Plein Air & Studio Painting Demonstration

[Music] hmm [Music] [Applause] [Music] hi there i'm rachel mccampbell and welcome to mccampbell art studio i am so glad you're here with me today i went on location to paint on plein air a beautiful barn by a creek but i only had about an hour and a half to set up and block something in so i did that then i took great reference pictures of where i was that day and went home a week later i printed the photos took my gear down by the creek because who doesn't want to be by a creek so relaxing and i wanted to kind of get in the mood for painting plein air again so i'm outside different location i looked at my reference photos and worked for about i don't know another hour and 25 minutes then i still wasn't finished so i took the painting about a week after that and went into my studio and finished things up i've noticed that some of my students get this feeling they have to finish their plein air painting on location right then and there and that's great if you can if you're really a quick painter awesome i'm not i am actually kind of a slow-ish painter so i like to take my time if i don't finish i just get good shots come back to the studio take my time and finish things up but i will say that if you can work on location and you have the time there is something about being there where you're catching the light where you're working fast and there's a freshness to the work when you get home and you overthink things and study it and get too analytical sometimes something is lost there and i understand that completely and that that has happened to me but i try to re-initiate and reignite that wonderful feeling of when i first stood out there and started painting and then i feel like i do okay so if you're like me and you can't always stay on location to finish your painting because you've got to leave or there's too many bugs or it's gotten too cold and windy and you're a fair weather painter then don't worry the plein air police are not going to come and arrest you just go home and finish your painting at your leisure so i hope you enjoy this video and don't forget to hit the subscribe button look at the comments section below the video and i have a list of all the supplies that i use to paint this painting hey hi there thanks for joining me i'm painting in a beautiful little spot in middle tennessee and i am standing in a creek so you can hear the beautiful sound of the water it's about 5 p.m and so i only have about an hour to paint so i'm going to have to make this fast so i'm going to see what i can get in and take some pictures and then probably do the rest in my studio so first thing i'm putting out is some gambling galcat gel and i'm going to tone down my canvas a little bit knock off that white and get a little tone on there and then i'm going to start drawing and then block in some color that's probably all i'll have time to do come on and join me so i'm going to add just a little bit of gamsol to a little bit of the alizarin permanent again a little bit a little bit of the burnt umber and a little titanium white i'm choosing red just because i really like a red undertone like this especially when you have mainly a green painting just that complement the complement of the green really helps i think it tones the green down and gives things a better look i'm going to wipe some of that off just because i don't want too much gamsol on there i want the paint but not too much gamsol and i say that because i just don't want it too watery now i'm going to use my little round brush and get a little burnt umber and some of this galco gel i'm going to think about my composition i'm looking through my composition finder and i'm figuring out what my focal point is and what it is that i want to paint i want the barn in it i want it to be an important element but i don't want it to be all about the barn so i'm just kind of coming in here really quickly seeing what my composition is like seeing if i like this first before i commit all right i only have about an hour so i'm going to have to speed this little story up okay i'm seeing some interesting things here very interesting some beautiful lines that god created nice diagonals see beautiful this beautiful grasses we'll get to okay and see how these trees are as you can see i'm not i'm not drawing in the trees i'm just indicating tree lines and there's a few tree trunks oh beautiful stone wall over there wow i'll have to get to that later that is a beautiful stone wall okay now anytime with planner painting you have to reduce things you know you can't get it all in it's just too much so i'm focusing on the things that really interest me and i'm going to start with a little bit of this radiant blue the sky is very very flat today now whether or not i'll create something to liven that up later i don't know sometimes it's nice to just see a flat sky so this gaucho gel because it has alkene in it is a fast drying gel it has a really nice glossy aspect to it too so your work just turns out to have a nice glow it's it spreads your oils really well yeah i really like it okay let's see i'm just gonna plop in a little bit of that blue and it's mixing with the red it's really almost a white blue it's got a lot of white in it as you can see it's very opaque so lots of people like to start from the very back and then move forward and that's pretty much how i like to work too just lock in doesn't mean you can't go back and forth i'm just kind of heading toward the back first all right i'm going to get a little titanium white and mix it with a little bit of this burnt umber and a little bit of that hansa yellow and that makes a kind of a putty color here and there's already brown and red on this wall i'm just going to block in a shape over here that says this could be that stone wall later yep and then i'm going to use the same color to go in toward the bank a little bit it's nice and putty-ish neutral very neutral i'm going to take a little bit of this cobalt and the hansa yellow and the putty that's already on my brush and i'm going to block in a little bit of green while i'm here which is very pale that's too pale so i'm gonna get um a little bit of sap green just to bring that forward a bit i'm going to get some of this burnt umber and the sap green together to start to create the creek color because if you'll notice there's a lot of green and a lot of dark brown in these creeks in tennessee it's not like they're blue like a you know some other places where they're reflecting a lot of sky or something these can be very very dark and brown let me get some of this red mix it with some of the burnt umber that's like quinacridone red which can be very very very loud so i want to tone it back with a lot of brown maybe a touch of sap green when you add the complement it really pushes it back now a lot of this barn has faded as you can see the sun is washed out that red but i want to get some dark end first can always lighten it up but i'm a fan of dark first and i'm going to take that same color go back here and lay down again blocking in where these stone wall could be later and to indicate this roof i'm going