MasteringSunsets Notes

Table of Contents
Click a page number to jump there.

Introduction 3
Sunset Physics 4
Color Lingo 6
Painters Keys 7
Photography 11
Project 1 - Photography 12
Project 2 - Value Study 13
Project 3 - Glazing 21
Project 4 - Alla Prima 25
Project 5 - The Glow 32
Project 6 - Colour Harmony 43
Project 7 - Plein Air! 58
Project 8 - Inventing Colour 70
Summary 81
2
All Content Copyright 2014 Richard Robinson Studio. All Rights Reserved. www.masteringsunsets.com
Introduction
Hi, I'm Richard Robinson. We're here in New Zealand,
which is arguably the first country in the world to see the
light of each new day, and so it's also the first to see
each new sunset. Everyone loves sunsets, but for
painters like us they're particularly beautiful because they
inspire us to paint them, so we're lucky in that way, but
also unlucky, because sunsets can be very tricky to paint.
Anyone can paint a sunset, but how can we paint them
really WELL? That's what we're going to find out in this
course. We're going to paint a number of different
sunsets, starting out quite simply and getting more
complex as we add new concepts and techniques to
your skills.
We know that the best way to learn something is to do it,
so you may want to watch the whole course right through
to start with, but I encourage you to come back here to
the beginning and work through the projects one at a
time if you want to be able to paint beautiful sunsets
yourself.
The course does not begin as you might think with
painting sunsets from life out here - that's really quite
tricky so I leave that right till the end. In my experience
you can always paint a thing much better once you
understand why that thing looks like it does, so to get the
ball rolling let's take a look at how a sunset works.
3
Sunset Physics
The sun sends us white light, comprised of all the colors
of the spectrum. When that light hits the Earths
atmosphere it gets scattered a little by the moisture in the
air. Longer wavelengths of light like orange and red don't
get scattered so much by the atmosphere, so the more
atmosphere the white light has to go through to get to
our eyes, the redder the light becomes.
Photo by Rubs.
Sometimes dust and pollution in the atmosphere increase
the effect making the light even more red. In Hawaii for
instance, the volcano there often puts out so much
volcanic smog, or vog, that you end up with very
beautiful sunsets.
You can think of our atmosphere as being like the peel of
an orange. Light coming straight down to us at midday
has the least atmosphere to get through, but light slicing
through at a low angle at sunset has about 10 times more
atmosphere to get through than at midday, increasing the
scattering of short wavelengths and leaving more red and
orange wavelengths to get to us. In actual fact the
atmosphere is really a lot thinner than we all imagine and
an orange is a poor example - an apple is much closer to
the truth. If the Earth were the size of an apple, the
atmosphere, which keeps everything here alive, would
only be the thickness of the apple skin. It gives you a
good sense of how precious our atmosphere really is.
Light from the sunset gets whiter higher up.
Photo courtesy Sonya Johnson
www.sonyajohnsonart.blogspot.com
The atmosphere gets thinner the higher up you go which
means the light gradually gets whiter up there because
theres less filtering going on. You can sometimes see the
effect of this on tall clouds and mountains as a gradation
of colour from orange to yellow to white.
Sunset, Ilya Nikolaevich Zankovsky (1843-1917)
4
Theres also occasionally a gray layer that creeps up from
the eastern horizon. This is actually the shadow of the
Earth being projected into the atmosphere! Like me, you
may find the sunset light effects in the east just as
beautiful as those in the west, so it pays to look behind
you when youre facing a beautiful sunset.
The Best of Both Worlds
The grey-blue layer in the sky is the shadow of the Earth
cast into the atmosphere.
Photo https://sites.google.com/site/thebrockeninglory/
Footsteps 2008 Oil on Canvas 122 x 91cm
by Richard Robinson
This painting of my son Luke headed down to our beach is something of a montage of two sunset lighting effects. The
foreground is light from the front (west) while the sky displays more the effects of a sunrise in the east. You can have your
cake and eat it too! Its something of a cheat but it solves the tendency for loss of foreground colour in a backlit situation.
5
Color Lingo
Im going to be talking a lot about color in this course,
and more specifically, the 3 aspects of color which are
hue, value and chroma, so let me just define those terms
for you so youll know what Im talking about.
Hue is the name we give to a color, like red, purple,
yellow - it describes where the color is in the spectrum.
Thats the easiest one.
Value is how dark or light a color is, as if you were seeing
it through a black and white camera. White is our highest
value and black is our lowest value.
Chroma is the amount of gray in a color. Its more often
called saturation and sometimes called vibrancy,
strength, brightness, purity, or power - all of which are a
little misleading, so I tend to use the terms Chroma or
Saturation. A color containing lots of gray has a low
chroma, or low saturation, and a color with no gray in it,
like yellow straight out of the tube has a high chroma, or
high saturation.
So again, we have Hue, Value and Chroma. All colors
break down into these 3 parts which makes it a lot easier
to discuss the intricacies of color usage in a painting.
Another term used a lot to describe color is
temperature.
Temperature is
how warm or cool
we perceive a color
to be. Its really just
a function of hue
because its
describing where
the color fits into the
color wheel, but its a useful term because it tells us
immediately what side of the color wheel the color is on
and since we use warm/cool contrasts a lot in painting it
can be really helpful to think in terms of color
temperature.
Reds, oranges and yellows are usually classed as warms
while greens, blues and violets are usually classed as
cools. Temperature is a relative measure because for
instance we can describe one red being cooler than
another red, which just means it leans more towards the
cool side of the color wheel than the other. Again, its
important that you understand those terms so youll know
what Im talking about next. Ok, time to get on to the fun
stuff.
6
Painters Keys
What are the things we need to watch out for when we
are painting a sunset?
Values
The first thing we get wrong is the values. Values are
particularly tricky with sunsets because sunsets often
have some very high chroma colors in them and we tend
to see high chroma colors as having higher value than
they actually have and low chroma colors as having lower
value than they actually have.
Using too much white to lighten can result in chalky color.
Glendalough, Early Morning - Acrylic 11x14 by Deb Hill
Chroma affects our value perception. We see high chroma
as lighter and low chroma as darker.
These two swatches have the same value, but see how
the high chroma appears to be lighter than the other?
This means that when we are painting a sunset we will
tend to paint the intense warm colors a little lighter than
they actually are, which will make them look a little chalky
as we add more white to raise their value. What that
means for us practically is that we need to hold off using
our lightest value (which may not necessarily be white) till
the last possible moment as in this painting by Albert
Bierstadt.
Save your white (if at all) right till the very last moment.
Deer at Sunset Oil on paper 19.5 x 14 by Albert
Bierstadt
7
Also, one might think that adding a bright red to a
sunset will make it more vibrant, but in fact red has a fairly
dark value which can often look out of place amongst the
other light values there.
Painting from our symbols tends to lead to over-
saturated, simplied color. Sunset by Roy H. Scott
http://pixdaus.com/single.php?id=42456
Gradients
Painting light is more about painting gradients than
anything else. Each little section of sky you might look at
always has at least two gradients happening within it. The
sky gets lighter towards the horizon which gives us a
vertical linear gradient and it also gets lighter and warmer
towards the sun, which gives us a second overlapping
radial gradation. Being aware of that is crucial to painting
believable skies.
Every piece of sky contains 2 gradients - 1 radial, 1 linear.
Warm and Cool
Sunsets can be a prime example of the general painting
guideline that "warm light makes cool shadows" and vice
versa. Clouds that are fairly neutral in color during the
middle of the day can display dramatic color compliments
during a sunset - bright orange where they are touched
by the sun and deep blue on their shadow sides. Yellow
and violet is the other common complimentary color
scheme in sunsets.
Australian Outback Sunset. Photo by Kerry Heffernan
Sunset clouds often display color complements - oranges
and blues, yellow and violets.
8
Chroma and Contrast
Something else we tend to get wrong is to oversaturate
our colors, making them look too gaudy. There are two
reasons for this. The first reason is that our eyes are
being tricked into thinking things are brighter and more
saturated than they actually are. How's that? Well, the
usually warm bright colors in a sunset cover a fairly small
area compared to the larger, darker and cooler sky, which
makes the light area look lighter, warmer and more highly
saturated than it really is. Conversely, that bright warm
light makes the cool darks look cooler and darker by
comparison.
Sky colors are usually not as vibrant as you might think.
In the color locators taken from this photo, the further the
color point is from the top right of each locator, the more
gray the color has in it (lower chroma). Notice how the
blue of the sky in position A is actually very nearly gray.
Notice too how much grayer and darker the orange cloud
is in position C than it is in position B. Its very easy to
make these grayer colors too vibrant in a painting, which
often tends to take away from the beauty of the sunset
rather than adding to it.
Florida Sunrise 2 8x16 Acrylic by Peni Baker.
This is a striking image, however the blue sky seems too
blue to me - it might look better a little warmer and grayer.
Painting our Symbols
The second reason we oversaturate our colors is that we
all tend to paint from our current understanding of a
subject (our symbols) than from what the subject really
looks like. Skies are one of the first things we paint as
children, using LOTS of BRIGHT BLUE!
Fireworks at the Park Watercolor by Danielle Robinson
(Age 6).
Our painting symbols show our current understanding of
a subject.
So we have that symbol in our head to overcome when
we come to paint a sky as adults. The sky is usually not
as high in chroma as we think it is, and the same goes for
sunsets. So what does all that mean practically? Just that
sunsets overall are a bit grayer than they look and with
not quite as much contrast as you'd think either, and if
we want to paint them really well we need to stop
painting our symbols and get outside and really analyze
those colors.
9
Clouds
Where would a sunset be without clouds? Sunsets seem
to be a little boring without them - they really add all the
drama to the scene. Without them a sunset is just a big
gradation of color - a big beautiful one which is very
soothing to look at, but it's not something we really get
excited about. It's when the clouds almost seem to catch
on fire that we run outside to see it and parents around
the world hold their children up for a better view.
Australian Outback Sunset. Photo by Kerry Heffernan
Making Mud
For the painter, clouds can bring a sunset to life, but they
can also very quickly get out of control and muddy all the
colors in your sky. The reason is that when you mix warm
colors with cool colors you are instantly graying or
muddying those colors.
Sonoma Coast Sunset 24x36 Oil by Jackie Lee.
Warm/cool color variations in clouds make it all too easy to
make mud.
My photoshopped version.
Those are some of the things to look out for when were
painting sunsets and youll see all those in action in the
painting projects later on, but first of all we're going need
some reference to start from, so lets look at how we
might get some good sunset photos.
10
Photography
To begin with we will paint from photographs, as many
painters do these days, but you will hopefully graduate to
plein air painting by the end of this course. By beginning
with photos it will help you appreciate the difference
between what a camera can achieve and what the
human eye can perceive. To get good photos of sunsets
you have two options - make your own photos or get
some from other sources, probably the internet.
Using photos from the internet
Every image and creative work is protected by copyright
from the moment it is created, so if we want to use
someone's image to paint from it pays to ask them first,
UNLESS it's purely for individual educational purposes
(which means you won't sell the painting) OR if you only
use a small portion of the image or transform the image
substantially in your painting so that it is quite different
from the original. Saying that, it's always nice to ask
anyway - it shows someone that you appreciate their
work and most people are excited to hear that someone
wants to paint from their photo.
You can find many sites which provide copyright-free
photos for artists to use. Here are a few of them:
http://paintmyphoto.ning.com
http://www.photos4artists.co.uk
http://www.morguefile.com
http://www.public-domain-photos.com
http://www.sxc.hu/
http://images.google.com/hosted/life
http://www.everystockphoto.com/
Get more photos at www.masteringsunsets.com/photos
Exposed for the lights.
Exposed for the darks.
HDR (High Dynamic Range).
The camera takes several exposures at once and
combines them into a single, better balanced photos.
11
Photographing a sunset
Most cameras these days are pretty clever, but sunsets
really do test them. The problem is too much contrast. If
you focus on the bright sky before you take the photo the
camera might get the colours in the sky pretty close to
what youre actually seeing, but it will tend to
underexpose the dark foreground, making it a black
silhouette. Similarly, if you focus on the foreground before
taking the shot the camera may capture the colours in the
foreground better, but the sky will be blown out, nearly
white. So if youre taking a photo of a sunset for a
painting youll want both of these photos - one exposed
for the sky and one exposed for the foreground. Usually
that means half pressing the shutter button while youre
centred on the dark foreground, moving the camera up to
