This "Dumb" painting approach may be all you need... 🤓

hey what's up with Ron here today I'm going to share with you one of my approaches for painting details this I feel like is a very dumb kind of approach because it's to me it's the ultimate approach I don't actually have that much of a plan but I'm focusing on whatever it is I'm painting at the moment so we're going to dive a bit into that once we get to the painting stage for now let's talk briefly about the drawing stage uh I didn't cut out too much of it here feel free to use the timestamps just to skip to the painting section if you'd like that my Approach here is because I have this egg carton um I'm I'm dividing it to a grid that shows where every egg is this is a process I'll often do starting from the large details to small details because I find it's very hard to orient if I just start from One Singular detail it actually can work most of the time you won't calculate the space on your paper correctly but you know maybe that's not that as important to you and that is perfectly fine and I enjoyed the challenge once in a while of just sketching directly but for the most part this kind of agreed really helps because it shows me exactly where I'm gonna put each egg and each divider between the eggs as you can see here I'm starting to put that first divider so I'm visualizing where its base is um and where the top part is and then I'm kind of putting in the eggs it's so funny because I really like the way I approach the sketching stage here the one thing I could have done a little better is to sketch the eggs a little around her and that that translates later on to the painting it's funny how sometimes the thing you do in the in the sketching stage can really dictate later on uh your your results in drawing because it really is all influenced by one another but in case I'm setting these up you see they're kind of changing their angle I'm not going as Extreme as I see it in the reference photo where it really all these dividers change their angle I'm kind of keeping it very sketchy and I am drawing mostly where I see a separation of light and Shadow too so that's something else you'll see in there especially for the eggs you see I'm using a full line for Sharp shadows and then a almost like a jagged or dotted line for the smooth transitions that's a good way for me to hint that's kind of the legend I built for myself on how to do this you know everyone's going to have different ways you can actually use a dotted line to do this you can you you don't even have to do this you can just draw the details and Wing the Shadows you know whatever works for you that's one way I like to do that and just like I like to sometimes scratch do some some hatching where the shadow is here I didn't though because the pattern is relatively simple light comes from the right hits the eggs the card and everything and casts Shadows to the left now while we're drawing this I do want to direct your attention to one more thing there the temperatures so what I love about these kinds of um subjects it's all pretty much gray which first makes it easier because you don't have to match very hard colors second it allows us to play in the temperatures so if we use gray as our Baseline which everyone you know always bugs me out why I don't never clean my palette because that creates a nice basis gray and then we add to it a bit yellow a bit red a bit blue we can every time push it in a different direction and that's kind of what I'm after here so let me show you the approach for me for this one is I'm painting the thing I'm painting at the moment and the point I found to start a good point for me was kind of top right corner so I'm painting the light value around that egg which is gonna bring out the lightness of the egg itself and as I said I'm working on whatever I'm working at the moment so I'll probably form from there make a transition and just start painting the eggs while really disregarding you know the idea of how long has it been can I will I get perfect flow I don't really care about that I'm using very wet petal paint anyway so I have a lot of time I pre-wet and then I put in the paint this is one way I like to achieve smooth edges it sometimes works much better for me than to put the paint and then smoothen the edge I'll just pre-wet the area and then wherever I put the water is where I'll get a clean Edge now I'm well aware that this isn't going to be my final values I'm gonna push things to be darker later on but I want to establish something for myself to be able to orient in the next wash um and you will just see me all throughout this process you know bouncing from one detail to another but pretty much like a wave I'm working from one side to the other and while I'm working on an area I'm in it I'm working on the area I'm focusing on the area that allows me to bring the most out of it to bring enough value enough color enough whatever everything and even though these aren't the final values it allows me to it it sets me off the right way it allows me to didn't it for the next stage know where I'm at to know what I'm doing so you see while this area is still wet I'm gonna put the shadow in there this is this is by the way this Shadow is almost the final value it's really close and I'm filling in the gaps uh between the white areas and the mid values for the shadows and you know if you're at a point where you're able to just do that without a big plan in advance you'll do really well it's very similar to how I painted the um basket of apples not too long ago um the idea of just looking at the thing and