- Lesson details
- Transcript
- Instructor
- Bill Perkins
- Subjects
- Painting
- Topics
- Head & Portrait, Light & Color
- Mediums
- Oil Paints
- Duration
- 4h 33m 16s
- Series
- Color Boot Camp
In this series, instructor Bill Perkins brings you his crash course on color theory and practice. This six part series is designed to accelerate your learning curve, allowing you to gain confidence in your paintings and an overall understanding of how color works in various situations. Each lesson will focus on a different aspect of color, and will center around images of a model in different color and lighting set-ups designed by Bill himself. This third lesson in the series will focus on complementary colors. Bill will begin with a brief introduction, and then it’s time to get to work: You will be shown a series of 4 different images throughout the lesson, each with a different color set-up, and you will have 30 minutes to complete a painting of each. Following each painting, you will see how Bill approaches the the same assignment, allowing you to compare your work with his. We recommend you give each painting multiple attempts, but restrict yourself each time to no more than 30 minutes per painting.
Materials
- Sharpie Marker
- Gamblin Artists Grade Oil Paint
- Hogs Hair Bristle Brushes – Filberts
- Gamsol Oderless Mineral Spirits
- Silicoil Brush Cleaning Tank
- Palette Paper
- Canvas Panel
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AUTO SCROLL
Hi, I’m Bill Perkins, and welcome to the third lesson of my color boot camp. What we’re
going to go over here today is complementary color, and the way this lesson works is that
I want you to paint each painting in only about 30 minutes. I’m going to give you
four individual images that you’re going to paint from, and after you finish each one
then you can take a look at mine and see how I’ve done it.
Now, I’ll remind you; I’m not really looking to render this image, and I don’t expect
you to either. What I want you to do is get it down the best you can in the short amount
of time. You’ve got to be quick, and you’ve got to move straight ahead. Let’s get started.
going to go over here today is complementary color, and the way this lesson works is that
I want you to paint each painting in only about 30 minutes. I’m going to give you
four individual images that you’re going to paint from, and after you finish each one
then you can take a look at mine and see how I’ve done it.
Now, I’ll remind you; I’m not really looking to render this image, and I don’t expect
you to either. What I want you to do is get it down the best you can in the short amount
of time. You’ve got to be quick, and you’ve got to move straight ahead. Let’s get started.
AUTO SCROLL
Okay, this lesson is going to be on complementary colors. We’re going to do four paintings.
They’re going to be quick, so you’ve got to stay with them. But we’re going to do
four paintings, and the first two are going to be red-green complements. The second two
are going to be yellow-blue complementary colors.
We’re going to set them up this way. Our first one is going to be notan-dominant. That
means it’s going to be flatly lit. We’re going to have—our model is going to be in
here like this. What we’re going to have is a situation where she’ll be in a red
dress, but her skin tone and everything is going to be warm against a green background.
It’s going to be about a green background with red figure.
That’s going to take care of our first image.
All of this is going to be red. Back here is going to be your green.
Proportionally it’s going to work out that this might be a little bit more red than green.
We aren’t going to have an exact balance of the two.
Our second painting is going to be a little different. On this one I’m going to show
you more form. This one is going to be about form. In this painting you’re going to need
to paint what you see the model being affected by a red light and a green light on both sides.
So, we’ll have a situation here on the model where we’re going to have a green light
coming in here and a red light coming in here, which is going to set up, it’s going to
set up a situation where we have a little darker core across the front, and we’re
going to end up with a dark surround kind of like this. This is going to be our setup
here, where we have a strong green light, a strong red light, and our complementary
colors are going to be shown on her local colors. This is more about her local colors.
You’ll see more of her local skin tone here. Here you will not. You’re going to see the
nuances of green and the nuances of red as they’re affected by the planes on her face
and skin. But it’ll be mostly the red-green. You’ll see the difference.
Our next painting, this painting is going to be notan, flatly lit. We’re going to
look at the local colors. In this situation she is going to be, there is going to be a
little bit of shadow on there. You’re going to see a little bit in here like this. What
you’re going to end up getting is you’re going to get mostly yellow in here. She has
a blue top. The background, this is yellow, her skin has more yellow tones in it, and
here is going to be the strong blue. It’ll be a little bit of blue in the surround of
a larger area of yellow.
Our last painting is going to be more form, and in this painting we’re going to create
a lot of visual tension. The yellow-blue arrangement that we have here, blue wants to go back in
space. Yellow wants to come forward in space. Anytime we have blue in front of the yellow,
we start to see a visual tension. In this painting, this one, we’re going to have
the model sitting with the same blue top, but in this case we’re going to have a light
coming this direction, a yellow light, and a blue light hitting her from this direction.
Okay, so she’s going to be mostly blue, and there will be a little bit of a rim on
her like this that’s going to be your yellow accent.
Now, what’s going to happen here is background is going to be yellow,
her hair is going to be dark. We’re going to have
a blue top here, and all of this is going to have a strong blue light on it.
It’s going to alter your local colors, your skin tones.
It’ll throw them way off. But what I want you to do is I want you to see
those zones first. We’re going to paint in the zones. Then what I want you to see
is start building the color nuances, the subtleties in there. Once you’ve done the original spots.
So again, these are going to be really fast, so if you don’t get to it, that’s fine.
If you want to try it again, don’t continue to paint. What I want you to do is start over.
The faster you get—use a bigger brush. You don’t need to paint them as large as I paint them.
Paint them at a comfortable size, and that could be anywhere from 8 x 10, 9 x 12,
11 x 14. Any of those sizes are fine. The main thing is that I want you to cover your
canvas quickly and get those relationships going.
They’re going to be quick, so you’ve got to stay with them. But we’re going to do
four paintings, and the first two are going to be red-green complements. The second two
are going to be yellow-blue complementary colors.
We’re going to set them up this way. Our first one is going to be notan-dominant. That
means it’s going to be flatly lit. We’re going to have—our model is going to be in
here like this. What we’re going to have is a situation where she’ll be in a red
dress, but her skin tone and everything is going to be warm against a green background.
It’s going to be about a green background with red figure.
That’s going to take care of our first image.
All of this is going to be red. Back here is going to be your green.
Proportionally it’s going to work out that this might be a little bit more red than green.
We aren’t going to have an exact balance of the two.
Our second painting is going to be a little different. On this one I’m going to show
you more form. This one is going to be about form. In this painting you’re going to need
to paint what you see the model being affected by a red light and a green light on both sides.
So, we’ll have a situation here on the model where we’re going to have a green light
coming in here and a red light coming in here, which is going to set up, it’s going to
set up a situation where we have a little darker core across the front, and we’re
going to end up with a dark surround kind of like this. This is going to be our setup
here, where we have a strong green light, a strong red light, and our complementary
colors are going to be shown on her local colors. This is more about her local colors.
You’ll see more of her local skin tone here. Here you will not. You’re going to see the
nuances of green and the nuances of red as they’re affected by the planes on her face
and skin. But it’ll be mostly the red-green. You’ll see the difference.
Our next painting, this painting is going to be notan, flatly lit. We’re going to
look at the local colors. In this situation she is going to be, there is going to be a
little bit of shadow on there. You’re going to see a little bit in here like this. What
you’re going to end up getting is you’re going to get mostly yellow in here. She has
a blue top. The background, this is yellow, her skin has more yellow tones in it, and
here is going to be the strong blue. It’ll be a little bit of blue in the surround of
a larger area of yellow.
Our last painting is going to be more form, and in this painting we’re going to create
a lot of visual tension. The yellow-blue arrangement that we have here, blue wants to go back in
space. Yellow wants to come forward in space. Anytime we have blue in front of the yellow,
we start to see a visual tension. In this painting, this one, we’re going to have
the model sitting with the same blue top, but in this case we’re going to have a light
coming this direction, a yellow light, and a blue light hitting her from this direction.
Okay, so she’s going to be mostly blue, and there will be a little bit of a rim on
her like this that’s going to be your yellow accent.
Now, what’s going to happen here is background is going to be yellow,
her hair is going to be dark. We’re going to have
a blue top here, and all of this is going to have a strong blue light on it.
It’s going to alter your local colors, your skin tones.
It’ll throw them way off. But what I want you to do is I want you to see
those zones first. We’re going to paint in the zones. Then what I want you to see
is start building the color nuances, the subtleties in there. Once you’ve done the original spots.
So again, these are going to be really fast, so if you don’t get to it, that’s fine.
If you want to try it again, don’t continue to paint. What I want you to do is start over.
The faster you get—use a bigger brush. You don’t need to paint them as large as I paint them.
Paint them at a comfortable size, and that could be anywhere from 8 x 10, 9 x 12,
11 x 14. Any of those sizes are fine. The main thing is that I want you to cover your
canvas quickly and get those relationships going.
AUTO SCROLL
Now it’s time for your first assignment. What I’d like you to do is spend a few minutes to do your
drawing and lay it out on your board. Save 30 minutes
for painting. We’re going to have a mostly red scheme. There will be a green background. The model is wearing
a red dress. You want to look for the relationships of
those more red versions in her skin tones against the background and how that works altogether.
drawing and lay it out on your board. Save 30 minutes
for painting. We’re going to have a mostly red scheme. There will be a green background. The model is wearing
a red dress. You want to look for the relationships of
those more red versions in her skin tones against the background and how that works altogether.
AUTO SCROLL
Okay, now that you’ve done your first painting, now you can check out how I did it.
I'm going to lay out my palette with initial colors. I use my regular palette even though we’re
dealing with a complementary situation. I’ll put a little bit of white up here. I’m going
to use a good amount of paint just to make sure that I have enough to work with. I don’t
want to run out. That’s one of the worst things that you want to do is run out of paint
and then start having to, you know, mix with just a tiny, tiny amount of pain. Just make
sure that you get an ample amount of color on your palette as you’re working so that
you kind of feel a little bit freer to mix with. If you’re stretching it then you’re
going to make some compromises when you’re mixing your color, and you don’t want to do that.
I’ve got white and black. I’ve got a cadmium yellow light and raw sienna. The reason for
these are that I want to have a light and a dark value yellow. You can see that this
is cooler and this is a little warmer. Then I’m going to go with a warm red, which is
a naphthol red. Then I’m going to use a cool red. The cool red is a quinacridone red.
I use that rather than alizarin crimson because it mixes better. It’s clearer a cool red.
This is clearly a warm red, clearly a cool red. I’m not trying to find a red in the
middle. A lot of people use alizarin. Alizarin does not mix very well with your other hues.
It’ll tend to neutralize your colors a little too much. What I try to is I try to make sure
that I’m using colors that really express a warm and cool version of each hue. I’d
rather have the ability to mix really saturated colors and mix them down then work with neutralized
colors and not be able to mix up.
Now, these are cobalt blue and a phthalo blue. Colbalt is my warm blue, and the phthalo is
my cool blue because it has more green it, and this has more red in it. Then I’m going
to go to my phthalo green. That’s going to be my basic palette that I’m going to
work with. In this painting, since it’s a complementary scheme, I’m going to be
working with my reds here and green. What’s going to happen is this phthalo green and
the naphthol red, these are more complementary because this is a warm red and then this cooler
green; you see, it’s a green blue-green. This is red with some blue in it. Now, the
blueness of these two which actually make a little bit more like a violet if I add white,
but these will cancel each other out. If you’re dealing with your complements, you deal with
a warm version of one color and the cool version of its complement. That way you’ll get more
true complements and more neutral.
So, knowing this is going to be a painting about red-green, what I did is I used my naphthol
red and I used my phthalo green, mixed it together to do the lay-in. I didn’t use
black and white. I didn’t use black and white. I’m using the colors that are key
to this painting alone. I always do my lay in with colors that are going to be dominant
in my final painting. Whenever I’m mixing with the red—she’s going to have a red
dress, green background—one of the things that I’m going to just jump into right way
is, whenever we’re using a red or a saturated red, what you need to do is pretty much lay
that in first, whatever that’s going to be. The reason being is that you’re going
to find that if you lay in your other values and you lay them in a little light, you’re
going to have to add white to your red. Adding white to red is going to create pink. It’s
not going to create a lighter red. It’s going to create pink. Her dress has a little
bit of coolness in it. I want to be able to add that in, and I don’t want to be subject
to try to push this red lighter than is possible. What I’m going to do is I’m going to start
with my reds to lay in the dress and then I’ll go ahead and go to my darkest darks.
Lay in my spots of color that are going to be allowing this color to stand with full saturation.
So, I’m going to start in here with this. I can see that it’s cooler. It’s a little
bit cooler. I do see that there is some lightness, a little pink quality to it. It’s one of
the most saturated colors up here. The red and the green are clearer the most saturated
colors up here, so I’m going to go ahead and block those in just quickly.
I'll get these colors a little bit thicker as we go too, so I just want to make sure that I get
the best of what I can up here.
Alright. So that’s going to be kind of the base red,
and I know that I’m going to need to go a little darker all around. In order to make
sure that is going to stand out. Now I’m going to need to get the green up to the same
value, so I’m going to add some white to the green and get it up to the same value
and temperature. I need to warm it up a little bit.