see the whole scene and then pressing down fully to take
the photo. Thats exposing for the darks. Do the same for
the sky to expose for the lights.
Every camera is different so youre going to have to play
around with yours to find the optimum settings. Try using
the sunset setting on your camera if you have one too,
and make a note of what settings you used for each
photo so that when you get them back home where you
can see them properly on your computer screen youll be
able to figure out which settings give the best results.
Some cameras now come equipped with a function to
take multiple exposures at once and then combine them
into a single, better balanced photo. This is usually called
HDR (High Dynamic Range) - look for it in your camera.
The more expensive the camera, the better it will be able
to capture true to life colour, although nothing yet
compares to the human eye.
In a nutshell, get there early to plan your shots, take lots
of different exposures and settings to see which ones
work best and make sure you expose for the foreground
as well, but before you go out check you have a full
battery and plenty of room on your memory card.
Project 1 -
Photography
1. Find 5 sunset photos on the internet (or any other
source) that you might like to paint from. Save them to
your computer. (Dont spend all day!)
2. Shoot your own sunset photos, taking note of the
settings and procedure you used for each photo so that
when you get back home you can figure out what the
best method is for your camera. Also take note of the
difference between what the camera sees and what your
eyes see. Thats important!
3. Make a new folder on your computer called Sunset
Photos and put all your photos in there for use in the
projects which are coming up next.
Note: For more student work and to upload your
own sunset paintings visit:
www.masteringsunsets.com/photos
12
Project 2 - Value Study
Value Study 10x8 Oil on Board by Richard Robinson
Value Study
Oh, boring! Well, remember I said that value is the first thing we get wrong? The object of this project is to help you with
that, and it will also give you a chance to focus on your brushwork and edges before things get trickier. So get your paints
out and here's what we're going to do - paint a simple sunset sky using just black and white. Sounds pretty easy and for
some of you it might be a little bit too easy, but I find there's always something to be learned when we get our paints out.
13
*See Figure 1 for a larger printable version.
Materials
! 10x8" Wood Panel primed for oil or acrylic in white.
3 Coats of Acrylic Primer, plus 1 coat on the rest to
prevent moisture absorption. I use MDF (Medium Density
Fiberboard) but you can use Masonite or whatever you
have available. You'll find that canvas is easier to hide
brushstrokes on if you prefer that, but I often prefer the
honesty of a wooden panel which shows all your
brushwork. You could use a toned surface to begin with,
but for sunsets I prefer white which allows the colors to
be shown at their highest chroma more easily, which is
not important with this black and white study, but will be
a factor in the following paintings.
! Ultramarine Blue, Burnt Sienna, Titanium White.
! Flat bristle brush #8. (Robert Simmons Signet).
! Palette knife.
! Painting Medium. (Chroma Archival Oils Lean Medium
or similar e.g. Liquin, M. Grahams Walnut Oil Painting
Medium)
Note: View all materials used in the Mastering Sunsets
course in your discounted online shopping list here:
www.masteringsunsets.com/materials
! Resource photo or painting from life. Use your own
photo or Figure 1.
Get more at www.masteringsunsets.com/photos
Extra Materials for Acrylic Painters
Painters using acrylics can do all the same techniques
presented in these projects, but the trick for them is to
keep their paints wet on the palette and on the painting
itself, which just means using one or all of three things to
help with that - a stay-wet-palette, a water spray bottle to
spray the palette and the painting every few minutes, and
a retarder medium to slow the drying time of the paint.
14
STEP 1. Define your value range
Mix the darkest dark and the lightest light for sky & land.
TIP: Warm vs Cool
The nice thing about using Ultramarine Blue & Burnt
Sienna instead of just black is that you can make it
warmer or cooler by adding more of the Blue or more of
the Burnt Sienna. My idea is to make it a little bit cooler in
the darks and a little bit warmer in the lights.
TIP: Mix Small Piles First
What I tend to do is mix a small pile first to get the color
right and once I know the mixture I'll mix a larger pile and
join that together with the first one.
STEP 2. Mix Intermediate Values: 3 values in between
lightest and darkest for the sky. Mix larger piles than you
think you'll need.
STEP 3. Block in your darkest darks
Use some medium - enough so that the canvas does not
show through.
STEP 4. Block in the next lightest value.
Use a little less medium. I prefer not to blend my strokes
and to make my brushwork as random as possible - not
paint strips like a house painter. Don't get fiddly! Keep
painting large shapes and pay attention to their edges -
are they sharp or are they soft?
STEP 5. Paint the remaining values
Keep moving through the values towards the sun, using
less medium with each lighter value so that the paint gets
thicker.
15
TIP: Acrylic Painters
Remember to keep spraying your palette and painting
every few minutes to make sure that those paints don't
dry. Otherwise you won't be able to make these beautiful
soft edges.
TIP: Two Gradients Combined
Vertical Atmospheric + Radial Sun Glow.
Whenever we're painting a sky or especially a sunset it's
good to remember there's a vertical gradient as the sky
gets lighter towards the horizon but around the sun
there's also a radial gradient. These two gradients
combine in the one picture, so that each little piece of sky
has two gradients happening in it at the same time; the
radial and the linear (the vertical).
Every piece of sky contains 2 gradients - 1 radial, 1 linear.
TIP: Keep Your Brush Clean!
There is no surer way to get muddy color on your painting
than to NOT clean your brush in between different paint
mixtures.
STEP 6: Block in the Landscape
Make it warmer and very slightly lighter as it gets closer to
the sun because that sun glow is actually affecting the
landscape as well.
STEP 7. Lights to Darks
Reclaim lost detail and adjust edges. When you reach the
sun, work back outwards to your darkest value, making
sure you keep your brush clean in between values. Apply
the light accent of the sun (White with a speck of Burnt
Sienna) with a palette knife to make it really thick and
textured.
I'm often tempted to stop painting after I've gone from
darks to lights, but there's a lot of detail that gets painted
over in that first run through, as you can see here...
This is at the end of the dark to light stage, and here's the
finished painting after going back from light to dark...
You can see the painting looks more finished, but it's very
easy to overdo it, to forget about the separate areas of
value and end up introducing to much light into the darks,
which makes the painting look pasty, so that's something
to watch out for.
16
STEP 8. Evaluate (Coffee/Tea Time!)
Take a break and enjoy your little sunset painting! Think
about what you learned by doing this and if you're really
going for a gold star, make a list of the things you
learned. Think about stuff like contrast, brushwork, light
effects, edges, values - all that sort of arty stuff and make
a note in your note book, or below.
Light Effects
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
Values
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
Contrast
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
Brushwork
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
Edges
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
Other
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
_________________________________________________
17
Figure 1. Australian Outback Sunset. Photograph by Kerry Heffernan
18
Figure 2. Australian Outback Sunset. Photograph by Kerry Heffernan
19
Student Examples for Project 2
Sunset in Value
9x12" Oil on canvas board
by Nora Mackin
Subtle value work Nora. Youve
made this more interesting than the
photo by simplifying the shapes and
tilting the horizon. Nicely done.
Sunset Gray
40x50cm Oil on Canvas
by Elena Sokolova
A good first try Elena. The overall
value scheme is good but if you had
joined together most of the darker
values in the sky into a larger mass
the cloud forms would be easier for
the viewer to understand. See
Noras version above.
Note: For more student work and to upload your own sunset paintings visit:
20
Project 3 - Glazing
Value Study - Glazed 10x8 Oil on Board by Richard Robinson
Transparent vs Opaque
Some paint colors are transparent by nature, some are
semi-transparent and some are opaque. The label on
the tube will tell you which is which. If you are wanting
to achieve the most luminous effect possible with your
paints you'll need to use transparent colors in thin
glazes over white. These thin transparent layers of paint
behave like stained glass windows, allowing some of the
light through the paint layer to bounce off the white
ground, back through the color again to our eyes.
TIP: If a finished sunset painting just lacks a little punch in
the highlights you can paint over that area with white, let it
dry completely and then glaze over top of that with a
transparent color - something like Indian Yellow,
Transparent Yellow, Transparent Orange - those are colors
in the Chroma Archival Oils range, but just check your own
tubes of color to see what you've got. If it's not
transparent or even semi transparent you can still use it in
a thin glaze (using lots of painting medium) but it won't be
quite as vibrant as a transparent color.
21
Let's try glazing over our first value study, just to see
what happens. I've let mine dry for a few days first - it
wasn't very thick paint. Usually with oils you'd want to
wait about 7 weeks to avoid cracking, but this is just a
study so I'm not too worried about that, plus these
Archival Oils from Chroma actually stay permanently
flexible so you don't need to worry about cracking like
with normal oils.
Materials
! Your previous Value Study painting, dried.
! Ultramarine Blue, Alizarine Crimson, Cadmium
Red Light, Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Yellow
Light.
! Soft synthetic or sable hair brush, size 8 or
similar, any shape.
! Painting Medium. (Chroma Archival Oils Fat
Medium or similar e.g. Liquin, M. Grahams Walnut
Oil)
Note: View all materials used in the Mastering
Sunsets course in your discounted online shopping
list here:
1. Make a very thin mixture of yellow and painting
medium on your palette.
2. Brush the yellow over the light areas of your paint with a
fine haired brush. Wipe back the edges if necessary.
3. Wait for that layer to dry (give it a day or two until its not
sticky) and then do the same with orange, but moving
further away from the sun. Wipe back the edges if
necessary. If youre too impatient to let this yellow dry first
(like me) just go ahead and try to make smooth transitions
between the yellow and orange. You can always brush the
transition area very lightly with a soft sable brush to
remove any brush strokes.
Glazing several different colours works best when they are
applied separately and allowed to dry properly because
that way the paint mixes optically rather than chemically.
Chemical (physical) mixing is more prone to creating
muddy mixtures than glazing is.
To learn about the classical masters technique of building
a painting with seven individual layers click here.
22
Here are a few great artists who have used the glazing technique to achieve beautiful glowing sunsets...
Sunset over the River by Albert Bierstadt
23
A Sunset Bay of New York by Sanford Robinson Gifford
Sunset by Joseph Mallord William Turner
24
Project 4 - Alla Prima
Colour Study 10x8 Oil on Canvas by Richard Robinson
Glazing is definitely a great way to get your colors
glowing, but for myself I prefer to not to have to wait that
long for the paint to dry so I really love the immediacy of
the Alla Prima technique, translated roughly from Italian
as 'at once', otherwise known as wet in wet, technique.
What I will do is a little bit of glazing on top of this alla
prima painting ready at the end of the painting after its
dry so well get to see how the combination of the two
techniques works.
You can see at a glance that there are many differences
between the colours in the painting and the colours in the
photo.
25
For instance I could have made the top of the sky more
purple-grey. As far as Im concerned it doesnt matter
how close I get to the photo, so long as the painting
stands by itself as a good painting. If I become a slave to
the photo it cuts down on my enjoyment, and if Im not
enjoying it I stop painting, and then I certainly wont get
any better, so I have to make sure Im painting with
enough freedom that I continue to enjoy the process,
which means theres always this fine balancing act
between copying and painting.
As things move closer to the sun they take on more of the
colour of the light. In this case the light is yellow, so
everything gets lighter and more yellow closer to the sun.
Thats the general idea but the tricky thing is figuring out
how to make for instance, a blue cloud, turn gradually
into yellow. What helps me do this is thinking of the
colour wheel. How is that colour going to get from here to
there? Weve got a few options. It could go around to the
right, or to the left, or straight through the middle. Now
just looking at the photo it makes sense to me that blue is
going to go through purple, red and orange in this
painting to get to yellow.
Materials
! 10x8" Canvas Panel or similar
! Ultramarine Blue, Magenta, Cadmium Red Light,
Cadmium Orange, Cadmium Yellow Light, Titanium
White.
! Bristle gesso brush 1.5
(Blick Economy White Bristle Gesso Brush)
! Flat synthetic wash brush 1
(Robert Simmons Expression Flat Wash Glaze)
! Filbert synthetic brush size 4
(Robert Simmons Titanium Filbert Long Handle #4)
! Liner brush size 2
(Golden Natural Liner #2)
! Painting Medium. (Chroma Archival Oils Lean Medium
or similar e.g. Liquin, M. Grahams Walnut Oil)
Resource photo or painting from life. Use your own photo
or Figure 1.
Get more at www.masteringsunsets.com/photos
a retarder medium to slow the drying time of the paint. It
also pays to mix twice as much paint as you think you will
need.
26
Student Examples for Projects 3 & 4
"Almost Night" 8x10"
Oil on Canvas
by Roberta Murray
Great glowing effect. Interesting
details in the landscape. The three
main clouds share a similar size,
shape and spacing which makes
them look less natural.

