The Baumann Effect 11 Painting Demo. Concept, Focal Point, Color and so much more

i'm stefan bauman and welcome once again to the bauman effect number 11. can you believe that while i'm talking with you right now please take a moment and look at the gorgeous scene we have in manchester maybe someday you can join us for a workshop in the meanwhile i'm excited about this week's topic again we we cover concept and i'm actually working with a concept that doesn't exist it's out of my imagination and it's really an interesting exercise to work with nothing then i discuss things about color light and shadow focal point all the wonderful things that we talk about so lay back pour yourself a wonderful beverage and enjoy this episode of the bauman effect number 11. [Music] i'm stefan bauman and welcome to the bauman effect today i'm going to take you to mount shasta again in a way i'm kind of like the the the preacher or the the goodwill ambassador from mount shasta because it's an extraordinary place and right now it's it had a major fire and uh part of the area that we're going to paint actually was affected by that and as we get into it i will actually uh talk about that but in the meanwhile i'm going to go ahead and get started now the thing i wanted to talk about today was concept getting the concept down before we do anything else when we paint and what is concept it's part of my 13 keys now 16 keys and i have a little video where i discuss it a little bit so if you want to hear the longer story you can witness that for yourself but concept is the idea i sit and i bring students to the national parks to go paint and when they go they run out to the edge they're busy putting their stuff up get their stuff up in the and you know the umbrellas and stuff and everything unfolds and then they sit down and they're painting and they go what are you thinking like i don't know i only have so much time to go paint and i go you're going to waste your time if you even start when you go out on location the first thing you want to do is stop stop and think think about what it is that you're actually going to do what is your story now it's not a story like a book most of the time it's a light story now light is fleeting it changes if you don't get your concept down first that's why it's the first key that i have you waste your time the rest of time you have no idea and you're so busy trying to render what's in front of you that you never get around to actually painting a painting that is worthy of a gallery so sit down for a minute and have a concept thinking about this i've gone backpacking quite a bit up in the castle cracks which is a uh state park near mount shasta it's a beautiful outcropping of rocks very beer-stylish if you may and i followed an old indian trail which not very many people actually know about it was actually told to me by somebody who at the time was 104 and she had lived in mount shasta since she was a little girl she remembered coming over with her mom and dad in a covered wagon believe it or not and she told me this story and she told me where to look for these and there's a lot of beautiful indian drawings on the walls as you go up into this area and it's quite sacred and as we go up we have this beautiful view of the mountain mount shasta with the castle crags in front and it's not a view that you normally see now unfortunately there's no view i'm not just watching the the the mountain from the where i can get a picture as i turn corners i see beautiful rock outcroppings as i go further there's mount shasta sometimes my outcroppings are over here manchester's over there i do remember being there while the sun was going down it's really quite beautiful and if you see me kind of wiping my brows because it's a hundred degrees here in medford it's very hot we're californians going through a hot spell hence the reason why we had the fire so rather than take a picture and work from that i'm going to work from my imagination and when you work from your imagination that's where your concepts come you develop and and people wonder how can i do that how can i work with that and one of the first keys that you want to start off with is actually giving your viewer a foreground or a sense of place have them actually land someplace first and so this is going to be a vertical painting now part of getting the concept is realizing is it going to be a vertical or horizontal and a lot of times when i get up to students who are just starting especially the first day of the workshop i'm i'm going what are you doing i'm painting because the light's fleeting they're so excited they want to get going painting seven in the morning i go stop do you think it's good to do that what you're actually looking at is a vertical or horizontal like i don't know what do you think that's your painting have you thought it through if it's a vertical painting then you need a lot of horizontals if it's a horizontal paintings you need a lot of vertical so a horizontal painting needs verticals to break it up vertical paintings need a lot of horizontals to break it up so ask yourself if it's a horizontal painting are there enough verticals to break it up or should it be a vertical and then use the horizontal list in front of you so this particular painting is going to be a vertical painting and i really want to get the feeling of it dipping down you know that's going to be like you know because when we're walking up the castle craigs it's just steep and and and scary and mount shasta is there in the distance now i'm going to use lots of turpentine now i'm actually using the mesonite board and why do i use masonite boards because they are much more luminous and they're definitely inexpensive but that's not the reason why i use them is because all that texture the canvas ruins the luminosity you're better off being on a board and the reality is is that the old masters used to pay on boards very