I’m mixing them close together here.
I don’t want to go so light, but I want to make sure that I get it a little bit warmer
in here and keep it pretty saturated.
Here we go.
Now, you don’t have to paint this large. I’m painting this large. But, as you can
see, it takes me a little bit of time and quite a bit of paint to cover the canvas.
You can just you spots, little spots of color if you want. But what you want to do is just
make sure that you get enough color to cover the surface well. I can always come back with
thicker paint. Once I get these two values set in here like this, you see, now I’ll
go in and set my real dark. I want to make sure that I have these working in a similar
value, and now I can go in and set in my darkest darks, which is going to be
somewhere in here for her hair.
I’m going to darken that down. I’m going to use some green. I’m going
to lean on my red-green in order to darken and neutralize. You can see how that’s going
to work in there. I can darken and neutralize these relationships, but I’m going to keep
with these colors in here, and I can make it a little bit more neutral in there.
This is kind of a medium value. It’s not the darkest dark in her hair.
I’m going to lighten that up a little bit. I have to warm that up a little bit.
I’ll warm that quite a bit there, like that. There we go.
I’m going to look at a couple little variations in here
now where I can start to break it up just a little bit. Then I can go back pretty dark
again. I’m going to go back into this, this darker value. I’m going to add some black
into there. I’m going to warm that up with the red.
I’m going to get a little bit of the green back in here so it’s not all neutral in here.
There is some green back in this area down in here, so I see a little difference down in here.
Okay. Back over here. And up in here.
There we go. You can see I’m just blocking it in. I’m just doing it as bold
as I can. Now, this painting is based on flat lighting. This is a notan scenario where the
light and shadow is minimal. I want to take advantage of the complimentary colors of the
local colors rather than the lighting. We’ll deal with that later. This one is all focused
on this red-green relationship and how that works in this complementary scheme. I wanted
something that’s extremely red, something extremely green. Her skin tone and her hair,
they’re going to have their local colors. We’re going to pick up the nuances of these
complementaries in the mixing in here. It’ll give our color a point of view in this scheme.
Any time where you’re setting up a strong color scheme you’re going to want it to
have a certain point of view. This is how you can determine, you know, the direction
or point of view that you want. Her skin tone is going to have a lot more sienna in it.
I’m going to go into here.
I might lighten that just a little bit. It is much lighter
than her dress, quite a bit lighter and lighter than the background.
What I can do is I can go a couple different areas. Since it’s a notan situation I’m
going to see a lot of changes, subtle changes in the colors all around. I can lay in those
subtleties as I lay in those basic shapes, or I can go in and lay in one value and start
shifting them slightly. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to go in—in this case, I’m going to go in and get a little bit
of this greenish in here in her skin, and then I’m going to go back and get some of
this red in here as well, get a little bit
of this red working back into this so that I can neutralize her skin down a little bit.
Now what I’ll do is I’ll put that in here. I need to make it a little bit warmer.
I'm going to go ahead and just put her overall skin tone in these areas, and then I’ll
come back and make some subtle adjustments in hue as we go. I’m going to go ahead and
block this in. Just get these larger shapes. I want to leave a little bit of my drawing
in there just so I know a little bit where to go.
Other than that, I can always come back and find those shapes again.
I know there are areas on her cheek and on her lips
and so on that are going to be a little bit warmer as we go. I’ll put that in as we need.
I can see that her neck down here is just a little bit warmer. I’m going to go ahead
and take advantage of that right now. I’ll go ahead and put that in down here.
Then I also see along the edge here and over her shoulders.
She is going to get some reflected light coming into her arms. I’m going to leave this a little soft.
I know in the photograph it’s a little bit harder edge, but I really don’t want the viewer really following the
edge along here. I’d rather that be something a bit more subtle like her hair back here.
Anywhere you have more contrast that’s where your eye is going to follow.
I’m going to get a little more color in there.
There we go. And it gets a little bit greener over on this arm over here, so I’m going to go ahead and do that.
Keep that soft.
Now, I know down in her chest area here it’s a little bit whiter. It’s cooler. So, I’m
going to use the green—I might just use just a little touch of the blue in here.
I'm going to need a little bit of the red to bring a little bit of warmth back into that. There we go.
So now I have my base values down there. I know that there is going to be a little darkening in here, so I’ll work
with that. Alright, once I get my base values in here now I can start making a few adjustments.
I’m going to finish darkening her eyes and put her eyes in. And then her ears and cheeks
and stuff. In here I’m seeing the most variation in her skin tone.
In her cheeks, for instance, I’m going to go into something that’s quite a bit redder.
I’m going to see how that works with skin tone here.
I polluted that color a little bit. In order to make a little more room on my palette.
After I’ve polluted some of those colors, I want to make sure I’m not mixing into
the color of some of these other hues. I want to make sure I keep my color clean.
That’s a little bit light, so I’m going to darken that down just a little...
and make sure that I get a little bit redder because I see a little bit redder and darker over
on this side. I want to go into a little bit of that, little bit of the cooler red over
here. Then what I’m going to do is I’m going to add just a touch of the green if
I’m going to darken that down or bring that into the constructing parts of her chin down
in here. Now, around her eyes I see a little darker in there as well, so what I’m going
to need to do is I’m going to need to go into that area. I’ll start with this because
her skin tone is in there. You can see I’m going to add this green in there. I’m going
back into this mixture of my red, green in here, and I’m looking at the color in here,
but I’m going to make sure I lean it towards using these mixtures rather than add in a
lot of other things from the rest of my palette. I’m going to stay with these groupings of
hue so that I harmonize all the color within there. Now I see some of these colors in here, but I just want
to make sure that I’m taking advantage and really pushing those aspects of those colors.
I also see that back in her ears here it’s a little bit darker. It does get kind of saturated
back below here where her ears are going into the shadow back there.
And then where they come into light a little bit they get a little less red.
They get a little bit lighter.
I’m going to go back to the original skin tone that I had here with just a touch of
this red, the naphthol red. I’m going to warm that just a little bit. I’m going to
make sure that I get her nose. I don’t want to make her nose too light because it is a
small form and it reflects less light. It’s going to remain just slighter darker than
the rest of her skin, her forehead and so on. So, it’s a little darker. It’s a little
warmer in here. That’s how I’m building my color into there. I can see there is a
bit of shadowing under her nose, and that is going to get to this more neutralized tone
in here somewhere down in this range.
Need to warm that up just a little bit.
As you can see, I’m rearranging my drawing a little bit as I go too. That’s always
a given. Whenever I’m working on something I can always keep pushing my drawing in any
different way that I want as long as I keep moving. With every step of the values, when
I’m working with my values and adjusting my hue, I can always change it just a little bit as I go.
A little more saturated color for her lips in here now.
Maintain a little bit more saturation in there.
I’m looking at the general placement of these, and I’m going to get more specific as I go.
If I want to get a little bit darker I can add a little bit of this in here, a little bit darker.
I’m going to get a little bit more yellow into this,
but below her lower lip it’s a little bit yellower again. Her lip has kind of a pink on it.
I’m going to go back in and add a little bit more green into this mixture under here.
Shadow in here. I’m going to also do it on her nose here.
I can see this is probably the better way to go there.
Even where I go neutral with it, I’m going to use the green to help neutralize my color
a little bit as I come over in here and get this—you know, if I’m going to define
a little lighter area that does feel a little bit more neutral over there, I’m going to
do it with that as well as up here.
I’m going to see a little bit along here, just
defining the upper part of her chin. Now I have to get her lower lip in there, and that
is this kind of a little bit pinker and a little bit lighter because it’s getting
more light on it, but it’s over in here somewhere like this.
And even a little touch lighter and a little cooler yet.
Now I’m going to see it right in here.
If I go back to the darker areas I can redefine her face a little bit by getting back into some of
these areas and just re-defining some of these shapes just slightly. Maybe this was a little
bit harder edge. Maybe this is a softer edge in here. Maybe there is a little bit softer
edge coming across here. Let me get a little into that color there.
Okay, so I see some variations in there, getting a little bit softer up there.
Also, a subtle transition into her temple there and then going back to a darker,
warmer value in her hair back in here.
I want to get a little bit more red into this because I want to get
this change in her hair color over in here, this little bit lighter hair over here just
as a variation and coming down in here. I want to make sure that I can show you
some of the subtleties that you can get into in some of these regions as well.
If we kind of pull up in here and get a little bit of warmth in there.
Okay, if I go back into this really dark saturated, and I’m not going to use a complement.
I’ll go ahead and go to the black a little bit to keep this more
saturated as I go dark into the dark of her eyes rather than use a complement to drop
down the value. I’ll go ahead and use the black to drop down the value.
Still using a pretty fat brush, but with these color notes that’s all I want to do.
I just want to get the broadest area in there.
I do notice that under her neck there is some shadowing under here.
I might want to use a little bit of that to kind of hold that together.
I’m going to go into my greens, but I’m going to make sure that there is enough of the
quality of the skin tone in there too.
We’ve got a little bit of warmth with this yellow in there as well.
Now, these values are a little bit lighter than what’s really there, and I see that. But what I’m doing is I’m making sure
that I’m staying with my color scheme and the fact that I’m playing with more ambient
light or more of a notan situation. In that case then I’m just choosing to make these a little bit lighter.
I can make the little bit of reflected light bouncing up under her jaw.
I can get a little of that in there as well from her dress down below there.
I’m going to reinforce this shadow on her now
just a little bit because I think it’s important to define the shape
and then get a little bit of the nuance of the subtle value changes in there.
Need to go darker.
That’s one of the things with the reds.
You find that you have to paint other things a little bit darker in order to make them read.
And then from this it’s going to be a little bit greener on the other side, so it’s a little
lighter and a little greener so I’m going to go ahead and do that on this side.
That's a little too light.
There we go.
I'm going to make that consistent up here too.
Now, what I’m starting to see is I’m starting
to see that there is a little bit of a theme there.
It’s a little bit greener on this side of her face than it is on the other.
I’m going to go ahead and stay with a little
bit of this green. I’m going to go ahead and get it a little bit greener over in here
on this side of her face than I am on the other. And over on the other I’ll go right
to the other side. I’m going to compare one to one. I’m going to go to the other
side and keep this warm. That’s too dark.
It’s too orange. Need to get a little
bit—there we go. Then her eye is a little bit darker
in here because it turns away, and this form turns down. There we go.
Okay, this needs to go much darker.
This is picking up a little bit of the green on the side of her neck. It’s picking up a little bit of the green from the
background there, and this will put her neck in front of her shoulder there. I’m picking up a little bit in here too
just along the edge. Okay, so this setup is a setup that is based on notan or local values, and the local color.
So we have the red to the green. And so when I have all these other areas besides just the two complements,
I’m going to keep my color scheme—my palette looks like hell—but I’m going to keep my color scheme
harmonious with those two complements. I’m not going to mix a lot in here. I barely dipped into these
hues. I kept it mostly with this range in here and the green. That’s one way that’s going to help you maintain
the feeling over a balance or a harmony within there.
I have room to go with my reds if I want. I can go down with this red like this.
If I want to get back in and get some accents in here I could put those in and start to build those up too.
Getting some subtle changes in there where I get a little bit more saturated and warm
along some of these edges. We can go a little more saturated, warm.
You can see I can bring this down just a little bit and get some mileage out of that.
Okay, there you go.
I'm going to lay out my palette with initial colors. I use my regular palette even though we’re
dealing with a complementary situation. I’ll put a little bit of white up here. I’m going
to use a good amount of paint just to make sure that I have enough to work with. I don’t
want to run out. That’s one of the worst things that you want to do is run out of paint
and then start having to, you know, mix with just a tiny, tiny amount of pain. Just make
sure that you get an ample amount of color on your palette as you’re working so that
you kind of feel a little bit freer to mix with. If you’re stretching it then you’re
going to make some compromises when you’re mixing your color, and you don’t want to do that.
I’ve got white and black. I’ve got a cadmium yellow light and raw sienna. The reason for
these are that I want to have a light and a dark value yellow. You can see that this
is cooler and this is a little warmer. Then I’m going to go with a warm red, which is
a naphthol red. Then I’m going to use a cool red. The cool red is a quinacridone red.
I use that rather than alizarin crimson because it mixes better. It’s clearer a cool red.
This is clearly a warm red, clearly a cool red. I’m not trying to find a red in the
middle. A lot of people use alizarin. Alizarin does not mix very well with your other hues.
It’ll tend to neutralize your colors a little too much. What I try to is I try to make sure
that I’m using colors that really express a warm and cool version of each hue. I’d
rather have the ability to mix really saturated colors and mix them down then work with neutralized
colors and not be able to mix up.
