I'm here in Southern California. I've selected a scene.
I selected it for a few different reasons.
It's fairly simple scene. It's got a nice nice variety of shapes and angles.
And the first thing I'm going to do is try to place the composition on
the canvas and think about how to how to get the right angles and shapes
and that's the first step.
I'm not going to think about anything else
other than that, just placing it on the canvas.
And I'm going to mix up a little bit of some sort of mud color, it’s
actually not important. I just want to sketch it on a canvas, the main lines of
the composition.

So in these first few minutes,
I want to make sure that I have the right amount of sky, land, and everything
placed correctly on the canvas.
I don't want to move on before I have everything, the main lines, established how I
want them. Also, it's important at this stage to keep everything open and flexible.
Anything is movable at this stage.
It gets harder and harder to change your composition as time goes on.
So I'm taking a few comparative measurements from time to time.
I don't want to be locked into what's there in the scene and I
want to make sure that everything is the way that I want it placed.
So I might move a tree over a little bit, exaggerate a height of
a hill or something, but it's good to take a few compared to measurements.
It makes me a little bit more sure of myself when I move
forward to know that everything is where I want it.
So I'm just checking - right now
I'm checking some of the space and I don't -
one of the key things about composition is you don't want to have equal spaces between
things. So in this situation there's a few verticals and I want to make sure that
I have a a different space, a different distance, between some of those.
So right now I'm just looking where I placed the trees and they seem a
little bit equidistant from the edge of the canvas.
So I want to make sure that at this stage that I'm getting those a little
bit different. So I’ll move this one in a little bit.
Okay so I've got my horizontals and verticals placed roughly where I want them.
Now as I sort of tighten down on the composition
I’m gonna also start adding a little bit of tone.
And I'm not going to aim for a specific shadow color or a specific value right
now. I just want to get the major - some of the major lights and darks going
so it will help me see the composition.
I'm going to use probably a sort of a washy,
thinned out paint for that.
And the point is I don't want to decide on anything at this point, any
colors. That will be later on.
This is just still part of establishing the composition.
I'm just slowly correcting things, changing things around, just establishing
the composition and the lighter I can keep it the better. The less paint on the
canvas the better at this point.

Okay, so part of what I'm doing right now is not only looking at the composition as
a whole, but I'm sort of starting to delineate some of the masses.
And the masses might be - the sky might be a mass, the tree might be a
mass, the leaves of the tree might be a mass.
These are things that need to be interpreted as you go.
This scene is fairly simple already.
It's fairly simplified. But all these things need to be interpreted.
I'm trying to do them simply and make them characteristic of the shape that
I'm seeing. Down here I'm anticipating the shadows
of a tree moving a lot and I want to make sure I have an
interesting design of these shadows down here, that's going to help the composition.
I want to have some - I know I want to have dark down there for the
composition. I've mostly left - anything that's in the sunlight
I've left alone at this point.
I want to be able to hit that with a fresh color when I start with
the color. So I'm just going to clean up the shapes a little bit here and
then then move on to color.
It’s also a good time to stand back.
Or it’s a good idea to stand back every once in awhile and look at your
painting from a distance. That's what I'm going to do.
And I'm pretty happy with the other placement and the masses.
I could spend more time delineating things a little bit more,
but I think at this point I'm ready to move on.
And right now or when I start moving on, I'm going to start going
more for direct color. The first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to look
at the scene and sort of establish in my head a value hierarchy of all the colors out
there. See what the lightest thing
is, see what the darkest thing is, make a decision of how light I want to
go, how dark I want to go, and start thinking about all of
the parts coming together.
So I think it's really important on this scene to get the little
sliver of light along the trees and up here that sliver is quite a bit lighter
than the sky. So I want to make sure I get that relationship going.
I also don't want to go too dark anywhere because there's a lot of light out
here. I'm also going to try not only to get a variety of shapes
in these trees but a variety of color in the trunks.
So I'm just going to look and see where it makes sense for me to start
right now. There's not really any rule to this.
Yeah, I'm just going to start.
As I'm painting in the sky mass a little bit,
I'm thinking about all of the other masses in the painting. So mentally
I'm - even though I'm thinking about how does this compare to this color mass?
And how does it compare to this color
mass? And will I have enough room to go light enough on the tree next to
this? So I’m trying to take in -
this is the hard part of painting actually, being able to take everything in
at once. So really when you're painting here,
you're thinking about all these other elements.