with a brighter red so i'm getting a little ultramarine blue all right so we take some burnt umber some sap green some ultramarine blue and that makes pretty much a black i don't want to come in and draw with that to get some of my contrast in and there's that barn that's sagging yeah you don't need to buy black if you can quickly make it with these other colors plus the black can be really a heavy black and this makes it a little more warm or cool however you mix your colors you can make a a nice warmer cool black okay so let's see let's draw draw that in now if i need it a little waterier to make a finer line i will add a little gamsol to that so i'm wanting to indicate these boards without getting too heavy and i'm going to tone down that red on that roof i wanted to get the ultramarine too so that i could mix it with a yellow make a little brighter green for example back through the back side of this barn you can see the green and you can pick up that in the trees [Music] i'm going to get back in here with this black tone some dark darks back here behind these trees to help make them pop go grab some of this ultramarine blue mix it with a little white solvent and just see if i like this or not there's some sort of camper thing over there but looks like a horse trailer i don't think i'm gonna bother painting that so while i have a color on my brush i usually try to find a spot to add it so i'm adding the screen back over the water glazing over a bit so i'm just going to lay down a little neutral greenish gray tone for these trees and then i want to grab some of that yellow that hansa yellow just straight up and i want to come across here kind of in a bold way right on top of this brown ah the sound of that water so beautiful and i'm doing that just to brighten it up a bit give the water a little life and down here the water starts to move a little bit it's wider i have this little squeegee that i like to use especially to find lines i'm not going to do every board just want to indicate and this also helps keep it loose a little bit i can come back in with this squeegee and mess with the water i can come in and pull in trees and branches fencing like indications of fencing back there so this is a process of removal you're digging back i may paint over this i don't know there may be something i find doing this that i like and you can just smear paint on with this kind of in a palette knife way [Music] i like the idea of you know mixing little colors in here that you wouldn't expect like pulling in some of that red maybe picking up some of that red and putting it over here in this green you can always lay down with your squeegee and come back in with your brush and you know finesse things but sometimes it gives you these really unexpected little shifts paint tone you just wouldn't have thought to do if you were trying i'm going to throw in some of this ultramarine and white in the water just to catch some reflections and you can mush the color around like i said creating new unexpected things and then when you let it sit here for a second it will start to set up a little bit like get some of this set green and um then it won't be quite so mushy and you can do other things with it so you can use it kind of like a palette knife and mix it right here makes a cool gray to put back here to lighten up the sky a little bit maybe with a yellowish green putty and that'll also help draw your eye over to this barn by adding a little contrast the greens against the reds greenish yellow against the red yeah that's nice do all right i'm going to get a little yellow ultramarine blue a little white make a green here to be a little more yellowy green so add a bunch more yellow and it's over here where it's reflecting in this water really nicely and while i have that on my brush come over to this tree and just kind of roll that green down just a little bit so the light might be catching these leaves wipe some of that off that's another thing using a paper towel is a wonderful thing it also adds unexpected texture and things happen when you pull the color [Music] [Music] [Music] so i like to push back and come back in add subtract make it fuzzy and add some detail later [Music] [Music] do [Music] do do so [Music] do do [Music] do so [Music] hi there so i started this painting last week i spent about an hour and 15 minutes outside working in a by beautiful creek and now i'm going to try to finish this up and also by a creek but a different creek so i brought down a picture of my reference and i'm just going to try to remember what that was like and finish it up here so welcome and thanks for joining me okay so i have my palette set up here so i have the gamblin galco gel i have gamblin ultramarine blue phthalo blue this is cobalt teal cadmium red light this is alizarin crimson this is venetian red this is some sap green this is phthalo green this is burnt umber this is cadmium yellow light and i'm going to add some hansa yellow medium and some titanium white and i have some williamsburg kings blue so i'm going to start off using a da vinci grijo number 10 filbert just to get some larger shapes in i also have my squeegee if i needed i've got a paper towel i actually can remove this right now because i have gamsol brush cleaner down below and i have my medium right here and i'm going to take this cosmo top spin is the name of it i've never tried this brush exactly but i like these kind of long pointy brushes like a signature brush or different ones and a line brush and they add you know nice little lines so we'll start with these so i have the da vinci plain air bristle brush number 10 it's like a filbert i have a round plein air brush by da vinci number 10. and i have the da vinci nova synthetics number six nice little thinner round one and then like i said i've got my grigio synthetic number 10 filbert this will be nice i'm looking at my painting and i want to start with my background so i'm going to grab a little medium and maybe go in with little ultramarine blue titanium white maybe tone that down with just a little bit of alizarin crimson make it a little more red and warm and see so my idea is to keep this painting pretty impressionistic i don't want to get real tight so there's a lot of paint down below and i'm going thinly so that there's a little hair i see look at that um so i'm going to go thinly so that well sometimes they just get stuck there so that some of those paint tones and things shine through and give interest and so in this case there were some yellows in the sky and i've got this purpley kind of blue tone here now because i have clipped this onto here this doesn't have anything to clip onto so it's a little loose so i'm just going to hold it with my hand while i paint but normally that would be there but i just have nothing else to clip that reference to right now all right boy is it beautiful outside the wind has picked up and so thank goodness it's very very humid with that breeze i can handle it okay so i want to start developing a little contrast here with the lights and the darks that's what i'm going for again if i use a small brush it'll start getting a little too fussy