or very smooth canvases and when students come and come to my workshops they have these cheap canvases with these deep pores and you cannot get a beautiful effect on your painting if you've got all those pores in those cheap canvases so this is this is an amber sandboard which is really nice and smooth sometimes it's a bit too smooth sometimes they go oh no that's slippier than snot i don't want to work on that but you can actually take some turpentine and rub on it and break that tension that's on the surface it makes a little bit easier to paint on so i'm working with a lot of turpentine at this point and i'm working on a white surface a lot of the students say oh stefan you tone your canvases originally it's like no it's not toned it's white and they go well i saw you i saw you working on a white canvas i mean on a tone canvas on your show at pbs and i go yeah that format of videotape didn't like white canvases so and maybe this one won't either so we want to kind of like hurry up through this [Music] okay so let me get it's getting very sucky in here so i'm going to go real quick i'm going to be using liquid because i can see that the canvas surface right now is actually very gravy and a lot of times that can be even from it being such a warm day that the canvas surface doesn't want to quite smear as much so i'm going to kind of tone that down it should also make it a little easier for the camera to get so first thing i remember is that you know i'm walking on a trail like i said i wanted to have a deep feeling here so i'm walking on a trail and i just use liquin to to to wet my canvas so i'm walking on a trail so i'm going to put the sense of place in first where it is i'm walking and i'm walking along the castle cliffs castle cracks and i'm trying to get a feeling of the sense of awe now part of getting a concept and that's going to be the word that we're going to be using today because this is my first i'm going to be going through every week each one of my my keys and this is the first one the concept this is the most important thing i'm thinking about how can i do something that's going to capture the viewer how can i that's my very first thing it's like my central focal point everything is also that i can grab the viewer and bring him in and that's my first idea so yes when we do that is that um colors what what is grabbing you is it color is it is it that spot what in your head grabs you when you look at the scene it's always the light it's always the light so if you look at she asked if uh what what grabs you when you when you know like when you look at a painting what grabs you and you know color does grab you but actually when you sprint your eyes at color it it falls into a value so color as much as we love to be colorist um and that's what we think we actually use color is the least important in the big picture of things value is important especially for people that that's you know that's like the the ultimate value that's like values everything but temperature is the key temperature is the key and when you understand that you can actually create light and with light you get your value so so the thing is it's a contrast between the lights and the shadows the play of lights and shadows it's that moment when you drive around a corner and it captures your eye at that moment you go aha look at that harold look at that stop the car i need to take a picture and by the time he restops about three miles down the road and you guys have to turn around and come back because men don't like to do anything you know spontaneous like that women are much more likely let's create something men are like hmm i don't know it's not safe here but anyway so so they'll turn around come back and by the time you come back the light's dead he's like well what did we come here for it's like well you should have seen the light so that fleeting thing that moment that light that comes in the finger of god that's what we're trying to capture does that answer your question yes um as you can see i'm starting to get these spirals up you know again a sense of place i can't have the viewer just hanging out there so i've got to kind of give them a little bit of a little pathway you know this is the pathway the the native american pathway that leads us in between all these wonderful rock formations um when i first moved up here that that castle rock at castle craig's rock is is one of those moments that when you're driving from reading up to mount shasta you go what's that and by the time it's one of those moments again you go hello turn you know turn around and you know by the time you get off the freeway and come around you can't get a picture of it because there's no good shot of it so uh i have found the one spot that when i have my workshops i take my students there it's like truly an albert bierstadt experience it's gorgeous there even a really bad weather you went there isn't it gorgeous there yeah yeah it's worth coming to the workshop just to see that but it's a secret spot that even a lot of locals go where is that did you make that up um so anyway this is still on the on the castle correct we've got these vertical lines like this and then i'm just going to kind of make this like an abyss maybe i'll i'll have of course now with this vertical line in here we're going to have to get something that brings the viewer up this way now i know i said that if you've got a vertical painting you want horizontals and i'm going to be probably putting some of those in here shortly when i do the mount shasta but i'm just trying to get a sense of place right now and my whole idea is to try to visualize myself looking down into a canyon of some kind and then up at mount shasta and here mount shasta will go i'm going in with a little bit cobalt blue and somewhere in here i'm going to fit her in now i'm making this kind of up because you can't be there and see mount shasta at the same