Now, these are cobalt blue and a phthalo blue. Colbalt is my warm blue, and the phthalo is
my cool blue because it has more green it, and this has more red in it. Then I’m going
to go to my phthalo green. That’s going to be my basic palette that I’m going to
work with. In this painting, since it’s a complementary scheme, I’m going to be
working with my reds here and green. What’s going to happen is this phthalo green and
the naphthol red, these are more complementary because this is a warm red and then this cooler
green; you see, it’s a green blue-green. This is red with some blue in it. Now, the
blueness of these two which actually make a little bit more like a violet if I add white,
but these will cancel each other out. If you’re dealing with your complements, you deal with
a warm version of one color and the cool version of its complement. That way you’ll get more
true complements and more neutral.
So, knowing this is going to be a painting about red-green, what I did is I used my naphthol
red and I used my phthalo green, mixed it together to do the lay-in. I didn’t use
black and white. I didn’t use black and white. I’m using the colors that are key
to this painting alone. I always do my lay in with colors that are going to be dominant
in my final painting. Whenever I’m mixing with the red—she’s going to have a red
dress, green background—one of the things that I’m going to just jump into right way
is, whenever we’re using a red or a saturated red, what you need to do is pretty much lay
that in first, whatever that’s going to be. The reason being is that you’re going
to find that if you lay in your other values and you lay them in a little light, you’re
going to have to add white to your red. Adding white to red is going to create pink. It’s
not going to create a lighter red. It’s going to create pink. Her dress has a little
bit of coolness in it. I want to be able to add that in, and I don’t want to be subject
to try to push this red lighter than is possible. What I’m going to do is I’m going to start
with my reds to lay in the dress and then I’ll go ahead and go to my darkest darks.
Lay in my spots of color that are going to be allowing this color to stand with full saturation.
So, I’m going to start in here with this. I can see that it’s cooler. It’s a little
bit cooler. I do see that there is some lightness, a little pink quality to it. It’s one of
the most saturated colors up here. The red and the green are clearer the most saturated
colors up here, so I’m going to go ahead and block those in just quickly.
I'll get these colors a little bit thicker as we go too, so I just want to make sure that I get
the best of what I can up here.
Alright. So that’s going to be kind of the base red,
and I know that I’m going to need to go a little darker all around. In order to make
sure that is going to stand out. Now I’m going to need to get the green up to the same
value, so I’m going to add some white to the green and get it up to the same value
and temperature. I need to warm it up a little bit.
I’m mixing them close together here.
I don’t want to go so light, but I want to make sure that I get it a little bit warmer
in here and keep it pretty saturated.
Here we go.
Now, you don’t have to paint this large. I’m painting this large. But, as you can
see, it takes me a little bit of time and quite a bit of paint to cover the canvas.
You can just you spots, little spots of color if you want. But what you want to do is just
make sure that you get enough color to cover the surface well. I can always come back with
thicker paint. Once I get these two values set in here like this, you see, now I’ll
go in and set my real dark. I want to make sure that I have these working in a similar
value, and now I can go in and set in my darkest darks, which is going to be
somewhere in here for her hair.
I’m going to darken that down. I’m going to use some green. I’m going
to lean on my red-green in order to darken and neutralize. You can see how that’s going
to work in there. I can darken and neutralize these relationships, but I’m going to keep
with these colors in here, and I can make it a little bit more neutral in there.
This is kind of a medium value. It’s not the darkest dark in her hair.
I’m going to lighten that up a little bit. I have to warm that up a little bit.
I’ll warm that quite a bit there, like that. There we go.
I’m going to look at a couple little variations in here
now where I can start to break it up just a little bit. Then I can go back pretty dark
again. I’m going to go back into this, this darker value. I’m going to add some black
into there. I’m going to warm that up with the red.
I’m going to get a little bit of the green back in here so it’s not all neutral in here.
There is some green back in this area down in here, so I see a little difference down in here.
Okay. Back over here. And up in here.
There we go. You can see I’m just blocking it in. I’m just doing it as bold
as I can. Now, this painting is based on flat lighting. This is a notan scenario where the
light and shadow is minimal. I want to take advantage of the complimentary colors of the
local colors rather than the lighting. We’ll deal with that later. This one is all focused
on this red-green relationship and how that works in this complementary scheme. I wanted
something that’s extremely red, something extremely green. Her skin tone and her hair,
they’re going to have their local colors. We’re going to pick up the nuances of these
complementaries in the mixing in here. It’ll give our color a point of view in this scheme.
Any time where you’re setting up a strong color scheme you’re going to want it to
have a certain point of view. This is how you can determine, you know, the direction
or point of view that you want. Her skin tone is going to have a lot more sienna in it.
I’m going to go into here.
I might lighten that just a little bit. It is much lighter
than her dress, quite a bit lighter and lighter than the background.
What I can do is I can go a couple different areas. Since it’s a notan situation I’m
going to see a lot of changes, subtle changes in the colors all around. I can lay in those
subtleties as I lay in those basic shapes, or I can go in and lay in one value and start
shifting them slightly. So, what I’m going to do is I’m going to go in—in this case, I’m going to go in and get a little bit
of this greenish in here in her skin, and then I’m going to go back and get some of
this red in here as well, get a little bit
of this red working back into this so that I can neutralize her skin down a little bit.
Now what I’ll do is I’ll put that in here. I need to make it a little bit warmer.
I'm going to go ahead and just put her overall skin tone in these areas, and then I’ll
come back and make some subtle adjustments in hue as we go. I’m going to go ahead and
block this in. Just get these larger shapes. I want to leave a little bit of my drawing
in there just so I know a little bit where to go.
Other than that, I can always come back and find those shapes again.
I know there are areas on her cheek and on her lips
and so on that are going to be a little bit warmer as we go. I’ll put that in as we need.
I can see that her neck down here is just a little bit warmer. I’m going to go ahead
and take advantage of that right now. I’ll go ahead and put that in down here.
Then I also see along the edge here and over her shoulders.
She is going to get some reflected light coming into her arms. I’m going to leave this a little soft.
I know in the photograph it’s a little bit harder edge, but I really don’t want the viewer really following the
edge along here. I’d rather that be something a bit more subtle like her hair back here.
Anywhere you have more contrast that’s where your eye is going to follow.
I’m going to get a little more color in there.
There we go. And it gets a little bit greener over on this arm over here, so I’m going to go ahead and do that.
Keep that soft.
Now, I know down in her chest area here it’s a little bit whiter. It’s cooler. So, I’m
going to use the green—I might just use just a little touch of the blue in here.
I'm going to need a little bit of the red to bring a little bit of warmth back into that. There we go.
So now I have my base values down there. I know that there is going to be a little darkening in here, so I’ll work
with that. Alright, once I get my base values in here now I can start making a few adjustments.
I’m going to finish darkening her eyes and put her eyes in. And then her ears and cheeks
and stuff. In here I’m seeing the most variation in her skin tone.
In her cheeks, for instance, I’m going to go into something that’s quite a bit redder.
I’m going to see how that works with skin tone here.
I polluted that color a little bit. In order to make a little more room on my palette.
After I’ve polluted some of those colors, I want to make sure I’m not mixing into
the color of some of these other hues. I want to make sure I keep my color clean.
That’s a little bit light, so I’m going to darken that down just a little...
and make sure that I get a little bit redder because I see a little bit redder and darker over
on this side. I want to go into a little bit of that, little bit of the cooler red over
here. Then what I’m going to do is I’m going to add just a touch of the green if
I’m going to darken that down or bring that into the constructing parts of her chin down
in here. Now, around her eyes I see a little darker in there as well, so what I’m going
to need to do is I’m going to need to go into that area. I’ll start with this because
her skin tone is in there. You can see I’m going to add this green in there. I’m going
back into this mixture of my red, green in here, and I’m looking at the color in here,
but I’m going to make sure I lean it towards using these mixtures rather than add in a
lot of other things from the rest of my palette. I’m going to stay with these groupings of
hue so that I harmonize all the color within there. Now I see some of these colors in here, but I just want
to make sure that I’m taking advantage and really pushing those aspects of those colors.
I also see that back in her ears here it’s a little bit darker. It does get kind of saturated
back below here where her ears are going into the shadow back there.
And then where they come into light a little bit they get a little less red.
They get a little bit lighter.
I’m going to go back to the original skin tone that I had here with just a touch of
this red, the naphthol red. I’m going to warm that just a little bit. I’m going to
make sure that I get her nose. I don’t want to make her nose too light because it is a
small form and it reflects less light. It’s going to remain just slighter darker than
the rest of her skin, her forehead and so on. So, it’s a little darker. It’s a little
warmer in here. That’s how I’m building my color into there. I can see there is a
bit of shadowing under her nose, and that is going to get to this more neutralized tone
in here somewhere down in this range.
Need to warm that up just a little bit.
As you can see, I’m rearranging my drawing a little bit as I go too. That’s always
a given. Whenever I’m working on something I can always keep pushing my drawing in any
different way that I want as long as I keep moving. With every step of the values, when
I’m working with my values and adjusting my hue, I can always change it just a little bit as I go.
A little more saturated color for her lips in here now.
Maintain a little bit more saturation in there.
I’m looking at the general placement of these, and I’m going to get more specific as I go.
If I want to get a little bit darker I can add a little bit of this in here, a little bit darker.
I’m going to get a little bit more yellow into this,
but below her lower lip it’s a little bit yellower again. Her lip has kind of a pink on it.
I’m going to go back in and add a little bit more green into this mixture under here.
Shadow in here. I’m going to also do it on her nose here.
I can see this is probably the better way to go there.
Even where I go neutral with it, I’m going to use the green to help neutralize my color
a little bit as I come over in here and get this—you know, if I’m going to define
a little lighter area that does feel a little bit more neutral over there, I’m going to
do it with that as well as up here.
I’m going to see a little bit along here, just
defining the upper part of her chin. Now I have to get her lower lip in there, and that
is this kind of a little bit pinker and a little bit lighter because it’s getting
more light on it, but it’s over in here somewhere like this.
And even a little touch lighter and a little cooler yet.
Now I’m going to see it right in here.
If I go back to the darker areas I can redefine her face a little bit by getting back into some of
these areas and just re-defining some of these shapes just slightly. Maybe this was a little
bit harder edge. Maybe this is a softer edge in here. Maybe there is a little bit softer
edge coming across here. Let me get a little into that color there.
Okay, so I see some variations in there, getting a little bit softer up there.
Also, a subtle transition into her temple there and then going back to a darker,
warmer value in her hair back in here.
I want to get a little bit more red into this because I want to get
this change in her hair color over in here, this little bit lighter hair over here just
as a variation and coming down in here. I want to make sure that I can show you
some of the subtleties that you can get into in some of these regions as well.
If we kind of pull up in here and get a little bit of warmth in there.
Okay, if I go back into this really dark saturated, and I’m not going to use a complement.
I’ll go ahead and go to the black a little bit to keep this more
saturated as I go dark into the dark of her eyes rather than use a complement to drop
down the value. I’ll go ahead and use the black to drop down the value.
Still using a pretty fat brush, but with these color notes that’s all I want to do.
I just want to get the broadest area in there.
I do notice that under her neck there is some shadowing under here.
I might want to use a little bit of that to kind of hold that together.
I’m going to go into my greens, but I’m going to make sure that there is enough of the
quality of the skin tone in there too.
We’ve got a little bit of warmth with this yellow in there as well.
Now, these values are a little bit lighter than what’s really there, and I see that. But what I’m doing is I’m making sure
that I’m staying with my color scheme and the fact that I’m playing with more ambient
light or more of a notan situation. In that case then I’m just choosing to make these a little bit lighter.
I can make the little bit of reflected light bouncing up under her jaw.
I can get a little of that in there as well from her dress down below there.
I’m going to reinforce this shadow on her now
just a little bit because I think it’s important to define the shape
and then get a little bit of the nuance of the subtle value changes in there.
Need to go darker.
That’s one of the things with the reds.
You find that you have to paint other things a little bit darker in order to make them read.
And then from this it’s going to be a little bit greener on the other side, so it’s a little
lighter and a little greener so I’m going to go ahead and do that on this side.
That's a little too light.
There we go.
I'm going to make that consistent up here too.
Now, what I’m starting to see is I’m starting
to see that there is a little bit of a theme there.
It’s a little bit greener on this side of her face than it is on the other.
I’m going to go ahead and stay with a little
bit of this green. I’m going to go ahead and get it a little bit greener over in here
on this side of her face than I am on the other. And over on the other I’ll go right
to the other side. I’m going to compare one to one. I’m going to go to the other
side and keep this warm. That’s too dark.
It’s too orange. Need to get a little
bit—there we go. Then her eye is a little bit darker
in here because it turns away, and this form turns down. There we go.
Okay, this needs to go much darker.
This is picking up a little bit of the green on the side of her neck. It’s picking up a little bit of the green from the
background there, and this will put her neck in front of her shoulder there. I’m picking up a little bit in here too
just along the edge. Okay, so this setup is a setup that is based on notan or local values, and the local color.
So we have the red to the green. And so when I have all these other areas besides just the two complements,
I’m going to keep my color scheme—my palette looks like hell—but I’m going to keep my color scheme
harmonious with those two complements. I’m not going to mix a lot in here. I barely dipped into these
hues. I kept it mostly with this range in here and the green. That’s one way that’s going to help you maintain
the feeling over a balance or a harmony within there.