"Project 3" 7x7"
Acrylic Glazing
by Sharon Repple
Dynamic design! Achieving a good
glowing effect with punchy colour.

27
"Fire in the Sky" 8x10"
Oil on Board
by Roena King
Nice to see so much palette knife
work creating a great shimmering
paint texture. Beautiful organic cloud
shapes. I like how the sun glow is
eating away the landscape.
The light grey swish in the middle of
the dark cloud seems out of place.
"Sunset Part 3" 10x12"
Oil on Board
by Dorothy Debney
Good glowing effect. Starting to
form interesting cloud shapes
although it looks like you're not quite
sure yet how to transition a cloud
from the light side to the dark side. If
a cloud's light side is orange it's
going to get slightly redder as it
turns over to become more purple or
blue on the shadow side. That's a
gross generalisation but the point is
that there is often a soft transition
between the light side and the dark
side of a thick cloud.

28
"Algow in the East" 9x12" Oil on
Canvas by Sharon Casavant
A good glowing effect and good
gradations of colour. The glowing
effect in the land would have been
more pronounced if you had gone
more orange instead of green or
grey with those areas close to the
sun. Similarly the grey cloud
obscuring the sun may have looked
more dazzling painted a light warm
rather than a cool. The strong blue
and red on the right side might be
more realistic greyed down a little.

"Dance of Colors" 5x5" Oil on
Canvas by Pandalana Williams
It's great that you've taken this to
abstraction Pandalana. If that was
your intention you succeeded
beautifully, especially seeing that
your usual work leans more to
descriptive realism. Very exciting!

29
"Sunset Over Castle Park "
22x24" Acrylic on Board
by Pauline Le Merle
Love the composition Pauline and all
the interest in the sky which looks
quite abstract - a beautiful
counterpoint to the crisp realism in
the landscape. I'd like to see you
paint this alla prima as well to see
what the difference would be.

"Sunset Alla Prima"
40x50cm Oil on Canvas
by Elena Sokolova
Very powerful colours there Elena
and some beautiful shapes in the
clouds which I know is not easy to
achieve what with everything else
you need to think about while
painting a sunset like this. From a
distance this works extremely well.
Up close it looks a like you could
have spent had a little more care with
some of your brushwork.