time like i said these these cracks are just extraordinary but they're not artistically stationed in a place that you can see them and mount shasta so remember we're working with getting a concept it's not a calendar picture something that you take a picture and you just copy it people how do you do that well it's years of experience but it's also giving yourself permission to just give it a try try working out of your imagination a little bit reason why you take classes and the reason why you watch all these youtube videos is so you can get knowledge but you got to put that knowledge to use and one of the key things to doing that is practicing and you have to practice with intention to create great work otherwise that's not really practicing that's doodling but when you finally do that you have to really assemble everything that you know and bring it out it takes a while to do that but this is ultimately where we're trying to strive so mount shasta will be here and then i'm going to just look at it concept-wise do i need it smaller do i need a bigger does she need to be bigger or smaller what is the relationship of this size to that size i'm not a xerox machine i'm not going to stick with a certain thing and hold on to it but you know my initial concept is that we see her back there behind these kind of ominous verticals here and then we're going to put in a lot of horizontal lines of valley floors going back and forth the key to any painting that thing that grabs people is a central focal point and i need to find that and the central focal point will be somewhere within my middle third so i have a third in here that's my middle third and that's where i'm going to put my central focal point now i'm going to create some drama with this i want i want the feeling of light and i want the feeling of an alpine glow now for those of you that want to know what an alpine glow is is that you have a highlight on a mountain and that can be really extraordinary but there are certain mountains that are not faced the direction that you have light hitting them so for instance the tetons they're north to south so so either you have the light in the back or in the front alpine glow is when there's a glow in the sunset and the mountain itself is picking up that glow all the light coming is is filtered through and with this fire that we're having right now although it's devastating as it is the the the light that is created is just amazing it's gorgeous it's hot orange or hot pink so i'm going to create a central focal point of just this beautiful light and that's going to be here now remember i'm still in my concept i mean literally this is the stuff that i'm thinking about before i even start but you know if it's in my head you can't see it so they say stefan show us on your canvas what are you thinking i always ask students so what were you thinking the great thing about patreon is that i have my students turning around on that and they say so stefan what were you thinking so they get that turned against me but right here is going to be my central focal point right there it's like oh almost dead center to the painting and i go stefan i thought you said things were not dead center in a painting it's like yes they are somewhere when you look at something it's always dead center yeah that's another concept that i have in my keys is that now we have the point of view if i'm looking down or looking at that's my point of view so that's going to be in here somewhere now it doesn't show up because it's going to be light in order for that to actually happen i have to start putting in shadows but now this is an alpine globe we're looking north at the mountain so the light is actually going to be coming from and it's going to be lightening this and so one of the keys that i say that's really important is transition and the left side of my sky here is going to be a pinkish glow and we're going to go from light to dark so on my right hand side i'm purposely going to darken my color adding a little bit of ultramarine blue with a little bit of asphaltum for those of you who don't know what asphaltum is it's a color that i use quite a bit i talk about it on my stations it has some history on it transparent brown oxide is also another name for it if you don't want to go with the the whole mummy thing and so i'm going to transition from the light over on this side to dark and this here in the transition between lights and shadows is where magic happens and so you don't want to have any inch of your canvas any inch or your canvas not go through some kind of transition so no matter what every inch of the painting needs to go into some kind of transition you should either be going into light and cool or warm a light and light and shadow warm and cool should always have something happening that that is always changing and in this process be awake because you're not working with a picture and i wasn't planning on putting scott clouds in but look there's actually some that start popping up here if you pay attention to your picture it's almost as if the painting gods come down and grace you with ideas so even if you have a concept don't hang on to it like it's everything it's just the start and you know if we go in and we start darkening watch i wasn't even planning on that but the great thing about painting when you not have a picture is that you can go any direction that you want so i can put some big billowing clouds in there whoa where do those come from and look because i kind of laid some color in there there's even some color in the clouds that actually work as a local color i may put that in or not but let's just see so i'm transitioning between light and shadow here i'm going to go just leave that for now because i don't know where that is i'm carrying on i'm developing my concept in my head i want to make sure before i start committing to anything that's a problem with me i never commit