I have room to go with my reds if I want. I can go down with this red like this.
If I want to get back in and get some accents in here I could put those in and start to build those up too.
Getting some subtle changes in there where I get a little bit more saturated and warm
along some of these edges. We can go a little more saturated, warm.
You can see I can bring this down just a little bit and get some mileage out of that.
Okay, there you go.
AUTO SCROLL
Now we’re ready for the third assignment. This assignment is going to be with the yellow-blue
complementary scheme. The model will be wearing a blue top, and the background is going to be yellow,
and it’ll be flatly lit. So, you’re going to see a lot of the yellow kind of coming through in her skin tones
and stuff, but make sure you see the variations in the warmth and her skin tone different than that in the
background. Again, lay it out if you’d like, and start your timer when you begin to paint; 30 minutes.
Let’s see how you do. Good luck.
complementary scheme. The model will be wearing a blue top, and the background is going to be yellow,
and it’ll be flatly lit. So, you’re going to see a lot of the yellow kind of coming through in her skin tones
and stuff, but make sure you see the variations in the warmth and her skin tone different than that in the
background. Again, lay it out if you’d like, and start your timer when you begin to paint; 30 minutes.
Let’s see how you do. Good luck.
AUTO SCROLL
Okay, now it’s my turn, so watch how I’ve done it.
This painting is going to be a green-red complementary scheme as well. But, as you can see, with this situation
I’m creating this real strong form statement by using a green light and a red light on the model.
This is another way to create complements or create a complementary scheme by using different colored
lights or having different colored light influences. Since this is a strong complementary scheme, I’m using these
really strong red and green lights. But, as you can see, they’re really displaying the model’s planes very, very
clearly, so that’s kind of an asset to your form painting if you want to do that.
I’m going to start out with some of my darkest darks. I know that I’ve got to be cautious of my red to make sure
that I don’t set the palette too light so that I’m going to have to create pink right there.
I need to be able to make sure that I can get the quality of her skin tone really influenced by that red light.
So, that’s what I’m really looking for, and I have to be very conscious of that. It’ll be a little bit easier to get it
with the green. But the red is really tricky. I want to make sure that I’m painting down dark enough for that
to occur. I’m going to start with a warm dark, okay, for her hair.
I’m going to get real dark in here and influenced by this really strong red light over on this side over here.
As the plane starts turning away from this red light over on this side, it’s going to get a little bit more green
over here. I’m going to see the influence of a little bit more green in through the top here.
Let me get a little bit more of the red back in this.
I’m going to see the influence of it a little bit more in here now,
and I’m going to get a little bit of this mixture in here where it’s closer to her skin
in these kinds of regions and then like this.
On the outside I’m going to go much greener.
I don’t want to go too light. I’m going to clearly make this the green. This is some of her hair color plus this
really strong green influence over here on this side.
We’ll have her hair color influence in there this raw sienna out through here.
I’m going to see quite a bit of it along the highlight of her hair in there and also something in there.
I’m just going to knock those things in really quick. On the other side of this in this darker region here,
I’m going to get a little bit more of the red influence in this darker region down in here.
Here we go. Like that.
Now, I’m going to make sure that this is dark enough to make the red on her face read clearly.
If I need to make this darker I’ll have to do that. I’ll get into that right now.
I don’t want to go too far and make a mistake here, so I’m going to start with my red for my warm light here.
I know her skin tone has got some yellow in it, and the yellow kind of a greenish in it,
but it’s really getting influenced by this red over there.
I can lighten it up just a little bit if I use just a touch of this.
There we go.
I’m going to hold back just a little bit.
By holding back what I mean is I’m not going to go to most saturation in here.
I’m going to pull it back just a little bit because I might want something to lay on over the top.
That’s better.
And I’m going to get this whole side plane in here. .
You really can’t see the planes clearly when you paint this way or with these lights.
It’s pretty clear. It makes your forms very clear.
You’ll see why in just a moment why I have to go, what appears to be so dark in this region,
because if I’m going to put something that’s going to appear to be darker next to it,
I need to make this appear very, very bright.
See, by making that a little bit darker it allows me to get this brightest bright right up in here like this.
Now I’m going to look at her skin in light, influenced by the green light over here. I want to make sure that I get
some of her skin tone, which is going to be right in here somewhere.
But it’s going to get influenced by this really green light.
So, I’ll mix it up in here.
There we go
It may look really bizarre and you might be thinking that, you know, this doesn’t look like a skin tone at all—
well, it doesn’t. It’s a color. That’s what I want you to think about. I want you to think about matching the
colors. This is the color in the light condition. If you get too used to painting with the same palette
with the same colors and same mixtures for skin tones and so on, you’re going to really stop looking at really
what’s there. This is why these exercises are so useful,
because what you end up doing is you won’t be painting under what would be considered a normal condition.
You’ll be painting under a condition that is extreme, and those are actually going to make you look a little closer
at the colors that you select, mixtures that you make, and so on.
I’m going to see on her neck down here it’s a little bit lighter.
Again, I’m putting this in pretty bold, and you can too; it’s just getting those mixtures...
and putting them in. Just go ahead and put them in pretty strong.
We can always correct our drawing later at any point during this painting.
It’s really more about the colors that you’re selecting.
In these frontal planes here it’s going to be more of the green plus her local color, which is going to be more like
this raw sienna. So, I’m going to go back up into here and get a little bit more of the raw sienna in there.
It might be a little bit dark. I’m going to try to get some of that in here.
There we go.
That’s a little more like it. Having to do this, you can see how it’s going to make this feel illuminated.
You’re going to go pretty dark in order to make these things feel like they’re lit up.
So in the area in here around her eye it’s going to be darker in those regions,
and you’re going to get a little bit more of this effect in those regions.
I’m going to put a little of that in there.
Now this is only on this side over here because the other side you see is very strongly influenced red.
We’re going to take one little step at a time in here.
I need to darken and warm this up here just slightly.
It’s going to come down here. Then on this frontal plane in here—oh, I can do one thing here too.
Get a little bit more of this. There we go.
On the underside of her nose and nostril. Then if we go back to this more of a middle value of her skin
in here we can get her frontal plane coming across like this.
I’m going to see that same thing as it comes off of her lower lip in the shadow up here and also off her chin.
There, like that.
And here.
In this same value I’m going to be crossing over into this region here like this. That’s why I want to make
sure that I make this transition in here. This frontal plane needs to be a little bit darker. There we go.
We’re also going to see down the bridge of her nose.
It needs to remain really dark because this is what’s going to make these darker values appear to be lighter,
if they are next to something that is darker.
Again, I’m going to reinforce this just a little bit just along there.
Now I’m going to go and lift a little bit more of the frontal plane on this side too, so I’m going to need to get
more of her local color, which is like this, and it has a little bit of this hue into it.
Let me try to get a little bit more of that in here.
And I can see that I need to make it much darker.
Get into this area where her eye is...
and a little bit greener in here. It’s a dark green but it’s a little bit greener in there, just like her eye is going to be
set up on this really dark combination of this red-green somewhere in here like this.
Her eyebrow above here is going to be real dark, but it’s going to be really in the red area, something like this.
Her lash might be somewhat the same in there.
As it turns a little bit more towards the light it’s going to be a little bit lighter and pick up a little bit more of the
influence of that red, but we can’t make it too light. Otherwise, it’s going to dissolve right into her face.
Again, on this side over here, on this warm side over here, there is an area right in the corner of her mouth
where it’s going to pick up a little bit of this green, if you can see that in there.
Then somewhere in this little darker area in here, it’s going to pick up just a little bit of green as this fold
comes over a good amount, and then on the side just above her lip is going to go back to the more saturated
red because that’s the plane that’s closest perpendicular to the light source.
So, before I do that, I’m going to go in, and I’m going to get her nostril
in there because that’s a real dark red inside there.
I’m going to go ahead and put that in. I can see the outside of her nose.
Then we’ll go back and mix some of this value, this lighter value of skin tone in here.
I’m going to go right down in the middle in this middle value right in here, and this middle color scheme.
Let me get back to the color of her skin back here where her ear is.
We’ll block that in back there. Then I’ll lay in the value of her lips in here.
Now, on the warm side it’s going to be dark, and it’s going to be a little bit warmer.
Then on the greener side, it’s going to get the appearance of—put a touch of this, warm this up,
or put a little white. You see this cooler red, and it’s got a little bit of that. I’m going to use this cooler red and
this cool green and the white, and altogether it’s going to get like a purple almost.
Okay. I’m going to see that in here on this side.
On her lower lip I’m going to see that it’s much more of this yellow-green.
I’m going to go back to the yellow-green here.
Then what I’m going to do is I’m going to take some of that and go back into this.
Here we go.
Then in the middle it’s going to be a little bit redder because it’s in the middle.
Again, this is where it’s going to pick up more of her local value. It’s going to be dark, but it’s going to be
more of a local value in here like that.
Then over on the warm side over here I’m going to get a little bit more of my flat-out red.
Now what I want to do is get the rest of these—I’ve got these planes, and that’s how I worked them out
with these different planes, and I’m going to do the same thing across here and then get her shirt.
Her shirt is mostly gray but it does have a strong influence of these red and green colors.
There we go.
This side is going to have a little bit more green in it over here and our background as well.
We’ll get a little bit on that background there.
There is a real strong presence of the green over on this side over here too.
There we go.
As this goes over to this side over here, there is a little bit of warmth coming back in from this side over here.
It’s actually a fold in the material in the background, but you can start to see how that’s going to work in there.
I’m going to clear a little space now.
I’m going to go back into some of my darker. I have to get her eye on the greener side.
I’m going to go back in with my darkest green, and I’m going to get a little bit of warmth in there.
That is going to neutralize it down and keep it really dark so I can get this effect in here.
Okay, so once I’ve got this all set up, you can see how strong the effect of the color palette is or the lighting is
and where I have a shadow coming down from this red light it’s going to go a little bit green on her.
There we go. It’s going to go a little greenish in there like this.
This is going to be kind of the shadow in there, and then there is some reflected light coming over here from
this green filling into that shadow, and that’s going to be pretty strong like this coming down into here.
It’s dark enough that it reads in here like this, and then the shadow on this side because it’s getting occluded
by that green light here, it’s going to be well over into this darker, redder zone like this.
And so is this little area around her mouth.
And the only thing left really are just some of the accents of these highlighted areas
that are most perpendicular to the light source. I saved some of the lightness of this to play that off,
so we’re seeing the color of the light hit in these areas.
Again, the highlights are not white. They won’t be white, and that’s because the highlights are going to follow
the color of the light source. They’re going to sit on the edge of the planes like this.
That’s how we’re going to read this mostly. It’s like this. Go a little bit lighter with this.
Still want to get a little bit of her local color in there in some of these areas like this.
And a little—even just a touch redder on her cheek. Just a touch, as crazy as that is.
It’s going to go a little bit under the plane on there.
There we go.
Then on the red side the same thing. We’re going to see the brightest reds.
I’m going to need to keep that warm with a little bit of yellow in there.
I don’t want to add just the white, but I need to lighten it and I need to keep this really, really as saturated as I can
in there because I’m going to see that there are little areas that are going to kind of pull out the
most saturation in here. And the highest value.
These are a little bit too hot so I’m going to bring that down just a little bit.
Okay, so as crazy as the color seems when you’re actually mixing it over here, when you put it down in the
planes they’re reflecting the direction of the light source, what you’re
going to end up seeing is you’re going to end up starting to feel something in there or see something
that is really quite a bit more like what is really there then thinking of actual skin tones being so, so close to
normal mixtures up here. If we say, you know, skin is flesh #5, you’d never be able to do this painting.
But if you’re looking at the complimentary lights on the model, yes, local color does have a place because you
can see it’s influence in through here where it’s less
affected by these stronger light sources from either side.
So, this is how you might set up a complementary type of painting with this lighting. But it’s a great exercise.
I haven’t finished any of this in here, but I’m going to leave it right now because I’ve run out of time myself.
I’m not going to try to render it anymore, not try to do anything else. If I want to try it again, I’ll do
the whole thing over again with 30 minutes. I’m not going to be spending more time trying to render it.
I’m just going to try another ramp up, another ramp up.
That’s where you get the benefit out of these kinds of lessons.
This painting is going to be a green-red complementary scheme as well. But, as you can see, with this situation
I’m creating this real strong form statement by using a green light and a red light on the model.
This is another way to create complements or create a complementary scheme by using different colored
lights or having different colored light influences. Since this is a strong complementary scheme, I’m using these
really strong red and green lights. But, as you can see, they’re really displaying the model’s planes very, very
clearly, so that’s kind of an asset to your form painting if you want to do that.
I’m going to start out with some of my darkest darks. I know that I’ve got to be cautious of my red to make sure
that I don’t set the palette too light so that I’m going to have to create pink right there.
