and then move it out but you are going to want some areas to be more prominent than others one of which is this top area so you can see that I'm going back to that quite frequently and simply this you should note when we're grabbing pigment from our palette or not grabbing pigment and then applying it we are taking off the majority of it we're making our brush very wet and then we're grabbing more the same goes for our mixes just because we want is a little paint on our brush as possible this is a process of slowly building it isn't applying it once and being done with it we're committing to these applications and to the layers we are building up here you can see just how thin it is over the light blue that we have down here in the water and we're just trying to make it look like less of a hard stark edge so now we're going to start working with some oranges but before we do that it's imperative that we go ahead and clean our water and our brushes as well because right now they have quite a bit of blue on and inside of them and if we were to take an orange that was a bit more yellow dominant and put it into this water or onto that brush we probably get a bit of a diluted effect occurring and you with something that was a bit more money rather than the color you actually want so take a quick break clean everything quite well and then we'll come back and start adding some detail to the fire so now that I have clean water I'm actually going to switch to a new brush this is another round pointed brush this one is just a little bit smaller it's about an eighth of an inch and I'm going to begin by making sure that it is also nice and damp then we're going to mix an orange so I'm going to start by grabbing some of our cadmium yellow deep you I'm going to grab some of our cadmium red light you about half that of what we use to yellow because the red is just a significantly stronger pigment then I'm going to take some titanium white not too much this will thicken the pigment there we go a lot a bit more red and now I'm going to take this and I'm just going to test it on my reference photo make sure that it's a good color and I think that it could be slightly less saturated so we're going to add the smallest hint of Mars black you can see I'm taking off the excess elsewhere on the palate a lot a bit more titanium white there's two will mix to make a grey they'll tone down the orange slightly and we are essentially just now making the most saturated colors here because you want to be able to build them up slowly over time and now I'll test that again and that is what I'm looking for so now we're going to head back up into essentially the center of the larger areas of flame and I'm going to tap this on in the same motion that that flame is moving so ours are worth noting that as you can see the edges of my brush have a lot of pigment on them and so I'm able to create these large applications but if you want to go into a very small delicate area make sure you take this pigment off your brush make your brush nice and damp and then head back into this let's get a little bit closer though so here we're just going to take more of that same mixture and I'm going to start combining some of these areas that we've created I'm using some water to ensure that I get a nice soft application on top of our previous one but I'm not using so much to the point where it's quite transparent like our last application we want some applications to be rather opaque we want some to be rather transparent and some in-between this certainly means more to the opaque side of things so here you can see we are working in the middle of the Reds and then we work our way to the edges allowing it to get more and more semi-transparent as you run out of paint and therefore it looks like we have this glow in the middle gets this opaque brighter more saturated pigment and then we get towards the edge it starts to dissipate and we get this more soft pigment we can apply more pressure to the middle make that more opaque and you're essentially looking for those gradients you want the edges to be the brightest or rather the strongest of reds probably the darkest value you'll actually have and then you'll progressively get lighter and brighter as you move in towards the center of the fire it's amazing how quickly the starts to come together and this is why I was saying earlier don't get destroyed when you just look at that initial red layer and you say oh no this is not going to turn out well it is it is if you are persistent if you believe in what you're doing and you just keep following through so again here it's fairly transparent and this is actually great I'm going to show you another technique we're going to get a bit closer for that but we're going to do some different interesting things here so when we have quite a bit of water on our brush and we get these very semi-transparent applications you can create this effect of moving fire so I'm just making I'll show you a zig like that and then maybe a sag that goes through it and the idea is that we're always building up to a sharp point and that multiple applications are going to connect and work into one another so you can see the red in between a lot of this but it's subtle there are just hints of it here and there so we just continuously built that up with these layers and then you can find any more prominent movements go back into the center of those and then apply this so we'll move up we'll move up on the other side and then we'll connect from other areas like that we'll go back into the center we'll build those we'll connect it into there so there is this idea of a technique of a pattern to follow you want to make sure that you are again moving around and continuously making it different from your last application I'd also like to note that while it is starting to look like fire we are far far far far from getting this to where we want it there are a lot of additional steps so stick with it because we are going to continue to learn a lot in this process but here going back doing more of the same heading over previously applied areas we can create new little zigzags and then just build those up leaving the edges to be more red and more transparent so we move down into this bottom area things are going to start to get a bit brighter they're going to start to get a bit more opaque and full of light especially right here so I'm actually going to give this an entire flat layer just like that I'll let it blend out to the and I just see that on the reference photo that's kind of how I'm figuring out where the brightest and darkest areas are find the the best way to do this properly is just to you know look at how it actually works in real life learn from it and then we can make things again brighter build it up we have a fire right down here that moves over this log it's a really neat effect and then we have just a couple little taps there the idea that it's sparking sorry sparking to a point not cracking like my voice despite the fact that