30
"Glazed Sunset"
10x13" Acrylics
by Silvana M Albano
Fantastic cloud shapes Silvana with
a great sense of perspective. Good
work.
31
Project 5 - The Glow
Sunset Beach 16x16 Oil on Canvas
The previous project introduced us to the colours and the forms of a sunset. Now it's time to take those concepts a little
further in a larger painting. I want to look a bit closer at the glowing effect of a sunset. The way objects close to the sun
are infused with the warm light, also called a color corona. I also want us to have a look at how to add even more colour
into the sunset foreground and see how that contrasts with what the camera does. As well, I want to show you how we
can invent a scene from various resources and also how the larger canvas gives us more options for exciting brushwork.
Thats all going to happen in this painting.
32
Materials
! 16 x16" Canvas primed for oil or acrylic.
! Phthalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Primary Magenta,
Pyrrole, Red Light, Permanent Orange, Primary Yellow,
Titanium White.
! Flat bristle brush 1.
(Blick Economy White Bristle Gesso Brush).
! Liner brush #2.
(Golden Natural Liner #2 Short Handle)
! Filbert Synthetic #6.
(Robert Simmons Titanium Filbert #6 Long Handle)
! Flat Synthetic Wash brush 1.
(Art Spectrum Series 700F Golden Taklon #10
or Robert Simmons Short Handle Sapphire Flat Wash 1)
! Painting Medium: Walnut Oil
need.
Video Transcript
This painting is a 16 inch square where the first one was
a 10x8 inch, so that gives you some indication of the
scale. This scene doesn't actually exist because the sun
never sets in this position. But I wanted to use this photo
of my beach, Ruakaka Beach, as the foreground for a
sunset painting. So how did I get this painting out of this
photo?
Photo: Sunset in my street
Pataua Oil on Canvas 152 x 51cm by Richard Robinson
Photo: Ruakaka Beach
33
Well I could have just invented it all but, normally, it
doesn't turn out very good if you do that. In fact, most
great studio painters I know put as much time in
gathering resources and making preparatory sketches in
paintings as they do in making the final painting.
So, I needed some reference for a sunset sky. I had this
old photo I had taken just across the street from my
house and also found this photo online and I was looking
at the way I dealt with this sunset in an earlier painting of
mine. (Pataua).
I really liked the way the light was coming through the
dune grasses in the foreground. This little plein air
painting I had done on the spot also helped. So having all
those resources in front of me, I sat down and did some
sketches about what I thought I would like to see in this
painting.
So I chose the best of those and looked again at my
resources and painted these two 4.5 inch square studies.
The one on the left was a little too vibrant for what I
wanted and so I basically just grayed all the colors except
for the yellow colors right around the sun in order to
achieve the second painting on the right. So I was pretty
happy with that and you can see it is not to dissimilar
from the final painting. It took me about a day and a half
to finish that whole design process. So don't be in a hurry
to jump into your big studio painting. Just allow yourself
the creative space and time to build your painting one
idea at a time. and just enjoy. You will find plenty of
resources in the lesson notes to work from but I do
encourage you to use your own material. For the moment
let's just see how I painted this one.
16 X 16 primed canvas, Stretched with masking tape,
Toned with Beige Acrylic Gesso.
There is my canvas all stretched and toned. I've given it a
day to dry. And there is my palette of colours. And all my
brushes. Now you can see on the left there thatI am using
black and white reference photos. That is so I don't
become a slave to the colour in the photos. I am going to
start off here by making two piles of gray. One will be cool
and one will be warm. I'll use these colours to subdue
some of the brighter colours when I need to. A cooler mix
is made from mainly white, then blue, lesser red; then a
tiny bit of yellow.
I am aiming for a mid-value half way between black and
white. Now, the warm gray is made with red, blue, yellow
and white but with much less blue in it. You can see
these grays very obviously cool and warm. They could
have been much closer to neutral gray. If you do make
them more neutral you may end up with a slightly more
neutral gray painting in the end. It all depends on how
much you use these pre-mixed grays in your colour
mixtures.
34
Premixed grays - cool and warm.
I am going to try a technique which has been used by
many artists down through the centuries. It is called
"painting into the couch". It has absolutely nothing to do
with the couch. It's coating the canvas with a very thin
layer of painting medium. In this case, white. My painting
medium is walnut oil. So I am going to add a bit of that to
my Titanium white, mix it all together with a palette knife
and spread it very, very thinly onto the canvas, where I
am going to avoid putting it on at the bottom right corner
of the painting where the darker land is going to go. It is
very, very thin though, it is a very light scumble. If you put
it on thick, I am pretty sure it will ruin your painting. The
idea is that it helps the paint flow a little better on to the
canvas and that it helps with the lighter atmospheric
properties of the sky.
So the first step, as with the previous project, is to start
painting that sun glow. Now where do I want to put that?
I could put it anywhere. I am going to start with the rule of
thirds, so I am going to put it one third in from the right
and one third up from the bottom.
Starting with the glowing area.
Right from the start, I am thinking of the glowing area
around the sun as an oval shape, rather than a circular
shape, I am adding a little bit of orange to that yellow
mixture and working out a little bit further from the sun.
Now using more orange I can start to indicate some of
the mountains in the distance there that would be lit up
by a sunset if it did occur in that area. Now I can add a
little bit of red as it gets further away from the sun.
Im think of an oval glowing shape as I go.
So, in general all the colours in the painting get cooler as
they get further from the sun. In my palette of colours
happens to be laid out in the same order, from warm to
cool. Just like the keys on the piano, if they are all in the
right order, it is a lot easier to play. So more white added
to that orangey mix and moving out once again up into
the sky. All the paint has gone on pretty thin at this stage
and we can put on the more impasto thick paint after the
initial block-in has been done and the whole canvas is
covered with the major colors. Very thin coat of orange
and red going on here to start establishing the glow in the
foreground. I've still got that oval shape in mind.
The warm gray that I mixed just happens to work very
well as the next colour in the sky. So I start using that to
start sketching in some of the clouds. How do I know
what cloud shapes to paint? Well I am always trying to
think of clouds as three dimensional objects rather than
flat paper cut-outs. So as the clouds get closer to us and
we look more up into the sky and we are seeing more of
the base of the cloud and less of the side of the cloud.
Colour wise the bases of the clouds move from warm to
cool as they move away from the sun. The sides of the
35
clouds do that as well but the sides of the clouds are a
little bit cooler than the bases they are on. That is
because the bases of the clouds are being lit directly by
the sun.
Cloud shapes and colours alter with linear perspective and
atmospheric perspective.
Of course the sky gets cooler away from the sun as well
and up in this area I am going to lay down very thin pink ,
almost a wash, to start with before I go over it with blue
so this area gets infused a little bit with the warmth of the
sun as well. After a few attempts I got the blue mixed
from mostly white and a tiny , tiny touch of pthalo blue.
because it goes a long way, that colour, and then tiny
additions of magenta, red and yellow, just to gray it down
a little bit. It's about the same value as the clouds, just a
little bit lighter at the moment, but you can see by the
finished painting at the bottom left there that, in the end, I
darkened the clouds a little and the sky is a little lighter by
comparison. While I am working with blue I just added a
little bit of blue and yellow to that to make it a little slightly
darker and block in the ocean, there. The cool gray which
I mixed before which is pretty blue, really, which is a good
colour for darkening the clouds at the top of the painting
here. Soften that edge right off just mixing it into the sky
colour. I don't want any hard edges leading off into a
corner.
The block-in continues, covering the canvas.
As we get down to the middle of the clouds, here, I am,
adding more of the warm gray to the cool gray. At this
point, I am using a Robert Simmons, number 4, synthetic
filbert brush. Now, with some red and blue and a little
yellow and white, I am mixing a cool dark to block in the
foreground with. Just warming and lightening that a little
with orange as it gets closer to the sun. I thought it might
be nice to have thee hills a little darker, maybe, some rain
over the side to help balance out all that sun on the right.
Slightly cooler gray for the sand, which is all in shadow.
This will be part of the rain graying down the colour of the
ocean here. A blue, red and orange for a darker dark
here. Softening that edge off with a paper towel. That is
the block-in finished. Before I move on to the next part, I
will get my soft nylon brush here and soften off some of
the edges. Here comes the rain.
Soften some edges.
So now I am going to start using a thicker paint with little
to no painting medium in it. I have mixed up a red, white
and a little bit of orange to get that pinky colour here. And
brushing it on very lightly. This is another synthetic brush.
36
It is one of my favorite brushes and can give a nice variety
of strokes, from very fat to very thin. (Art Spectrum Series
700F Golden Taklon #10) Adding a bit stronger yellow
orange in there now. And working it up into the clouds a
little bit as well. And adding the sun back in. So basically I
am going over a lot of the lights in the clouds with a much
thicker paint and adding a few more details as I do it.
Adding some more pink , a bit more vibrancy to the sky, a
little more white to the shadow sides of the clouds. Using
the same colour for the hills in the distance. And starting
to play with the idea of putting some detail further away
there. Using a very light cool gray to paint what is called
"rim lightening" at the top of the clouds here.
Adding Rim Lighting
Remember that higher up in the atmosphere there is less
air and moisture and dust for the sun's light to travel
through, so the light up there is generally, whiter. Using a
nice long brush to put this on, but if I often find, if you
want to get thicker impasto highlights, it is better to use a
palette knife. The nice thing about a palette knife is, well,
it is a little bit easier to make a random organic texture
with it. But if you use a combination of the palette knife
and the brush, you've got the best of both worlds.
Using a palette knife for interesting texture.
I don't know if you have seen me paint with an old credit
card before. I got tired of dragging my knuckles through
the paint, so I stuck it onto the end of an old brush.
Thanks to Stuart Gourlay for the idea. It is good for
smooshing paint around and giving it more textural
interest. Or if you haven't got one of those, a big painting
knife will do much the same thing.
Painting with a credit card brush.
If you add some small details into the clouds with a little
brush, it helps to give the whole scene scale. Just like
adding a little person in a scene, it helps to give it scale.
Paint back in with the sky colour to help define those
shapes some more. Very easy to get too finicky with a
small brush. The nice thing about this brush is you can
apply it more heavily for a broader stroke. Really put the
paint on very thickly and scoop it up with the brush and
lay it down gently onto the canvas. If that is not enough
grab the palette knife and trowel it on. If your cloud forms
get too dense it is easy enough to put little sky holes into
them. Here is where the wet sand is reflecting some of
the orangey colour in the sky there. A few vertical strokes
37
help to reinforce the idea that it is a reflection. Just
playing with the colour of the sand in the shadow here,
again, making it a little bit cooler. I often find that when I
cannot tell what the colour should be, it is probably closer
to a neutral gray, so I end up, a lot of the time, mixing a
cool gray over a warm gray, or vice-versa, and that often
ends up working well. High-lighting the tops of the Dune
grasses in the distance, there.
Highlighting dune grasses with a large bristle brush and
loads of paint.
And again, as you get closer to the sun, all the colour
becomes much more like the sun colour,so, I am being
very careful to keep all of the colours in this area very
similar. This foreground actually turned out being a lot
harder than I expected it to be,and I spent quiet a long
time working back and forth from the lights to the darks
trying to create interesting form without over-simplifying
things. I guess there is a lot going on in this small area so
it is quiet a tricky part of the painting. Here, I am using a
thick bristle brush to try and simulate the texture of the
grasses in the foreground. If an area starts to look to
regular and predictable , then, hitting it with a palette
knife is often a good cure for that.
At this part of the painting, I wasn't really happy with the
foreground and I had a look at my old Pataua painting. I
thought, "That looks nicer, with the warmer foreground."
So I started pushing the colours in the foreground in that
direction. If you scrape an edge of paint on the palette
knife, you can lay it off really thinly to create very crisp
lines in the distance. Then dragging the paint off the flat
face of the blade, creates more of a textured look.
This is a mix of ultramarine blue, orange and a little bit of
red to create this very warm, greenish-brown colour for
the foreground grasses. If you do mainly up-wards
strokes it gives you a very soft finish to the top of the
grass. Just softening and cooling this area off again. I
really want this to be a very atmospheric, mysterious part
of the painting.
As I keep trying to get the foreground right here, I do
three things to help me. I step back 10 to 15 feet in the
studio to see how it reads from back there. I also step out
and have a cuppa and come back after five minutes and
register my first impression in the first couple of seconds I
see it. I also have a look at it in a mirror. That is a very,
very good way to see if the painting or small area of the
painting is reading correctly.
Using a fine sable watercolour brush to add some details.
Time for a couple of little seagulls on the beach. Very dark
gray for the dark wings and their little reflections and a
very light warm for their light sides.
With a clean palette knife I'm just smooshing the paint to
give that edge a little more interest. A soft edge in the
corner so your eye doesn't get taken out there. And a
soft edge way down the beach to help that recede into
distance. The continuing saga of the foreground here, just
trying to get it to read right. And again, I am looking at my
older painting, of Pataua to see how I solved that
particular problem. Just adding some juicy highlights to
the bottom of the clouds now and remembering that they
get cooler as they get further from the sun. So they go
from yellow through orange through to pink.
In the photo and in the original sketches and colour
studies, I had that big lamp post in the foreground here,
but in the end I couldn't bring myself to put it in. It just
seemed to intrusive, so I just put in this little fence post
instead with the dark gray and a light highlight.
38
Ive replaced the lamp post with a less intrusive fence post.
Dont be afraid to change from your original design - large
paintings often have different needs than small paintings.
Now, with some pthalo, some magenta and a bit of white,
mixing up a slightly more vibrant purple to add to the
clouds as they get higher up and take more of the dark
blue of the sky on and get some quite beautiful vibrant
colours up there. I guess I could have made the cloud
over the hill here a blue but I thought it would be more
interesting and balance the sun up a little if it were pink. A
little seagull in the sky here, using a very fine brush for
that and signing it. The real fun part is taking the tape off.
The hard part is knowing when to stop. I just keep going
until I can't think of anything that would make it better.
Actually, one thing I did do after I stopped filming was
add a couple more darks to the foreground.
The nished painting.
Viewing it in grayscale allows us to appreciate the
importance of colour in this painting.
So, there is the finished painting. It is all about the colour.
I guess most sunset paintings are all about the colour.
And you can really tell that when you take the colour out
and you can see it really doesn't look that appealing. You
can put the colour back in and it's like the sun is coming
out. Beautiful! Okay, now it's time for you to get your