I need to be able to make sure that I can get the quality of her skin tone really influenced by that red light.
So, that’s what I’m really looking for, and I have to be very conscious of that. It’ll be a little bit easier to get it
with the green. But the red is really tricky. I want to make sure that I’m painting down dark enough for that
to occur. I’m going to start with a warm dark, okay, for her hair.
I’m going to get real dark in here and influenced by this really strong red light over on this side over here.
As the plane starts turning away from this red light over on this side, it’s going to get a little bit more green
over here. I’m going to see the influence of a little bit more green in through the top here.
Let me get a little bit more of the red back in this.
I’m going to see the influence of it a little bit more in here now,
and I’m going to get a little bit of this mixture in here where it’s closer to her skin
in these kinds of regions and then like this.
On the outside I’m going to go much greener.
I don’t want to go too light. I’m going to clearly make this the green. This is some of her hair color plus this
really strong green influence over here on this side.
We’ll have her hair color influence in there this raw sienna out through here.
I’m going to see quite a bit of it along the highlight of her hair in there and also something in there.
I’m just going to knock those things in really quick. On the other side of this in this darker region here,
I’m going to get a little bit more of the red influence in this darker region down in here.
Here we go. Like that.
Now, I’m going to make sure that this is dark enough to make the red on her face read clearly.
If I need to make this darker I’ll have to do that. I’ll get into that right now.
I don’t want to go too far and make a mistake here, so I’m going to start with my red for my warm light here.
I know her skin tone has got some yellow in it, and the yellow kind of a greenish in it,
but it’s really getting influenced by this red over there.
I can lighten it up just a little bit if I use just a touch of this.
There we go.
I’m going to hold back just a little bit.
By holding back what I mean is I’m not going to go to most saturation in here.
I’m going to pull it back just a little bit because I might want something to lay on over the top.
That’s better.
And I’m going to get this whole side plane in here. .
You really can’t see the planes clearly when you paint this way or with these lights.
It’s pretty clear. It makes your forms very clear.
You’ll see why in just a moment why I have to go, what appears to be so dark in this region,
because if I’m going to put something that’s going to appear to be darker next to it,
I need to make this appear very, very bright.
See, by making that a little bit darker it allows me to get this brightest bright right up in here like this.
Now I’m going to look at her skin in light, influenced by the green light over here. I want to make sure that I get
some of her skin tone, which is going to be right in here somewhere.
But it’s going to get influenced by this really green light.
So, I’ll mix it up in here.
There we go
It may look really bizarre and you might be thinking that, you know, this doesn’t look like a skin tone at all—
well, it doesn’t. It’s a color. That’s what I want you to think about. I want you to think about matching the
colors. This is the color in the light condition. If you get too used to painting with the same palette
with the same colors and same mixtures for skin tones and so on, you’re going to really stop looking at really
what’s there. This is why these exercises are so useful,
because what you end up doing is you won’t be painting under what would be considered a normal condition.
You’ll be painting under a condition that is extreme, and those are actually going to make you look a little closer
at the colors that you select, mixtures that you make, and so on.
I’m going to see on her neck down here it’s a little bit lighter.
Again, I’m putting this in pretty bold, and you can too; it’s just getting those mixtures...
and putting them in. Just go ahead and put them in pretty strong.
We can always correct our drawing later at any point during this painting.
It’s really more about the colors that you’re selecting.
In these frontal planes here it’s going to be more of the green plus her local color, which is going to be more like
this raw sienna. So, I’m going to go back up into here and get a little bit more of the raw sienna in there.
It might be a little bit dark. I’m going to try to get some of that in here.
There we go.
That’s a little more like it. Having to do this, you can see how it’s going to make this feel illuminated.
You’re going to go pretty dark in order to make these things feel like they’re lit up.
So in the area in here around her eye it’s going to be darker in those regions,
and you’re going to get a little bit more of this effect in those regions.
I’m going to put a little of that in there.
Now this is only on this side over here because the other side you see is very strongly influenced red.
We’re going to take one little step at a time in here.
I need to darken and warm this up here just slightly.
It’s going to come down here. Then on this frontal plane in here—oh, I can do one thing here too.
Get a little bit more of this. There we go.
On the underside of her nose and nostril. Then if we go back to this more of a middle value of her skin
in here we can get her frontal plane coming across like this.
I’m going to see that same thing as it comes off of her lower lip in the shadow up here and also off her chin.
There, like that.
And here.
In this same value I’m going to be crossing over into this region here like this. That’s why I want to make
sure that I make this transition in here. This frontal plane needs to be a little bit darker. There we go.
We’re also going to see down the bridge of her nose.
It needs to remain really dark because this is what’s going to make these darker values appear to be lighter,
if they are next to something that is darker.
Again, I’m going to reinforce this just a little bit just along there.
Now I’m going to go and lift a little bit more of the frontal plane on this side too, so I’m going to need to get
more of her local color, which is like this, and it has a little bit of this hue into it.
Let me try to get a little bit more of that in here.
And I can see that I need to make it much darker.
Get into this area where her eye is...
and a little bit greener in here. It’s a dark green but it’s a little bit greener in there, just like her eye is going to be
set up on this really dark combination of this red-green somewhere in here like this.
Her eyebrow above here is going to be real dark, but it’s going to be really in the red area, something like this.
Her lash might be somewhat the same in there.
As it turns a little bit more towards the light it’s going to be a little bit lighter and pick up a little bit more of the
influence of that red, but we can’t make it too light. Otherwise, it’s going to dissolve right into her face.
Again, on this side over here, on this warm side over here, there is an area right in the corner of her mouth
where it’s going to pick up a little bit of this green, if you can see that in there.
Then somewhere in this little darker area in here, it’s going to pick up just a little bit of green as this fold
comes over a good amount, and then on the side just above her lip is going to go back to the more saturated
red because that’s the plane that’s closest perpendicular to the light source.
So, before I do that, I’m going to go in, and I’m going to get her nostril
in there because that’s a real dark red inside there.
I’m going to go ahead and put that in. I can see the outside of her nose.
Then we’ll go back and mix some of this value, this lighter value of skin tone in here.
I’m going to go right down in the middle in this middle value right in here, and this middle color scheme.
Let me get back to the color of her skin back here where her ear is.
We’ll block that in back there. Then I’ll lay in the value of her lips in here.
Now, on the warm side it’s going to be dark, and it’s going to be a little bit warmer.
Then on the greener side, it’s going to get the appearance of—put a touch of this, warm this up,
or put a little white. You see this cooler red, and it’s got a little bit of that. I’m going to use this cooler red and
this cool green and the white, and altogether it’s going to get like a purple almost.
Okay. I’m going to see that in here on this side.
On her lower lip I’m going to see that it’s much more of this yellow-green.
I’m going to go back to the yellow-green here.
Then what I’m going to do is I’m going to take some of that and go back into this.
Here we go.
Then in the middle it’s going to be a little bit redder because it’s in the middle.
Again, this is where it’s going to pick up more of her local value. It’s going to be dark, but it’s going to be
more of a local value in here like that.
Then over on the warm side over here I’m going to get a little bit more of my flat-out red.
Now what I want to do is get the rest of these—I’ve got these planes, and that’s how I worked them out
with these different planes, and I’m going to do the same thing across here and then get her shirt.
Her shirt is mostly gray but it does have a strong influence of these red and green colors.
There we go.
This side is going to have a little bit more green in it over here and our background as well.
We’ll get a little bit on that background there.
There is a real strong presence of the green over on this side over here too.
There we go.
As this goes over to this side over here, there is a little bit of warmth coming back in from this side over here.
It’s actually a fold in the material in the background, but you can start to see how that’s going to work in there.
I’m going to clear a little space now.
I’m going to go back into some of my darker. I have to get her eye on the greener side.
I’m going to go back in with my darkest green, and I’m going to get a little bit of warmth in there.
That is going to neutralize it down and keep it really dark so I can get this effect in here.
Okay, so once I’ve got this all set up, you can see how strong the effect of the color palette is or the lighting is
and where I have a shadow coming down from this red light it’s going to go a little bit green on her.
There we go. It’s going to go a little greenish in there like this.
This is going to be kind of the shadow in there, and then there is some reflected light coming over here from
this green filling into that shadow, and that’s going to be pretty strong like this coming down into here.
It’s dark enough that it reads in here like this, and then the shadow on this side because it’s getting occluded
by that green light here, it’s going to be well over into this darker, redder zone like this.
And so is this little area around her mouth.
And the only thing left really are just some of the accents of these highlighted areas
that are most perpendicular to the light source. I saved some of the lightness of this to play that off,
so we’re seeing the color of the light hit in these areas.
Again, the highlights are not white. They won’t be white, and that’s because the highlights are going to follow
the color of the light source. They’re going to sit on the edge of the planes like this.
That’s how we’re going to read this mostly. It’s like this. Go a little bit lighter with this.
Still want to get a little bit of her local color in there in some of these areas like this.
And a little—even just a touch redder on her cheek. Just a touch, as crazy as that is.
It’s going to go a little bit under the plane on there.
There we go.
Then on the red side the same thing. We’re going to see the brightest reds.
I’m going to need to keep that warm with a little bit of yellow in there.
I don’t want to add just the white, but I need to lighten it and I need to keep this really, really as saturated as I can
in there because I’m going to see that there are little areas that are going to kind of pull out the
most saturation in here. And the highest value.
These are a little bit too hot so I’m going to bring that down just a little bit.
Okay, so as crazy as the color seems when you’re actually mixing it over here, when you put it down in the
planes they’re reflecting the direction of the light source, what you’re
going to end up seeing is you’re going to end up starting to feel something in there or see something
that is really quite a bit more like what is really there then thinking of actual skin tones being so, so close to
normal mixtures up here. If we say, you know, skin is flesh #5, you’d never be able to do this painting.
But if you’re looking at the complimentary lights on the model, yes, local color does have a place because you
can see it’s influence in through here where it’s less
affected by these stronger light sources from either side.
So, this is how you might set up a complementary type of painting with this lighting. But it’s a great exercise.
I haven’t finished any of this in here, but I’m going to leave it right now because I’ve run out of time myself.
I’m not going to try to render it anymore, not try to do anything else. If I want to try it again, I’ll do
the whole thing over again with 30 minutes. I’m not going to be spending more time trying to render it.
I’m just going to try another ramp up, another ramp up.
That’s where you get the benefit out of these kinds of lessons.
AUTO SCROLL
Now we’re ready for the third assignment. This assignment is going to be with the yellow-blue
complementary scheme. The model will be wearing a blue top, and the background is going to be yellow,
and it’ll be flatly lit. So, you’re going to see a lot of the yellow kind of coming through in her skin tones
and stuff, but make sure you see the variations in the warmth and her skin tone different than that in the
background. Again, lay it out if you’d like, and start your timer when you begin to paint; 30 minutes.
Let’s see how you do. Good luck.
complementary scheme. The model will be wearing a blue top, and the background is going to be yellow,
and it’ll be flatly lit. So, you’re going to see a lot of the yellow kind of coming through in her skin tones
and stuff, but make sure you see the variations in the warmth and her skin tone different than that in the
background. Again, lay it out if you’d like, and start your timer when you begin to paint; 30 minutes.
Let’s see how you do. Good luck.
AUTO SCROLL
Okay, I hope that worked out. Now it’s my turn so you can follow along.
This complementary scheme we’re going to set up is based on blue and yellow. They are near-compliments
as well. What are we going to do with this is this time instead of the red and green,
this time we’re going to have a very light value, a yellow, compared to a dark value
complement, which is the blue. You’re going to see what’s going to happen when we paint
both this flat light situation and a more strongly lit situation with these two complementary
colors. The difference between something that’s so dark compared to something so light, it’s
going to give you a different spatial quality. The warm colors want to come forward, and
the lighter ones, the lighter colors will also want to come forward. Now, the cool colors
are going to want to go back in the darker color. The values are going to want to go
back as well. So we’re going to get a little bit of visual tension here. We’re going
to get a little contrast in here that’s going to create a little tension and vibration. So, we’ll get the vibration
through the color and the tension through the values of this spatial difference.
So, we’re going to explore this one.
I’ll start now, and what I’m going to do is I’m going to lay in a pretty full
saturated yellow in here. I can see that in my image it’s not full saturation out of
the tube here. It’s slightly lighter in a lot of the area up here.
I'm just going to block that in real roughly.
There we go. Okay, so we have a little bit of that, and
then what I see outside here is a little bit more of the darker value yellow into it.
It's a little bit warmer and darker. You can see a little warmer and darker is just adding
some of the raw sienna to it. So, if I’m keeping this warm and darker, I’m going
to be getting a little bit like this.
There we go.
We had that pretty extreme there.
My next step is I’m going to put this real saturated blue in there. I’m using a cobalt
blue right here. And I see it’s even a little bit darker, so I’m going to use a little
bit of the phthalo blue to bring that down and this cool red, I’m staying with my cool,
my blues, which are in the cool hemisphere, but I’m also going to pull a little bit
of the red to darken it down. It has to be the red with the cool in it. I’m going to
the cooler version. Otherwise, I’m going to neutralize it too much. Pretty saturated
in here. I’m going to go ahead and just block that in.