I am 26 years old you'd assume that would go away at some point apparently not fine perhaps it had some comedy to the lessons makes them interesting in an entirely new way here I'm going over some of those middle areas again I accidentally made a slightly more yellow mixture as I'm sure you can see and we eventually wanted to build up to this so it's not a bad thing it just happened a little bit early and I'm using it to build up those highlights in the rest of our fire now right now I feel like the fire looks a little bit stiff it has the right movements it has you know these semi-transparent areas you can see all of these different values and changes it looks like we have the warmth coming off the edges but I do feel like it feels a little solid right now and we are going to tackle that in a minute but right now I don't want to progress with this yellow outside of this area because we haven't laid a base of orange yet and we need that to make a yellow look as natural as we can so we are going to grab our initial mixture which means quite a bit of yellow half that of red remember that will make a bit more of a red dominant mixture will grab a hint of Mars black take off the extra on our palate and of course we need titanium white to soften all of it and make it a bit more gray I think we could use a hint more where it's black in this well there we go so here we are we're back to orange it's not a particularly bright orange but it's brighter than the red which we've previously incorporated in the painting and therefore it is a good next step here I'm just tapping in some of these semi-transparent areas making those areas I kind of fly off a bit more opaque and also thicken this we need this area to be really thick we don't want any of that red showing through it in the end so I'm just working that up and then we'll move a bit farther down now the area down here is going to become a bit more visually complicated because we essentially have the hottest fire and we're going to have diffused areas that are essentially almost white but then we'll also have areas that are still very red so right now I'm painting in what is going to be the brightest areas of fire here which will eventually be white and I'm just starting to build those up right now with this mid to dark orange it's fairly transparent at this point just so I have an opportunity to try things and it makes it a bit more like drawing really than anything it's like sketching you're figuring things out before you really commit to them and I'm just bouncing back and forth to that reference photo making sure that everything's as it should be there we go again you don't need the reference photo you really don't need it you can just follow this lesson and do what I'm doing follow those techniques but for those of you up over on patreon I know that it's something I personally really like to use and I'm personally finding quite useful but it isn't necessary now we're going to take more of our yellow our red and we're going to make a bit more of a yellow dominant mixture like we accidentally did previously so we're just using maybe 3/4 yellow to red and then I'll use significantly more titanium white and this time I'm not going to add the addition of any Mars black we are boning this up and you can tell by the other variations that are around it then I'm going to head right down into this area and start building up that real highlight that we're going to look for in the end so yet again I'm applying very soft little taps with the point of the brush to achieve detail and I'm applying more pressure when I want to create more of a body of paint like that just having it jump around whisp through and over portions of our log but you can see there's a bit of a darker area right under here so we're not covering all of it we're not making a kind of a blanket application we are still being cognizant of how we're working with it and here I'm going to be a bit more playful will have some that's kind of moving up and down almost in a wave-like shape and then we can do a couple taps to have some sparks flying off we are going to do a lot of other Sparks and we're going to do with a slightly different technique later on but that's a good way of kind of just getting it started right now admittedly this does have a bit more of a illustration look so it's a bit more cartoony but we are going to bring it into something significantly more natural looking in just a little bit again patience is key it's amazing what we turned this into after a single application over the dark red and we're just going to continue making those larger strides as we work with the piece with that said in the last clip I was talking quite a bit about the reference photo and the traceable and all of that the supporters up over on patreon and I do this in every lesson and I'd really like to do it again here I think that it's something that should be said in every lesson I'd like to say a big thank you to our patrons for making these lessons happen as I frequently note these lessons are primarily fan funded and they take a lot of time and effort and work and I just I wouldn't be able to put in that time each and every week if it wasn't for that support instead of this being a weekly show it might be him monthly show maybe but thank you thank you for making this happen thank you for allowing me to teach art thank you for really providing these lessons for everybody else who is watching them it is because of you that these happen as frequently as they do and you know thank you really really really thank you I feel like I say something relatively similar in each episode but it's one of those things that it's hard to put into words it's hard to you know kind of articulate those feelings and emotions it's kind of like Christmas when someone gets do something incredibly thoughtful how do you how do you properly say thank you right so I'd like to say a big thank you to you for supporting the channel for making this happen and again for providing me the opportunity to teach painting for a living and for providing these lessons for everybody else who's watching up over on YouTube I hope you really do find the reference photos the trades the board's the extra lessons the ebooks all of that good stuff incredibly useful and you know I will I will always always appreciate the support I'd also like to say if you are new to the channel and I know where you can support the channel up over on patreon up there you can get things like the traceable is the reference photos I have a bunch of additional bonus lessons that you can't find anywhere else I have 5 e books including acrylics for beginners which is essentially the essentials and everything you need to know about acrylic painting before you jump into your first acrylic painting we talked about working with water what brushes to use how to combine different colors the color schemes composition again just really really everything you need to know before you jump into that first painting we also have a