paints out and give it a go. HAPPY PAINTING!
39
"Sun Sinking, Dying Light, Winter"
30x30cm Oil on Board
by Julie Cross
A lovely painting Julie and it generated a lot of
helpful suggestions from other members on the site
which is great to see. I'll just repeat what Michael
Severin said in that the hard line of the river bank
could be softened by adding the reflection of the
bank into the water which I thought was a good
idea. I took the liberty of photoshopping your
painting a little to see what that would look like and
I also gradated the reflection of the sky in the water
and added a slightly brighter colour corona around
the sun and warmed and lightened the landscape in
front of the sun to aid with the glowing effect. I also
put the foreground into shadow which I feel makes
the light reflection in the water more intense and
provides a stronger base for the overall design.
The Original Fiddled in Photoshop
40
"Dors Workshop 26"
16x16"
Pastel by Dorian Aronson
Beautiful colours Dorian and a soft
edged ethereal feeling to the whole
painting. Great stuff!
"A Captive Audience"
12x16" Oil on Canvas
by Michael J Severin
Great work Michael as always.
Fantastic glowing effect and a solid
composition. I like the depth of
colour you have in the top blue
clouds and I've made a note to head
in that direction with mine with
glazing at the end of the month.
41
"Twilight Serenade" 11x14"
Oil on Panel by Karen Meredith
Really interesting work Karen (and I do
mean that in a good way). Such a
beautiful arrangement of colour -
especially all the broken colour in the
ocean, it inspired me to have a look
through your website
www.karenmeredithart.com and I'm
glad I did - love your work! My only
reservation with this one is the colour
and forms in the cloud arch over the
sun because they seem to me to have
gotten just a little muddied and not
thoroughly finished unlike the rest of
the work although that's to be expect
in an intricate warm/cool light/dark
area like that on a small painting. Love how you've used large to small brushwork in the water and softening in the
foreground as well to give us some perspective. Beautiful work! Thank you.
"Passages" 24 x 26"
Oil by Luba Robinson
That's quite some glowing sky you've
got there! Very subtly painted colour
transition from warms to cools. The
intricacy and dark sharpness of the
foreground is a nice counterpoint to
the soft sky. It's easy to see all the
work and thought that's gone into this
- great to see. My one reservation
would be that I would want slightly
thinner, flatter bottomed clouds closer
to the horizon to help with the linear
perspective, and because the roof of
the building is well above the horizon we should be able to see the underside
as a very thin elliptical shape - that's why it's currently looking a little flat.
Oh and you know how all the books say don't place things smack bang in the middle of
your canvas vertically or horizontally? Well rules are made to be broken, right? Centering
the sun as you have and having the sky fairly symmetrical is giving this piece a balance and
radiance that reminds me of a meditation mandala. In fact I took the liberty of taking the
idea further in Photoshop.
42
Project 6 - Colour Harmony
Rogue Wave 12x12 Oil on Canvas
A colourful sunset tempts the artist like nothing else to cover the canvas in all the vibrant colours they can get their hands
on. It's very hard to resist all that colour, and that's why amongst artists at least, sunset paintings have something of bad
reputation for being too gaudy and commercial. Beauty, as always, is in the eye of the beholder. Some people simply
prefer lots of vibrant colours together in a painting, whereas some prefer a slightly more subdued colour scheme. I
personally find that a painting containing a good amount of fairly gray colour makes a beautiful stage for more vibrant
colours to work upon. What's a good way to achieve that in a sunset painting? Sunsets themselves give us a big clue -
they create strong colour complements. Yellow and violet for instance. If we were to use a complementary colour scheme
like that in a sunset painting it would make it easier for us in a number of ways:
43
1. All colour harmonies are based on excluding some part of the colour wheel (just as playing every note on a piano at
once doesn't produce a nice sound, so can too many colours produce a visual cacophony). A two colour complementary
scheme excludes much of the colour wheel so it makes a simple colour harmony easily achievable.
2. Mixing complements together often creates a beautiful chromatic (colourful) gray, which is perfect for use within that
same complementary scheme.
3. Simplifying our palette makes colour choices much easier and greatly reduces the chance of muddy colour, which is
just a grayed colour in the wrong place in a painting.
In the demo video we look at using the Gamut Mask tool to help us develop a simple colour scheme and then we mix
colour strings on our palette to use that colour scheme in the painting. We also look at the special effects created when
light and water interact and what special brushwork techniques we can use in a scene like this.
Feel free to follow me step by step in painting the same scene or use the photos below or your own resources to design a
piece that is more your own. You can paint this any size or shape you like using any medium. Happy painting!
Materials
! The Gamut Mask Tool (click here).
! 12 x12" Canvas primed for oil or acrylic.
! Ultramarine Blue, Pyrrole Red Light (or Cadmium Red),
Magenta (or Alizarine Crimson), Yellow Ochre, Bright
Orange, Primary Yellow (or Cadmium Yellow Light or
Lemon Yellow), Titanium White.
! Liner brush #2.
itself, which just means using one or all of three things
to help with that - a stay-wet-palette, a water spray
bottle to spray the palette and the painting every few
minutes, and a retarder medium to slow the drying time
of the paint. It also pays to mix twice as much paint as
you think you will need.
44
http://www.morguele.com/archive/display/616959
Photo by Li Newton http://paintmyphoto.ning.com/photo/crashing-waves
45
Ivan Aivazovsky, "The Ninth Wave", 1850
The Tintagel Coast, Cornwall, England, circa 1886-1888
William Trost Richards (American, 18331905)
46
Rocky Surf Off Rhode Island Oil on Canvas -c1899 46 x 86.5 cm
William Trost Richards (1833-1905)
Garrapata, California, USA
47
Video Transcript
In this project we're going to be looking at colour
harmony and to do that we're going to be using the
Gamut Mask Tool. That's going to lead us to colour
strings and while we're actually painting the painting
we're going to be looking at how light and water interact
and what special effects that creates and of course going
to be also looking at what sort of brush work we can use
to enhance a scene like this one.
A colourful sunset tempts the artist like nothing else to
cover the canvas in all the vibrant colours they can get
their hands on. It's very hard to resist all that colour,
that's why amongst artists at least,sunset paintings have
something of a bad reputation for being too gaudy and
commercial.
Beauty, as always, is in the eye of the beholder. Some
people simply prefer a lot of vibrant colours together in
their painting. Whereas some prefer a slightly more
subdued colour scheme. I personally find that a painting
that contains a good amount of fairly grey colour makes a
beautiful stage for more vibrant colours to work upon.
So what's a good way to achieve that in a sunset
painting? Well, sunsets themselves give us a big clue,
they create strong colour compliments. Yellow and violet
for instance. If we were to use a complimentary colour
scheme like that in a sunset painting it would make it a lot
easier to create a simple colour harmony.
Sunsets suggest complementary colour schemes
What else could we use? Blue and orange. Red and
Green. Maybe yellow-orange and blue-violet. Let's try a
few of those, but first of all we need a subject to try the
colour out on. I chose Garrapata for this because at the
end of my painting session there, the sun was setting and
it turned out to have some really spectacular colour in it,
but I didn't get to capture that in the painting, because of
course I had started three hours earlier.
So I only had my memory and few photos to go from. I
was painting right on the waters edge there and I was
little bit worried because my Californian friend had told
me all about the rogue waves that keep taking artists out
to sea there and so I was a bit worried and so I thought it
only fitting that I should paint a rogue wave in this place
with the sun setting behind it.
Thumbnail sketches help develop ideas.
Value studies help to further develop the design.
(5x5)
48
So I did some thumbnail sketches, working on some
design ideas. Then did a small value study, working out
some of the details. Then I used the Gamut Mask Tool to
map out two different complimentary colour schemes.
The first one was blue-violet and yellow-orange. The
second one was blue-green and red-orange. I knew I
wanted a moderately vibrant look to the finished painting
so I reduced the chroma by about a third. That adds
more grey into the colour scheme.
So how do I get that colour scheme onto my palette?
Well I start with the easiest colour. The grey-yellow-
orange at the top looks exactly like yellow ochre. So I just
put that down. For the blue-violet I use ultramarine blue,
little bit of pyrrole red and a little bit of magenta. To grey it
down I just add a little bit of yellow ochre.
Using the gamut mask tool to create colour strings.
Now starting from there I'm going to mix what's called a
colour string of five values. So I've just added white to
that to get a lighter value and then add white again to get
the next step, which should be something like a mid grey
in value and then I do that twice more so that I end up
with five steps from nearly black to nearly white.
Now I need to do the same thing with yellow ochre so
that I end up with two colour strings of equal value. But
there's a problem because pure yellow ochre is a mid
value, rather than a dark value, so I can't start with the
yellow ochre. So I move the yellow ochre to the mid value
range, where it belongs and I add a little bit of the dark
blue-violet and a little bit of red and a little bit of
ultramarine blue, in order to darken that yellow ochre
down.
Now I added the red because I didn't want the colour to
go to grey as it moved into the dark. Now I do the same
again but this time I add more dark blue-violet and more
red to make this colour darker still, so it's the same value
as the dark blue-violet. And then I clean off that palette,
and just add white to the yellow ochre and white again to
get my last two lighter values.
So next using just those colours and white, I did a small
five and a half inch square colour study based on the
sketches I had done previously. Now I was pretty happy
with that already, but for interest sake I mixed up a whole
other set of colour strings based on red-orange, blue-
green and this is the little colour study that came from
that.
I decided from there just to go with the yellow-orange,
blue-violet colour scheme. But I encourage you to do
more than two colour studies if you find you have the
patience to do that. Because you'll learn more about
colour and value each time you try a different colour
scheme, and especially how easy it is to grey down a
colour by adding its compliment. The next step is taking
that little colour study through to a full blown painting,
and that's what I'll take you through step by step next.
So I've got my canvas stretched and ready to go, and I'm
just going to tone it with yellow ochre, and because I'm
using water mixable oils, I'm using a lot of water with this.
You do the same with acrylics but if you're using standard
oils, you'd just be using your odourless solvents or turps,
something like that.
49
Toning the canvas with acrylic.
Then with a lint free paper towel, just going to wipe that
whole thing down until there's hardly any left. And next I
have to mix up my two colour strings again, making sure
I've got plenty of paints. So big piles of paint. In the little
pot down the bottom there I've got walnut oil as my
painting medium, and these are the brushes I'm using. A
range of sizes.
So, on the left there I've got the black and white study at
the top, the colour study and then the finished painting
down the bottom. I'm starting the sketch in with yellow
ochre and a small brush. I start off with the top of the
wave. I'm just angling it down slightly, which means that
the top of the wave is slightly over head, because the
horizon will be a straight line, just below that.
And this is the top of the next wave, which is below eye
level so it's angling up towards the horizon, or eye level.
And that's my glowing area there and the sun will go
directly above that. Now I've put the rocks in and these
and the sun and the sky and the wave, they're all going to
reflect to some degree into the water below and into the
wet sand in the foreground.
So what I've tried to do in the design is to make a lot of
the major lines lead the eye back to that glowing spot in
the wave, which is the centre of focus. What I'm also
careful to try and do is give everything variety so the
rocks will be a different size and shape and angle, and
the wave forms will all be slightly different. And not just
the objects themselves but the spacing between the
objects need to have variety as well. So variety is the
main thing that I'm thinking of when I'm doing the sketch.
The completed sketch. Shape variation is the key.
So I'll take a larger brush, dip it in the walnut oil and start
with the darks. So my plan is to move from the darks
through the mid tones to the lights, and lets see if we
stick to that, through the whole painting. These darks are
going to go on a bit thinner, so that means they have a bit
more walnut oil or painting medium in them than the
lights, which will go on thicker and juicier later on.
At the same time I'll paint in the reflections for those rocks
and they will get painted over with other colours later on.
I'm also adding some of the dark blue-violet into those
rocks as well, so it's not all the same colour. While I'm at
it I'll just add a little bit of the next lightest colour and use
that for the really dark shadowy area at the base of the
wave here.
Then I'll add a little yellow ochre to that, just varying the
colour and continue painting some dark shadowy water
areas. And I will paint back into these areas with the next
lightest value so I'm painting these areas further than
what I need them. Now I've added a lot more yellow
ochre and starting to work some colour into the face of
that wave. So I'll build up this glowing area very gradually.
Here I'm just using pure yellow ochre. And a little darker
version for the next gap in the wave. And with that I also
start building the glow in the smaller wave face in the mid
ground. Next I use some of the mid value blue-violet for
the foam in shadow. Remember this whole wave is like a
50
wall that's blocking the light, but allowing some of it
through in the thinner sections of water. So all of the foam
that's on this side of the wall is in shadow.
I'm staring to put in some of the rock there, with yellow
ochre. I'm just going to paint a glowing area in the rock
here so the front of the rock is going to be very very warm
and light and it's going to hopefully merge in with the
glowing area around the sun and that will give that sun
the real appearance of being a very strong light source.
Now the foam in shadow down this end of the wave is
going to be a little bit darker because it's further away
from the sun and I'm going to use that same colour to
start suggesting a cliff way in the background, obscured
by atmosphere.
Also add a little of that colour to the darkest brown to
start suggesting the right hand side of the rock as it
reflects those cooler colours away in the distance. And
again using that same colour as the basis of the foam
and water in the foreground. Lightening it a little as it gets
closer to the area where the sun will be reflected. Starting
to paint that stronger reflection in the wet sand now, with
yellow ochre. And if you do this all with vertical strokes
and then just finish off with a few horizontals, it'll really
give the nice appearance of the wet sand reflecting the
sky.
And just like the sky in the background it's reflecting
against darker and cooler, the further away it gets from
the sun. The sand itself is just a warm grey. I know I want
this distant cliff to merge with the sun glow in the
background and the sky, so I mix a cool and a warm
together, which makes a warm grey, which is slightly
lighter than the blue-violet grey, which is already down
there. Then I go slightly lighter and warmer again to paint
the sky in behind it.
Now I really want all these elements to stay well back
there in the background and let the rock and the splash
be the centre of focus. So the closer I get these values to
each other and the more analogous the colours, like the
closer they are together on the colour wheel, the better,
because they'll all just sink back there nicely. And the
sky's getting warmer and lighter around the sun. And the
sun itself I paint in with very nearly just pure white. It's got
a little touch of yellow ochre in it.
Some of the clouds can start to be suggested with a
cooler grey. And it's really nice how that shimmers next to
the warm grey, cause it's the same value. But then I did
