Quick Tip 236 - 3 Ways to Gradate

ever since we've been doing these quick tips we keep getting requests such as how do you make a sky go from the dark to the light or how do you create a sunset sky or how do you create fabric we get lots of requests for things that require a skill called gradation so I want to show you now three ways that you can grade eight [Music] Green Asian means a gradual change from one thing to another and in this case the gradual change would happen with either value or it would happen with color or it would happen with intensity or it might happen with all three together so it's a skill now there's no magic in how to how to create fabric how to show a sky going from the darker point into the sky to the lighter part it's no magic in that it just requires skill so if you will practice these skills on this skill that works in three different ways that I'm about to show you you will solve many of your problems when you approach something that requires a gradation so I'm going to begin with value now value gradation means gradual movement from dark to light it doesn't have to be any particular color it doesn't have to be any particular value range it could be from the very darkest start to the very lightest line or it could be somewhere in between it's just a change that goes from a darker color to a lighter color or you could say it reverse a lighter color to a darker color all right so I'm just going to use a single color and I think I'll just take ultramarine blue here and all what I'm going to do here is rather than start with the darkest version and altering blue I'm calling lightening that darkest version up just a little bit and you could do this any way you could have it begin at any and any degree of value so I'm just going to mix that really really good on the palette there and get a darker version and I'm going to pull down on the palette to get a good hit start with this I'm going to pull down a good bit of white here on the other side and then then I'm going to begin to mix and this is the valid sort of for a little bit of a value line that I show you where I show you how to do this another quick tip but you can see me do it right now where we'll have a middle value then the value LUN usually I will take it from maybe the darkest start to the lightest light of a color but here if you just do this some kind of mixing on your pallet you have a head start and then I'll go to a lighter version of that ultramarine blue and so that I have a dark a middle and a light you pull just a little bit more of that white down into this lighter portion here then the once you have you once you start out with a mixture or a serie the set of mixtures that will enable this to happen and you don't have to you don't have to do this this is an it step that makes it easier for you you can sit and start out with a dark and then gradually pick up light with your brush I'm trying to show you something here that makes it a little bit easier now from this point from this point you could start at any point you start from light and built the dark or you can start from a lot dark and build up the light so I'm going to start from this darker point right here and pick up the dark a really good amount now you can't can't be skippy on the paint here so let's start with a really good amount in there right here I'm just going to place an area of dark now this could be moving in any direction depending on what you're painting but let's I'm just going to show it to you moving in a horizontal direction I so that you can see the scale now I'm just sort of going to blend out the edge of that and then I'm going to move into the middle value color but as I move into that middle value color I'll pick up a little bit of the dark color with it and then here I will bring in that middle value color now the object here is to get this get this blended so that you don't see the darkest dark you don't see the division between the darkest dark in the next lightest color so what I'll do here and I found that you can just use kind of crisscross strokes to to make that blend there are people who use this sort of strap holding the brush not real tight and not aim directly at the canvas like this because it just pulls it away but holding the brush about a 45 degree angle and a loose touch just sort a zigzag stroke like this and then pull down like that then you can see you reach a point where you don't see where one value ends and the other begins so now I'm going to continue in the middle value area of the mix and I'll bring that right over here now you can see a value difference there the value is separated to get that value graded to give it value gradated humble wiped off the brush and this time I'll use that little zigzag motion where you just sort of zigzag between the two and then bring bring down a vertical struck and you see there you get a clear gradation that goes so you don't see where one ends and the other begins sometimes you can move over this way and then into this way now now I'm going to continue to move I'm going to begin to get it a little bit lighter so I'm going to gradually pull a little bit of that lighter mixture into the middle value mixture and bring it right here okay it's a little bit more so I'm kind of showing you you you might find shortcuts to this but if you will practice this particular method if you're having trouble with gradation if you practice this particular method until you get the hang of it then you can find your own shortcuts to it so just place them and now you can see the division between that value and this value now once again now this time I'll just sort of do this see there are several kinds of movements that you can make where you're pulling those colors together pulling the edges of those colors together so that you don't see where one ends and the other begins now that itself is a gradation I could continue it on to the next light up get the brush really good and look and if you don't if you if you skip beyond your paint you may have trouble working this so be sure that you if you're working so the skill it is a skill it doesn't require talent to do this that's another one of those misuse terms that we find out there when someone does a beautiful job with a scale than the uninformed public let's say oh you're so talented and it has nothing to do with talent it's simply a skill all right now you see that that you can see that division there you can see between the darker color here and the lighter I should say darker value in the light of value this time I'll just pull in this way between each other so I've