There we go.
Now, I’m going to stay with my darks and I’m going to favor these colors, the yellows
and the blues, because that’s what my complementary scheme is about. I might start with some of
her hair. I’m going to use some of the cobalt blue in here, and I’m going to pull in a
dark yellow. If this goes too green I’m going to get a little bit more of my red back
there to neutralize that back out. And I’m going to get this darker, that’s a little bit green.
I’m going to warm that up with a little bit of the warmer red, still trying
to keep it pretty dark there. There we go.
I’m going to see that it’s a little bit favoring the yellow up here and even along the edges here.
Along the outside of her hair it’s going to get a little bit of reflected light from the background there.
That's a little bit too heavy, so I’m going to reduce some of that back up in there.
I can go and refine that later if I want.
Okay, still staying down in this region, I’m going to get a little bit more of a violet.
I’m going to get the yellow in there to kind of cancel that out just the violet out.
Keep it dark and cool.
Then I’m going to lay in her hair like that right there.
Her skin is real fair, and she does have deeper eye sockets in there. I don’t want to give her raccoon eyes,
but what I want to do is I do want to make a little bit of darkening in there.
I’m going to lay that in first before I lay the rest of her skin in.
Now for that, I'm going to, again, stay within my yellow range.
I’ve got my yellow and I’m going to warm that just a little bit because it has most of her local values in there.
It’s not as dark as her hair so I’m going to lighten that up just a little bit.
I’m going to see this area right on her nose too.
It’s a little bit warmer.
I see it a little bit lighter. You can just tell there is a little bit more warmth on her chin down here,
so I’m going to go ahead and do that.
Then I’m also going to look at the underside of her upper lip, which is pretty dark as well. I’ll go ahead and put that in
while I’m dealing with my darker values here. I tend to group the values. So, like this.
I laid in this very saturated yellow, and then I put in the blue, and then I put in my dark group.
And now I’ll go ahead and put in my lighter value group. Well, actually, before I do that, I’m going to cool this off
just a little bit and give a little bit of the local color in here. There we go.
I can also see that there is a coolness under here. I don’t want to make this too dark.
I do see it a little bit like that.
Under her lip there. It’s a little bit of the same.
Now I’ll go ahead and put her skin and light in. Her skin is a little bit darker than the background in most of the
places. There are some areas and some of the highlights that get a little bit lighter, but for the most part
it’s a little darker than the background. It does reflect a little bit more of her natural skin tones.
I’ll start with this, but I’m going to go ahead and get a little bit more of the darker yellow in there.
I’ll add the white. I’ll neutralize that a little bit, but then I’m going to go in and add a touch of the red.
If I need to neutralize that any more, I might even just take a touch of the blue and neutralize that in
there just a little bit, just to make the overall skin tone just a little bit more neutral.
It needs to be a little darker than the background.
I’m going to see that it is right here. It’s about just slightly darker. In here it’s just slightly darker so I know
these are the lightest areas that go against the background. I know her skin tone has got to be darker
than that. It’s got to be another step darker. I’m going to go ahead and do that.
There we go.
I see her skin is a little bit lighter in here, a good step lighter. What I’ll do is I’ll go ahead and finish out her face.
It’s a little bit warmer up in there. I’m going to go ahead and finish that out first.
Okay, right now I’m just blocking this whole area in.
It’s a little grayer in there. I just saw that. Just a little bit grayer in there. And a little lighter up in here.
Again, lighter. I’m going to add just a little bit of purple up in this area here.
This is keeping with that blue and the yellow scheme because I’m getting a little bit more of the blue in some
of these areas that I’m seeing in here in these little lighter areas.
Now, that same lighter, cooler color that I saw up in here, I can see this area in here is similar to that.
But it has a lot more yellow in it than this color up here.
But it is still is light like that, and it’s cooled down slightly.
I’m going to use the blue to cool it down just a little bit.
I want it to go green, and it’s going to be in this range.
Now what I’m going to do—well, let me finish this.
Alright. I’m trying to get the color of her cheeks, but I can see it’s more in this cooler red rather than the warmer
red, so I’m going to go back over it something like this to get that difference.
And I can go just a little bit darker with that too.
Okay, let’s go back to this little bit neutralized, little bit darker tone.
I’m going to go back and get some of the areas in here, and these are on the yellow side as well.
If I want to get her ears, they’re going to be a little bit warmer.
They’re going to be like this.
At this point, I’m just still trying to cover the canvas with these basic colors.
And I’m finding that I might even need to go just a little bit cooler in some of these areas.
I’m going to take that to my advantage here when I go use a little bit cooler like this,
it’s a good excuse to bring in some of the blues.
So now I have all these areas blocked in, and I’m going to keep pushing this blue-yellow combination.
I’m going to take a little advantage now, and I’m going to push a little bit more of this, accentuating
the complementary scheme just a little bit more. I’ll take advantage of some of these areas that might have a little
bit more saturation. And they’re a little bit darker in here so I can bring some of these areas in. Also, along here.
So in some of these areas I’m going to add a little more saturated yellow with a touch of the red in it.
Gray area is like this. There is a little bit more red.
Like this side of her nose here.
And in here too.
This is going to be real dark. I want to make it a dark reddish, but I’m going to cool it way down.
I’m going to go straight with the blue in there. Cool that way down to get a little bit of the corner of
her mouth in there where it gets real deep in there.
I can then also use this very dark value using my yellow and blue with some of that red.
This is where I can go in and get my eyes in here as well now.
Utilizing those colors, I could take advantage of the blue a little bit. Keep it real dark.
I can take the blue and bring it back with a little bit of this lighter yellow...
to get kind of the connection there.
Okay, I kind of lost that little area there.
I’ll neutralize that just a little bit. I want to keep it down fairly dark, but I’m going to neutralize it
because I want to get kind of the whites of her eyes in here.
I’ve neutralized this down. I’ve used some yellow, white, and just a touch of this blue to neutralize this down
because I know that there are going to be some areas in here where we’re going to get little bits of highlights
and things like that. I’m going to use a combination of these, where we get these little bits of light,
where they get a little bit cooler—
where I can make them a little bit cooler I will. I’ve got to keep them light.
That’s a little too cool. I’m going to warm it up just a little bit. We’ve got a little yellow in there. That’s too yellow.
Start with that again.
That’s a little more neutral there. I’m just going to barely warm it, but I want to keep it pretty light.
Just barely warm it up a little bit. That’s where I’m going to see some of these other colors
that are in some of these lighter regions. That’s too bright.
Pull that off a little bit. That’s going to end up being pretty close once I mix that in.
Again, you see this is more of a neutralized warm yellow right in here against this neutralized cooler white.
I’m still going to be playing off that warm-cool, the yellow-blue scheme even as I go through.
I’m just going to hit a couple little highlights here where you might see some of these.
That’s not a real bright one, but I’m going to go ahead and lighten that up just a little bit.
Can soften some of these edges by bringing this warmer, darker tone in here.
Just softening some of these things up because I know she’s got some makeup on.
Go back here and get a little bit more out of her eyelashes if I want to do that.
I’m going to be consistent with the way that this cooler light falls on her.
Let me get a little bit more on there.
You can see this is a hard transition here. One thing I can do with that too is I can bring some of the yellow back.
I’ll just slightly warm that just a little bit. But I’ll keep it mostly the yellow. I’ll get a little bit of that.
I want it lighter than that, but I want to keep it yellow, and I’ll get a little bit more warmth in there,
and I can run along the edge here. And if I make it even lighter yet, I can slowly make the transition out to the
outer side. What’ll happen is it’ll start to feel like we get
the plane turning a little bit, even though it’s pretty soft.
This you can make as soft as you want. If you want to go and kind of wax on, wax off, kind of tease that edge,
make it soft, and make it feel like a glow coming from the back.
You can kind of turn those edges around as well.
Okay, so this is as far as I’m going to take this one because we’ve run out of time.
This complementary scheme we’re going to set up is based on blue and yellow. They are near-compliments
as well. What are we going to do with this is this time instead of the red and green,
this time we’re going to have a very light value, a yellow, compared to a dark value
complement, which is the blue. You’re going to see what’s going to happen when we paint
both this flat light situation and a more strongly lit situation with these two complementary
colors. The difference between something that’s so dark compared to something so light, it’s
going to give you a different spatial quality. The warm colors want to come forward, and
the lighter ones, the lighter colors will also want to come forward. Now, the cool colors
are going to want to go back in the darker color. The values are going to want to go
back as well. So we’re going to get a little bit of visual tension here. We’re going
to get a little contrast in here that’s going to create a little tension and vibration. So, we’ll get the vibration
through the color and the tension through the values of this spatial difference.
So, we’re going to explore this one.
I’ll start now, and what I’m going to do is I’m going to lay in a pretty full
saturated yellow in here. I can see that in my image it’s not full saturation out of
the tube here. It’s slightly lighter in a lot of the area up here.
I'm just going to block that in real roughly.
There we go. Okay, so we have a little bit of that, and
then what I see outside here is a little bit more of the darker value yellow into it.
It's a little bit warmer and darker. You can see a little warmer and darker is just adding
some of the raw sienna to it. So, if I’m keeping this warm and darker, I’m going
to be getting a little bit like this.
There we go.
We had that pretty extreme there.
My next step is I’m going to put this real saturated blue in there. I’m using a cobalt
blue right here. And I see it’s even a little bit darker, so I’m going to use a little
bit of the phthalo blue to bring that down and this cool red, I’m staying with my cool,
my blues, which are in the cool hemisphere, but I’m also going to pull a little bit
of the red to darken it down. It has to be the red with the cool in it. I’m going to
the cooler version. Otherwise, I’m going to neutralize it too much. Pretty saturated
in here. I’m going to go ahead and just block that in.
There we go.
Now, I’m going to stay with my darks and I’m going to favor these colors, the yellows
and the blues, because that’s what my complementary scheme is about. I might start with some of
her hair. I’m going to use some of the cobalt blue in here, and I’m going to pull in a
dark yellow. If this goes too green I’m going to get a little bit more of my red back
there to neutralize that back out. And I’m going to get this darker, that’s a little bit green.
I’m going to warm that up with a little bit of the warmer red, still trying
to keep it pretty dark there. There we go.
I’m going to see that it’s a little bit favoring the yellow up here and even along the edges here.
Along the outside of her hair it’s going to get a little bit of reflected light from the background there.
That's a little bit too heavy, so I’m going to reduce some of that back up in there.
I can go and refine that later if I want.
Okay, still staying down in this region, I’m going to get a little bit more of a violet.
I’m going to get the yellow in there to kind of cancel that out just the violet out.
Keep it dark and cool.
Then I’m going to lay in her hair like that right there.
Her skin is real fair, and she does have deeper eye sockets in there. I don’t want to give her raccoon eyes,
but what I want to do is I do want to make a little bit of darkening in there.
I’m going to lay that in first before I lay the rest of her skin in.
Now for that, I'm going to, again, stay within my yellow range.
I’ve got my yellow and I’m going to warm that just a little bit because it has most of her local values in there.
It’s not as dark as her hair so I’m going to lighten that up just a little bit.
I’m going to see this area right on her nose too.
It’s a little bit warmer.
I see it a little bit lighter. You can just tell there is a little bit more warmth on her chin down here,
so I’m going to go ahead and do that.
Then I’m also going to look at the underside of her upper lip, which is pretty dark as well. I’ll go ahead and put that in
while I’m dealing with my darker values here. I tend to group the values. So, like this.
I laid in this very saturated yellow, and then I put in the blue, and then I put in my dark group.
And now I’ll go ahead and put in my lighter value group. Well, actually, before I do that, I’m going to cool this off
just a little bit and give a little bit of the local color in here. There we go.
I can also see that there is a coolness under here. I don’t want to make this too dark.
I do see it a little bit like that.
Under her lip there. It’s a little bit of the same.
Now I’ll go ahead and put her skin and light in. Her skin is a little bit darker than the background in most of the
places. There are some areas and some of the highlights that get a little bit lighter, but for the most part
it’s a little darker than the background. It does reflect a little bit more of her natural skin tones.
I’ll start with this, but I’m going to go ahead and get a little bit more of the darker yellow in there.
I’ll add the white. I’ll neutralize that a little bit, but then I’m going to go in and add a touch of the red.
If I need to neutralize that any more, I might even just take a touch of the blue and neutralize that in
there just a little bit, just to make the overall skin tone just a little bit more neutral.
It needs to be a little darker than the background.
I’m going to see that it is right here. It’s about just slightly darker. In here it’s just slightly darker so I know
these are the lightest areas that go against the background. I know her skin tone has got to be darker
than that. It’s got to be another step darker. I’m going to go ahead and do that.
There we go.
I see her skin is a little bit lighter in here, a good step lighter. What I’ll do is I’ll go ahead and finish out her face.