so i'm using a large brush all right so i'm going to take a little this burnt umber a little bit of that phthalo green that makes it very dark almost a sap green but it's more opaque than a sap green except green is is very transparent which works really great for glazing things like that so again i'm going very thinly very thinly here back here in this background i want to put in some dark so that the lights will then pop out a little more and i want to create some unity with the green back there by having it in different parts of the painting okay again this is a bit of a almost a glazing i'm just really lightly going over this i'm going to want to keep the background very loose and indicative now some of you may say oh i thought that painting was finished because you know it's all a matter of choice and people like just super super loose paintings and i love super loose paintings but i'm going to do a little bit of a combo here i'm going to get a finer brush here because i want to create some of these sky holes with this blue while i've got it out so to do that i'm just going to dab around you can see where there's light shining between these leaves and i could have done that first thing had i been more organized i would have had this guy painted entirely in and then you paint the leaves and the trees and then you don't have to worry about sky holes but because this is more impressionistic and loose and haphazard um i kind of like coming back in and just making random shapes like this and seeing where it leads me it's not a very planned out thing which gives it that nice spontaneity and i like that [Music] okay so i took a little bit of that green that was there and mixed some of this cadmium yellow light in there just to make a warm cadmium green there for the edge of the leaves where the light might be hitting adds a lot of brightness and high chroma and again i'm not painting every leaf i'm just giving indications of light the light's hitting some of the leaves some areas when you see paintings that where every leaf is painted i mean that that can be beautiful like a highly photorealistic painting but that's not what i'm trying to do here and i see up here there's a lot of lightness in this area here so i'm just going to kind of glaze over this with some of this cadmium green and bring out some of that lightness [Music] and i'm going to go over to this hansa yellow medium some titanium white touch of this venetian red and then i'm going to add just white to what's on my brush and i'll look at these tree trunks here for a second again like i said i'm trying to create a little contrast here and there was a little bit of a tree in the foreground it's not in this photo reference but i remember it and i may want to delve in there mix a little bit of that burnt umber with that cad green now in the actual landscape there was a big thing of white rocks which i found to be a little distracting so the fact is you can design this painting however you would like so i'm going to get a little burnt umber with my medium and a little bit of that green and the alizarin a little more green and that makes almost a black i'm going to go over here and i really want to get some contrast in here like i said at this point i'm kind of making up the landscape a little bit but that's okay you can do that i'm going to push the color in just a little bit but i'm not going to worry about spreading it at this point i'm going to lay down some color dark color while it's on my brush a few spots here for example inside this barn it's very very dark and i'm going to take this black-ish color while i have it mix it with a little white you always want to have a nice little pile of gray somewhere to use and actually i'm going to pick up this gray that's on the roof [Music] sometimes you can just take gray and put it on top of your tones you already have and it's all you need for example this barn has all this red paint that has lost its color so dragging some of this gray on top of it gets that that look i'm going to take a little that gray and mix it with these reds the venetian red touch of cadmium light to brighten it [Music] again just dragging down letting the texture that's on the panel work for me because it gives that old wood look [Music] so here i'm taking just some lighter red going on here and just creating some layers of the gray and the red i don't want it as bleached out and white as the actual barn because to me that's too stark of a white i just want to indicate that it has been sitting there for years and the paint has faded [Music] and you can see that i rarely clean my brush i just keep going with whatever's on my brush because sometimes it gives you that kind of dirty green or gray that actually looks a lot better than if you cleaned the brush and started over with new paint so i like this bit of a muted green here i'm just going to pop around here there was a tree here i wanted to capture just very softly so this dull kind of gray green it's nice for a more distant tree like this and i'm going to go back in with a little bit of this green and gray and back here you can see the back area i'm going to go with a little this cadmium green that i made and just indicate the the light beyond there with the trees and i want to get a little bit of brown and green and indicate these branches [Music] so i'm looking at things and i'm seeing these different shades of green in the background some are bluish green which is always nice because it's a cool green and it recedes okay so now i'm going to grab this number eight da vinci and i want to pull this color down a bit so i'm going to take my medium i just want to kind of glaze this down and see what happens a nice flat brush is a good way to do this [Music] and then there's this yellow with this green it's right in here i don't want to touch in there set that color down a little bit and then take a little brighter see this cadmium yellow warmer yellow and i'm going to mix it with this kind of putty color i made earlier to tone down the yellow okay now because this is a lot of titanium it's going to be very opaque so i'm going to add as much medium as i can to it and i just want to lightly get some lighter tones in here and where i had put this color down earlier before it totally dries i want to change that shape a little bit and there's a lot of light lights up against the barn where this grass is i don't know if it's hay or what but i want to kind of indicate that and again i don't want it totally opaque so i'm trying to be very light with it and let all the stuff i painted earlier shine through the pinks the greens the browns and let's go ahead and indicate the reflections while i have this on my brush then i want to soften that by dragging so you can just gently drag across and that will push that back [Music] and i'm going to take a little bit of this brown and green and come down in the foreground and where your little clasp is you know where it's holding on to your panel you know while your painting's wet after you take it off it's always nice to touch that little edge up while you have your colors mixed on your palette and this got a little