painting it as I see it whenever I'm doing these kinds of processes I am so fully invested I'm so in the moment um I'm so deeply focused and it's never by effort I'm just like it just gets sucked into the process that way um which is why I'm I'm a sucker for these kinds of processes and and quite frankly I would love to use these almost as a default always sometimes the subject matter and the arrangement dictate a bit of a different process usually it will happen with larger scenes but with these kind of scenes where there's a lot of Shadows and little highlights uh to me that's the perfect process and it's the process of no process it's the process of absent-mindedness it's the process of just painting it as I see it to me that's the perfect idea and already you're seeing a bit of a warmer feel on that below a bit of a cooler feel on the egg above it's not even cool actually it's neutral tint but the gray in this context looks a little cool I'm going to further exaggerate this effect in a few moments um I had a point and I forgot it was something interesting we'll get back to that later on but but you know these processes again are the thing I probably enjoy the most in watercolor oh yeah I wanted what was it I I keep it keeps escaping me I'm sorry about that but I will take this um opportunity of a little bit of a brain fart uh to suggest if you aren't subscribed definitely make sure to subscribe to the channel if you can leave a like uh and hopefully comment too let me know how you find this process so far I'll be super duper grateful for that um but yeah so in a moment you'll see me starting to push more of the colors um to stretch out that middle gray okay so the way I like to think about it and this turns out this is revolutionary to to many people so um because I don't always describe it that way I look at it as this is my base color it's a gray and every time I stretch it in a different direction I'll stretch it towards the red as you see there towards the blue towards different directions now what this does is because I keep using the same gray and in fact the red I'm using here slowly becomes a part of my gray because it's mixed into the gray when I add more blue right it's still some of the red is still there some of the blue I use this still there what it leads to is a very harmonious result um everything has to work together because everything has everything in it so my gray right now what would you see me mix uh was there a bit of warmth there earlier if I'm not mistaken see it all works uh but now it's starting to stretch a bit the temperature so you see me pushing it more towards the blue gray just a bit more blue now people always like to ask about the colors I'm using so I'm using a bit of a different combination um I thought Ruth Ruth made a noise there she's just sleeping um this time I'm using a bit of a different one so I'm using mostly French ultramarine that's pretty much the usual one quinacridor rose that's also the usual one but I'm also using neutral tint and I'm also using Turner's yellow once in a while I'll let the Panzer yellow medium or the new gumbos or the lemon yellow take a back seat and I'll use something more like that Turner's yellow is a very gentle yellow it is very easily dominated by the Reds so that's something you may want to be aware of um especially here like to make it look yellow I really need to bring a lot of yellow in there if that makes sense now there's actually a lot going on here in the realm of edges the edges are very interesting right you see this hard Edge next to a soft Edge and I'm not too worried you see these two washes are touching the egg at the top egg at the bottom I'm not worried it's going to reawaken the egg at the bottom it's not really a concern at this stage um you can worry about it you can be more meticulous about the areas you cover you can be a little more pre-planned work lighter layers and just know from like in advance exactly what you're gonna paint I find sometimes I'll naturally go there but very often I won't um and it's and I find it to be very limiting right and if there's one thing I'm I'm trying to remove um from my processes limitations the more limitations you can remove the better you'll do that is just the truth that's just how it works um doesn't mean it's wrong to have limitations you know and I sometimes talk about self-imposed limitations just for fun and experimentation but the less limitations you have that you feel forced to do the better and that's one of them so you see a lot of beauty and Grace is created in these um contrast of edges right so we have a hard Edge soft Edge hard Edge soft Edge um and that is something I personally really enjoy showing uh it's not always easy I do have quite a lot of videos on the topic of edges so you can go to the channel just search for them um you'll find plenty because the thing is once you see it you will just naturally start using it it's so much fun to always have in mind oh what does this Edge look like how should I do this one like even now when I'm looking at the right blue side of that divider I'm thinking oh can I blend that blue edge I didn't do it but would I and would it benefit from it even though the reference photo in the photo it's not right um so that's something that's on my mind one more thing I want to talk about is um sometimes people send me questions like or paintings where it feels really amateurish in the colors um and a lot of it is subjective by the way but I just want to say sometimes especially for those who tend to use the colors just the way they are out of the box just clean