It’s a little bit warmer up in there. I’m going to go ahead and finish that out first.
Okay, right now I’m just blocking this whole area in.
It’s a little grayer in there. I just saw that. Just a little bit grayer in there. And a little lighter up in here.
Again, lighter. I’m going to add just a little bit of purple up in this area here.
This is keeping with that blue and the yellow scheme because I’m getting a little bit more of the blue in some
of these areas that I’m seeing in here in these little lighter areas.
Now, that same lighter, cooler color that I saw up in here, I can see this area in here is similar to that.
But it has a lot more yellow in it than this color up here.
But it is still is light like that, and it’s cooled down slightly.
I’m going to use the blue to cool it down just a little bit.
I want it to go green, and it’s going to be in this range.
Now what I’m going to do—well, let me finish this.
Alright. I’m trying to get the color of her cheeks, but I can see it’s more in this cooler red rather than the warmer
red, so I’m going to go back over it something like this to get that difference.
And I can go just a little bit darker with that too.
Okay, let’s go back to this little bit neutralized, little bit darker tone.
I’m going to go back and get some of the areas in here, and these are on the yellow side as well.
If I want to get her ears, they’re going to be a little bit warmer.
They’re going to be like this.
At this point, I’m just still trying to cover the canvas with these basic colors.
And I’m finding that I might even need to go just a little bit cooler in some of these areas.
I’m going to take that to my advantage here when I go use a little bit cooler like this,
it’s a good excuse to bring in some of the blues.
So now I have all these areas blocked in, and I’m going to keep pushing this blue-yellow combination.
I’m going to take a little advantage now, and I’m going to push a little bit more of this, accentuating
the complementary scheme just a little bit more. I’ll take advantage of some of these areas that might have a little
bit more saturation. And they’re a little bit darker in here so I can bring some of these areas in. Also, along here.
So in some of these areas I’m going to add a little more saturated yellow with a touch of the red in it.
Gray area is like this. There is a little bit more red.
Like this side of her nose here.
And in here too.
This is going to be real dark. I want to make it a dark reddish, but I’m going to cool it way down.
I’m going to go straight with the blue in there. Cool that way down to get a little bit of the corner of
her mouth in there where it gets real deep in there.
I can then also use this very dark value using my yellow and blue with some of that red.
This is where I can go in and get my eyes in here as well now.
Utilizing those colors, I could take advantage of the blue a little bit. Keep it real dark.
I can take the blue and bring it back with a little bit of this lighter yellow...
to get kind of the connection there.
Okay, I kind of lost that little area there.
I’ll neutralize that just a little bit. I want to keep it down fairly dark, but I’m going to neutralize it
because I want to get kind of the whites of her eyes in here.
I’ve neutralized this down. I’ve used some yellow, white, and just a touch of this blue to neutralize this down
because I know that there are going to be some areas in here where we’re going to get little bits of highlights
and things like that. I’m going to use a combination of these, where we get these little bits of light,
where they get a little bit cooler—
where I can make them a little bit cooler I will. I’ve got to keep them light.
That’s a little too cool. I’m going to warm it up just a little bit. We’ve got a little yellow in there. That’s too yellow.
Start with that again.
That’s a little more neutral there. I’m just going to barely warm it, but I want to keep it pretty light.
Just barely warm it up a little bit. That’s where I’m going to see some of these other colors
that are in some of these lighter regions. That’s too bright.
Pull that off a little bit. That’s going to end up being pretty close once I mix that in.
Again, you see this is more of a neutralized warm yellow right in here against this neutralized cooler white.
I’m still going to be playing off that warm-cool, the yellow-blue scheme even as I go through.
I’m just going to hit a couple little highlights here where you might see some of these.
That’s not a real bright one, but I’m going to go ahead and lighten that up just a little bit.
Can soften some of these edges by bringing this warmer, darker tone in here.
Just softening some of these things up because I know she’s got some makeup on.
Go back here and get a little bit more out of her eyelashes if I want to do that.
I’m going to be consistent with the way that this cooler light falls on her.
Let me get a little bit more on there.
You can see this is a hard transition here. One thing I can do with that too is I can bring some of the yellow back.
I’ll just slightly warm that just a little bit. But I’ll keep it mostly the yellow. I’ll get a little bit of that.
I want it lighter than that, but I want to keep it yellow, and I’ll get a little bit more warmth in there,
and I can run along the edge here. And if I make it even lighter yet, I can slowly make the transition out to the
outer side. What’ll happen is it’ll start to feel like we get
the plane turning a little bit, even though it’s pretty soft.
This you can make as soft as you want. If you want to go and kind of wax on, wax off, kind of tease that edge,
make it soft, and make it feel like a glow coming from the back.
You can kind of turn those edges around as well.
Okay, so this is as far as I’m going to take this one because we’ve run out of time.
AUTO SCROLL
Okay, it’s time for the fourth painting. Now, in this painting I’ve lit the model in a very extreme way,
and what happens is I’ve got this blue light on the model, and I put not only a yellow background,
but I put a yellow light all in the background to intensify that yellow even more.
What’s going to happen is that light value yellow in the background is going to want to come forward,
and the blue on her and the blue light on her is going to make her want to sink back in the distance.
This creates a lot of visual tension. You might look at the image and say, whoa, this is really, really odd.
But that’s okay. This is a color matching exercise. What I want you to do is sketch out your drawing,
and once you have it laid out then start your time for 30 minutes and try to match the relationships that you see.
Good luck.
and what happens is I’ve got this blue light on the model, and I put not only a yellow background,
but I put a yellow light all in the background to intensify that yellow even more.
What’s going to happen is that light value yellow in the background is going to want to come forward,
and the blue on her and the blue light on her is going to make her want to sink back in the distance.
This creates a lot of visual tension. You might look at the image and say, whoa, this is really, really odd.
But that’s okay. This is a color matching exercise. What I want you to do is sketch out your drawing,
and once you have it laid out then start your time for 30 minutes and try to match the relationships that you see.
Good luck.
AUTO SCROLL
Okay, now that you’ve done that, it’s time for my last painting. In this situation,
we’ve got a yellow background and a blue light on the model. Now, it’s a dark blue.
It’s a dark silhouette against this light background. What’s going to happen is this
creates a situation where this blue obviously wants to go back in space, and the yellow
wants to come forward. This is an extreme case of visual tension. I don’t know how
many cases you would ever be painting a figure this blue, but as a color exercise it’s
a great exercise because it forces you to mix outside of normal skin tones and play
up a complementary situation and forces you to work within a lighting scheme that does
have some visual tension.
Now, visual tension isn’t always bad. It’s not always something you should avoid. It’s
something that you should use when you have a plan to use it well. It’s like any other
aspect. A lot of people might say that you wouldn’t do it because it’s not appealing.
Paint the skin so blue or whatever. But guaranteed, in the right kind of night condition you may
just find yourself painting in some similar kind of a scheme. Maybe it’s a couple walking
outside a café or something like that at night. You might end up with this kind of
a scheme. Realizing and pointing out where the visual tension is because the blue wants
to go back and the yellow wants to come forward. Indeed, the blue is forward and the yellow
is back in the background. That’s where you’re going to get this tension.
Most of this is pretty dark in the foreground. Most of it is close to blue. I’m going to
block that in first, and then I’ll go back and lay in the yellows on top of that.
I'm going to start with the darker version of the blues in this region on her face.
This all coming in this direction like this. As it turns across this plane along that edge,
what’s going to happen is it’s going to get a little warmer. We’re going to pick
up some of its local color so that we can get a little bit more red in there. We’re
also going to get the influence of the yellow over here and really yellow when it gets into
the direct light hit from behind along this rim edge.
Okay, so I’m going to look for this color along this edge. It’s going to be really
dark. There is my local color or what might be near my local color. It might have a little
bit more in that. I’m going to keep it cool. Then I’m going to get this pretty darn dark
down here. I can see that it’s starting to go pretty neutral on me, so I’m going
to warm that up just a little bit. Just a little bit here.
There we go. I’m going to block that in.
This might be just a little bit dark. I’m going to lighten it up just a little bit.
This cool light over here is forcing the shadow to appear a little bit
more yellow, so I’m going to save that a little. I’m going to save a little of this
for the yellow in there.
Okay, now I’m going to get a little bit more of the yellow in the shadow of that blue,
so I’m going to get a little bit of the blueness out of it. I might need to keep it
down dark. I don’t want it to get too light, so I’m going to add a little bit of the
black and the red. If I add the black it’s going to go greenish, so I need to keep it
down in here in this range
where I’m going to see that warm, that really yellow shadow from this direct light is going to really appear.
You can also see it down in this area of her lip, so I’m’ going to make sure that I get it in there as well
and along the edge down here. I’m going to lay in this cooler blue, and this is going to be lighter,
but it’s going to have some of her local skin tone in it.
Also, there is some more of this yellow quality in this shadow over here too on her arm.
Shadow is going to go towards the complement of the light source, this blue light source over here.
Okay, so I’ve blocked in this whole area in here. I’m going to see that this
on her chest area is a little bit lighter,
so I’m going to go ahead and lay that in just a little bit lighter in there
I see some variations in here now, the different
blues and stuff like this, but I’m not going to worry about those.
I want to get this whole area blocked in first
and then getting a little bit darker over on this side
There we go.
Here we go. It looks like a mess right now. I’m going to go in and I’m going
to lay in the dark of her hair. I’ll go with real black in here. I’m going to use
some of this phthalo blue because it’s really dark. I’m going to need to warm that up.
I’m going to use this cool red.
This is going to be my darkest dark in here.
Again, once I get over to this side, I’m going to see a little bit more of the yellow
influence. I’m going to go and warm this up just a little bit and get a little bit
of this dark yellow in there. Warm it up a little bit more. Get more of the dark yellow in there.
We’re going to shift over to this. Value is going to be a little bit lighter than the other side.
There we go.
I’m running out of the blue so I’m going to go ahead and put some more blue on there.
Now, her blouse is a little darker than her skin, and
it’s got a little bit of the red of it. It’s a little bit more violet, so I’m
going to lighten it and make it a little bit more violet. I did that with a little bit
of my quinacridone red here as well. It’s too light.
There we go.
Now, keep this dark enough I go to this darker blue, this phthalo blue. I do need to use some of this
quinacridone to make it more of a blue-violet. That’s what’s I’m going to see in this
area here where I need this darker blue.
Just a little bit of a treatment on the edge here.
Lay a little bit of that in. Also, on the inside of here it gets a little bit darker
so I’m going to lay that in. And along here it gets really dark and redder.
Put some dark and warmer in here.
Now you can see the effect of the warm shadow happening in there.
I’m going to clear a little space here now so I can get some of my background in, the
yellow in the background there. I can see that the background is pretty saturated, but
it’s got a little bit of warmth in it, up in this upper area because the lighting is
from down below. It’s striking down here. I’m going to keep this a little darker and a little warmer up here.
Very saturated in here.
Try not to let that pollute that color.
This is a great way to get yourself to see color, by forcing yourself to create these
lighting schemes and mixtures that are outside your normal plein air painting or whatever.
You’re going to see that after doing a series of these, you’re going to get more excited
about going out and doing more plein air work or painting from still lifes or whatever because
you’re going to see more color.
I’m going to get a real light, a little lighter and saturated in here.
Trying to get it on here without letting the blue pollute the yellow too much.
That white there is filled with blue so I’m going to move it
because I want to get some clear, clean color up here.
So, now I need to get in this warm light on the
side of her face there. It’s going to be pretty bright. It’s got some of her local
skin tone in it, but it still has to remain pretty light. It’s going to be darker than
the background. It’s got to be warmer than the background. Add just a touch of that in there.
That neutralizes it just a little bit. It’s not that this is the most saturated.
It’s just that it is very, very bright.
I want to be careful that I’m not polluting that color with blue.
I’ve got to be very careful with that.
We’ll warm this up just a little bit.
I’ve got to watch that this doesn’t go green right away.
These colors, the yellow and the blue, are going to pollute fast, so I have to make sure I go darker
and get a lot more warm in it to neutralize that green.
I can get a little bit of the blue, but I have to be very careful so I went to the
instead of this blue-green I go to the little bit more of the blue-violet, and I add the cool
red to this, and it gives me a color that won’t go as green as fast.
And if I can get a little bit more red back into this,
I can actually get some warmth in her cheek in here along the edge. I can soften that
up just a little bit. Bring that down into here. This bigger and softer.
This up here.
I’ve got a really dark accent, but it’s a nice mixture of the two right in here.
I want to make sure that it doesn’t go green, so I need to make sure to get enough
warmth in there so it doesn’t go green. Go back to those violets, greens in there.
There we go.
That can even come back over into here.
This eyebrow is going to go way over into this yellow, but I want to make sure
that it’s not going to go green. That’s one thing that I have to really watch out for.
Okay, so now I’ve got all of these areas. I have my dark accents in here kind
of broken in. I’ve got the effect of this cool light on here,
and it’s going to happen here too, kind of at the corner of her mouth.