too yellow so take some of this brown a lot of medium push back over this so there's a little bank edge there so indicating that dark bank edge and then pulling that reflection of that bank into the water okay down here in the foreground i'm just going to kind of wet this out with the medium a little bit moisten it so it'll be ready for some paint here in a minute all right i'm going to step back and look i'm looking at my colors my possible reflections here in the water [Music] so when you do reflections basically measure like right here so this red to here you carry that down and it would actually and about right there and then the roof would start if i've got that right let's see [Music] and then you've got this dark area here now i'm going to go in with my phthalo green my alizarin crimson and my burnt umber there i've got that black again i want to come back in and just create a few little bank indications here i'm gonna look around while i have this on my brush and come back in and get some of these dark darks that i want to get in and to keep this loose i'm going to move my brush around wiggle it i'm going to add just a little bit of gamsol to that medium just to make it a little waterier and i'm gonna take this small brush come back in and get some of these darker indications of limbs back in the shadows [Music] as you can see because i've spent an hour earlier on this piece laying down some basic tones it makes it go much faster now because i'm kind of building on what's beneath don't forget to step back okay so i'm going to find me some kind of brownish greens to come up here break up these branches that's not enough contrast i'm going to add a little phthalo green little alizarin crimson to it for the dark dark greens i'm going to take some of this warm yellow cadmium yellow again with the green that's already on my brush and that will get some of these cadmium tones here where the light can catch these leaves on these limbs so if you notice sometimes these these trees have clumps of leaves they'll be lighter where the sun is catching them there then they go to middle then they go to dark tones so right now i'm just catching a few of the the top leaves [Music] and i know i'm losing my battery here i've been painting an hour so it may turn off any minute but if it does i hope you guys have enjoyed this it's been very peaceful for me to get out of my studio and just be inspired by the nature that's around me to paint something that i've already started somewhere else you can still paint outside who knew yeah paint wherever you want wherever inspires you and you know when i get into the end here and i'm not near there yet there's wonderful little you know highlights where the lights from the sky and stuff's peeking through and hitting the water and then it ripples so those are little final touches that will be futzed with i'm not going to do all that now but you know that's that's part of the water reflections and things that are really fun to do at the very end you soften them a little bit so take a dry brush to soften some effects you can sharpen it back up wherever you want to it's just so nice to add and subtract with reflections you can just you know if they if you get too much wipe them off if it gets too distracting to your painting you can always push them back or get rid of them my red reflection kind of went away entirely here so again you just pick these things back up i'm gonna add a little gamsol to my brush and go with a little brown a little green and just be making some indicative grass here maybe some yellows and because this is impressionistic you can just do it however you want to do it but as you can see grass just goes how it wants to go and that's how i like to do it just playfully and then you you can have these very loose grasses and then you can come in and there was this one grass kind of called your attention to this weed and i thought well i'm going to feature it [Music] let's take a little bit of this king's blue and put it in a few spots up here and see how that looks i wanted kind of a muted sky but it might be nice to put in some blue or blues and have those in spots maybe blend it in a little bit down here that's a little loud you can always go back and tone that down a little bit push it back with some grays [Music] and these sky holes again you can come and soften everything with a dryer brush just to make the edges soft and more atmospheric you just take your brush and every now and then while you're painting soften it's a big trick people are like how do you get it so soft how do you get it so atmospheric this is how it doesn't happen on the first go-round you have to let the paint set up for a few minutes and then go back in and soften move your brush different directions so it'll be a little more subtle where you're softening it or you can come in and dab with your paper towel to soften but sometimes that leaves a print it'll leave the imprint of your paper towel sometimes so i find it better just to let it soften i mean harden up a little bit set up a little bit and then go back in and soften do and sometimes if you want just a little straight line you can come in with your squeegee and of course with a barn an old barn i don't want it super straight because the barn ain't straight and then the same here you could add some of the light reflections with your squeegee your tree edges and then if you want to we can get into a little bit of the stones that are down here some stacked stone wall i'm just going to get into that just a little indication of it with a little white gray that gray that i had made and i added a touch of venetian red just for warmth and you want that to reflect also in the water so and these trees have gotten a little on the bright side so turn those down so i basically made a little bit of a purpley brown color to push those back [Music] do do get some of those grasses in with this brush and that will make a good contrast against this weed that i want to do [Music] do do [Music] do okay welcome back here we are in the studio and i have my painting that's very dry now dry to the touch so what i want to do is wet this painting out a little bit i am going to grab just a an older little flat brush make sure everything's clean i've already wiped it off really good and then i'm going to take a little bit of gauked light and pour it in my container here and a little bit of gamsol i like to have i pour my larger gamsols into these small sample gamsols because they're nice to have on my desk here and mix those together and i'm going to just wet this out and what this does is it just moistens the whole canvas brings it back to life helps you to see your colors it also adds an even sheen over the whole thing and makes it where when you're laying down your paints there is just a nice moist surface to work on as opposed to a very dry hard surface so this works well when your panel is completely dry and you just want to get this moist and it does a lovely thing it helps bring the darks back out and helps you see your contrast and it's just nice evens everything out so you don't want it sopping wet so i'll try to get it