to anything because i never know where i'm going to be or what i'm going to do it's people really upset okay so i'm mixing ultramarine blue and asphaltum and i'm going to lay in this silhouette now this silhouette is just a dark color and if if people go do you tone down your canvases before you start i would say yes but this is the toning down at this point this is where the the tone down starts is actually with some color i think it's a waste of time if you tone your canvases and you're not um adding color to it you might as well add color if you're toning your canvases getting the white and the thing is i can't even work on my concept until i actually get the canvas toned because i have to develop my lights and shadows so i'm going to have the feeling of steph is like oh my god this is craziness i'm going to have the transition color remember how i go from light to dark and i'm actually going to go dark to light as we go further back up into the mountain i'm taking cobalt blue now and i'm adding asphaltum to it again i want to add a little bit of living crimson i i keep on saying alizarin crimson but i don't like alizarin crimson anymore and people go well you should use permanent lizard crimson i go why it's an ugly color it's kind of like ultramarine blue it's not a really good blue it's a nice blue for making shadows and things like that but but then eliza and crimson i mean there's so many beautiful colors that can fulfill that thing you had white toilets and crimson what do you get ah it's ugly but add phthalo red rose or permanent rose or magenta quinacridone rose you add white to that you go ah it's the color of a rose it's beautiful it's like why wouldn't you use that as a substitute okay so we're going to go into the depths here in order to have great light you have to have good shadow that's what we're going after oh wow now remember i'm a professional don't try this at home it's just a canvas why do people take this so seriously i had a student today she was so depressed when she called me i go why you're depressed and i go because my painting didn't turn out and i go of course it didn't turn out this is hard if it were easy they wouldn't be building museums for artists now would they but i want to do good and i go you're doing fine for what you what you're doing it's not something that people can do all the time i like going really saturated dark anything i hate are like these chalky little paintings now i'd rather go dark and then work my way out of it these are my transitions to dark so if you don't get the dark and it will never come in and so i don't feel and this is the way i feel like watercolors people go stefan you hate watercolors i go no i don't i like really good watercolors but the problems with watercolors is that artists kind of work their way up to it and you look at sergeants watercolors it's like boom there's some dark tones and they're right at the beginning can only go over the paper so many times until it gets overly saturated and i know i have a lot of watercolor students that take coaching from me and acrylics it's just that oils is just such a beautiful medium all right so just so you don't get lost in translation the mountain is going in here there's going to be another mountain in here and this is really dark and right now i'm going to run in real quick with some transition color now the transition color that's between the lights and the shadows that's where the magic happens it's in between lights and shadows that we get color and that's usually the local color i'm adding lots of medium to this the medium i'm using is liquin i want more of a pink come on this is going to be my medium color until i get this canvas covered things are going to look pretty scary but one thing for sure is that i've got your attention nothing better than a train wreck to get people's attention don't believe me just slam on the brakes and toot the horn and watch everybody's neck turn whoa what's going on so so okay and then this is going to be where the mountain goes i'm going to go in and just put in now this is still the concept i'm like going will this work is this an idea this is yeah how what will i have to do it's my preliminary idea worked out and like i said i would if i wasn't talking so much this would have been done in the first 10 minutes like i said i really want that alpine glow and the thing is you kind of have to get the whole canvas covered before you can actually like actually see the concept and see it working now i'm going to just blend this because this is going to be blending down into my color here if i don't get the darks in here i'm not going to get that transition down into the valley you can start seeing how that dark color is starting to mix into that color right there you can start seeing some there's a little magic happening that's where i'm going to leave you right now so goodbye no i'm just kidding just kidding i know you want to say oh my god it's a train wreck what's he going to do all right remember this isn't a holy relic experiment a little try try to see what happens as i'm bringing this pink down there's always surprises if you let go remember i've talked about this before if you watch my videos or take my coaching watch me on patreon this wonderful time to just plug away or on facebook i always say great work actually happens when you're at the edge of oh oh oh oh oh you know when you feel like you're losing it you're going that's where great art is that's when you go in and when it's a little out of control and you have to get some passion to get it working that's when great art is i'm created that comes in my head right there and i'm like okay just plug away yeah yeah so anita says yeah she says when she's at that edge where she's like oh i'm oh i'm gonna blow it that's when she grabs that hold everything just keeps working on it because that's where you need to be if it's safe and comfortable