shown you several little variations on how you can get those blends the C doesn't require very much at all to get that moving into a gradation so that you don't see where one begins and where the other ends now if you overdo that you're just going to get one blob so pulling back on the brushstrokes not having not having too many brushstrokes pulling back on the brushstrokes on it is the best way to do that you can see what's happened there then in this you have to be careful about maybe it's gonna think you saw me do that because if you start moving back with that lighter color in your brush you going to it's going to then interrupt the gradation so there we go so a little bit of brush work using those strokes and holding the brush in the right direction that's the skill of gradation we know what about if you wanted to gradate one color into another well let's add to this mix a different color and why not add maybe yellow so we know if we we know that yellow and blue give us a kind of green and so what I'll do here is I'll just add some yellow into the lighter portion of this and you see as I add the yellow to that lighter portion it begins to get it begins to turn green alright now we want that gradually to move from blue to green and it can move a it can be a value change it can be a darker blue to a lighter green they want to do that here or or it can be the same value okay this just puts a little bit more well I'm gonna wait pickets at Yale and show you how that works all right so I'll start again and still same thing I'm going to start with a blue and right here I'll begin by just putting a line of blue is once again it can move in any direction so I'm going to sort of move a little bit of that blue in this direction there just to make it move to easier then we begin to turn that blue green what does that mean it means that the next little band there needs to be slightly green but it also needs to stay I'll be just a little lighter in value so I'm going to pick up just a little bit of that yellow and a lighter version of that boob let's see if it's dope yes that's it right there it's going to be all right now I'm not going to control the kind of green it is just want to show you the gradation they see we have now two distinct colors side by side let's get that just a neat a bit like or so that we can see also a changing the value just a little bit now to color side to side and you can see the distinct difference between those two colors now we can wipe the color off the brush and get a clean paper towel here be sure I make that happy and again you use it can use the same method up I'm sig zag zig zagging pulling one color into another and then a vertical stroke like this move the stroke move the brush in between where the two joint move it then gradually barely touching very touching faint gradually towards one and then gradually towards the other until you reach that point where you really can't see where it changes from one into another alright no I can still see that change so I'm going to pull reach this way full you know you know Duyvil a movement put a little bit of the blue in now in the dive on the move it I'll pull a little bit of the green into the blue again you can overwork as he said I'm giving very light touches if you hit that too heavy with your brush you won't you'll just pull the paint away now you're beginning to see that the the blue is great edging into the green now I'm going to make one more step here and you'll get the idea of how this works I'm going to pick up plenty of color now I'll raise the value a little bit and make that make that move just a little bit more towards yellow so put this color right here so that's a little bit a little bit more yellow in the matter all right now now we've got it all right so pull this y'all right side beside this color see there's a value difference and the color difference just pull those right side to side without adding without rinsing the brush or adding any more liquid to the brush now one can begin to sort of zigzag those between each other like this give it a downward stroke but begin to see it blend now because the color is involved not just the value of the colors involved may have to work the yellow into the blue or and the blue back into the yellow in order to get that smooth gradation all right now I'm just going to add just pure y'all well it's not really pure it has a little bit of blue in it let's add this right here and put it side-by-side so that you see a distinct edge between the yellow and the green and pull the color out of the brush like this now we're going to this is executive erst see on the whole brush very loosely kind of zigzagging between those two you can see it's even holding a brush loosely it's going to pull some one color into the other now we'll give it the vertical pull you begin to see them blend now when you're when you're mixing when you win you're gradating from one color to the other you might find that you have to be just a little bit more careful because of the color change in there you might have to be just a little bit more careful you may have to do the pulling of the colors into each other a couple of times but again if you overdo it you're going to have are you going to just pull the paint on so um that pretty much shows that I see it a little bit too much of a gap here so I'll go back know be sure to pull all this stuff off the brush a little bit of a gap here it's not this pull a little bit more the blue in but very very light knees it's got to be a feather touch if you go back up if you go back where you guys it's going to be a photo just go see what's happening already is pulling blue off the canvas so that's a good thing for you to see - all right so there's your gradation all changing one color into the other again the being emphasized the colors can be the same value they can be a different value so the important thing is the skill of Greg adding one to the other and I'm going to very briefly show you here about creating from a saturated color to a neutral that's called creating intensity all these colors on my palette now are saturated saturated means that they're the most of the highest intensity they can be well if a color is fully saturated it's a high intensity heist intensity it can be so I will start out with red and I've gotten a really really strong red here called natural red I'm just going to start out with red and what we want our object here is to gradate this red toward a neutral so I'll just put the high-intensity red right here now I'm going to pull let it put pull just a little bit really get a