even across here i look at it from the side to make sure i'm not missing a spot i don't want it pulled up and then i'm going to put my brush in my brush washer i'm going to take a paper towel or a rag i'm just going to dab it make sure there's nothing too thick on there now with paper towels these are just regular paper towels which have a lot of lint on them so it's best to use a shop towel if you have it i'm actually out of them right this moment so i'm using this but this works okay you just have to keep an eye on it make sure you don't leave any lint okay that looks good all right so now let's talk about what we're painting here this is my third session and i've got these reference photos like i told you that i took just to remember what the barn look like what some of these plants look like what some of the trees look like and the rocks and again i'm trying to get back into the mode of being loose i'm not trying to do a super realistic painting a little more impressionistic so let's look here i think i'll start with the sky first and i'm using some da vinci grijo brushes today i've got a grigio synthetic number 10 filbert and aguigio number four filbert a round number two grigio synthetic and a round number four grigio synthetic i've also got a da vinci black sable number two it's a nice little flat chiseled edge there and this is a master touch liner brush just you know for the finer points this is an old beat up fan brush i don't even know who made this actually it's so old but it's beat up and i like that because it can give you some unexpected little jaggy you know leaves and then this is a dynasty black gold one eighths i think it says on there that says one slash eight but anyway it's it's got a little chisel to it it's a little flat brush it's just good for getting little details because we're going to get smaller at this point so i'm going to start with a big brush i'm going to put my medium over here let's talk about the colors i've laid out on my palette i have some burnt umber i have hansa yellow medium these are all by gambling i have cadmium yellow light i have cadmium red light i have alizarin permanent i have ultra marine blue i have phthalo blue and i have some williamsburg kings blue this is titanium white and i'm using a gray palette glass palette by new wave and i like this because you can scrape the paint off at the end of the day they have these wonderful little plastic razors that you can scrape up and i can put that away in my oil container my masterson oil container seal that in and then that keeps the oils fresh all right so i'm looking at my sky and i'm thinking about mixing i want to keep this looseness but i also want to maybe i'm going to take some of this mixture that i made with the the medium with the gamsol just for a second because i want this a little on the watery side then i'm actually going to pour some gauked light right in my medium because this is my last layer so you can add this is a little fatter medium and since this is the last layer it's okay to go fat on lean at this point so i'm going to take a little titanium white and mix it with that i'm going to throw in a little lizard crimson just to tone that down and a little bit of burnt umber i'm gonna add a little lizard and crimps i mean uh i'm gonna add a little more ultramarine blue here i just want to tone down the blue i didn't want it to be too garish so you can add burnt umber to that you can add a little crimson or quinacridone red or whatever you want to do to just kind of tone it down a little bit so i'm going to go in here and that makes a nice little gray blue and i'm going thin i'm not globbing it on because i want to just let all the other things beneath it show through all the other colors and layers but i'm using a big brush because again i want to keep this loose i don't want to get too too tight i'm trying to emulate a little bit if i'd had time to finish my plein air painting out of doors that day which i did not so i've worked on it the first time out on location and the second time down by the creek and this is my third time of working on it now in my studio and like i said there's no shame in going back into your studio to work on a plein air painting i know there are purists that say oh no don't do that but yeah if you have to do it i'm all about just doing what you got to do no judgment here okay so that's a nice grayed color i think i might take a little bit more of that ultramarine blue maybe to add a little bit of that king's blue to it just to get a bit of a darker blue for the top here if you'll notice skies are darker at the top and then they get lighter as they go down now i was debating if i want to even bother with clouds for this painting because it's a study for a larger painting and i don't know we'll see all right now sometimes i like to just take a paper towel and wipe around just to loosen things up keep it soft looking and it can blend your strokes a little bit for you if you want to now i'm going to take a little titanium white touch a medium i'm going to come down here and just see what a little brighter color might be now this area right here is my focal point so i want it to pop so to have it pop you need some contrast this is where you can get into indicating clouds if you want to what i like to do with oils is let them like lay them down like this then let let the medium do what it does which is it helps it dry and then i come back in and blend a little bit but not immediately because then it'll just it'll just mush around i'm going to take this number two grigio and pick up some of that white mix it with just a hair bit of blue and i want to define some of my leaves and trees by going back in and kind of creating these little i call them sky holes now if i had painted my sky completely first then i would be painting my trees on top of that already finished sky but this is an impressionistic painting so i don't care i mean i'm not trying to do a super realistic painting or i would have done that this is a different feel i'm going for so i want my strokes to show i want the looseness to be there i find that exciting again depends on what you're going for if you're a photorealist that wouldn't be your thing i like the abstracted edges and just letting things go off the edges like this let the red that was beneath there show through okay so now i'm going to make some color to indicate some of these tree limbs and if you notice they're a little darker than this color they're kind of a gray color to mix gray we can make some black so i'm going to take some of this hanza medium some of this phthalo blue and mix that together it makes a nice green mr viridian green then i'll wipe off my brush a little bit pick up some of this alizarin permanent and mix it in with the green and as you can see it almost creates a blackish tone now when you add a little titanium white to it that will show you which way it's going is it going more blue or is it going more green or yellow what's happening well it's going more blue so i'm going to add a little burnt umber to that a touch more of this it's a little bit of a purpley brown so i'm going to take some of