private Facebook group where we all kind of share our work and help each other out and I also do personalized art reviews we have ebooks full of traceable reserves a bunch up there I do recommend going and checking it out if you are serious about learning acrylic painting and just getting as good as you can with the medium and we have a really great community that's that's one thing that I think is incredibly valuable about it is when you post over on that Facebook group people talk and they help you and that they they give suggestions and it's supportive and it's I just I love to see what that gets turned into and again I'd like to say a thank you to the patrons for not only financially supporting this channel and making this happen but for making such a positive and great community for artists to enter into and ask questions and you know just learn not only from me but from all of you as well I've always wanted to build something like that and I really feel like in the last six months it's become something incredibly special so big THANK YOU from me and really everyone else but with that guess we should get back to talking about the painting for a minute as you can see I am building up those highlights I'm adding the yellows on tops of some of the oranges and right here something interesting happened you can probably see a bit that darker red underneath and it's just not as opaque as this pigment over here but simply because it had a buildup of water and we're not able to apply pigment over that right now to a thick degree so we just need to let that dry for about five minutes and then we can come back I think a lot of people actually have this issue right here generally in skies or larger blends just because you pick up varying amounts of water and you interject more to prolong that wet life and eventually that effect can happen but it can really happen anywhere and it's not difficult to deal with if you're intelligent about how you aren't going to deal with it and generally the best way is just to kind of let it dry and then come back and work over it again but this area right down here it's coming along really really well and it's time to now grab a lot of titanium white we're going to mix this over here new area we'll grab some of our cadmium yellow dpu not much we want this to be almost a warm titanium white smallest hint of red we don't want it to be a pink though so we want a lot more yellow than red and with this we can really start building up that diffused look for the fire so this is only for the brightest areas and you can do small little strips or bigger more bold applications like that it's really going to vary dramatically and it just builds up on top / inside the previously applied brightest areas so if you apply this right now over a wet pigment it will blend it will not be as bright that's okay you can work through transitions but you can also wait for it to fully dry and then just get this really bold pigment as well it's up to you it's really about how you like to work I'm also going over some of the edges with a small slight light tap giving it a very minut blend as you can see right there it's all going really well and I'll try to move over this area you can see that it's still it's still not accepting that paint need to wait for that to dry a bit more before we really get into it but I do want to build this up even brighter anyway so I'm not not concerned about it I did want to go back later anyway so I'll apply some extra there I do want some in here that way we're balancing it we have light on both sides what some into that and here you can see that I'm applying it but I'm not applying it over the yellows or the oranges and this actually looks a bit more green and clear than the other so it's a different look it's a different technique but that's really why we start most of these with that base layer now I'm going to continue this and I'm going to do a couple more of them I'm deviating from the reference photo for this right here just because I want just a little bit more fire than what's presented in that area so you can deviate you can make it your own it's important to recognize that there are rules and painting that there are different things that are generally there to aid you and help you and make the process easier but it's also okay to break those rules make the pieces your own and reject your own ideas and that's when things can start to get really special so just something to consider or is it worth noting this moves up in a very stereotypical fashion for fire and at least what we did initially think of and that's why we work from a reference photo if we did this everywhere the painting would look a bit or less interesting less intricate right so just something to consider I deviated I deviate it intentionally in a single area obviously there are other deviations that weren't intentional that is okay but that single deviation was okay because it added something new something different it filled in an area that I wanted to be filled in but I'm also not doing it everywhere and I'm not doing too much of it because I really want this to look natural in the end now I am going back up over this area building that middle making it brighter it's dried so we can do this again and this is a brighter yellow but it's not as bright as miss miss miss miss miss any of that something to consider and again I have quite a bit of pigment on my brush right now so it's a bit harder to work with I'm okay with that but if you find that your pigment is harder to work with and you're kind of frustrated just take that extra pigment that you mixed with off your brush make your brush damp and then come back grab some more and work from there there we go I'm also going over some of the darker areas with a very light stroke when I have almost no paint and that's just going to soften that contrast it's not going to take it away you're still going to have that darker area it's just not going to be as dark and that's another option if you feel like you have too much contrast in one area or another so here we have a bit of a wider shot of our fire that way you can see how it's progressing again far from finished but the main idea is that we started with that darker backing layer then we added the slightly more wispy strokes along the edges that were semi-transparent then we added a semi dark orange in the middle blended it out so we could still see a bit of the red edge but we were building that base when we came in a bit more of a yellow-orange and these wispy emotions inside leaving openings then we went over them a number of times building them up making them brighter then we went down to the bottom ish area and started incorporating this almost white and therefore it looks like it moves from an almost white to a bright orange yellow to more of an orange and then eventually up to a red I do still want to do a bit of highlighting up in the top here and I wanted to do that from a distance just because I think it's a really important that