Okay so as I'm establishing this ground mass,
I'm also working with the shadow area and designing the shape of that
mess little bit. Sometimes using what's there, sometimes using what was there a half an hour
ago, sometimes anticipating what might be coming up next.
This is great what's happening right now.
There's a little bit of breeze going across the water,
which is going to make a more interesting shape here.
So I might just start indicating that right now while we have a little
breeze.

So the light’s starting to change quite a bit and I'm gonna have to come up with
a strategy to capture the things that are going to change a lot.
I think the shadows down here are changing quite a bit
so I want to I want to establish a color for those before they move too
much and disappear. I think also at this point I should probably not wait too long
to establish more of a color and value for the trees. It's kind of when
I look at the painting
I just I look at what's the furthest thing behind?
What's the easiest thing I can do to further the painting?
And right now it's the value of some of the trees.
But I'm going to put some of these shadows in because they're going to move very
soon. Still trying to compare everything to everything else.
So I'm - when I'm making a decision on the shadow on the ground.
I'm thinking how is that going to compare to the shadow on the trees? Is It -
am I going to have to make it lighter, bluer,
how's that going to compare?
So that's what I'm thinking about when I'm mixing up this color.
Okay, I’m going to jump into the color of the shadow part of the trees now
and there’s a lot of variation that I want to get right from the beginning.
So the masses that I've established so far
there's not a lot of variation and that's a general rule for a mass.
You don't want to have too much variation within the mass.
In the foreground you can get away with a lot more variation.
It’s going to create a lot more interest in the trees if they're each slightly different colors
for the trunks. Okay, so now I'm almost - I’ve almost got the painting massed in.
So I'm missing the lights on the trees. So far I’ve just done the shadows.
And I'm missing a little bit of the houses up here, both the light and
the shadow part. I want to get the painting all working as a whole, especially today,
because I want to paint on this tomorrow.
And so the goal at the end of the day is to have a unified
feel to the painting. So I don't want to spend any - I don't want to spend
too much time on any given area.

So I’m kind of taking my time to pick a few of the houses in the background
out and make certain intricate shapes out of them because they'll give a sense of scale
to the background. I’m trying to keep them unified and pick a few out and some I’ll
pull out of the sky, some I’ll pull the sky down over again later on.
So I just got that one mass left, which is the lights on the tree. So
I got to get that in there quick before it changes too much.
Actually, one of the hardest things to paint is what’s called a transparent mass.
So it's a mass of leaves against another mass, in this case sky.
And it forces you to interpret what you’re seeing, everything is interpretation,
but something like this really forces that interpretation.
So I’m now at the point where I've got everything more or less massed, I’m starting
to sort of work within the masses,
which should be be easy.
If I got this, the value and color of this mass correct against all
of the other, relating to all the other parts,
should be easy just to go in here and throw in a little bit of variation
and make that work but it's not easy.
Still thinking about the bigger trunks.

Okay. So at this point, I'm going to start thinking about wrapping it up for the day,
but I want to work back into the masses a little bit.
I just noticed that this house is a little bit low
and I want to bring that up.
I think it's going to help the composition.
I don't want every house to be on the same level.
So I want to have variety.
I'm going to drop the sky down a little bit here, bring this house up here
just to get a little bit more variety.
And then I'm going to play with the shape of the tree against the sky
a little bit and get that ready for tomorrow.
Just design it a little bit more.
Okay. So with all the main masses in place and the light changing so much
I think I might let this dry, come back tomorrow with fresh eyes,
and see where I can take it from there.