French ultramarine especially all of these colors clean there's a way to use them so that they look good there are a few ways there are many ways but there are also some ways that tend to look more amateurish again nothing wrong with that but some ways just don't lend themselves to a sophisticated look if you will but the way to find that sophisticated look to me is to always mix uh is to always have my colors be broken almost like when you get started playing the guitar maybe this analogy will hit for some or any musical instrument let's say uh any chord bass like a piano guitar stuff like that um and you get started with very basic chords you know major and minor but then the more you you do that the more you find the broken chords and the more you love them the sus chords the diminished chords all of those good stuff that I absolutely love um and you'll start making use of them very naturally it's the same for for this kind of a thing you start with very clean colors in a very naive way which is great nothing wrong with that and then you'll slowly find your own sophistication if you will um sometimes I'll just use strong paint for the heck of it no real purposes will just feel right which is why that instinct honestly takes precedence over everything for me you know it's just the thing that enables you to do that um looking back this is very similar to but a lot of people myself included tend to call alaprima painting um we just paint directly let the washers touch you let the areas touch and that is perfectly okay it doesn't mean you finish it necessarily in one wash but but that first wash is doing a lot of the work um and I actually covered that in the frustration-free watercolor course I have a few other Primo processes so if that's something you're interested in that's a great place to check them out it's almost like a complementary to the watercolor realism course in that the watercolor realism is that more calculated is that more sometimes it's multiple glazes it's a bit more planned and nothing is wrong in these approaches you know there is no right or wrong here it's very much what captures you in a specific painting and sometimes I find that I really don't enjoy a painting process not because of the subject matter even but because my Approach wasn't in line with what I felt I wanted at the moment it's almost like I knew what the right thing to do for me was at the moment meaning the thing that will make me feel good about the process and enjoy it and I just didn't listen to myself um and and then I may redo the painting a different route and I will get a result I love and I would briefly enjoy the process and all of that um so it really is sometimes too and I talked a bit about it in the sensitivity about the subject matter it's that okay what does this subject matter almost asked me to to paint it like um so yeah now already you can start seeing how the light and shuttered it starts to come together very nicely I think um the eggs start to have volume um this is already beyond what I see a lot of people utilize when it comes to values um most people wear their paintings are flat and they they really yearn for more depth in a sense of three-dimensionality usually they don't push it to be this dark but I'm gonna push it to be darker in a few seconds okay so that's another thing to to throw in there because this isn't enough for me uh so you know if you're painting much flatter meaning your lights are lighter your darks are lighter and everything is kind of the same lit value this could very well be the reason why the result ends up looking a little flat now here to the left I'm taking a bit more of a loose approach because there are no eggs it's just the highlights that are left behind and the nuances in the shadows which hopefully will read well um a lot of it is just trusting myself that things will work out and I just remembered my point from earlier so so talking about you know how this process is very much intuition very much what I feel like in the moment very much the vision takes precedence over everything you do need some basic understanding of the medium to do that so if you're looking at this and you're you're telling yourself well I have no idea what I'm doing it could be the vision it could be like you still don't know what you like you still haven't acquired The Taste for it and that's just another step in the way or it could be that on a very basic level you haven't yet acquired the technical understanding of paint which it makes fully sense you know I would say if you have been experimenting with a watercolor for over I don't know a few months you should get an understanding of the basics of how they handle assuming you actually experimented with them and not just followed a predetermined process that someone told you what to do at every point along the way if you have done that you should already have an understanding I'm not talking about being super proficient because I'm not that too my technique isn't isn't as good as some of these especially Korean artists you see out there that they know exactly how much pain to have on the brush on the paper on the palette in every single moment in time I'm not there but I feel like I'm still able to execute on my vision very well um and that to me is a kind of knowledge you acquire very fast um it doesn't take years maybe months could be in weeks too if you're really determined uh but I would say to me it was a couple of months to start feeling it that way of course a year later I felt like a year ago I didn't know anything right you're always grow and learn but but it shouldn't