sometimes you paint really up-close sometimes you look at your painting from farther away when you paint and you can just do that by holding your brush like this it'll give you more distance it'll give you a looser strokes of things less class heavy on form it'll make things look lighter and more loose and it's important to do this because generally we focus really heavily on certain areas and while we make them look great we can make them look less cohesive in the painting and they don't really match with everything else so it's important to sometimes paint from further way to look at the painting from farther away because you just get a new perspective and with that you can make sure that things are progressing evenly and together that way you don't have to redo something that you worked really hard on because you forgot to look at it in context with the rest of the piece so again the main idea here brightest at the bottom most yellow at the bottom most warm and then gets darker and more orange --red as you move up to the top I'm also going to add quite a bit of water to my brush grab some paint and I'm going to be incredibly delicate with this I might ground my hand and I'm only touching the tip of the brush to the canvas and I'll start just creating a couple little sparks flying up from the edges now when you're doing this it's incredibly imperative that you don't press the brush into the canvas because if you do you're going to get a much larger stroke the bristles to expand and you're not going to get the effect you want you want this to be incredibly subtle and if you find that it's difficult to get a lot of pigment or a lot of marks on your canvas when this is happening because you can't apply pressure you just kind of need to accept it and recognize that you'll have to go back and grab more paint frequently and then just continue from there but we've done quite a bit from afar so let's get closer again and I'll show you just how I'm applying this where and applying it and the the ideas behind it so here's where I started and I want to kind of start from scratch with the mitts just to show you the process so I'm going to start by taking some yellow some red and we can make this about an even mixture if anything you want it to lean to red because we are working on top of blue and if it's semi-transparent it might turn out a little green if it leans yellow so in for something in the middle but if you're not certain about it add a little more red so now I have the color I want for the most part maybe maybe a little bit more yellow let's be honest let's get it right so there now I have the color I want but if you look at my brush there's so much paint on it if I were to tap that on the canvas I get a massive mark and that's not what I want so I'm going to take all of this off wipe it off on a cloth or paper towel grab some extra water we'll come back we'll grab just a hint ground my hand with my pinky finger and the idea is that you're essentially starting in the fire and then you're working your way out however you feel it'll start crackling and moving if you need to you can start on the edge and work your way in that can be an easier way of kind of finding your path I'm just kind of looking at the reference photo where things are starting and stopping looks like we have a lot actually out here there we go so once I have that line that path I will start more in the middle here and then I'll work that out and I'll show you a couple of different ways of applying these but here you can see that they can be a little bit big you can wipe them off because they're fairly watery if you feel they're too big might leave a little bit of a warm glow but that's okay the idea here is that you're moving it with direction you're just letting the tip of the brush that pigment touch the pigment on the canvas and you're not pressing the bristles in it's incredibly small I do see that the camera is fighting focus right now but you should still be able to see what we're doing and sometimes I make a tap on the canvas and you won't even see any paint on it and that's just because there isn't enough pigment on that area of the brush to deliver pigment and in that case I'm not applying more pressure I'm not fighting it I might just rotate my brush a little bit and hope that there is more pigment elsewhere on it now I do want significantly more sparks I mean significantly more but before I do that we've let this dry for quite some time and now we can come back and do it with a new application and make it what we really want it to be and I'm doing this right now simply so that we don't forget about it I want to make sure that it's done I want to make sure that I am NOT putting the painting up or uploading it and saying oh no oh no we forgot about that area that was important so here just making sure we do it putting in that time and that's already so much better can work it up a little bit so cathartic to paint flames on display just such a such a fun time there are different subjects in painting that I think we all kind of innately find more catharsis in and this is definitely something that's pattern oriented and therefore just fun one of those things you feel like you can find a lot of success in as you continue with it we're gonna have some crackling and some other fire happening out on the outskirts here we do need to go back and work on the burning areas of the log but we'll do that a bit later that'll be more of a finishing touch I'm just having this progress upwards as I run out of paint try to get that nice transition can also add just a hint of it up here we'll skip an area we don't need it to kind of continue in a line but again we want the majority of the bottom to rely more on these brighter values on the top to be more orangie because the top area it's going to be very visually complicated via the these parts that we're going to do and this bottom area is not going to have that many sparks so they're going to create interest in different ways the top area through detail the bottom area through bright high contrast values so just something to consider so now we're going to take a roughly half inch flat headed brush and this one synthetic and it's also fairly disposable I'd recommend looking in the dollar store for some cheaper brushes and things you don't mind kind of roughing up because we're going to take this and we're going to peel back the bristles as you can see here until they kind of stick out in random formations this is going to create a brush that can render a myriad of different applications out and it's going to create a lot of sparks with incredibly small applications that we honestly couldn't render any other way because each little bristle can now have a slight bit of pigment on it and that is incredibly fine details I'm just pulling all of this back applying pressure if you find that it's a little difficult pull it back more hold it for a longer period of time you can also press it into your finger and just kind of move it about