Okay, so we're here on location for the second day of this painting and the painting’s had time
to dry overnight and I've had time to step away from the painting and I'm
coming back to looking fresh - looking at it fresh.
And I'm gonna spend a few minutes just looking at the painting, looking at the scene.
Try to figure out a strategy for today moving forward.
The first thing I noticed when I look at the painting is that I think I could
add more contrast of the painting.
It's the range - the value range is very compressed right now
into this sort of high middle range.
So that's one thing I'm going to try to do.
The other thing is I really need to make a decision on the effect of light.
So right now the effect of light is sort of a backlit and it's
moving into a side lit lighting situation.
So I'm going to make a decision about that
and try to increase the contrast, continue working on the shapes of the masses.
And I think I'm going to start out by putting down a few dark accents so
I can see what the range of values is.
Okay so I'm trying to mix up something
that's not as dark as I can go but fairly dark. I want to see where
my range is. And I'm kind of just looking at the - trying to look at the
whole painting again and see really what sticks out to me is something I want to change.
And if something's working, I just want to keep it.
I don't want to touch it.
So these trees could definitely use more value contrast. There’s also some clouds moving and
some high atmosphere clouds and I might use those for the design a little bit.
Something else to think about. So already I've got more contrast coming on.
I don't think I want to get darker than that anywhere.
I'm just kind of moving around the painting trying to
think about what I want to change.
And if something's working I don't want to spend time painting it.
Okay so I think I'm going to just spend some time increasing the contrast in the
foreground trees right now. Which are mostly shadow right now and they're going to change to
light later on. I want to get that before it changes too much.
Everything that's against the sky is going to be
affected by the color of the sky, so the branches
against the sky are going to be - take on a little bit more of a
blue cast. So I’m gonna try to keep that in mind.
So this tree for example, I'm thinking about the color change from top to bottom and at the
bottom of the trunk there's a lot of reflected light bouncing up from the grass
hitting that tree. At the top there’s a lot less reflected light and it’s taking on
more of the color of the sky.
So that's something I want to get as well.
So warmer actions down here.
And since this is in the foreground it can have a lot of value and color variety
going on. Try to also
tie this group of trees together a little bit to the shadows
and make it a connected shape.
Okay starting to get a little bit more contrast in there now.
I want to sort of increase the warm reflected light on the bottom of that trunk
a little bit. This trunk’s got a kind of purple a quality that I want to get.
So they're all kind of different.
Which should make the painting a little bit more interesting.
Increase the contrast here on the leaves a bit. So everything's still changeable this point too. I
can make big changes, I can
vary some of the masses, I can change the shapes around. Everything's changeable.
As time goes on it gets a little bit more locked in.
And right now I'm kind of putting more blue than I had yesterday,
which is good. It's good idea to not put the same color on top of
the same color. So I’m gonna increase the contrast here as well.
Okay. So I'm increasing the contrast between the foreground tree and the background.
I've got a little bit more
value room to play with, just more separation from foreground to background.
That's going to allow me to
darken some of the background which would be good.
But I'll have more contrast between the sky and the background.
So just kind of expanding the value range a little bit.
So I'm laying down a lot of little bits of shadow and I'll come back and
cut into that tree mass with the sky color. I might just expand the - I’m
seeing some of these clouds up here now and I might just jump in and put
a cloud or two down which will expand the range of the sky a bit.
Okay, so that's creating a little bit more interest in the sky,
which is good. A little bit more contrast as well.
It’s kind of good to let the the sky bleed into the tree and the
leaves. It's kind of nice to have to paint into - paint the sky into the tree
and paint the tree into the sky. It starts creating
a nice effect but most painters will tell you that's the hardest thing to paint is
a tree against the sky.
Okay, so I’ve kind of done one pass on the foreground, increasing some of the contrast
in the shadows So that allowed me more room to put a little bit - put something
a little bit darker back here.
So I'm going to - I’m going to look at that.
I want to look at these values again, compare them to my new
foreground values and see how that goes.
I'll try to look at the shadow of
these background trees and make sure that when I'm mixing up that color
rhat it’s going to be lighter
and slightly bluer than the stuff I have in the foreground.
I don't want to go too dark either.
These shadows are going to kind of disappear as the session goes on.
Okay stand back and look at that and see if that - see how those values look.