you're not learning anything new and you're not doing anything that's going to change the world you're just producing something you already know it's comfortable be a little uncomfortable some people say when i go to my studio i fall asleep because it's so quiet and lonely well do something that's scary right here you notice that this is going to be a a problem because i have a light clouds and it's going to come up against the light so what i will have to do is a little bit of a checkering now for those of you who don't know what checkering is shame on you you haven't watched all of my videos it happens to be the video that is called how to improve your painting or your money back but you don't get any money back because you didn't pay for the video to begin with but nonetheless i'm going to darken the mountain here because i don't want to lose that edge so i'm going to darken that part of the mountain right there so right here we got uh notice how i'm darkening the space now this is clouds here but i'm not going to figure that out right now i'm just going after the check ring i'm bringing the dark behind the mountain there now obviously i'm not going to get this done in one setting but i guarantee you if you pay attention to my youtube station and my patreon station and even another facebook live like we're doing right now next week at two o'clock every week at thursdays at two o'clock unless something comes up you'll see more of this painting getting done so i want to try to get the whole thing for you now one thing that we want to do is get a little bit more shadows in the mountain i'm going to start drawing the mountain now this is a foot note here i'm going to just my concept is working yeah again i'm going to have to put in my central focal point which will be right here but i can move off and start actually drawing my my mountain and i'm going to do that by bringing some shadows now if you notice i've got light all over the the painting i put that element to light because i wanted to get that alpine glow now what i'm doing is i'm going in and bringing in the shadows as i bring in the shadows of the mountain the light will start popping so if you actually remember when i put this on it was really sloppy part of that was to keep your attention going oh what is he doing now it's like you see well okay he kind of knows what he's doing i've been doing this for 40 years but even when i put that on i was saying oh because you guys are watching in my studio i just wipe it off and one thing i want you to get in order to become great a painting you have to have a whole garage full of you have to make lots of mistakes and every time i do a painting now i'm going to be doing a lot of these paintings on facebook live for you guys as people say steph and you never paint but i'm going to be doing more paintings for you guys i want you to know that i will show you amazing dexterity with brush control i will show you true mastery of color and application of paint you're going to be wowed and dazzled with my ability to create really great art every week or i'll show you a really great way to rope off a painting that didn't work so i'll teach you how to do that too because it's 50 50. sometimes you're going to see something really great and sometimes you're going to see me bomb and that's okay because that's all about creating great art barry bonds owns home runs ever by a baseball player but you know what also record he owes yes also the record for the most strikes because for him to swing that heart and to to cause the ball to go out of the park he has to swing in such way that he risks every time striking out and he's willing to strike out and willing to strike out and willing to strike out to get to his goal which was to be the number one home run champion so play the game now when you're putting shadows into a mountain it is actually like putting beauty marks on a mountain or or or putting in wrinkles in a face or or eyes and mustache it's a personality when you're drawing mount shasta it has to look at the end like the mountain that you want to to to explain i've seen a lot of paintings by bierstadt that the museums will say you know paintings of mount rainier and i know it's mount hood yeah there's certain characteristics that mount hood has and so you want to when you label something as mount shasta you want to at least have the ear marks of of that landmark you might take some artistic liberty with shadows and highlights but you do kind of have to paint the glaciers correctly and the different characteristics of the mountain now notice where the mountain where the clouds back here are lit up i'm going to put a shadow on the top of that mountain why because to me chuck green is more important than getting a highlight on top of that mountain this part of mountain could be easily just covered by a little bit of a cloud passing by and then the dart here i said i wanted the central focal point actually you see the light that's on the mountain that's very tempting that's very tempting to have the center focal point there it's already there it's like wow that'd be really great but seriously my initial concept was to have the light a little bit lower more like in here if you rewind this tape and you actually see what i've been doing it's like you'll notice right here this is where i wanted to put the central focal point right here right up against now if you have studied with me watch my videos uh on youtube uh just look them up stefan baumann youtube my national park stuff there's over 20 national park i was on pbs at one time there's 20 episodes of bauman in the national parks you actually get to see me hiking around the national parks painting on location back when plein air painting was not popular so i invite you to go see that series it was incredible it was touring the national parks to the eyes of an artist and i had a backpack and i was traveling and like i