but the idea here is that we just have a brush with a bunch of loose bristles and then we're going to take this we're going to start making some sparks so now that we have our disheveled flat headed brush ready we're actually going to switch back to our regular medium sized flathead the brush it's about half an inch and I'm just going to use this to blend a lot of pigment I don't want to make any of the blends with the other one because the more pigment it has on it the more it's going to condense the bristles and make larger marks so what we need to do is make our colors here with this brush and then we can go to the other brush to actually pick them up and apply them so here yet again a lot of red maybe an even amount of yellow and then maybe an even amount of our titanium white as well remember if you feel like it does lean towards yellow just add some extra red until you get what you actually want so I'll put that brush down oh now take this one I'm going to apply a very minimal amount of pressure pick up as a little pigment as I can just to the point where these have what I need and then I'm going to make a little stroke and another one and another one and you want these to be incredibly small strokes but here you can see that we are starting to build up a myriad of little sparks so so quickly so so easily and we have control over their direction let's go back grab more now what is imperative here is that you consider the movements of the larger areas of Flint and that these come off it in a natural way so this is going to leaf up here this is as well right here it's going to be interesting because it's going over the landmass in the water so it's creating depth you can also have some light crackling some of those sparks down here but not too many and you can also apply it over the fire because it's not just going to come out on the left and right hand side remember that this is occurring on top of it in front of it behind it all of those different things are happening at once there we go and this is fairly interesting we seem to have it move up like this so I'll just start up here that way I can get the motion going and I'm also rotating my brush in the air that way when I come back down for a new application it's different from the one I did before let's get you a bit higher on the canvas and also a bit closer so here we have our pigment our brush and our sparks that have moved up into this point we can continue moving them like this here you can see the brush is rotating in the air and then it seems to catch a different pattern in the wind and then it changes to moving back towards the left a little bit and then it kind of leaps off to the left and right as it really starts to dissipate so we want more sparks closer to the actual fire and then we want them to lessen as they move farther out so we'll go back over this area a number of times where the top will be significantly more sparse it's also worth noting that we don't just move up with them we do need to go back to these edges and do significantly more so yet again pigment whoa look at that on the photo or say okay you know what it looks like it's actually moving this way right down here which is kind of interesting it's moving up at the same time they're intersecting and then we also have some that are just kind of loose out here there we go we have a lot of orange happening on our palate easy to lose track of what's wet and what's not but when you really start to build up those sparks on top / beside your larger flames this is when it starts to look natural this is when it really starts to come together and become interesting this is where we take it from a cartoony look to something that is a bit more realistic and here you can see I have almost no pigment on my brush and I'm okay with just getting these incredibly subtle occasional marks now our pigment down here has started to dry which makes it not super useful so I'm just going to start mixing more of that with the regular half inch flat headed brush might make this a bit more red dominant than we did before there we go and it's important to note that your paint will dry especially when you spread it out this much I'm intentionally spreading it out of that much so that it's easier to grab with this and I did get the question the other day how do I keep my paint from drying on my palette the answer is that I don't really I let it dry as it naturally does and then I have more paint to the palette when I need to or I go back and I do mixes all over again it's not a bad thing because again it teaches you to redo things it teaches you how those things are done through repetition and that's a good thing it might be a little bit frustrating that you do have to mix it so frequently if you are used to something like oils I do love alloys I understand that feeling but at the same time it does eventually make you into a better painter and it's not something I don't think to worry about I think it's just something you accept in you you look at the positive sides of it hope that makes sense here we have quite a bit moving out but I am leaving some semi openings in here I think those are quite neat can I have some stray sparks over on the far left and right hand side when I have almost nothing left on my brush I might create a little bit of a trail to get to that point it's an incredibly subtle impression that's left but it's one that you really appreciate if you take time to look at the painting and also will subconsciously help you kind of connect movements and that sort of thing so now I'm just taking more pigment and you know what I think this should be a bit more D saturated so I'll grab more titanium white work that in you might add a hint of Mars black you can have different colors of Sparks and I actually heavily encourage that so here we have a bit of a more beige more orange a dark orange will grab that and we'll use that more around the body here I have some that are kind of falling different effect think about pink will fill in this area it's a mixture of looking at the reference photo at this point and working intuitively so here in our wider shot we can see the painting and a bit more of a full light and when I step back I noticed that I do want more of a movement right here so I'm doing a bit more of a drag I'm applying more pigment and I'm just trying to make that a bit more of a full area so you can keep them more thin you don't have to apply that much pigment but once you start to apply a lot it can start to look like a buildup of actual fire and you can eat kind of be neat to have that almost nebulous idea is that fire is that sparks is it something that's you know come off this is that a piece of it and I really like when it does get to that more loose idea I think that can be quite fun well also tap some of this along the bottom give it that extra detail still rotating and that area has built up way to the bit so I'm going to take the smaller and probably eighth of an inch round headed brush I'll take some titanium