take long just for the sake of it taking long it should take as long as it should take that's the thing right for some it'll take a little longer maybe you want to really understand the technique uh in a very deep way so you know nature dictates that by the way this is a very important Shadow nature almost dictates that it will take you longer but for the most part the basic understanding I'm referring to is something very quick now as soon as you acquire that or once you have that this is the kind of process you're probably able to follow doesn't mean you'll get the same result as me you'll never sweater color doesn't mean you'll get a better or worse result than me but you should be able to do that you know um from what I've seen and from my personal experience now one thing that is shouting to me right now and I will fix later on is to make the highlights on the eggs mean more I will probably need to paint the desk itself or the table or the surface so we'll see me later on darkening it ever so slightly just to give more meaning to the highlights that's something very common now it is time to push this more towards the final values now the way I've been doing this lately we're halfway through you know buckle up there's a bit more to go hopefully you're enjoying this one still the way I've been doing this lately and I forgot to cut out this part where I'm doing nothing sorry um is I'm almost repeating the colors I used the first time because I found that that enhances them so if you put a thin glaze of brown and a thin lays of more Brown above it it will make it look more Brown more saturated more fun um you could glaze a warm and cool a blue and red a red and yellow whatever you want if you're if you got the colors pretty much right the first time and you only want to amplify it I find that the same version of the color works really well or close one so if you have a brownish red and you glaze it clean red over it that will still amplify it okay I'm talking just science here what happens when you glaze two transparent layers one over the other so if you like the colors you have and you just want to amplify it and make them stronger make them feel more bright more saturated I'll be using the same colors to do that okay now my mid values are pretty much good the the thing that's missing is the deeper shadows and you see me starting to uh indicate them here from that egg now we have the there are a few interesting things going on here in terms of the science of light and Shadow 2 by the way so you'll notice the top of the egg I'm trying out to think how I can demonstrate this so let's say this is an egg right you'll notice that the top of the egg or it's not even the top that's a that's a wrong way to explain it actually um I needed oval like object but whatever let's say this is an egg right and you have the line where it crosses from light to Shadow you'll notice the line where it crosses from light to Shadow there's it's actually darker than the shadow so the the reason this happens is because you have reflected light inside the shadow part so what actually happens is this is the egg this entire side is in the shadow right but there's a bit of reflected light on the bottom of that shadow making it lighter that reflected light is reflected Here I Am by the way glazing blue over blue that reflected light comes off of these dividers that are light so they reflect backlight on the eggs it comes from other eggs it comes from the environment this is a very common pattern you'll see where the transition from light to Shadow actually has the darkest value and if you're able to catch this Nuance um the result is going to be more believable it will look more realistic plainly speaking in simple terms and I think I managed to do that quite well with the egg on the top right there I didn't try to do that with every egg I didn't succeed in doing it with every egg but the effect is there here's where some people make a mistake now the reason it's actually a mistake is they don't see things accurately um and again there's nothing wrong with that but if you're actually trying to paint it as you see it you need to see it accurately so where where some people go astray is they think the Highlight on the egg is actually as light as the right side that is not true I can prove it to you and I think I've shown it in multiple videos actually and if I remember where at the 23 11 I'm gonna write it down for myself I'll forget 23 11 mark light Shadow because I want to show you this so hopefully I remember um I'll show you the darkest the lightest point on the darkest side side is still darker than the Highlight than the light side so when you look at the egg right side is exposed to the light left side has a highlight in it for reflected light the Highlight in it is still much darker than the lightest side and that's the importance of core Shadows actually showing you the division between light and Shadow will lead to a more realistic view that's just the way it works um and it's okay if you're not into getting a realistic result if you're into being a little more expressive of whatever you have there whether it is congruent with reality or not but just have that in mind um and I will and I have demonstrated this hopefully on the screen for you um so I'm in the process of making these Shadows darker so that there's a clean separation between the light and the shadow and then the little highlight quote unquote within the shadow that's actually reflected light can shine and the part that is exposed to light can also shine very well take a sip of water here but this is