darken it just a touch and the cloud also gets warmer as
it gets closer to the sun. Now with a very light warm
mixture and quite thick paint I block in some of the foam
spray coming off the top of that wave. Then I work a
slightly grayer version of that into the background as well,
just a soft mist coming off the top of the wave.
The completed block-in.
So at this stage of the painting we've really finished the
block-in. Most of the canvas is covered and the rest is
the icing on the cake or the details. One of those details
is this shadow line across the top of the wave. Because
the sun's behind the wave, the light has more water to
travel through as the wave curls over towards us at the
top.
Of course there's not one wave in the ocean which is the
same as another wave. But I'm just trying to make use of
principles, which will make sense of this wave in this
particular lighting situation. So I know for instance that
when the foam comes over to the front of the wave it's
going to be in shadow and there'll be light across the top
of it.
Now I've actually just extended the colour scheme a little
bit, I've added primary yellow or cadmium yellow to the
51
palette there, and I'm just using that for the very intense
colour corona area directly around the sun, and I'll also
use that later in the reflection of that sun in the wet sand,
and to intensify the glowing area in the wave just a little
bit.
Just decided to give this foam some more interest by
adding some of the smooth curling water in there, instead
of having it all foam. And this is the start of some
highlights on the rocks here. Remember this is wet rocks,
so it's reflecting that sunlight really well.
Now I've just darkened it a little bit as it gets further away
from the sun. Trying to get this light paint on as thick as I
can here and by just grazing it lightly across the surface
you end up with that nice speckled texture, which you
don't get if you press firmly, you just get a big smooth
mark.
So the water out here in front of the wave is reflecting that
sun really strongly and crisply, so I'm getting nice thick
paint down there, but inside the wave, it's actually
reflecting that beautiful glowing colour, so I'm using
yellow ochre and adding a little bit of the bright yellow as
we get closer into the curl there.
Just staring to experiment with adding some foam
crawling up the wave here. Time for a little bit of softening
with this very nice soft synthetic brush, very lightly
brushing it over the top. So just vertically blurring these
little shapes in the foam here, just going to help with the
illusion of movement.
I'm moving to a different colour area so really important to
keep that brush as clean as you can. I'm just trying to
build some highlighted spray coming off the back of the
wave here. I've extended the colour scheme again a little
bit here, just by adding pyrrole red or cadmium red into
the palette and I'm putting it here because I know there's
going to be a very bright reflection on the edge of this
rock and wanted to have some strong colour there in the
rock indicating that a glowing effect is happening there as
well.
I've paved the way for this bright reflection in the wet
sand there by getting lighter and warmer as it gets closer
to this narrow column of light and it's pretty important
that that is directly vertically in line with the sun. If that
reflection isn't directly in line, if it curves away, what that's
telling our brain, is that that reflective surface is actually a
curved surface.
So all these strong reflections of the sun, actually they
peter out to the left and right, and so if you just keep
brushing out to the right the paint runs out and that
naturally creates this gradation of colour from strong
reflected light to very little reflected light. It's often a good
idea to break the reflections of rocks with little ripples of
light or dark like this which run right through the reflection
and what that does is it tells the brain that, that's a
reflective surface because obviously these little ripples
don't run through the air in front of a rock, so, oh this
must be a reflective surface. So it's giving a hint to the
viewer as to what exactly they're looking at.
Its very important to get the reections vertically in line with
their origins.
Using a palette knife to help smooth out this reflection
can help as well. I'm using a mid to dark blue-grey to
suggest some cooler reflected light on the shadow sides
of the rocks helps define their form. And a little layer of
water on top, dribbling down, catching the light. I'll just
simplify this area back here with a dark grayish-green.
And add a few dark accents into the rocks.
52
Quite a lot of softening to be done in this area up here. I
really want this to sit back in space. So with that done I'm
ready to put a few faint highlights on the tops of these
cliffs, and the front of the rock faces. It's very hard to tell
but I made the fronts of the cliffs a little tiny bit oranger
than the tops of the cliffs. And that's why I added that tiny
bit of orange to my palette. I'm just adding a vey strong
bit of colour, just to the very middle of that glowing area,
directly under the sun, making that wave look really
translucent.
Now that sky's glowing pretty well now but I need to
match up the reflection in the foreground sand, so it
needs to get a little bit lighter. Now we can get a nice
shimmering effect in the sky up here if we add a cool
grey, against the warm grey, which is the same value.
While I'm doing that I can reshape these cliffs a little bit.
Just darkening this cliff a little bit will bring it forward a
little bit from the one behind it, and create a bit more
space.
The distant cliffs are downplayed to give more focus to the
foreground.
And again adding a slightly cooler grey to the sky and
that lessens of course as it gets closer to the sun, so
what that does is makes the sun all the more lighter and
brighter and warmer by comparison. A few little light
snippets of clouds adds a little bit of interest. With these
really thick highlights I want the paint to really just drag off
onto the painting, I don't want the bristles of the brush to
touch the painting, only the paint to get dragged off.
Now it's about time some seagulls landed on the beach I
think and the tricky part of painting dark into light like this
is of course is doing it in very few brush strokes, so that
you don't go back and muddy up what you've just put
down. A little bit of warm light on his side. And a soft dark
vertical reflection. And a faint cast shadow across the
sand. And some shells or little rocks. And if you put them
in the strong sun glow area, they have to take on some of
that colour, they get lighter and warmer.
Using a rigger brush for some ner detail along the tops of
the waves.
A couple of seagulls and some indications of pebbles and
shells give the scene a better sense of scale.
A little more cool reflected light helping to shape this rock
some more. And just a few more sparkly bits. Finish it off
with your famous signature. Nearly finished. There we go,
all done. It might be time for those seagulls to move eh? I
know what it is time for. Time for you to get your brushes
out. Happy painting.
53
"Rogue Wave 2"
18x24"
Oil on Canvas by Jim Delk
Good work Jim, you've really captured
the translucency of the wave and the
reflections in the wet sand all while
staying within the yellow orange/blue
violet complementary colour scheme.
Your rocks are solidly rendered for the
most part with well described light and
shade planes. A couple of things I would
change would be to remove the darker
smudges close to the sun which spoil
the glowing effect, to add a little more
detail to the face of the secondary wave
in the midground and the highlighting of
the water just behind it. Also there is a
light patch in the shadow side of the
main rock which doesn't seem to belong
there. Other than that it's all good.
54
"Rogue Wave 2" 12x12"
Oil on Canvas
by Jennifer Cruden (Jen Stone)
Hi Jennifer, you did a really nice job
with this colour scheme - not an easy
one to get right and quite a brain
bender at times. I especially like the
splatters you made in the crashing
foam - a nice touch and not
overdone. I can't see anything I
would change. Great work!
"California Coast 2"
Oil by Karlo Bonacic
Nice one Karlo! Good design, well balanced and a nice overall spotlight effect helping us focus on the centre of interest.
The yellow sky works really well and you've toned the hills in with that nicely giving convincing atmospheric perspective
and the soft edge on those is helping a lot too. For contrast I'd like to see the top edges of the main rocks made a little
sharper against the sky. Your brushwork is really exciting and it's great to see you've made good use of the palette knife
to indicate all the intricately detailed foam. Beautiful painting!
55
"Breaking Free" 16x9" Oil on Canvas by Carolyn Brunsdon
Congratulations for taking the leap and composing a scene from 3 different photos with this painting Carolyn. You've
certainly expressed the awesome energy of pounding breakers in this piece and have done well using the red orange/blue
green colour scheme too. Love the peachy sky.
The Original The Altered Version
I've taken the liberty of trying out a few changes in photoshop here. I darkened the sky except for an oval section above
the wave and I also darkened the foam burst on the far right. Then I added a little more warmth (orange) to the foam from
the main wave (for sunlight) and lightened the central foam and reflected that light a little in the foreground water. Just a
few subtle changes to help focus the attention on the central wave.
56
"Morro Rogue" 11 x 14" Oil on Canvas by Nancy Sands
Great to see you working from your own resource photo on this one Nancy. Morro looks like a great place to paint. I like
the action of the wave and the movement in the sky, the balance of warm and cool colour and the glowing effect of the
sun. Here are some things I'd personally look at changing:
1. The gradation of colour in the face of the wave. The warm light of the sun wouldn't penetrate so strongly lower down
so it should get gradually darker and cooler there.
2. Be more mindful of the shadow side of your wave so that all foam on this side of the wave is in shadow.
3. Change one of the two foreground rocks on the left so that neither is the same shape and size as the other. At the
moment they are reflected twins. You could always join them together too.
I hope that helps.
57
Project 7 - Plein Air!
Plein air painting on the West Coast of New Zealand
So far we've painted sunsets from photos, which is good training, but the camera has its limitations. If you want to be
able to paint sunsets with more life in them, you're going to have to get out there and paint the real thing. It can be hugely
daunting, but you'll find that it's really worth the effort. You'll only have about half an hour to complete your painting, so
it's not going to be very fancy, but with it you can capture colour information that a camera can't record. Even if you didn't
manage to succeed in your painting your brain will have spent 30 minutes absorbing plenty of information and you'll start
to be able to see the true difference between what a camera sees and what the human eye sees. Then you'll be ready to
apply that knowledge in a studio painting, taking your work to the next level.
58
If you honestly just can't paint outside for some reason
you can always paint along with me in the demo video,
but this time I'm really challenging you to take a bold step
and get out there painting. The challenge is to paint one
or more sunsets from life outdoors, quite small, then to
take that back to the studio and paint a larger version,
making changes where you see fit. GOOD LUCK!
Paint better than a camera
You can see in the photos below that cameras have real
trouble capturing the colours in the bright sky and the
darker colours in the shadows at the same time. To
capture the first image I centred the camera on the sun
and half pressed the button to focus the camera on that
(with all settings on auto). Then I clicked the button fully
to take the shot. To capture the second shot I focused
the camera on the shadowed hills, then kept my finger
half pressed on the button as I turned back to point at the
sun, and took the photo. So the first image is exposed for
the sun and the second is exposed for the hillside. As
painters we can do better - we can paint both exposures
in the same image, as I did in the painting above.
Photo exposed for the sky.
Photo exposed for the foreground.
Materials
! Small Canvas primed for oil or acrylic.
! Pthalo Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Pyrrole Red Light (or
Cadmium Red), Magenta (or Alizarine Crimson), Yellow
Ochre, Bright Orange, Primary Yellow (or Cadmium Yellow
Light or Lemon Yellow), Titanium White.
! Liner brush #2.
! Easel with legs
! Paper Towels
! Plastic rubbish bag
! Wide brimmed hat
! Camera
need.
Note: View your discounted online shopping list here:
59
Video Transcript
In the previous projects we've painted sunsets from
photos, which is good training but the camera has its
limitations. If you want to be able to paint sunsets with
more life in them, you're going to have to get out there
and paint the real thing. Now it can be hugely daunting
but you'll find that it's really worth the effort.
Now you'll only have about half an hour to complete your
painting. So it's not going to be very flash, but with it you
can capture colour information that a camera can't record
and even if you didn't manage to succeed in your
painting your brain would have spent 30 minutes
absorbing plenty of information and you'll start to be able
to see the true difference between what a camera sees
and what the human eye sees.
Then you'll be ready to apply that knowledge in a studio
painting taking your work to the next level. Now because
you'll have such a brief time to paint the sunset from life
the key to your success is going to be preparation. Here's
how I set up for plein air work.
My plein air setup.
I've got a standard French box easel made by Mabef with
all my gear in it ready to go. Got my colours and brushes
a palette knife and a little pottle filled with walnut oil and a
little mirror there as well I've got a big panel of MDF or
hardboard which my canvas is taped onto and the palette
is on there as well, clipped on so it doesn't blow away,
and you'll notice that I've got a very small canvas
because I've got such limited time. This is really just a
colour study. I'm not interested in the finished painting,
just interested in finding out what colours I'm seeing.
That big backing board may seem like overkill but the
reason for it is to stop light entering your eyes from
behind the easel and behind the canvas. Now you don't
see the benefit of it here because we have a dark
background with that black sand but if you had a very
light background behind your easel you'd find that the
pupils of your eyes close down to protect your retinas
which makes the scene a lot darker and you'd find it very
hard to see the colours that you're actually painting with.
So I always set up the easel against the darkest
background possible and I also always turn the easel so
that the canvas is in the shade. If you paint with your
canvas in the sunlight your painting will end up much
darker than you want it to. Something else you've got to
have is paper towels ready to go, flattened off so they
wont roll off in the wind and a plastic bag ready to put
those dirty paper towels into.
And so that you don't have to keep shielding your eyes
with your hand a wide brimmed hat is a really good idea.
Before you really start your painting, you've probably
been there about an hour already, just setting up and
trying out different compositions, taking photos and so
something you can do before you actually start painting
the sunset is to sketch out the composition that you're
happy with.
Save precious minutes and sketch out your composition
before the sun gets in the position you want it.
60
The simpler you keep the composition the better, it's a
really good idea to figure out exactly what time the sun
will set, so you know how long you've got to do your
painting. If you don't already know that a Google search
will tell you.
Another handy trick to know, is that with your arm out
straight in front of you, for the sun to travel the width of
your hand takes about an hour. Despite the poor lighting
at this time of the evening I did manage to record the
painting coming together and I've edited it down from 22
minutes painting time to 2.5 minutes video time.
The first thing I notice looking up from my blank canvas
into the sun was just how powerful that light was. So
much so I could barely stand to look at it so I just kept
stealing brief glimpses of it and I saw this vibrant orange
colour and the corona that was flaring across the rock.
Those were the 2 things I was trying to get down in this
painting, the power of the light and the vibrancy of the
colour.
You can see that I started with the glowing effect around
the sun and worked outwards from there, moving from
yellow through orange and red to dark browns. If you
don't follow some sort of logical system like that , you'll
be very much more likely to run out of time. So it pays to
make a plan like that from the start and stick to it when
the adrenalin kicks in. Squinting at the scene to simplify it
is vitally important when you're painting fast like this
outdoors, so that you don't get confused by all the detail.