white I'll take the mixture that we're currently working with take a little bit of extra yellow bit more of that white go it up something nice and bright and inside the middle of it I'll actually turn this into a bit of fire again when you really start to do a lot in an area you have more option with it and you can turn it into something different you can give it form so we're just trying to find the right balances between sparks and the bodies of flames now I like this but I think we should make it a bit brighter and build up some highlighted sparks on top of the ones that we already have so here I just added more titanium white you can see that it's simply a brighter mixture and again I want to work from a bit farther away right now just because what's really important about what we are currently doing is movement and you're going to get the best movement when you can see it from a distance there we go so by building these lighter sparks on top of the pre-existing dark ones you create depth you make it look like somewhere farther away it makes it look like some are fizzling air while others are new and fresh then again I'm going over the edges with this tap building that up as well there we are starting to get some magic in it decided to connect to this area make that a bit more full we can also just take the corners of it and create some really loose applications right on the edges at this point I'm only really creating one or two little impressions but it's enough it creates that realistic atmosphere that you want to build now it's important to kind of accept the fact that in the process of having all of these sparks you're going to lose form in some of your applications so we're going to take our yellow our red quite a bit of our titanium white our smallest pointed brush and we're going to create essentially the highlights that we were using previously for the middle of our fire to create form right just make that right there and then I'll come back in and I'll build that up yet again I'll make it sharper and then I'll take that same pigment and I'll build it down into the bottom that way it's cohesive feels like it it fits within the rest of it and again you can create little bits of fire that feel like they're flying off in the larger areas I'm being very selective with that though essentially have all of the main ones that were realistically presented in the photo at this point when I do this I'm creating my own there we go I like that a lot I think we need some yellow some very bright yellow to connect it though so I'll just make that there it is there it is wonderful and also I bring that up here just a little bit don't want much we'll just put it in the middle same rules as before applied you want those edges to be more orange and dark and we want the majority of that yellow and white to be at the bottom of the fire we can also take this though and with the smallest taps create slightly larger sparks and these are essential you're just going to add direction because they're much more visibly noticeable you don't want to do too many of them but it's a great way of diversifying the size of your application and again because they're larger they're going to look closer to us and therefore they're going to create and instill more depth in the painting so we want a variety of sparked sizes we want a variety of spark movements we want a variety of values and hues in their sparks so I always talk about in painting the key to a great painting is diversity so we're not quite done with the sparks the fire in the sky but I wanted to take a quick moment to talk about this brush for a second this is the flat headed disheveled brush that we use the night wrist washed it now this is a brush you actually don't want to wash frequently most of the time with our brushes we do because it keeps our applications nice and sharp it extends the web life of our paint but if we do that with this brush when all of the bristles are extended the water will condense them it'll make it so you no longer have that randomize factor that you want so for the most part you want to keep this brush dry when you want to clean it is essentially when it needs to be cleaned when you feel like the pigment have the ends of the bristles is actually drying and when that happens you do need to clean it because if paint dries on your brush you're essentially going to connect all of those bristles and you're never really going to be able to get them fully clean or individual again so when you feel like your brush is drying with that pigment on it do wash it but if you do need to continue working with it dry it exceedingly well then yet again peel back these bristles and make it a bit more disheveled looking so just a little tip for the most part with most of our brushes we are consistently keeping them damp and wet this one however we want to keep dry as best we can for as long as we can just something to consider with that said we are now going to head to the bottom of this and start working on the fiery portions of the logs for this next portion of the painting we're going to be using our smallest round pointed brush we're going to make sure that it is nice and damp we'll grab some power cadmium red light hue and some of our titanium weight as well but not too much we don't want it to become a pink I'll also grab the smallest tenth of a yellow but again not much we do want this to remain a red so once we have that pigment we're going to go to the bottom of our logs and I'm going to essentially outline the bottom of this one because of course the form was lost when we painted the other one right under it and we want this to be incredibly sharp so if you feel like you're running out of paint and you're not able to get their sharp applications make sure your brushes dip and grab some new pigment so once we have that line apply it we're essentially going to create some cracks in the bark and then another line of bark like that you want it to be very inconsistent you want it to always be changing but you're essentially painting the series of bricks so let's start again with this one so I'm going to take my pigment I'll run it along the bottom of this like that you can see that it's semi-transparent it looks darker because we have that base and then I'm going to create these lines that move up randomly and then I'll create another line that follows the same angle as the edge of our log and this is going to make it look extra hot it's going to make it look like it's really burning and it's going to give the ones appear all of the the darker is the idea that it's essentially just turning into a charcoal there we go so again REE mixing that pigment wanted to be primarily red but we are interjecting portions of yellow and white and we can go over these applications a couple of times to really build them up I'd recommend doing that with the bottom of them but not necessarily the little details that move upwards generally when you go over those things a couple of times you eventually