Adding Details To Define The Trees

In this video I start adding detail and making small changes. The painting looks quite different at the end. I have again added a talkover here and there – I hope I’m improving at that! The video is around six and a half minutes long this time.

See the transcript below, along with some notes.

Video – 6 minutes 28 secs

Sometimes detail can be a bit fiddly and correction might be needed.
The methods and slips are all in there!
The technique and handling of paint is quite different.
I’m using another brush and mixing the paint to be more fluid.

The previous layers are dry and the paint goes on easily, most of the time.
You’ll see that as the paint on the brush dries, so the action of my hand changes.
I go with it and let the paint go on without flowing, then replenish and it starts flowing again.

This means that I get varied marks, and unexpected marks. I like that and let it happen.
As I have said before – If there’s something I really don’t like, it can be altered.
Often it makes for an interesting surface on the finished painting.

As a beginner in this medium, knowing that ‘mistakes’ can be covered means you can play around with ideas without waste.
The secret is to Not be too precious about it – Let things happen and learn from your experience.

Next, I’ll attempt to bring the painting to life with Depth and Light.

Transcript of this video

Ok I’m going to make a start.
I’ll go back to this (soft) brush
and do bit of defining some trees and things
OK?

Let’s see how we go.

We’ll use this – Whoops!
This Ultramarine and a bit of this red (vermillion)
to get a deep purply ultramarine.

There you go. It’s quite thin so I’m just going to –
define some trees – The Spaces between trees actually.

I’m painting pretty loosely round here. It’s, oh dear, I don’t know what to say.

I’m using the soft brush at the moment and that’s quite easy.
You can draw with a soft brush, it’s almost like a pencil if you touch very lightly, and if your paint is reasonably wet.
So,
And then for scraping and cleaning off and things like that, I’ll use a harder brush, the hog hair.

You have to remember that this is not so much a lesson as a demonstration of,
What I do, but it isn’t what I Always do. It’s just what I did for this.

So if you see, it’s the bits in-between that are the trees.
The dark bits are shadows behind, if you like.

And actually, you can do things like that as well
(spreading the colour to form a shadow),
Look at that.

I’m going to carry that on over to here.
(Paints more blue)

Just an impression.
Not exactly like anything in particular.

Ah now, you see how you can take another brush and manipulate the paint.
You have to keep the paint on your brush quite nice and fluid,
otherwise it doesn’t flow so easily.
If you’re just trying to draw you need plenty of paint and plenty of water, but not so much that it splashes.

That does take a little bit of practice, I suppose.
Practically every time I start painting again, you sort of have to get your hand in.
I didn’t particularly with this, but…

And I wasn’t all that sure how the paint would behave under the hot light.

(More painting…)

I can use another brush to take it off.
Well, to blend it in. A dry one.

(Long silence with just the sound of the brush.)
Talk over: Since I recorded this I’ve got some better lights that aren’t Hot.
They’re LEDs. So they’re not qute so ‘Cooking’.

In this series I was using some old halogen lights that I’ve had for years and years.
They make a wonderful light but My, they’re very hard to work under.

When circimstances aren’t quite what I expect, I don’t worry about it, I just carry on.
Just carry on painting, and whatever comes, you know.
Sometimes you make a discovery if you’re using the paint and it behaves differently because
it’s warmer or cooler, or something. It makes a difference to how the paint flows.

Now there at the bottom here. I’ve actually made the paint even thinner and it just – you see how it just Flows?
Well I’m not being precise at all but you can be more precise and get finer lines when the paint is nice and thin.

I’m putting various colours over it.
We can muck about with that afterwards if we want to.

(More painting…)

It’s sort of doing something.