I mean you'll be squinting anyway because you're looking
into the sun, but if you're not used to doing this, how
about writing yourself a note that says 'Squint' and stick it
to your easel where you can't miss it. Of course because
the light on my canvas was getting darker and darker, the
painting itself came out a little lighter than I would've
hoped and the only way to overcome that if you're
painting at this time on night is to light your canvas with a
clip on led light. I've even seen some that can clip onto
the front of your cap or a headlamp would do to.
Even though I'm painting as fast as I can and it's a very
small painting, by the time I was finished the sun had
sunk below the horizon and it was a completely different
scene.
Time to take it back to the studio and compare the
painting with the photos and see what I might like to
change for the larger studio version. Well I like the basic
design and that striking orange speaking of the power of
the light but I'd like to subdue that just a bit and make the
shadows on the left slightly darker and add a few more
details like a little figure on the beach to give the scene a
sense of scale.
Toning the canvas in acrylics. Leave to dry for several
hours.
So I start off by toning the canvas with acrylic using
yellow, orange and red to help create the big glowing
effect which is what this whole painting is really about. I
just estimate where the sun is going to be and work
61
outwards from there, working very quickly so the paint
can blend together.
Now I just wipe it all around with a paper towel to give it a
more random texture. And lots of fun with a rag. It
actually reminds me of a Turner at this point although
mine's not quite as good. Turner used lots of glazes over
textured impasto paint to achieve his glowing sunsets.
Very Nice.
Now I leave that to dry over night and then start in with
the oil paints the next day. So these are the brushes I'm
using. A range of sizes and this is my palette of colours.
Now for the sky and the main glowing area I'm going to
paint into a couch as we did before, by laying down a
very thin mixture of yellow, white and walnut oil.
From there on in I can use less oil in my mixtures because
there's enough in the couch. So I start off in the area
around the sun or the corona with pure yellow.
Remembering to work down into the reflection as well.
Then I add a touch of orange and red to that mixture so
that it's just very slightly darker in value and move
outwards from the corona. Then I add a touch of blue
and red and white to that and again so it's just slightly
darker than that previous colour and move outwards
again. So it's getting cooler and darker. Now straight into
the rocks with pure orange.
Working outwards from the sun in oils, getting darker and
cooler.
And working out from there adding red incrementally and
then eventually adding blue which turns it to dark brown.
I'm just adding a touch of yellow ochre into the mixture
there because this hillside is predominantly a dark green,
and although it's very hard to see the colour in the
shadows there, I know that it is green, so I'm just adding
in that dull yellow to push it towards green.
So those are the shadows and for the lights on top I'm
going slightly greener and slightly lighter again. The
interesting thing is that even tho it looks fairly green, if you
isolate it on a white background you see that it's actually
still just brown. The reason that it looks green is because I
pushed it towards green and it's surrounded by a very
warn colour. That's why I'm always saying it's the
relationship of one colour next to another colour which is
important. It's not the colour itself.
Using the palette knife on the at for interesting texture.
I'm just using the palette knife very lightly across the top
of the surface here to try and get some of that broken
surface of the grass, that broken texture. And as the
grass gets closer to the sun there on the edge, I've made
it slightly warmer by adding a little bit of yellow and
orange, tiny touch of white to it as well.
Now I'm building a lot of texture in the hill there but a
place where we don't really need texture is this corona
area, the glowing area of the sun, that's really quite a
smooth transition. So I'm just using the brush there to
blend that across. Just restating some of the darks now.
Always keeping in mind that they get cooler and darker
the further they are from the sun. Again for reflections in
very still water, just try and use vertical or horizontal
strokes.
62
Try and avoid any diagonal strokes, which will break the
surface of the water. Just felt like this hillside needed a
little more interest in it. So I'm just adding some highlights
and trying not to go overboard. Which it's very easy to do
with highlights. What happens above must happen below.
Use vertical strokes in calm water.
Although I've mixed quite a pinkish grey for the ocean
here, it's surprising how blue that looks surrounded by all
that very warm colour. So if you really want your colour to
be unified and read correctly, you have to keep thinking
about what's the dominant colour in this area and try and
keep your mixtures in keeping with that dominant colour,
and test, keep testing on the canvas just a little bit before
you commit yourself.
Thick paint for bright highlights.
This is just about pure white here with a little bit of the
bright yellow in it and very thickly applied. Have to make
sure that if it's still water, that reflection is perfectly in line
vertically with the sun. Adding back in some bright yellow
around the edges of that for the reflection of the corona.
What I thought I'd try here is taking a slightly cooler
mixture, but exactly the same value as the bright yellow
that's down there and applying that over the top to
simulate something of what happens in the eye when we
look at the bright sun. So that's before and after. There's
a little figure going in. Now to start with I made him too
small, so I checked the photo and looked where his head
was in comparison to the horizon and that always helps.
Crepuscular Rays extend radially from the sun.
I thought I'd just put in a wee crepuscular ray here, which
I don't think is a very good name for it, sunray sounds a
lot better and the only thing you have to be careful with is
to have the edges of it radiating out from the centre of the
sun, Which quite clearly I haven't done very well at all. A
few little touch ups, thought it could do with some more
punchy colour in the shadowed area here, so I've got
pretty much pure red, using it for a couple of highlights on
the rocks and a little bit of grass. And I'm done.
The nished painting with gure included.
63
So again this project is really about getting out there plein air painting, bringing that information back to the studio, and
deciding yourself what changes you'd like to make in a larger painting. So this is really the biggest key to be able to paint
beautiful sunset paintings and I really hope you'll take this challenge and get out there with your paints and give it a go
and don't be too discouraged by your first attempts.
They're bound to be pretty bad because it is really tough painting to that sort of a deadline. But they're only going to get
better and each painting gets you better. So good luck with it, all the best. Happy painting.
"West Coast - Plein Air" 5 x 13" Oil on Canvas
"West Coast - Studio" 9 x 22" Oil on Canvas by Richard Robinson
64
Student Examples from Project 7
"Karaka Bay Sunset"
42cm x 30cm
Watercolour on Paper
by Bob Mitchener.
Great painting Bob - nice to see you
back in the workshop again. This is
an interesting triangular design with
the eye being led from the sun to the
foreground to the boat and back to
the sun - finely balanced with your
signature. Perhaps a subtle hint of a
few rocks under the water would
have been good in the foreground
too. But you can always add.
Subtracting and simplifying things as
you've done is the tricky part which you've done so well in this painting. I wondered what it might have looked like with a
darker foreground so I took the liberty of trying that in photoshop. I don't think it's better, just another option. Your
drawing of the boat is spot on too, which is the key to the whole painting. Beautiful!
With the foreground darkened in photoshop.
65
"Sunset on Union Road, Goderich, On Canada" 14 x
18" Oil on Canvas by Gina Dalkin-Davis
Hi Gina, I'm taking from your comments that this work
was done in the studio and yet it does have some of the
bold brushwork common to plein air work. Rather than
write screeds about this I've done a little photoshop work
to illustrate some changes I might have made.
1. Increased the tonal range - making the darks in the
foreground darker and lightening the sun and highlights.
2. Introduced more of the sun's colour in the background
elements thereby losing some of the muddy no-descript
colour back there.
3. Darkened the foreground slightly to help with the
composition a the glowing effect.
Fiddled in Photoshop
66
"75 Bridgeman RD
sunset_v2"
11 x 14" Oil on Canvas
by Laura Xu
Laura I read through all the
comments the others made on
this painting and can't agree
more with Michael J. Severin's
comments which I'll quote here
for the benefit of others:
"Looking much better. The sky
is looking good. I would still
like to see the edges of your
tree reflections much less
sharp. Also, where the bright
sun reflections meet the tree
reflections ..it is much too
abrupt. Soften that edges with
a warmer yellow and progress
into orange as it meets the tree
reflection. The other side of the
tree reflection, take a brush
and go right down the left edge
of the tree reflection so it
blends into the light part of the
water. Your edges of the
foreground tree reflections are
also much to sharp. Laura,
don't be timid here, just go for it on those edges. The value of your background trees is very, very well handled!! I love
the shaft of light on the green grass. Near the ends of your tree reflections, introduce a little of the blue/violet ..it is picking
up some reflection from the sky above. Always think ...gradation in your elements. Now, if you insist on putting those
tree trunks in on the bank, they must show a reflection. To summarize: Concentrate on your EDGES and GRADATION of
your tree reflections." - Michael J. Severin
I would also add that the thin strip of dark land at the base of the painting seems to be an afterthought - it might be better
to just continue on with the water. Also the branch stretching out from the big tree seems to follow and hide the line of the
bank which makes us question whether it is part of the tree or growing from the bank. Better to move the branch to allow
for some distinction there. It's exciting to see the variety of brushwork you've employed and overall the colours work very
well.
67
"Workshop 28" Oil on Canvas by Randall Tillery
Beautiful work Randall! A++. This painting is a lesson in itself. There's nothing I would change except for the green tree
way in the background - I would expect it to be more orange in keeping with the sun's colour corona there.
With the distant green tree made more orange.
68
"Workshop 28" 8 x 16" Plein
Air and 12 x 24" Studio,
Acrylic on Canvas
by Walda Juhl
Good on you Walda for getting
out there and giving plein air
painting a try and for choosing
such a complex subject. Your
sky looks great in the studio
piece and it looks like you
learned the lesson well of
finding the happy medium
between the colours of your
plein air piece and the colours
of your photo. Fantastic! All that
detail in the foreground tree is
beautiful but I personally would
have made more of a
suggestion of the tall trees in
the background. Squint hard at
them in the photo and that's the degree of detail I would recommend there - large blurred masses with a few hints of the
major trunks. (You've also removed all that lovely dark mass behind the edge of the barn which was what made the roof
so appealing.)
Similarly you've agonised over the detail in the fence where a more calligraphic approach would be much more
interesting. Beware large areas of the same colour as you've made in the roof of the barn. It's uppermost plane would be
slightly lighter for a starter and you can always throw in a rusty panel to break the space up a bit. Having a tree sitting so
near the base of the painting is always a bit uncomfortable like it was squeezed in. The placement in the plein air piece
was better, or even running it out the bottom as in the photo. A few things to think about for the next one. Great work!
Note: For more student work and to upload
your own sunset paintings visit:
69
Project 8 - Inventing Colour
"Evening Gold" 13x15" Oil on Canvas by Richard Robinson
We've learned a lot going through the Mastering Sunset
Projects and it's time to apply that knowledge by inventing
sunset lighting in a scene, changing it completely. Paint along
with me in the demo video using the photo above or get your
own photo and apply the same lighting concept to it.
70
Photo by John Warren at http://paintmyphoto.ning.com/photo/whitby-lass
71
Materials
! 13x15 Canvas primed for oil or acrylic.
! Ultramarine Blue, Pyrrole Red Light (or Cadmium Red),
Magenta (or Alizarine Crimson), Yellow Ochre, Bright
Orange, Primary Yellow (or Cadmium Yellow Light or
Lemon Yellow), Titanium White.
! Liner brush #2.
need.
Note: View your discounted online shopping list here:
Video Transcript
There's something I really love about painting boats. I got
this photo from John Warren at
www.paintmyphoto.ning.com online. I just thought it
could do with a few changes to make it into a decent
painting. Two things that I thought could do with
changing were, the background was too complicated in
that it competes for attention with the foreground.
The other thing was that the colours are all jumbled. It
doesn't have an overall colour unity. So here's how I fixed
those problems. I've really oversimplified the detail in the
background and now the colour idea is basically warm
versus cool. So there is a lot of invention going on in this
painting, but I'm relying on what we've covered already in
the Mastering Sunsets course in terms of warm versus
cool colours and also painting a glowing light source.
So feel free to paint along with me with this one or get
your own resource photos and work on a similar idea.
You may find one of the trickiest parts of this painting is
getting the drawing of the boat just right. It's really easy
to get it wrong so what I recommend you do, unless you
want to trace it, is to draw a rectangle around it and
divide that rectangle into smaller segments and then you
just transfer that same shaped rectangle to your canvas
wherever you want to place that boat. The same goes for
the wharf as well.
Divide the boat into rectangles before transferring the
drawing to the canvas.
72
If you start off with a straight horizontal line it's much
easier to read the angles of that wharf. If you tape the
photo next to your canvas make sure it's nice and square
so that you won't be reading the angles wrong when you
come to paint it. There's my palette of colours although
later on I do add alizarine crimson and cadmium orange
as well.
Here are my brushes, a range of bristles and synthetics,
mainly flats. And my trusty palette knife. Now because
I'm using water mixable oils I've also got this water bottle
here which I can spray water onto the canvas with and I'll
use that at the beginning. So the first step is to draw that
rectangle onto your canvas where you want that boat to
go. It is a tricky shape so I'm actually drawing it in pencil
where as I normally just draw it in with a brush but just to
get it right I'm using a pencil, taking it a bit slower and
then blocking in all the major shapes. Wouldn't it be neat
if we could draw this fast!
Sketching in with a pencil in this case because theres
plenty of drawing here that would be easy to get wrong.
Really take your time with this because drawing is the first
place we fall down in a painting. If you want to get it right,
draw it out on paper the same size first and then transfer
it. So I'll start off with the background using the big fan
brush dipping it in the water there.If you were using
standard oils you would be using your odourless thinners
here.
I'm going to spray the canvas with water to start with and
as we've done in all the other sunset paintings I'm going
to start off where the sun is the brightest and the chroma
is the highest with this bright yellow. Very very thin, just a
wash, and work that outwards. Then dipping into the
yellow ochre we extend that glowing area out further and
the paint gets slightly thicker. So just like a watercolour at
this stage and you'd be doing exactly the same with
acrylics.
Spray the canvas with water rst, then lay in a gestural
wash with a fan brush.
The beauty of using a fan brush at this stage is that
because of the shape of it you get this beautiful, almost
random feel to your brushwork which is very hard to
achieve with a standard shaped brush. If you want to
paint a painterly painting it really pays to start out as
gestural and as random as you possibly can, simply
because we have a tendency to copy the marks we've
already made when we paint over the top of them.
Premixing warm and cool grays.
What I'm doing here is premixing four different grays.
There will be two darks and two mid values. The first one
I've mixed at the top right there is the warm dark... and
now I've mixed the cool dark which has got a little bit