build up your layers and you make them significantly more thick looking and that's known we want we want it to be incredibly small and thin so we're just being quite cautious with our applications and there you can see us really getting that that pigment right there we can continue this with a lot of these you might want it to be slightly more subtle as you get towards the edges because it's not going to be as hot and you also don't want to distract the viewer and bring them out of the mid portion of the painting so I'm grounding my hand on my easel right now taking it that shake and then I'll create some of those lines that follow the edge of the log working really well there we are yet again more paint you notice that we've done this a number of times it's because it's the best way of doing it we get really good at mixing this color so the next time we want to camp fire we'll know exactly what to do so I'm starting closest to the fire and then I work my way out and let it dissipate now I already because I just blended I have too much paint on my brush and not enough water so I'm going to take that pigment off start closest to the fire create some of those more vertical strokes then I'll create the connective pieces there we go told you we were done down here still lots to do I think that painting fires another one of those subjects much like a cityscape that initially looked incredibly intimidating it looks like there's so much detail and it's so difficult but it really isn't it's one of those things that just tapes a lot of different applications and time much like a cityscape and I'm really glad that everybody over on patreon voted for this as our new lesson just because I don't feel like there are a lot of elaborate fire lessons on YouTube and I'm really glad that we have the opportunity to make this here today I'm glad you guys voted for it and you wanted to see it we're making it happen so thank you for your input thank you for making this happen I'm really glad that we were able to kind of contribute this lesson to the collective lessons on YouTube right just because again I don't feel like there's a lot of us because I feel like there is this misconception that it's quite difficult when it really really isn't it just takes time and since I've done a lot of repetition really here we go just building it up I'm also going to make some of these areas in here significantly more orange and I'm actually going to use the same technique that we used up here so I'm leaving some openings to be that darker red and then there are some of the brighter versions too but essentially that same wispy effect there are only a couple areas to incorporate it but I think it worked really well I also I wanted to talk about these again because these are essentially then I'll create a new one for you we'll take some yellow take a hint of red take quite a bit of titanium white and more yellow that should do it these are essentially little wisps that kind of work their way around our logs so they're playful they're fun they create depth because they move in between different subjects from behind to in front and I'd highly implore you to incorporate a couple of these just because I think that they work really really well here I've obviously started to move out to the edge I got a little distracted I was looking at the reference but I said hey there's actually there's a there's more fire right there you know it all I'll paint that in so that's what I'm doing right here but for the most part in here you just have these sweeping little applications really love them great for depth and remember to go over them with the brightest of pigments because they are kind of spawning here in the brightest area of the fire so as you can see we are getting fairly close to finishing but I do have another technique I really want to use for the sparks and if you are familiar with the space paintings of starry night paintings you're probably familiar with this technique but now with this mixture so we're going to take that same a smaller round pointed brush I'm going to dip it in some water grab some yellow some red some white make that make sure significantly more watery so I'm just adding water to it then I'm going to put my brush in the same direction as some of the sparks I'll peel back the bristles and I'll launch them at the canvas and here you can see we have yet again so many additional little markings that we wouldn't be able to create in any other way and it's such a good way of filling it out and adding to the directions if you move your hands in that same direction then you get close enough to the canvas let's get a little closer so let's do that again I'm taking that same small brush dipping it in water grabbing a good amount of yellow about an equal amount of red and then yet again probably an equal amount of titanium white then with this mixture I'm just going to grab a lot more water not wiping it off on the side making this essentially into a water color so you can see it'll almost start dripping on the palate if I hold the palette here for long enough and I'll put that palate down find the angle of the sparks put the brush on that same angle peel back the bristles and launch all of these little impressions and marks on the canvas and this is going to create a randomized effect in different sizes of sparks it's also going to spread them out farther than our brush could have so we have created sparks by creating movements like this with this brush with the cap and drag effect of the order to chef with synthetic brush and here we're creating another type by flinging paint at the canvas so it's a real amalgamation and I'd recommend playing with all three I think it's when they're put together that the painting looks its best and again you can create directional ones to move with it or you can just hold your brush in the middle of the canvas and get kind of a widespread randomized application you can also play with where it's going to end up by how close you hold the brush to the canvas if you want a lot of control get closer if you want it to be more loose and randomized farther away is ideal so yet again putting down that palette getting close and that's a really neat effect we got there it kind of had its own little drag because the pigment wasn't as watery so if you want it to not necessarily just be a lot of dots but occasionally get it so it hits the canvas and then does a little bit of a jumping movement just don't incorporate as much water on your brush here I'm getting farther back and I'm just trying to get a couple little markings everywhere and also recommend that in this process that you frequently grab slightly new mixtures this time we'll go with a significantly more red heavy one so out of the paint now I'll add the water now I'll come back and I will diversify the colors that we have in here and you can see I do it a number of times the first two generally get off the majority of the paint but the following ones allow you to work a bit more subtly and