this darker tone i'm going to go back over here my light source is coming somewhere from here so i'm going to have the darker side over here see that purple pushes it back i don't want it to scream at you as far as a tree goes but i want it to be pushed back yet still visible peeking through between the leaves you would have some branches some will hit the sun some won't i'm going to moisten my brush a lot with the medium because i want this to be very flowy and if the paint is too thick it just sits it globs it won't it won't make limbs very nicely again i'm not going to get too detailed i just want to indicate lines and limbs and then we'll have some dark darks over there to really help with the contrast in a minute and light lights yeah i'm loving that purpley color now not all the trees are the same color so i'll have to change that up a little bit but okay so i'm going to take some of this dark dark over here and just show you how when you medium on there you take your dark tones your complimentary's all mixed together and you put it against something it really makes that thing pop that's adding contrast you can start to pull out some shapes maybe there's an indication of a fence without having to paint the fence because it's in a shadow you can just barely put in some lines that maybe indicate that the fence is over there again let's get some dark contrast over here in the distance you can see in the photo it was very very very dark over in here there are a lot of big darks over here against the trees so i'm going to go over there now because i wet the painting out it's really helping me spread this color nicely that moistness really helps because the painting has a lot of texture it's very dry if you don't do that and your paint has a tendency just to sit on the surface and not go into the crevices so this helps that i am relaxed i hope you are too hope you're painting with me so at the end it's nice to add a good amount of medium to your brush so that you can get in here i call it backstroking where you're going into the back and pulling in over these soft weeds to pull them out but without having to draw weeds in you know you want it to be soft at least i do i want it to be indicative and soft sometimes it's good to just let the viewer be able to fill out some of the details for themselves if you get do too detailed especially in the background it flattens your painting out well i have that on my brush i'm going to go ahead and go down here where there are some darker darks some some of these edges here from the bank it's nice because this isn't a black black it's just compliments mixed together which makes a little more bit of a subtle subtle black or dark and then i'm going to take this black and kind of glaze over some of these other areas where i want it to be darker but not solid black [Music] and while i have the black i'm just going to go back over here and glaze a little bit on the stone to indicate where the light is not falling on the stone and maybe pick up some of that same color that's in the trees to create some of those middle grays the stone that purpley gray color it works great for stones so i want to get some details in but i don't want like i said to get too too tight so that's going to be the challenge here is to add colors but not get too too tight a little bit of that lizard into that green that's left there and make another dark tone [Music] okay let's take i don't need to clean my brush just go in here and grab some of this lighter tone for this tree and indicate where the light might hit it here these trees that are sticking more out more toward you will have more of this on hitting them than the ones in the back and you notice i'm not putting down pure titanium or anything i i want to let this be a little more subtle so i think in painting you're pushing you're pulling you're you're pulling things out then you're going hmm nope that needs to be pushed back i don't get it right the first time i i just don't some people do so i keep studying it editing it and this tree being even closer will have even more light to it [Music] and then if you want to make one area pop just a little bit maybe i'll add just a little warm little warmth to it with the yellow the hansa yellow well i have that light on my brush i'm going to go ahead and touch the barn a little bit has a few highlights right there on the roof so by adding this white on here that's muted down it'll add a little more contrast to the dark barn help it to pop and let's make a little muted green okay i'm going to take a little ultramarine little hanza and the white that's already on my brush and see that makes kind of a dulled back green and i want to come down in spots where the light would be hitting you can see through but it's not too loud same here you might come back here with some of these trees or lights hitting it hitting the leaves but not too loudly [Music] do there's a little bit of red showing through from the base tone and i like that i'm going to make sure and save that a little more of an olivey green now and i'm gonna come back up in here i like just having different tones so it's it's not the same throughout on a leaf on a tree and these leaves will have a softness for two reasons one i wet out the panel to begin with so everything's softer and blends a little bit better plus i did those sky holes which are still wet and that blends in a little bit i like this brown that was on here i don't remember when i did that probably the first day so i just want to keep that and add a little subtle green on top of it that's where layering can come in really nicely and create beautiful little unexpected things but you want your colors in the far back for realism's sake anyway to be a little more subtle a little more grayed back and that's called atmospheric painting so the further the distance that goes it goes the softer the tones will be the more muted the tones will be and the softer the lines will be and that gives you that distance that feeling of deep distance let's see i'm gonna grab a little bit of titanium white mix it in with this grayish green tone i've got going here and maybe pick up a little highlight on some of these branches to help pull them out not all the way down i just want the light to hit on some of them there's a post here have him catch a little light and then while this is on my brush go over here to this tree as you can see i don't really wash my brush very much i just like to let the colors mix and as the water moves the reflections get warped and skewed let's get some dark dark dark a little more red in there a little more yellow a little more phthalo blue and a little burnt umber so adding this contrast definitely helps pull this out a little bit from the background i'm liking that also you want to create some movement with your colors even if it's indications of leaves you can create diagonals with these colors to pull your eye in toward the composition so if i want to create a diagonal you know you can do your darks going that way or as in this one there's darks kind of pointing your eye that way so there's lots of tricks to keep your composition moving