Often I hear teachers, including myself, describe values as the structure, framework or foundation of a painting. And it’s true, they are. But, how excited can we get about that? It sounds more like something we have to do or should do to get to something more exciting or interesting. Sort of like taking your […]
Value, Color and Movement
One of the most powerful compositional tools we have as landscape painters is our ability to move the eye of the viewer around the picture plane and even create the illusion of movement into the picture plane by creating the illusion of depth. Movement is a visual pathway through the painting that the artist creates […]
Mixing Low Chroma Greens
In the recent post Simplify Mixing Greens we saw how using Chromatic Black as a starting point for mixing greens can result in a wide variety of naturalistic greens. In this short video, I use Williamsburg Neutral Greys as a starting point to mix low chroma greens. You can use the premixed Williamsburg or Gamblin […]
Water: Color in Reflections
Painting water is an endlessly challenging subject. In addition to understanding the visual science of how we perceive reflections, as artists we also need to think about how to best depict those perceptions in color! Here are a few helpful color notes to think about when painting reflections: ~the depth of the water (the deeper […]
Scumble!
For landscape painters one of the challenges of depicting the outdoors is getting a sense of “air” and atmosphere into our work. A scumble is a useful technique that can add that look of distance and “bigness” we want. Use a scumble to create atmosphere. Here’s a short video to show how that works! P.S. […]
Simplify Mixing Greens
It’s spring, soon to be summer, and one of the best ways to get a strong start on your landscape paintings is to simplify your palette. Mixing beautiful naturalistic greens can be challenging. Here’s a short video on mixing naturalistic greens to show you how! P.S. If you’d like to know more about how to […]