that's why I pull back with it because it essentially gives me a bit more of a final random piece or two rather than doing it from the beginning and getting a lot of those random pieces I can kind of stagger the amount I have through the process so with that let's let's make one more heavy yellow and white mixture like that it's worth noting that titanium white is an incredibly thick pigment it's the most opaque pigment you'll probably end up using so you need to use more water when you do end up using titanium white so here I'm just continuously going back and forth grabbing more water adding it to that and then continuing I also like to note that it's important to be aware of what's behind your canvas in this process because you are going to get little bits of paint essentially everywhere so maybe if you have carpet put down a towel or something and you put something behind this I know that I used to keep my computer and my reference photo right behind it and I would always come back to them after a painting and they'd just be covered in these little white speckles so just something to consider that one is really neat we got some additional lines in there but just something something to think about so many different techniques you can render with this it's pretty pretty incredible let's do it let's do a white one it's very watery I'm in the middle of the canvas there we go worked really well so now I'm going to take a bit more of my yellow hint of our red but I want this next make sure to be primarily yellow and titanium white I want it to be nice and bright and from afar I'm going to start building the body a bit more and just making sure that if I have any thin areas there intentional because here you can see it gets quite small quite quickly it really tapers and then it moves off in these two strands at this point you have the option of kind of filling this in if you want to or keeping it a bit more loose right now it has this real vertical feel to it which I really like but I did want to bring this up for those of you who might want something that's a bit more form heavy so just something to consider with that said we are coming to the end of the lesson and generally at the end of these if you follow the channel you know this well but I like to give you a little bit of a secret word a code word to use on the comments that way I know and everybody else you've got this far knows that you are one of the dedicated few who really is trying to improve really trying to learn all you can I think it's an incredibly respectable thing when people do sink in you know multiple hours to learning how to paint a subject and to do their best with it so if you are one of those people leave the word crackling like a fire crackling in the comments or you can incorporate it into a sentence but that way I know and everybody else who's reading the comments and watching the lesson knows that you are one of the dedicated few with that said I would also like to say a big thank you to all of you for just you know making it this far for building this artistic community with me for taking the time to watch these comment do all of those things really does mean a lot and I also like to say a big thank you again to our patrons for really making this happen I feel like I've spent a lot of time on this fire here today a lot of intricate details doing different things in different ways and I just I have the time if it wasn't for you so thank you yet again for making this happen it's a real pleasure to work on this one it's a a very cathartic painting to paint and again you provided this for the people should take real pride in that with that said again if you are new to the channel you can find the link to patreon in the description where you can support the channel make sure these lessons do continue and that the rate that they do up there of course you can get the traceable words the reference photos my ebooks full of traceable and the one on the basics of acrylic painting you can also get access to our Facebook group if you want to share your work and have a conversation with other artists about it about different ways of improving and you know what elements worked really well what you can take into your next piece and lesson I also do personalized art reviews and a bunch of fun things out there so consider checking it out if you would like to be a bit more invested in our little community here and I also like to say a big thank you again just for watching you know even if you don't go over to patreon if even if you aren't kind of supporting the channel financially there I still really appreciate you being here you taking the time and watching the lessons I also really appreciate it when people share these I don't think people realize how big of an impact it has on the channel and the videos when they are shared so thank you to all of you as well I know there is a very dedicated group of you who make sure you do that each week it's incredibly appreciated and again for those of you who are new I do post new paintings each and every Saturday so if you come back next Saturday there will be a new one been doing a lot of cityscapes and seascapes as of late we just did a patreon poll where everyone voted for the next lessons this one won the poll but there was also a golden seascape that came in second so we'll probably end up doing that next week but there's another another little perk for patreon ability to vote on future lessons and I'm really glad that you guys voted on the fire lesson here because again I feel like it's something that's a lot easier than people initially think it just takes a lot of time and repetition and because of that I just don't feel like there are a lot of lessons teaching it on YouTube so I'm really glad that those of you who voted for it really put this into action and made sure it occurred really happy we get to kind of contribute this fire painting lesson to the whole of the artistic YouTube community had something new and I guess on that no remember to be brave with your paintings you know follow the rulers but recognize that you can break them here you can see I'm really just jumping around and I'm doing I'm doing a lot of different things but they're just kind of fixing things up with that said I would like to say one more time thank you for tuning in I will see you next week remember to leave the word crackling in the comments and above all as always stay creative [Music]

Channel: Stay Creative Painting with Ryan O'Rourke

Views: 1,234,332

Rating: 4.9436359 out of 5

Keywords: How to paint, acrylic, lesson, easy, fire, camp fire, sparks, light, glow, landscape, seascape, tutorial, real time, draw, realistic, realism, artwork, bonfire, how to paint fire, fire painting, fire painting tutorial, learn to paint, sketch, flames, how to paint flames, stay creative painting, night painting, night, painting, painting tutorial, bob ross

Id: lMLbz1On1sA

Length: 125min 26sec (7526 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 19 2019