I think I need to increase the contrast on the ground plan as
well, but I'm going to wait till the shadow comes around for that.
Here I'm just picking up on some of these under planes.
I just started noticing those when I was painting the background around them.
I just want to get those really warm under planes in, at least start and suggesting and thinking about
it. Kind of just jumping around all over the place right now.
Okay I’ve got to think about these greens.
There's so much yellow in the background,
but I don’t want to make it too yellow.
I want to have the most intense green somewhere in here. The most yellowy intense
green. So I don't want to compete with something in the background so I have
to think about that when I'm making a mixture.
I'll probably try to kill the mixture a little bit
with some red or some mud from the canvas.
All right. I've got a greyed down green I can try again.
Okay, that's a little bit better.
Very intense yellows out there. I’m kind of drawing the shape of the tree as I'm
painting the background around it.
Sometimes I just compare values by kind of isolating them with my hand.
Because they can be deceiving.
Try to pick out some of the lights in the back trees now.
Okay, so I’ve got everything kind of working.
Kind of every, almost every, part of the painting is going now.
The only thing I haven't really touched is the foreground shadow, which I will do soon as
it as the shadow rolls around here.
I'm just going to continue working around.
I've got the contrast established now, that sort of value range established.
I'm just going to continue working around, not really spending too much time at any given
spot. So I'm just going to react to the scene so
the water is changing a lot. When I see the water that I like
I'll probably go in there and make a few touches.
There's a lot of things to do, there’s so many things to do.
I'm just trying to do kind of everything at once.
And one thing that helps with that, deciding what to do,
I've got this little mirror.
And once in awhile, I just look at the painting
and it allows me to see the pain is fresh and allows me to see it
as if it's not my painting.
So I can just see immediately what I want to change what I want to work
on some look at that now.
And one of the thing that sticks out to me just the first thing is the
shape of the houses on the top of the hill.
And the values I think I need to clean that up a little bit.
That's one of the first things that sticks out to me. So I’m gonna spend
a few minutes doing that.
So I'm just kind of a drawing these shapes and they just don't look
right to me. They look -
I need a little bit more definition there.
I think I need more of a violet color.
Just want to have some intricate shapes.
up in this area. I don't need to paint every house but It's nice to have
a few well-placed intricate shapes. I can come and paint the sky back into this stuff.
So not too worried about putting something in the sky right now.
Get a clean brush for the shadow part of the houses. It’s very similar to the
sky actually. Okay, I feel like I'm spending too much time doing this, I need to check
what the next thing is that needs work.
I think I'm going to put down a few because these little sparkles on the
leaves are kind of start going away.
So I want to get a few of those just started.
So I remember that for later.
The glare sparkles. Kind of those are the things that make a painting work a lot of times
but they’re hard to paint, people overdo them.
You don’t want to break up the mass too much.
Okay, I'll jump back into the background now.
Trying to get more variety in this mass
but trying to keep it held together at the same time.

Okay so my palette’s getting a little bit
messy. I’m just going to scrape off some of the extra paint.
And I'm just looking - just keep on looking at things
I want to work on.
Right now this mass is looking a little bit too solid.
This shape I want to bring up a little bit, the field.
So I’ve just got almost too many things to work on.
I want to connect these shapes a little bit more. Trying to get some of these reflections in and making sure that
they're darker than the - so this is the reflection of this field.
I want to make sure that that's darker than this field because that's how reflections work.
Light things reflect darker and darker
things tend to reflect lighter. So if I was reflecting the shadow of this bush,
I would have to make sure that the reflection is actually lighter than the shadow.
And the water is changing all the time.
Everything's changing all the time.
So a lot of this, everything I'm doing,
I’m trying to kind of design it and make the painting make sense.
That's the hard part about painting outside especially is
selecting and designing.
See if I can clean up the water a little bit.
So the water is reflecting the sky,
but it's reflecting the top of the sky and it's I reflect a lot darker than
the sky. I think I'll keep the main design that I had yesterday with the
water. I’m just gonna try to clean it up a little bit.
Might get a smaller brush for this. And where the clouds are reflecting I'll make the
the water just a little bit lighter.
And show the influence of some of the clouds.
Kind of getting worried that this is getting a little bit broken up.
I don't want to have it so broken up.
So I’m gonna keep that in mind.
Maybe just connecting these a little bit more.
I’m gonna jump back into the trees here before the light rolls around too much. I wanna just
clean up the shape of light on the edge of those a bit. Trying to get a
clean stroke, to really preserve the contrast between light and shadow.
So I don't want to mush these colors around.
It's not going to look like sunlight. There’s really only
two categories outside. It's either in sunlight or it’s not. And if
you get too many half tones it starts taking away from that effect.
I'll try to get some of the lighter accents go in here,
let’s see how light I can go.
And I’m trying to design the shadow, the cast shadow, on the foreground,
but I just noticed I've got a sort of design problem,
which is common. I’ve got four shapes more or less that are all the same.
They're all the same angle, all the same shape and size, and it's just kind of
boring. And so I need to fix that.
I need to add a little bit more variety there.
Maybe I'll just tie some of these together a little bit more.
Create a more unified effect.
Get a little bit of variety on the edge of the mass.