a good reminder once again uh if you haven't checked out my frustration free water core course I have about 250 quarter million subscribers here and I think a couple of thousands more High thousand no maybe mid thousands have signed up for the frustration free water core course so if you so there are a lot of people who haven't that's the short of it this is exactly what I show there so if you like this kind of process check it out now even worse uh less than that are in the watercolor realism of course so uh it's like a zero point something percent of my audience so if you haven't checked it out and you're into the more realistic meticulous step-by-step values uh edges uh shapes approach check out the frustration free water records I will put all the links in the description box below now we're coming to the left side and this is actually it was important for me to get the nuances of dark and light light and dark there uh as accurately as I could that entails getting those the depth right where the egg sits is darker and the more it goes up to that divider like I'm really looking at these as three-dimensional shapes the more it goes up into the divider the lighter it gets so it's almost like a a you have um you have dug a hole in the ground and the deeper you go into the hole it is darker it's one of those things that were really important for me to show look at how the that shadow on the left and especially above the divider will Define its Edge right here look look at what I'm gonna do I think it happens in a second or maybe I forgot and I'm not doing it or maybe I'm doing it later I'm not sure but those Shadows behind are gonna um really tell us where the dividers are okay um and this is a whole different kind of um kind of a mode if you will because it's really in the darks in the let's say you have a scale of one to ten ten is the darkest so this is really in the five to ten or six to ten a bit tough sometimes if you're used to painting a light so it may be something will take a bit of repetition but just a bit not repetition for repetition's sake I stopped believing at that a long time ago they're one of those things like you have to do a skill repair repetitively to uh develop to develop it eh not really not really it's not the repetition that gets the success it's the perception of doing the thing from the right place so if you is relevant even to sports if you know where the action comes from you'll do really well after a few attempts not years of doing the same technique because when you think about it doesn't make really sense if you know how to do a a thin wash painting a a thin even wash should not take years of practice and if your bar was that it should maybe raising the bar is something to consider it shouldn't take years it honestly shouldn't um if you've been doing it for a long time and you still can't not the occasional blooper because that happens to me all the time but like if you just don't it's it's a gap in understanding right and I'm curious to hear if you have any questions following this this statement in particular and other things we discussed so far let me know if you have a question down below I'm curious to hear them and see if I can address them in the comments um I'm just loosening up that edge slightly it's still going to be a relatively hard Edge but just I wanted to add a layer of slight lightness near the edge um and I don't even remember what happens now I still need to darken some spots I need to paint the background I need to darken the top of the cardboard carton box whatever you want to call it I know it's an egg box in the UK uh and it's an egg carton I think in the US so hopefully I'm accurate about that uh we call it and Hebrew it's just carton carton um which can explain why if you hear someone who's a native Hebrew speaker saying it in English they will say egg Carlton which is going to sound very awkward but yeah so for the background which I'm gonna tackle in a moment I'm just I just want to make sure I push the the the the core Shadows on the X to actually look like light and Shadow clear the vision um for the background I'm going to use a very light wash that I'm gonna start top to bottom and I will make it a little darker as I move down I want to divert your attention to the reference photo you'll notice that the top of the surf look at the surface on which the egg carton sits the top is lighter than the bottom it's one of those things people keep missing but it's important so I'm starting very watery the the more I move down the more paint and value I'm starting to add okay it's a it's a very gradual smooth transition my shadow that is cast by the garden is still not fully dry so look at how I'm approaching it once I get there what I'm gonna do is leave a very small white Gap and close it off carefully this is something I always do so if I'm compelled to paint an area I'm going with my feeling even if it meets or intersects with a wet shape because my instinct usually is correct so what I'll do is leave this small Gap you see here and then I will carefully close it off very gently if you do it gently and the paper is decent you should not probably reawaken anything in a in an egregious manner you should be good now I'm adding a bit more red and yellow just to make the bottom a little more colorful I like to add colors to the thing that is closer to us the bottom is a little closer to us so there we go just a touch of color it's barely going to be noticeable but it will give it this extra bit of Interest punch whatever um there's a bit of a kind of diagonal Shadow there just very gentle