Just a little bit warmer along the edge of her mouth in here.
Just a little bit lighter than the rest. It’s just a hint of the light hitting it.
Same thing on the edge of her nose.
Now I’m going to see some of my little accents in here.
Things that go really dark in here.
Areas that have a little bit more of her skin tone, I’m going to make
sure that they don’t get green. I’m going to go a little darker than the skin, but I
don’t want to go violet-violet. It’s just going to warm up a little bit around her skin
tone, but it needs to go a little darker than that
I see some of it in here in her cheek.
There is a real reddish quality to her cheek in here.
I’m going to see that coming through this way.
Same thing with her nose here.
This needs to go even darker yet.
Yeah, those have to go real dark. I’m going to make this like that.
Too cool.
There we go.
Alright, I’m back to getting a little bit of a difference in here, but darker.
Take some of these planes turning this way just a little bit.
Then I’ll just lay in a couple of the highlights, which are going to be really, really saturated blues,
lighter blue, very saturated blue. That’s a little bit more blue-blue-violet than that,
so I’m going to keep it saturated.
There we go. Since it’s coming at this angle,
it’s going to be coming a little bit up like that, and so it’s going to pick up
a little bit of this here, and it’s going to be picking up a little bit of this here on her lip.
A little bit lighter in there.
Then on her neck here I feel like we’ve
got a whole plane that’s just a little bit lighter like this.
We’re picking up a little bit of it above her clavicle there and then below whereas on her clavicle it’s going
to be a little warmer like that.
And then, just to finish it off I’m going to go in
here with this dark yellow that I see along the edge here because I want to go from this
blue-black to a yellow, and I don’t want to make it turn green, so it’s going to
go towards more of the orange along the edge.
Even where her hair is.
We don’t want it to go green.
Of course, on her other side over here…
Along this edge here we want it to keep this kind of this orangish,
real warm, warm yellow rather than that green.
Alright. Okay, there we have another lighting condition that has
a really strong complementary color contrast.
Thanks for joining me for this. I hope you enjoyed those four paintings. And anytime,
if you feel like you didn’t accomplish what you wanted in those images, my suggestion
is give yourself another 30 minutes. Do it again until you feel comfortable with it.
Whatever you do, don’t continue on the same painting. It’s not a rendering class. This
is all about your color mixing, and it always works out best when you do one after the other,
after the other, altering your color situation one after the other. And if you paint outside
or set up a still life, if you want to practice color and practice color relationships, then
what you can do is set up simple still lifes with these color relationships. Then, again,
time box yourself. This isn’t about making the most beautiful paintings. This is about
heightening your ability to see color relationships,
and that’s the takeaway with all of these lessons in the Color Boot Camp.
we’ve got a yellow background and a blue light on the model. Now, it’s a dark blue.
It’s a dark silhouette against this light background. What’s going to happen is this
creates a situation where this blue obviously wants to go back in space, and the yellow
wants to come forward. This is an extreme case of visual tension. I don’t know how
many cases you would ever be painting a figure this blue, but as a color exercise it’s
a great exercise because it forces you to mix outside of normal skin tones and play
up a complementary situation and forces you to work within a lighting scheme that does
have some visual tension.
Now, visual tension isn’t always bad. It’s not always something you should avoid. It’s
something that you should use when you have a plan to use it well. It’s like any other
aspect. A lot of people might say that you wouldn’t do it because it’s not appealing.
Paint the skin so blue or whatever. But guaranteed, in the right kind of night condition you may
just find yourself painting in some similar kind of a scheme. Maybe it’s a couple walking
outside a café or something like that at night. You might end up with this kind of
a scheme. Realizing and pointing out where the visual tension is because the blue wants
to go back and the yellow wants to come forward. Indeed, the blue is forward and the yellow
is back in the background. That’s where you’re going to get this tension.
Most of this is pretty dark in the foreground. Most of it is close to blue. I’m going to
block that in first, and then I’ll go back and lay in the yellows on top of that.
I'm going to start with the darker version of the blues in this region on her face.
This all coming in this direction like this. As it turns across this plane along that edge,
what’s going to happen is it’s going to get a little warmer. We’re going to pick
up some of its local color so that we can get a little bit more red in there. We’re
also going to get the influence of the yellow over here and really yellow when it gets into
the direct light hit from behind along this rim edge.
Okay, so I’m going to look for this color along this edge. It’s going to be really
dark. There is my local color or what might be near my local color. It might have a little
bit more in that. I’m going to keep it cool. Then I’m going to get this pretty darn dark
down here. I can see that it’s starting to go pretty neutral on me, so I’m going
to warm that up just a little bit. Just a little bit here.
There we go. I’m going to block that in.
This might be just a little bit dark. I’m going to lighten it up just a little bit.
This cool light over here is forcing the shadow to appear a little bit
more yellow, so I’m going to save that a little. I’m going to save a little of this
for the yellow in there.
Okay, now I’m going to get a little bit more of the yellow in the shadow of that blue,
so I’m going to get a little bit of the blueness out of it. I might need to keep it
down dark. I don’t want it to get too light, so I’m going to add a little bit of the
black and the red. If I add the black it’s going to go greenish, so I need to keep it
down in here in this range
where I’m going to see that warm, that really yellow shadow from this direct light is going to really appear.
You can also see it down in this area of her lip, so I’m’ going to make sure that I get it in there as well
and along the edge down here. I’m going to lay in this cooler blue, and this is going to be lighter,
but it’s going to have some of her local skin tone in it.
Also, there is some more of this yellow quality in this shadow over here too on her arm.
Shadow is going to go towards the complement of the light source, this blue light source over here.
Okay, so I’ve blocked in this whole area in here. I’m going to see that this
on her chest area is a little bit lighter,
so I’m going to go ahead and lay that in just a little bit lighter in there
I see some variations in here now, the different
blues and stuff like this, but I’m not going to worry about those.
I want to get this whole area blocked in first
and then getting a little bit darker over on this side
There we go.
Here we go. It looks like a mess right now. I’m going to go in and I’m going
to lay in the dark of her hair. I’ll go with real black in here. I’m going to use
some of this phthalo blue because it’s really dark. I’m going to need to warm that up.
I’m going to use this cool red.
This is going to be my darkest dark in here.
Again, once I get over to this side, I’m going to see a little bit more of the yellow
influence. I’m going to go and warm this up just a little bit and get a little bit
of this dark yellow in there. Warm it up a little bit more. Get more of the dark yellow in there.
We’re going to shift over to this. Value is going to be a little bit lighter than the other side.
There we go.
I’m running out of the blue so I’m going to go ahead and put some more blue on there.
Now, her blouse is a little darker than her skin, and
it’s got a little bit of the red of it. It’s a little bit more violet, so I’m
going to lighten it and make it a little bit more violet. I did that with a little bit
of my quinacridone red here as well. It’s too light.
There we go.
Now, keep this dark enough I go to this darker blue, this phthalo blue. I do need to use some of this
quinacridone to make it more of a blue-violet. That’s what’s I’m going to see in this
area here where I need this darker blue.
Just a little bit of a treatment on the edge here.
Lay a little bit of that in. Also, on the inside of here it gets a little bit darker
so I’m going to lay that in. And along here it gets really dark and redder.
Put some dark and warmer in here.
Now you can see the effect of the warm shadow happening in there.
I’m going to clear a little space here now so I can get some of my background in, the
yellow in the background there. I can see that the background is pretty saturated, but
it’s got a little bit of warmth in it, up in this upper area because the lighting is
from down below. It’s striking down here. I’m going to keep this a little darker and a little warmer up here.
Very saturated in here.
Try not to let that pollute that color.
This is a great way to get yourself to see color, by forcing yourself to create these
lighting schemes and mixtures that are outside your normal plein air painting or whatever.
You’re going to see that after doing a series of these, you’re going to get more excited
about going out and doing more plein air work or painting from still lifes or whatever because
you’re going to see more color.
I’m going to get a real light, a little lighter and saturated in here.
Trying to get it on here without letting the blue pollute the yellow too much.
That white there is filled with blue so I’m going to move it
because I want to get some clear, clean color up here.
So, now I need to get in this warm light on the
side of her face there. It’s going to be pretty bright. It’s got some of her local
skin tone in it, but it still has to remain pretty light. It’s going to be darker than
the background. It’s got to be warmer than the background. Add just a touch of that in there.
That neutralizes it just a little bit. It’s not that this is the most saturated.
It’s just that it is very, very bright.
I want to be careful that I’m not polluting that color with blue.
I’ve got to be very careful with that.
We’ll warm this up just a little bit.
I’ve got to watch that this doesn’t go green right away.
These colors, the yellow and the blue, are going to pollute fast, so I have to make sure I go darker
and get a lot more warm in it to neutralize that green.
I can get a little bit of the blue, but I have to be very careful so I went to the
instead of this blue-green I go to the little bit more of the blue-violet, and I add the cool
red to this, and it gives me a color that won’t go as green as fast.
And if I can get a little bit more red back into this,
I can actually get some warmth in her cheek in here along the edge. I can soften that
up just a little bit. Bring that down into here. This bigger and softer.
This up here.
I’ve got a really dark accent, but it’s a nice mixture of the two right in here.
I want to make sure that it doesn’t go green, so I need to make sure to get enough
warmth in there so it doesn’t go green. Go back to those violets, greens in there.
There we go.
That can even come back over into here.
This eyebrow is going to go way over into this yellow, but I want to make sure
that it’s not going to go green. That’s one thing that I have to really watch out for.
Okay, so now I’ve got all of these areas. I have my dark accents in here kind
of broken in. I’ve got the effect of this cool light on here,
and it’s going to happen here too, kind of at the corner of her mouth.
Just a little bit warmer along the edge of her mouth in here.
Just a little bit lighter than the rest. It’s just a hint of the light hitting it.
Same thing on the edge of her nose.
Now I’m going to see some of my little accents in here.
Things that go really dark in here.
Areas that have a little bit more of her skin tone, I’m going to make
sure that they don’t get green. I’m going to go a little darker than the skin, but I
don’t want to go violet-violet. It’s just going to warm up a little bit around her skin
tone, but it needs to go a little darker than that
I see some of it in here in her cheek.
There is a real reddish quality to her cheek in here.
I’m going to see that coming through this way.
Same thing with her nose here.
This needs to go even darker yet.
Yeah, those have to go real dark. I’m going to make this like that.
Too cool.
There we go.
Alright, I’m back to getting a little bit of a difference in here, but darker.
Take some of these planes turning this way just a little bit.
Then I’ll just lay in a couple of the highlights, which are going to be really, really saturated blues,
lighter blue, very saturated blue. That’s a little bit more blue-blue-violet than that,
so I’m going to keep it saturated.
There we go. Since it’s coming at this angle,
it’s going to be coming a little bit up like that, and so it’s going to pick up
a little bit of this here, and it’s going to be picking up a little bit of this here on her lip.
A little bit lighter in there.
Then on her neck here I feel like we’ve
got a whole plane that’s just a little bit lighter like this.
We’re picking up a little bit of it above her clavicle there and then below whereas on her clavicle it’s going
to be a little warmer like that.
And then, just to finish it off I’m going to go in
here with this dark yellow that I see along the edge here because I want to go from this
blue-black to a yellow, and I don’t want to make it turn green, so it’s going to
go towards more of the orange along the edge.
Even where her hair is.
We don’t want it to go green.
Of course, on her other side over here…
Along this edge here we want it to keep this kind of this orangish,
real warm, warm yellow rather than that green.
Alright. Okay, there we have another lighting condition that has
a really strong complementary color contrast.
Thanks for joining me for this. I hope you enjoyed those four paintings. And anytime,
if you feel like you didn’t accomplish what you wanted in those images, my suggestion
is give yourself another 30 minutes. Do it again until you feel comfortable with it.
Whatever you do, don’t continue on the same painting. It’s not a rendering class. This
is all about your color mixing, and it always works out best when you do one after the other,
after the other, altering your color situation one after the other. And if you paint outside
or set up a still life, if you want to practice color and practice color relationships, then
what you can do is set up simple still lifes with these color relationships. Then, again,
time box yourself. This isn’t about making the most beautiful paintings. This is about
heightening your ability to see color relationships,
and that’s the takeaway with all of these lessons in the Color Boot Camp.
Free to try
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1. Lesson Overview
55sNow playing...
Watch the whole lesson with a subscription
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2. Introduction to Complementary Colors
6m 43s -
3. Assignment 1: Notan-Dominant Red/Green Setup
30m 52s -
4. Bill's Approach to Assignment 1
39m 26s -
5. Assignment 2: Form-Focused Red/Green Setup
30m 50s -
6. Bill's Approach to Assignment 2
34m 23s -
7. Assignment 3: Notan-Dominant Blue/Yellow Setup
30m 59s -
8. Bill's Approach to Assignment 3
31m 50s -
9. Assignment 4: Form-Focused Blue/Yellow Setup
31m 16s -
10. Bill's Approach to Assignment 4
36m 2s
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