said it's before it was even popular to do when we first started we had to use beta with big huge cameras but eventually these cameras got really small i was one of the first artists to actually do that outside of the studio i don't know why i brought that oh yeah center focal point whenever whenever you hear me talking about a standard focal point which is like what is it it's number two uh yeah after concept the center focal point it's like what are you trying to to capture the viewer this is the thing that i told you at the beginning i said you want to be able to reach out to your viewer you want to reach out to them grab them out just like i'm doing right now if somebody's looking into a gallery you want your painting to stand out this is it you put the light right next to the dark right there boom that contrast there that gives it a center focal point boom when we develop that and we get that light right there it's nice to have the light there but that contrast right there will sell the painting that's the thing that's going to make the difference in this piece we're going to transition this color remember i said transitions are really important so our shadows now remember i said this is the brightest area uh the center focal points are brightest lightest lightest in value biggest contrast hardest edges look at some of the the notes that i have on painting uh the 12 keys and i talk about the central focal point and we're going to have a whole talk on patreon about these different topics central focal point concept transitions um temperature all of those those things will be covered and each week on the facebook live i'm going to be unveiling these things today's the concept essential focal point will be maybe next week because that's number two on my list but the central focal point here always up against the dark now when i talk about this next week there will be a test so i'll say so tell me what are the elements of a central focal point when is that well it's in the middle third of something so we talked about that it's also got the greatest contrast boom right against the dork and there's four other more elements that make a really great central focal point but you'll have to tune in next week impatient girls often miss dessert okay so i'm going to put that central focal point against a dark shadow too the more i do that now that's exactly the same color i started off with now what you don't get is that when we are trying to paint on a white surface and then we put anything on it nothing's going to be that brilliant and so you when i first started this remember i said so where's my essential focal point where's my arm and light and i put some color and you went like ah that's awful now look at it it's like wow it's exactly the same color that's why it's important to tone your whole canvas now i don't get how artists can sit and work painting from the left hand corner all the way through their painting first it would just but there's no passion there it's like sitting there going it's like no no get your painting on there get paint on there you know there's a reason why i got invented paper towels i prefer viva they're the best um i'm not sponsored by vietnam by the way okay people go but vivas are so expensive and i go you're worth it painting is very cheap you want a hobby that's going to cost you money almost any other hobby will cost you more take up golf you want to know what's expensive just the lunch alone would set you back artisty top ramen our golfers go have three drinks and a lobster lunch all right no i'm not bashing golfers they just haven't experienced painting yet all right so we want to get in the transition remember this is kind of an alpine glow so i'm going after this really pink color and that will happen in the transition so the light's coming through here and that's that's the light hitting that and then the the the transition of that color going from yellow to pink oh it's so beautiful yes and then we have right here we have that shadow it's actually one of the main crevices in mount shasta and then it's picked up again over here now what was interesting i don't know if you guys were paying attention but when we first started this i was pointing here and i said oh that'd be obvious to have the light there remember that you forgot about that didn't you so anyway so that right there all of a sudden it died because i went with something brighter so i want to bring that back because i want light to be on different parts of this mountain but i can't have a competing with that now can i otherwise that won't be a central focal point and there's another there's another clue right there when i say central focal point which next week you get to play with and see what that means but anyway all right my students who take lessons from me they're going i know i know i said we can't hear you so i'm going to get the light across here that brings that in a little bit more i'm going to get a little bit like this i know this mountain really pretty well i live at the base of it and i look at it every day i used to have a blog that used to be on called my side on living on the side of a volcano and that literally is that and mount shasta is a active volcano and from what i am told by geologists is that it's about 75 years overdue so uh i have a ranch for sale just kidding what am i gonna do with my horses all right um if there's a vault if it blows up then i'll have all of this artwork to show for it it's really a spectacular place i highly recommend if you have nothing to do in october to come up to mount shasta sign up for a workshop it's a three-day workshop we work intensely for three days people go well why don't you do five days and the reason why is because after three days you'll go okay i'm done because we start at seven in the morning every morning and we work till on friday and saturday till nine o'clock at night because on top of