come back with clean water to smoothen out the edge and I'm gonna pre-wet this part so that I can go back and darken it I have noticed I went a little too cool there so the color I'm using now is mostly a warm gray to cover it up um and I will leave you see where the carton goes up to to close on the eggs that's where it goes a little lighter it's one of those nuances you know if you pay attention you will want to capture it it's not going to be the end of the world if you miss these small nuances but I wanted to to keep it there now if that makes sense so my temperatures here are all over the place uh which I love that's kind of what I was driven to to paint this um but I may do another go where I plan them out a bit more um some organization in the colors can also have an impact on the obviously on the end look of the painting usually when it comes to realism it's all about these values and getting the values somewhat in the ballpark but when it comes to the feel of it the harmony the organization the composition paint does play a role um so it's another thing to think about and yeah now you'll notice again some areas just need to be a little darker look at look at the photo where I'm just now placing this paint it contrasts much stronger with that divider um and and those are really important things for me to show um now where we talk about composite there is the the basic level of showing something showing contrast showing value showing whatever then there's the more advanced element of where am I showing it and where am I not showing it so what I usually do is show more contrasts near the focal point my focal point is the eggs on the right side so that's where I'm pushing the values to be a little darker whereas on the left they are darker because there are no eggs there but it's almost vague and you'll notice I don't go as dark as some spots in the reference photo and I did a lot of it wet and wet so everything is Blended a bit uh and that kind of moves it away to the left so it's it doesn't steal too much of the attention if that makes sense but for example the bottom of this thing needed to be darker all of these little points needed to be darker on the right divider to the right there with the four eggs on the right that needs to be darker that gap between the egg and the divider need to be darker and again when I say need you know the only real um definition of it is needed for the purpose I have right it's not like there's one way to finalize this painting um now you see why I usually don't struggle with you know adding too many details or adding too much you know or overworking because all I'm looking for is if I take us in this particular one it's not always the goal but usually if I take a few steps back and it looks right that's good for me sometimes it's hard to see it cleanly so I just uh take a break put the painting somewhere Revisited a few hours a day later I know immediately sometimes flipping it upside down can do that for you sometimes just looking at it from a distance can do that for you but once I see the finished product I see it I know it's done it's done now this actually is not done yet this one egg in particular like the clear uh division between light and Shadow I completely forgot about in the previous step so I'm gonna enhance that now and if I'm not mistaken that is the last thing I do maybe I add a few more small touches but uh yeah to that egg below probably didn't feel strong enough as well though again it's not a must to take a few steps away from the screen you will get the impression immediately you'll know what you're looking for uh the eye and the brain are very clever they know exactly what they're looking for usually it's not a problem um but yeah they're gonna get that [Music] um what do you call it that darker I guess area and the transition from light to dark and I'm using a damp brush sometimes to move that around and control it a bit that's something I'll do as well uh just to help it blend if necessary um and with again a moist but almost dry brush just to blend that edge and we are pretty much done um that's how I love to paint very often it's a clean just experience of painting the section I'm working on and I cannot describe to you how fun and exhilarating it is um and I think everyone has their own kind of sweet spot of how they like to create and to me that usually puts me straight in the zone I stared at the paper in the brush the whole painting process was so much fun there was never really a doubt um now I can look at things and say oh I could have done this better that better while doing it there was never doubt I was so in it so invested and here it is zoomed in uh result you can see all the details in the scan here's another view of it I want to thank you so so much for watching I really do appreciate it I will take this opportunity to thank everyone who supports me on patreon if you want to get credits at the end of my videos your name up there be sure to check it out uh frustration Freewater caller course as I mentioned watercolor realism course Link in the description box for everything I will see you in the next video Until then take care thank you [Music]

Channel: Liron Yanconsky

Views: 4,768

Keywords: watercolor, watercolour, watercolor painting lesson, watercolor painting tutorial, watercolor technique, watercolor loose approach, watercolor dumb approach, watercolor still life, watercolor egg carton, watercolor egg box, watercolor light and shadow, watercolor core shadow

Id: 8Ap3Ldwr6Rc

Length: 36min 42sec (2202 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 01 2023