i'm gonna get a little medium there and glaze this out a little bit let's see what happens here i'm just gonna push in and let these weeds show up a little bit against the stark i'm just glazing over whatever colors were here there were a lot a lot of different colors and things i was doing over here but i want to darken this up in the foreground so i'll just try a glaze i don't worry about it being perfect i'm going to grab a paper towel smooth that out a little bit lighten it up i'm going to take a little bit of this burnt umber make some titanium white with it and just get a nice brown color to come back in on top of this glaze and create some water reflections and i want everything that's beneath it to show through [Music] and then where the stone is you want to have some of that that reflecting into the water here and to create unity it's always a good thing to repeat some of the colors that are on your brush around this purpley tone and the grasses it's really nice so taking the cooler yellow and mixing it with the cooler blue the phthalo blue you get a brighter green like that so i'm gonna mix that with some white and it gives that very bright chroma so i'm going to tone that down a little bit with the burnt umber and maybe a touch of cadmium light just to take the compliment and the compliment always tones it down a little bit let's see what that green does on top of this darker tone here it's a cooler green so therefore it kind of goes back into the distance a little bit and you want to be realistic about your leaves so you want to make sure they go on top of your branches and cover over your branches at times you want the limbs to peek through and then the leaves to cross over you want them to be darker behind and lighter in front so it's a little bit of a build up and when you're painting impressionistically you can just kind of dab and have fun with this again like i said to create unity i'm going to spread pretty much all the colors around a little bit i mean there can be areas of just one color that stands out for sure but i'm trying to create it where it makes sense where they're all speaking to each other across the panel go back and add a little red to that to tone it down and my burnt umber again a little more phthalo blue and sort of cadmium light this is kind of a warm dark green here come up in the foreground with that it's nice to have your warmer dark colors you know in your in your foreground okay so at this point i'm going to grab a small brush like this little black sable number two and i'm going to grab some of this dark tone again and i want to create the bank no not that dark sorry it's add a little lighter to it yeah kind of a gray tone for the for the bank and make it soft i want to come in with a little bit of that hansa yellow and this white and this mixture of a light green here and i'm going to come back in i don't want it white white but i want to pick up some contrast here in front of the barn it looks a little dull to me let's take this color and go back down to some of the rocks and pick up a brightness on top of the rocks here that's where the sun is hitting some of them so again i want indications of rocks i don't want to paint every rock and i achieve that just by making some marks and having some contrast of light and dark and i'll come smooth these out in a minute with oils it's nice you can just lay down some color and then get back to it a little bit later all right i want to add a little contrast here on this tree so i want to indicate some of these tree limbs again pull them in push them out every now and then i have to wash my brushes just to make sure they don't dry i keep a metal garbage can in my studio so that i can put all my rags and paper towels and anything that has any of these solvents on there so that there cannot be any kind of fire these colors they kind of changed as they started to dry so i'm taking a dry brush it's got a little bit of gamsol on it i'm going to come around and kind of mix these together a little bit and see what i have with the sky and a lot of the red is showing through from beneath which is kind of interesting i'm also going to take a little cadmium light a little of this cadmium yellow light titanium white i'm making a warm white because the sky is very very cool i'm debating i'm just going to put some color down here and see if i like it or not i want to see what a warm like a almost a naples yellow against this looks like see if i like it better than the blue i just don't feel like there's enough contrast it's definitely more contrast let's see it's a beauty of painting it's your painting it's your world you can keep changing it i don't like that color wait a while wipe it off look at it again make another change i'm kind of liking the brighter what happens when i add some of that to this water hmm i'm kind of liking it i'm going to go ahead and lay some more down and that green is a very light green right there i haven't gotten to that yet kind of like having a warm tone in here because everything's pretty green and brown and except for the red barn and this is the part i like about painting is the process and playing and just seeing what resonates for me not everybody's going to like my work and i know that so i don't worry about it and i just paint for myself and when i paint for a client i remind them that you know a lot of my personality comes in here and and it's just going to be what it is so i've never had anybody turn return a piece of art so that's good but i mean i think it's important to let the artist go you know let them do the thing okay so let's go back with some of this warm yellow and make an olive tone here so this is blending and then if you want something to really stand out you can always come at the end and make some prominent dabs of paint to pull something out but i'm just trying to push things back i want to create some darker tones here at the base of these weeds and maybe come in with a little dark dark just in a few spots where the shadows might be so i want to make a brighter green so i'm going to add this brighter yellow the phthalo blue it's way too much blue so let's see let's grab a lot of yellow and keep the green on my brush there we go and when you use a cooler yellow with a cooler blue you can get that cadmium kind of green very bright green that you see sometimes when grasses are lit in the sun i like to use it for little highlight areas [Music] and let's see what it does up in here maybe too bright yeah it's a little bright okay so i'm going to take this over here i'm going to add a warmer yellow a hanzo yellow medium see how that toned it down and i want this to be where the sun is hitting it hitting parts of these leaves over here and then if i want it really bright just come back in with some yellow and touch where the sun might be getting that very edge to make a little bit of a statement there but i wouldn't do it everywhere just a few spots and i want some of the color to reflect in the water so i'm going to throw those in there so when in doubt add some gray not sure where i'm going with this color right now but i think some of these weeds are