everything else we do night painting nocturnes and every so often we have a full moon and we do a beautiful silhouette of mount shasta at night the information of all that is on my website again lemon yellow and white is the highlight color that i'm putting through here but everything that i put in on here i'm i'm tinting down with red so that i keep the the value not the value but the color the color of that sunset um is so crucial to try to keep that pink tone going through my painting sometimes the pink glow is just amazing you just sit in awe of this this peak um it's it's one of the seven chakra things in in the world with mount fuji and sedona arizona it's a it's a incredible mountain just to witness there's dozens of religions that belong here because of the spiritual quality of the mountain and the rock um it's also a mecca for ufos in fact back when we had the big ufo the end of the world the mayan calendar and all that there was a huge group of people that came to mount shasta and they sat there waiting for spaceships to come down and rescue them was really quite extraordinary needless to say i think some people actually did leave but uh i don't think they left on the spaceship anyway so uh i'm going in and trying to get even more this actually happened yesterday uh the the mountain the the bottom part of the mountain turned this beautiful glowing purple and again it's all part of this transition color that i'm trying to get in the painting and again i'm still actually if you notice i'm still kind of working with the concept yeah i got my light this is what's in my head the lights and shadows i will take it home on the patreon site you'll see me finish this next week if i don't get it done on the patreon site i may bring this up and and and work with it for you guys so that you can see the next layers that go in i usually don't work in layers i like working if this were in my studio i would work on this painting non-stop while it's wet until i until i can no longer paint on while it's wet and this is one of the beautiful things about oil painting i actually introduced a little bit of oil of clove to my paints and that retards it ever so slightly so the following morning it still is wet and people who are acrylics they go oh no painting's got to dry i got to have this got to dry it's got to dry it's like no really you start getting used to putting paint on top of paint on top of paint and you realize it's like the wonderful mixtures that you get in between the layering that you get is really wonderful if you run into an area where you've got really kind of confusing color and it's still wet you can actually take a paper towel and you can wipe it down you know in fact i think i'm going to wipe down this a little bit because i think on the patreon site for those of you that are on my patreon i think we're going to show you what to do with this that's a little bit more unusual some of the old masters like beerstart and church worked with a surface that was more transparent like that and if you're familiar with paintings of of maxwell parish he worked in layers also and so starting off with a preliminary layer like that is a is a good thing um i can kind of cut into it at this point like i said i'm going to work a little bit more on the patreon site with this but just start sculpting into here now had that been dry i wouldn't be able to do this and one of the things that i studied when i was in high school sumi painting or japanese brush painting and i find when i do these castle cracks it's like old japanese techniques come up the the japanese and chinese painters they would hold their ink like this and they would hold the brush upwards to the god and they would work flat so i don't quite do that i'll work this way but usually the stroke that they made was a stroke of water going over rocks so it had a curve to it and it would go down let me just illustrate this a little darker it would go down like this and then the next line would go down from there down it's like water going over rocks see that that beautiful line that you get from that this is water as it cascades over rock and that gives it a kind of rock and for those of you that are familiar with chinese and japanese brush painting you can actually see where that is now remember it's important if you've got a lot of these verticals in a vertical painting you want to get some horizontals so at some point i have to cut in some horizontals this way in here and and in the mountains is try to get things a little bit straighter and i'm going to get darker as we get down towards the base a lot of horizontal strokes as the mountain comes forward the foothills come forward i'm um darkening it up and the great thing here again too outside of the fact that i'm going oh oh push it i need a break no don't keep working anyway so while i'm working on down here is is um i'm working this color back into the wet color up in here the more i work that back and forth the more amazing the transitions get and so much of this stuff i couldn't you know i said you have to come up with the concept and know what the your interest is where that where where you know the developing the idea why is that this is this is you know this is part of it you have to kind of feel it kind of happening you gotta let it go watch it so much of this painting one of the things i do teach in my classes is um nuance painting nuance paint is where they come up with no idea they just start putting brown onto a canvas and they start pushing and wiping it and pushing it it's kind of like you ever look at marble or artificial marble especially in really cheap restrooms i thought we spent a lot of time looking at western marble but anyway if you look at it long enough you start seeing eyeballs and elephants and and you know behind all of the writing of you know for a good time call you'll actually see the marvel the fake marble making forms you can see