little bit thinner and a little bit thinner as it moves in this direction and they get all that read off the brush now according to the way color works we can neutralize any color whether it's complement and we know that green is the complement of red so we'll do is to to mix a green you could you could use almost any oh let us say almost any green but I just happen to have these primary colors on the palette so I'm just going to take that old blue right here and hence the yellow light right here I've got a pool grass my phthalo blue and hence the yellow light and to like out the green now what I want to do is to gradually change the neutral and change the saturation of this to neutral so I will pull a little bit this is one way of doing it you could do this on the palette and then here this is one way of doing it I'm going to put a little bit of that natural red on the brush now I'll go right here to the edge of that green for just a little bit of that green end of the brush and then come right here and stroke it in so that's going to be a little bit darker I'm gonna stroke it in until it changes just just one degree of neutrality all right then I'll put that right here you can see it not only changes the neutrality it also changes the value but that's okay that's all this will show you how this is done now I'm with the after I get major part of the painting off I'm going to kind of move it now over into that red and you can grab you can see that just by doing that I can get a gradation where you barely see that place you very see the change as it moves from neutral from a high saturation to neutral now I'm going to do the crisscross thing again and oh that's probably enough of that I'm going to get another degree of neutrality so I'll reach back into the red and then move back into the green and then back into the red and what I'm looking for here is one degree one degree change one degree more neutral than than the bend I have right here this is a good exercise for you because it also helps you to control to learn how to control new trial and neutrals as you see them by using the complimentary colors rather than a lot of people will existent use on a gray well sometimes that's that works but if it's a very bright color you're working with us can also mute the color so you're just reaching for grain by itself it's not always the answer in fact I always depend upon the complement to give me the more neutral work that just a little bit now what we've got going on there is that methyl red is very very strong color very high tinting strength and say okay that that's going to do it it's a very high tenting strength and that means that it requires less of the green into it in order to to get the neutral so we'll just pull out of the brush here now I'm going to once again I'll just pull them once I have all the paint are pretty much pina dab the brush and I'm just going to pull them up brush in between those two very feather feather light barely touching the crisscross and barely touch with them that's it so now I'll take it one more degree of neutrality so that you get the sense of how this this skill it's the skill and it may take some practice but it's worth the practice me see also we have here it's not only gradating from the saturated to the neutral salsa great ending in values going from a lighter color to a darker color and that's because oftentimes when you mix two comas together it's going to go darker so there the previous quick tips we've done there's a whole series of working value in intensity a chart which shows you how to control the value as well as control the intensity but I won't go into that here you go to those chart to them work with the whole set of six and you will you will discover how to control this stuff now what we want here is just another degree of neutrality we never want it to turn green if at any point during during this exercise if at any point it turns green then we've taken it too far because we just want a gradation of neutrals that go from the brightest red to the more neutral red now often times this will happen oh I take a red tomato for example you might see this very thing happening in the change of neutrality as well as a change in value on a red tomato in a bright light let's see what I have here okay yeah there is another degree of neutrality it's cool just a little bit more than that green in there see if I can get it almost all that red out but the green subtracts the red out that's what becoming all what God kind of controlling saturation in intensity means and by the way you might have heard others called the the intensity we might hear hear them call it chroma means the same thing you see that's more neutral that's less red in that a little bit more than out and I'll put it between the two where they join if you feather feather light strokes that's all it takes maybe crisscross all right so now we can see well I could have worked a little bit more and gotten a really really smooth they're not going to you get the idea we've got three different kinds of gradations remember it's just a skill it involves the way you hold the brush and involves how much pressure you put on the brush onto the canvas and it involves how much paint is in the brush along with all these mixing tips I've just shown you so perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea to take a day or maybe several days in a row and practice just a skill of gradation in these three directions of gradation value of one color the gradation of a single color into another coat and then the gradation of intensity from the high saturated into a lower saturation hope you enjoyed this quick tip if you have questions or suggestions for a quick tip it was comment right down here in the youtube comment box and take a trip over to dynamite come and look at all the things we have there for you including full length video tutorials and while you're there sign up for a newsletter so you're always be informed of our latest adventures thanks for watching [Music] [Music]

Channel: In the Studio Art Instruction

Views: 12,203

Rating: 4.9877486 out of 5

Keywords: in, the, studio, art, instruction, in the studio, art instruction, with Dianne Mize, Dianne Mize, SauteeLive, quick tip, 236, 3 Ways to Gradate, color theory, color blending, color mixing, how to paint, oil painting, watercolor, acrylic painting, painting, fine art, easel, palette, canvas, brush, online art lessons, online art classes, online art instruction, learn how to paint

Id: Ta9es5XysPQ

Length: 23min 56sec (1436 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 25 2019