going to go over this but i think if you want a neutral background or anything just always either go with a warm or cool gray this is kind of a coolish gray it's got some blues in it but it's also got some reds beneath it so it has a warm tone to it let me take some of this color and put it in the foreground here you need to deepen some of this these weeds i want to soften the edges here with the reflections okay i'm going to grab some of this lighter green over here and let that reflect to the water [Music] and i want some of these weeds over here to have a little bit of darkness where the light is not hitting them on this side add a little dimension to that so when you look in a field it's never just a straight color it's like the hills go up and down there's a lot of different dimensions and when you start looking at grasses you see all the different colors and dimensions and heights they dip do all kinds of fun things okay where over here i'm going to put some grasses and i think i'll use the fan brush so i'm going to dip it a little bit of the medium make it pretty watery i'm going to grab some hanzi yellow medium and maybe mix it with some of this green i already have here and that green purple just to tone down the yellow i wanted to tone down color and again i want to keep this loose looking that's where this fan brush does fun things it just makes great lines okay so i'm going to take some of the yellow a little bit of titanium white a little bit of burnt umber thrown it down [Music] so i'm just going to dab a few lighter colors here for highlights and then i'm going to do a little blending then add some more so again to create some unity i'm just throwing some color around here now when it's like this at this stage i like to grab a small brush and come back and do just a little blending and softening especially in the background otherwise it draws your eye too much to it and let's get a little green kind of a gray green purpley green and come in here and create some of these the base of some of these uh possible wildflowers or weeds and then i want to get another dark color so i'm going to get the burnt umber again give your phthalo blue get cadmium light and make it black here do [Music] i'm going to get a little bit of that lighter green again make it a little muddy and come back in here and have this peeking through the back of the barn to some greens i want to get after some of these trees here do there's very thin lines like this and they're very kind of watered down paint those will fade back they'll dry really really pale now i'm still debating this tree limb i don't know if i need it or want it and if i don't want it see what happens when i just go over it with this limb kind of obliterate it and sort of achieve the same thing i want with some of these interesting diagonals and lines just with this tree i don't need that tree so i'll go back in create another green take a little phthalo hey let's try the king's blue forgot about it it makes a very high chroma green let's see a little cadmium light to that tone it down and then come back over here add a little white and a little more yellow and the ultramarine blue and let's get some of that dark in there it kind of pushes that back brings the tree a little bit more to the foreground now there are a lot of ways to skin a cat when it goes to painting trees and landscapes so whatever resonates with you this is just my personal style and my way of trying to stay loose as i paint sometimes it's the way i handle my brush keeps me looser [Music] do do so i want to darken this tree where the light is not on these branches i'm going to install that back maybe add a little ultramarine and a little blizzard to make a purpley color put a little of that in there for shadow and i need to cover up some of that with some leaves random branches in the actual landscape there was some really light yellow almost whitish maybe grasses and i thought they were really pretty colors so i'm going to pick that up and i'm seeing this red on the barn and i really want to add some accents with the red i think it'll be interesting and help things pop so i'm just going to add a touch of cadmium with the alizarin permanent mix them together and maybe mix with this white a little bit warm white because the roof is actually red let me see what happens when i add a brighter red on here see if i like it or not can always dull it back and it's got this dull kind of purpley tone on it which helps neutralize this color i'm putting down definitely brings it out [Music] warm gray which i like getting that texture on there it just kind of adds something now these weeds i'm going to get some of this umber cut out a yellow i'm going to get some more yellow but that makes a really nice warm kind of brownish green color and also keep everything loose i'm adding a touch of red just because i feel like the foreground needs to have a touch of warmth in it the weeds were actually growing and pointing this direction which is a nice indicative line here to pull your eye into the landscape do okay i'm gonna use this little guy to pick up some lighter colors here and see if i can't get that on there squeegee is just used to break up maybe some of your normal marks you might make and just add a little looseness and unexpected flare [Music] so i like to mess it up and then straighten it up a little bit so i'm going to come back in here with a little white a tiny touch of cadmium and a tiny touch of yellow [Music] and warm that up a little bit and i'm going to take a little bit of that and add it to the water [Music] and glaze over this just a hair glazing with a little green on top a little opaque green okay i'm making this dark color again and i'm wiping it off on my brush i just want to come in here and smooth this line out just a hair it's just a little too loud and add a little touch of blue here and there because it's pretty this is that king's blue by williamsburg it's just so pretty [Music] do do [Music] do do do do [Music] do so thank you for joining me today i really appreciate it and if you enjoyed this video please hit the subscribe button and if you'll notice in the comments section i have links to all the supplies i use today in case you're interested in seeing what they are i hope you'll get outside and paint and have some fun however you do it if you finish your painting there great if you go to your studio and finish it up that's awesome too the main thing is is that you always have fun with art i'll see you next time oh you

Channel: McCampbell Art Studio

Views: 19,514

Keywords: Nashville artists, Rachael McCampbell, Plein Air Painting, How to paint plein air, Plein air and studio, What is plein air painting?, oil painting 101, Basics of oil painting, How to paint in oil, How to paint a barn, How to paint a creek, Tennessee artists, Art instruction, Adult Art Instruction, studio painting, how to paint outside, Landscape painting, how to paint a landscape, How to paint trees, Impressionistic painting, Nashville art teacher, Southern artist, Art!

Id: GLZ9Nx90U_0

Length: 131min 15sec (7875 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 06 2022