that in real marvel too not as not as not apparent as much but in clouds you know when you watch clouds and the nuances start looking like a horse and all of a sudden it's a chariot behind the horse and allison the horse turns into a dragon those are nuances your brain wants to resolve things and those are amazing things if you're present enough to let it happen and so when i'm painting these there's a lot of things i'm in control of my concept is such i can't give you a picture of this because there isn't one my concept's all up in here on my head and that's so wonderful because i have nothing to influence it i talk about students working from photography and the issue with that is that once you see the photograph you're now tied to whatever you saw it's not like walking on an indian path someplace where nobody has actually wandered for 100 years looking at cliff drawings as you walk up the cliffs finding vista points as you go along and then sitting at home creating something out of your imagination that recreates the experience there's no picture there and while this is happening before our eyes there are certain things that are happening that i go oh wow i remember seeing that it's like watching a an accident and then you know recalling the license plate through hypnosis it's like all of a sudden you start recalling yes yes yes and the thing is because the color is there already you know that we put that color in it's still wet an hour ago it seemed like a really good idea so now i'm going in and enhancing it developing the idea even more working into that wet paint see if i were working with paint that was already dry i'd have to repaint this and then go back in and push it around right now i can work the shadows up into this color and then blend the transition because that transition between light and shadow right there that part right there that's the most important part the dark is dark the lightest light the transition how that goes from light to shadow that's where the magic happens i want you to try this experiment this week and i want you to be prepared to discuss it next week but if i take an orange or a lemon whatever's in season right now maybe even an avocado but it's too dark and you bring that that lemon into the light i want you to look at the light hitting that lemon and notice where the lemon is being kissed by the light first thing it's not really the color of the lemon it's the color of the light so it's kids if i change that light to blue you're going to get a blue light on that part so where the light's hitting the lemon is going to be the color of the light okay and you won't see a lot of texture or even lemon color i want you to notice in the shadow where there is no light there's no texture or anything in there in fact it's absent of white and there is a there is an absentee color most people think oh well it's a complementary color it's like yeah well that's good if you don't know what you're doing complementary colors are great to work in it's like when in doubt put a compliment your color in and fix it somehow that's going to do it but you know if we actually follow mrs gubalinski's laws again if you follow me watch my youtube videos that talk about her um but in the shadow code there's a default color to shadow and you see that in the lemon or the orange you'll notice they're very similar the magic happens in between so between the highlight and the shadow for doing an orange in the middle is going to be your local color your orange that's where that is the between highlights and shadows is the local color that's also where all the texture happens so i want you to take a lemon look at the light hitting it there's no texture it's just light in the shadow area there's no texture but in the middle you'll have this band of color that's where the orange is that's the local color the color of the object without lights or shadows on it it's a transitional color but it's also where you see all of the pores that's the important space so when we're working between lights and shadows here that is where the magic happens i think you've learned your lesson for today so always remember don't go into your studio unless you plan to change the world and always remember to paint with passion please add comments down below let me know if there's things that you want me to explain or if you want to do my workshop go to my website at least read about it it's fun stephenbaumann.com couldn't be easier if you want coaching give me a call at 415-606-9074 but i have a patreon site where i'm working at trying to get even more content more detail i want to make everybody a fabulous painter always paint with passion and have a grand day thanks for watching well as you can see we're just unveiling some of the interesting conversations that we'll be discovering as we go through the bauman effect in the next few episodes i will be going through the keys and then elements about what it takes to create really great art but in the meanwhile once again here's my website www.stefanbauman.com if you wish to contact me about coaching you can do so at four one five six zero six nine zero seven four that is my personal cell phone number that is the phone number that i use for uh virtually everything and i do answer it so feel free to give me a call again 415-606-9074 and as always don't go into your studio unless you plan to change the world and always remember to paint with passion i am stefan bauman and you have a granddad [Music] you

Channel: Stefan Baumann

Views: 29,338

Keywords: Plein Air, painter, Stefan Baumann, Landscape, painting, The Grand View, American National Park, How to paint, ALLA PRIMA, art, oil painting, wildlife, still life, color, Colour, Concept, imagenation, Composition, Brushstrokes, plein air painting, en plein air, plein air setup

Id: 1rZ8VSZPUXQ

Length: 58min 46sec (3526 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 20 2021