more purple in it. And now I'll mix a couple of mid values
73
- one warmer and one slightly cooler. So the colours I've
mixed to achieve these grays are not really important. It's
just that I'm trying to achieve two sets of fairly neutral
values and one of those is slightly warmer and one of
them is slightly cooler than the other.
So if you mix blue, red and yellow together you get a fairly
neutral grey to start with. Now if you want to make that
cooler you'd add a bit of blue and some white. And if you
want to make it warmer you'd add some red or yellow,
just like I did with this one. I'm using a wide nylon flat
brush. I'm going to put a real thin coat of the warm mid
value down into the background here. It's something to
start with.
Just trying to suggest very loosely some blocky shapes of
buildings in the background. Now I've used water with
the mixture here instead of oil and it appears to be too
thin so I've wiped most of it off there and I also wanted it
to be a little bit lighter and a little bit warmer again. So
you can see I'm just putting white and yellow ochre in
there.
Blocking in the background thinly, trying for large shapes
with plenty of variety. Two layers of buildings in the
distance much like paper cutouts.
And now I'm using slightly thicker paint and I'm using oil
as the medium instead of water. That seems to sit on top
a little bit better. So I'm always experimenting with my
paint, seeing what it can do and I hope you'll do that too
because it just makes it more fun. Now blocking in the set
of buildings further back into the distance. So my basic
idea is that I've got two plains of buildings back there -
one way back in the distance which is catching all that
beautiful golden light.
And then another plain which is slightly closer to us and
that's slightly darker and slightly grayer, but it's still warm
and both of those planes of buildings, as they move over
to the right, they get slightly light and slightly warmer. So
they're very much like paper cutouts. The difference
being that most of the edges in the background will be
very soft compared to the sharp edges that I'll put it the
foreground later and I'm also trying to put in some
variation in the shapes.
I'm putting in a dome here and I'm trying hard not to
repeat the shapes that I have in that background layer of
buildings in the layer in front of them because that's a
very easy thing to do and you see beginners do that a lot
when they paint different layers of mountains. They'll have
one set of mountains in front of the other which looks
exactly the same, or follows the line of the mountains
behind it. The same deal with these buildings. Just try
and vary the shapes.
Now I've got some thin slushy warm goop. That's the
technical term. That I'm smooshing around in the
foreground here trying to add some interest. So basically
all around the edges of the painting I plan to leave this
paint really quite thin and washy so anything I can do to
create interesting texture there is good for the painting.
So it's time to start putting in the dock now and because
I'm inventing this glowing light source remember what we
learned previous to this painting was that objects in front
of a glowing light source take on the colour of that light
source and that effect becomes stronger and stronger
closer to the light source itself.
So I'm starting off with a very warm mid value here and
that's going to be the basis of the glowing effect under
the dock here. You'll see once I've finished blocking in
this orange shape and its reflections that I'll use a darker
colour and work inside that so that I'm leaving a little bit
of that orange showing on the edges so it appears that
74
the light, the power of the light, is making the edges of
this object glow with its own colour.
Starting the dock in warm hues close to the sun glow,
getting cooler and darker further out.
So there's the dark going in now and I'm just being pretty
careful to leave the edges orange. That thin little pole
there I can leave completely orange because he's going
to be right in the middle of the reflected sunlight here. So
he's very influenced by the colour of the sun. The nice
thing about this flat synthetic brush is that it's very sharp
and has fine hair so you can create a very crisp edge with
it and use it long ways or sideways to get a very
calligraphic stroke.
There's my darkest dark - or, so far my darkest dark
going in for the reflection of the boat which you can see is
really a dark purple but it's fairly grey as well. I'm going to
paint more of the side of the dock now, so I'm going to
mix a fairly dark grey for that and I'll start off with a slightly
bluish grey and then I'll add other colours into it as I move
over the dock and just bend the colour here and there so
I get more colour interest within those dark grays.
I'll keep the values fairly much the same but just changing
the hue or bending the colour to create more variation
and more interest within all that darkness. So for instance
I just added some yellow there to that grey which made it
slightly more green and it's changed the hue but hasn't
really changed the value much at all.
What you'll see a lot of beginners do in a situation like this
would be to just paint this entire dock black because it's
a silhouette and you lose all that opportunity for variation
and interest in your painting when you do that. Another
thing I didn't like about the photo was all the jumble of
lobster pots that were piled up on top of the dock
because if you tried to paint them without going into
some serious detail it would just be an indecipherable
mess.
So I decided to simplify what was going on top of the
dock into a couple of barrels and then a smaller stack of
well organised lobster pots. And that's the start of them
there. I'm just going to block in a light warm grey there for
the reflection on the side of the boat which is going to
play out differently than in the photograph because I've
changed the lighting conditions so I have to change what
gets reflected off the boat.
Working systematically from darks to mids, then the lights
will go on later.
I start up this end of the boat and as I work this dark
bluey purple down to the left it mixes in with that light
grey that I had put down there to start with and that gives
me enough of a colour change to start indicating the
reflection on the side of the boat. I thought it'd be nice to
have a big cleat on the dock to tie the boat off on. It just
adds a little bit to the story.
A bluish mid grey for the inside of the boat and I've just
added a little bit of yellow to that same light grey for the
paint of the waterline. Now the reflection of that waterline
paint needs to be a little bit darker so I just add some of
that warmer grey next to that. See the difference is really
quite subtle but it does help with the impression of
reflectivity.
75
When you're painting a boat it is so easy to lose track of
the drawing and muck up the shape of the boat so it
pays before every brushstroke you put down on that thing
to check it against the drawing, to know what you're
going to be painting before you paint that brushstroke.
Just painting some negative shapes here, that's the
shapes behind the foreground shapes. You can really use
these shapes to sharpen up the edges of your foreground
objects.
That's the distant boat going in. One thing you'll notice is
the big difference between the painting and the
photograph that you can see in the side bar there, is that
the values are so much lighter in the painting and that's
because I'm trying to keep all this background area in this
beautiful warm glow. If I had painted a really dark dark
back there which you can see in the photograph it would
have destroyed that whole sense of light through that
background area.
So if you take anything away from this particular project I
hope it's that you will learn more about how to control
your values because the basic setup of this painting is
light values in the background contrasted with dark
values in the foreground. If you start to destroy that setup
by putting too many lights in the foreground or too many
darks in the background it will destroy the whole idea of
the painting.
The buoys are not all coloured or lit the same - each one is
unique. Be careful of the placement of their reections!
Using the edge of the palette knife here and some very
thick warm grey to capture the light on the top of the
dock. I've just added some cadmium orange to the
palette there to help with the vibrant colour in the orange
buoys on the side of the boat. You could try and mix that
same orange with the red and the yellow on your palette
but you'll find that it's never quite as powerful as
cadmium orange straight out of the tube. I've found one
of the really tricky things with painting these buoys was
getting the placement of their reflections right because
they're not where you expect them to be, so have a really
good look at the photo before you put those reflections
in. And again you make the reflections slightly darker than
the buoy itself, especially in this case because what
you're actually seeing reflected is mostly the underneath
of each buoy.
It's also really important to get the reflection of each buoy
perfectly in line vertically with the buoy because otherwise
you're telling the viewer that the water is tilted and we
know that it's not, it's flat. Now I'm going to put in the
reflection of the buoys into the side of the boat. These are
not all the same colour - some of them are darker, some
of them are lighter. I'll do a few highlights now. I've got
mainly white and both of the yellows.
Pushing the bristles into the paint, loading it up nice and
thick, just dragging it off on the surface so it's nice and
chunky. Just added a bit more yellow ochre to darken the
reflection of that one, and pure yellow ochre for the
highlight on the pole up here. You gotta hold your breath
for this one! For some of these sparkling highlights here
it's pretty much pure white with a little bit of that
cadmium yellow in it.
Using the edge of the palette knife to create crisp lines.
Just want to add a little bit more mystery up here. I mean,
who knows what atmospheric effects you've got going
on. It could be plenty of mist or rain, anything down here
76
so just enjoy making an interesting texture with paint.
Now for the highlights in this area it's mostly cadmium
yellow a tiny bit of white thrown in.
Painting the highlights in very thickly.
Basically all I'm trying for in the water here is to have
broad horizontal strokes in the foreground and they get
thinner and thinner as they go into the background. It just
helps add some sort of form and perspective to the
water. Just adding a hint of green to the foreground water
here as if you could start to see down through into the
water to see the colour of the water itself.
Creating a more interesting texture in the foreground by
spraying and wiping.
I gave it a little spray with the water bottle, dabbing some
of that off with the paper towel. Just to keep some sort of
textural interest there. I was just thinking there's a lot of
warm in the water there and it could perhaps do with a
slightly cooler grey on the tops of some of these ripples in
the water. Here's another part of the boat that's really
easy to get wrong, so don't just assume you know the
pattern that this should take. Before you do every stroke
here take a look at the photograph and see what's going
on, so you really understand it before you paint it. I'm
using a pointy sable watercolour brush here to do this
work. It's really nice to get a fine brush like this to just put
some finishing details in. There's an orange rope going in.
And over here it's obviously a darker grey rope because
it's further away from that glowing effect. And where
would a good fishing boat scene be without a seagull?
Painting the seagull with four strokes.
There's really only four brushstrokes in this. This is the
first with a cool light grey. Then I've got a very dark cool
grey for the wing. And red or orange for the leg. And then
my white with cadmium yellow for the highlight. Not a bad
little seagull. Then signing it, and I'm done.
The nished painting.
The best part, pulling off the tape which frames it
instantly, and there's the finished painting. Thanks for
watching. I hope you got a lot out of that and if you are
going to paint this project I wish you good luck and
happy painting.
77
"There's room for you"
16x20" Acrylic on Canvas
by Russell Kells
Hi Russell, congratulations for grabbing the reigns and
inventing your own painting as you have from your own
photo. It's notoriously difficult to invent lighting on objects
like this but you've done a pretty good job. I took the
liberty of fiddling with your painting in photoshop to see
how I might change the lighting to make the whole
painting a little more convincing. Basically I think you need
more greys in the painting, especially on the shadow sides
of the buildings and their reflections. Doing that allows the
colourful sunset to feel much more powerful in
comparison. I love your composition too, but the one thing
I'd change there is the placement of the corner of the
building that is currently lining up too neatly with the left
side of the gondolier.
Fiddled in Photoshop
78
"Evening Gold" 12x13"
Oil on Canvas
by Marianne Rodwell
Good job Marianne. The things you
did really pretty well in this painting
are your overall value structure (that
is, the difference between your lights,
mid values and darks), your drawing
is good except for the angled
approach you took to the side of the
boat which looks a bit odd, the
orange fenders look beautiful, even if
two of them have shrunk with the
cold water, and your seagull's great
too. Oh and the subtle value
changes you made in the distant city
is good work- very mystical looking.
A few things I would look at
changing are the muddiness of some of the colours which you have where cools and warms have been brushed together
too much, I would add more light into the sky especially around the sun and its reflection to break up the background a
little more, grey the blue off a little and darken the light stripes on the left side of the boat which are jumping out too
much. I hope that helps.
"Evening On Winyah Bay, South
Carolina, USA"
8x10" Oil by Nora Mackin
Hi Nora, great to see you making
your own composition from this
project - very inventive. The design is
interesting in that my eye follows the
boats in a circle around the painting,
but those poles being all so similar
and similarly spaced makes
something of a visual barrier to the
painting and I almost wish it wasn't
there. Maybe that's just me. Your
colours have become very muddy in
places where you've used neutral
grey instead of greyed colour, but
the glowing effect you've achieved in the sky and water is great. You could look at darkening some of the shadows inside
the dinghies to give a more convincing realism and maybe one or three of those orange fenders would help add interest
79
to that grey foreground. I like the freedom of your brushwork but being more careful when it comes to key areas like the
shape of the dinghies will really help this painting. Close though! Keep up the good work Nora.
"Workshop#29"
10x14" Watercolour
by Colleen McCafferty
Nice to see a watercolour version of
this scene Colleen and I love the
soft effects you've achieved with it
which are quite ethereal. I do feel
that there could be a little more
weight and detail in the boat to
contrast against the softness of the
rest of the image. This side of the
boat for instance could do with a
darkening wash of blue-grey,
especially the light stripe along the
waterline which is poking out. The
drawing of the boat is a little wonky too
as the far side should be angled a bit lower. Looking at it in a mirror will let you see it anew. I assume the painting has
been taken at a slight angle, otherwise the whole image needs to be tilted to the left to straighten it up. I guess you're
dropping paint into damp areas to achieve some of those soft effects - really beautiful. Oh and, great seagull!
"Night mum, Goodnight son" 10x14" Oils on Arches Huile
paper 21x29cm by Janet Poole
Great painting Janet,
good composition,
great drawing, nice
choice of colours and
good brushwork. My
only reservation is
that the blue grays
seem too cool
compared to the
warm sunset colours.
See what you think of
the changes I made
in photoshop.
Note: For more student work and to
upload your own sunset paintings visit:
80
Summary
Hey well done - you've made it to the end of the course,
that is great work! Now if you haven't done already I
encourage you to go back to the start of the course get
your paints out and do these projects one at a time,
because that is the best way for you to learn to be able to
paint beautiful sunsets by yourself, not just by watching
me do it. Ok.
So thank you for watching all the way through and I wish
you happy painting and best of luck. Thanks for
watching.
What now?
Get painting!
Oh, and there are some bonuses for you here:
www.masteringsunsets.com/bonuses
Happy Painting!
Richard.
ps. If youve really enjoyed this painting course
please let your painting friends know about it.
You can do that easily here:
www.masteringsunsets.com/share
Pataua
152 x 51cm Oil on Canvas by Richard Robinson
81

MasteringSunsets Notes

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

MasteringSunsets Notes

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Table of Contents

Click a page number to jump there.

Das könnte Ihnen auch gefallen