Okay. So the thing that I haven't really touched yet is the - I haven't touch the
sky at all. I haven't touched the the lights of the trees at all.
And I think before too long,
I need to start working those into each other.
So I'll mix up a sky color and a leaf color and I'll start kind of working
those together. Still lots of things to do everywhere,
but that's I think the farthest thing behind at this point.
Okay, so sky and I might need to scrape the palette again.
And I might be able to increase the gradation in the sky too, so I might
be able to go a little bit bluer at the top and leave what I have
at the bottom. and I think I might be able to go little bit less orange
for the leaves. So I'll start mixing up some of those things.
So I’m thinking about the direction of the light
as well as just looking at it.
I'm kind of going for that side lit.
And I guess right now it's a side lit situation.
It was more backlit. I'm just trying to partially remember how it was, partially
trying to logically figure out
where the light is and then partially just react to what's there.
And then of course trying to design it and interpret it. There’s a million leaves there,
probably more. So in this tree
it looks like - It's a lot of stuff going on there,
but it's it's basically I've got a shadow color,
I've got a light color,
I've got a highlight color,
and then I've got the sky color behind it.
So it's those four things kind of
coming together and interacting. And I've got a lot of sky holes to put in here
yet. It's a little bit too solid on on the top of this tree,
but I'll come in there with the sky holes and break that up a bit.
Okay, I think it's time to get the sky holes going.
So I’ll grab a clean brush and get the sky going.
Like I said, I'm going to try to go for a slightly more blue,
maybe even slightly darker sky. Okay
there we go. And sky holes can be painted
even darker than the surrounding sky so they keep that in mind to.
I'm just going to try to paint the major holes,
sky holes and the major chunks of sky. If it's working.
I'm going to leave it.
I don't want to touch it if it's working.
I'm not going to repaint the whole sky.
But I think that little bit of increased contrast is kind of nice.
I want to keep going with that.
And I might have to work into - I’m working the sky into the leaves right now.
I'll probably come back and work the leaves into the sky bit.
And it’s kind of back and forth.
Looking for some of the bigger shapes and trying to design the bigger shapes.
Trying not to make all the sky holes the same shape.
and same size. I'll try to find something.
There was some smaller ones.
Okay I'm going to grab another sky brush that's going to be the sort of lower part of the
gradation. So I’ll have a dark sky brush and a slightly lighter one.
Just keep things clean and there we go
I can even make that one a little bit bluer.
So I always try to put down a different color than I did yesterday.
And is you put the same color down on top of itself,
it will kill the surface a bit.
So I'll mix it up a little bit.
I see the sky as a little bit more bluey and green right now then
the sort of orangey yellow that I had yesterday.
So just try to mix that a little bit different.
Okay. And I can also start cutting around these shapes of
the houses and trees.
Okay, I'm going to pull out the mirror again because I'm a little bit
lost as to what to do, what to work on right now.
So I think the thing that needs work really is the design of the water.
And the design of these leaves here.
That's probably the weakest part right now.
Just gonna put another little cloud in there though.
Back there. I also, I think I need a little bit more contrast between the
trees and the sky. So I might increase that a bit as well.
Okay, I’m gonna mix up the color for the background trees again and just make
it a bit darker. Okay so I think that's helping a little bit.
Just making this entire mass of back trees a little bit darker
and more connected. Sort of a ignoring the variety right now because I just want
to get the whole mass working.
That's a little bit too dark.
Maybe some more intricate shapes for the background.
That back sky - back hill where it hits the sky. Just step back and look at this
now. I might try to work some darker sky holes into this area.
It's kind of running the risk of breaking up the mass too much.
But it’s just not looking transparent enough right now.
I'm just trying to suggest some shadows in the back trees.
One thing I notice is that I can - I just noticed I could try to connect
the - try to break this back line a little bit and connects the water to
everything else. Just by finding a few breaks in the shadow.
here. Put a little bit of color variety in the foreground here. Try to get that to come forward
a little bit.

Okay, so kind of getting to the end of the session here and I'm trying to figure
out what I can do to improve the painting the most.
I think the painting improved from yesterday.
I've got more separation of foreground background that's starting to work.
I think I'm going to try one more time to get some of these leaves going
here. So I think I'm going to mix up another shadow color of the
leaves and try to bring back some of that mass. Right now
it's too much sky, so it's kind of that back and forth thing so I'm going
to try to get more mass up there.
It's going to help the design a little bit.
Some of the stuff is getting a little bit too broken up, which always happens when
you continue working on a painting.
So it's the balance of breaking it up a little bit to get more variety,
but then also making sure it's unified.
So I'm going to work another 10 minutes and try to get the leaves going again
and maybe unify a few areas.
And it probably is a few areas that just stick out is kind of
wrong. So like there's a couple of - this just sticks out is too dark when I
look at it. So I'll work on a couple things and just try to wrap it
up for the day’s session.
I just want to reunify this area.
Just getting a little bit too broken up.
And I'll try to take some of the contrast out of this branch here.
It's just distracting. I’ll warm that up a bit as well.
And I might even throw in - there's another tree back there.
It's not necessary, but I could think about putting that in. Maybe I won't ,maybe
I'll finish doing these trees.
And I don't want to break up the sky too much.
I might try one last attempt at designing this a little bit better.
Maybe a few more light patches in there.
I’ll hit a couple of the lights on the leaves here and maybe even a couple
of highlights. And maybe a couple of highlights there.
Or the glare, I guess it's called really. It's a highlight or glare.
It's a reflection of the sun.
So you’ve got leaves turned in every direction and some of them are catching the sun.
I’,m just trying to pick a few of them up.
And I'll try to unify one more time this back
mass of trees, just trying to tie it together a bit more.
So I just want to make sure everything in the background has less contrast.
And the foreground. Just want to keep kind of pulling those things apart a little bit
as much as I can.
That's a little bit too uniform.
I'm going to - I'm going to put in a couple touches of a more purply
color back here. It'll be the same value,
but just kind of break up the - just break up the color of it.
Okay, I'll get kind of a purply tone here.
It helps for the vibration and variety. Maybe one last shot at the water and then
I'll wrap it up for the day.
I’m gonna just try to create a little bit more sense of this yellow patch reflecting in
the horizontal band. And maybe this darker patch reflecting in horizontal band
and see how that works.
And just one more shot at this darker band reflecting off the trees and then
I think I'll call it finished for the day.
Okay a few more touches on the background and I think that'll be it.
A few last things here. I’m gonna try to paint in a few of these trunks and kind of tie
them to the shadow bit.
And maybe a little bit of light on that trunk. A few leaves here.
And the last thing I'm going to do, this edge is just a little bit
too much the same and I just want to just liven it up
just a tiny bit. Okay,
so I think I'm going to stop there for the day. The light’s
changed a lot and I'm happy with the painting.
It's come back together as a unified whole that I can either leave as a
sketch, an idea for a bigger painting, or I can just leave it as a painting.
Some of the things that I really tried to work on today were the separating the
foreground from the background and the way that I did that is I tried to
increase the amount of contrast between the foreground and the background.
And also having more contrast within the foreground.
So for any given area has more contrast so within this shadow there's color
and value variety. Whereas in the background
there's a less color and value variety.
Another thing that I tried to work on today was keeping a unified effect
while still adding more information and keeping the masses separate while still working on them.
So trying to keep the idea that for example,
all of the background trees are part of one connected
mass and all of the ground in light one connected mass and so on.
So that was another thing I was trying to do today.
if I were to spend more time on this,
I think I would continue working back and forth into the - from the sky into the
leaves and try to develop that a little bit more.
I think I would also
try to design this shadow a little bit better.
I'm still not happy with the design of the shadow.
And starting to lose some of the unity there.
So those are two big things that I would work on if I went back
to this painting. But for today,
I'm going to leave it there and pack up.

Transcription not available.