Today I am sharing with you part of the painting process of a painting I am currently working on. The scenery shows a view over the town of Bright in Victoria from Tower Hill Lookout. I visited this place couple of weeks ago at two different times of the day, at around sunset and mid-day. On my visits I prepared a plein air sketch and did a photo shoot of the whole scenery. Plein air sketching/painting is the best way of documenting the landscape as it gives you the capability to understand the landscape much better than taking photos, for the simple reason that you do observation from reality. Our eyes can see far more details than a camera could see. A camera is a machine and hence does not have a brain to created the illusion of reality. However its very difficult to capture the landscape at sunset and when the weather and light are constantly changing. So in that situation I preferred to use the camera to capture the light and my memory to record the atmosphere and the feel/smell of the air after the rain. 

This painting is a composite of three elements, plein air sketches, photography and memory. Its going to be painted on stretched linen 101 x 85 cm using oil paints. The first image above shows the first layer of paint (block in) where the main shapes and tones are established. Will keep you updated about the progress of this painting.

Painting outdoors is the best way not only to learn how to paint the landscape but also gives you the opportunity to experience being part of the same landscape. This experience will help you to understand better the subject matter that you are painting and to translate that onto the canvas. Apart from the visual senses one will also be translating the whole experience captured by the other senses, hearing the sounds of the birds, water, winds as well as feeling the heat or the cold air around that will affect the overall execution of your painting. I was camping around Lake Hume overnight and the next morning came out to be a very beautiful sunny and warm day. So while sitting there observing the view I observed a nice combination of shapes and complementary colour contrasts. So I took out my easel and paint box together with a small canvas panel. To help me construct the view I used a view finder same size as the canvas panel. I used a palette consisting of Ultramarine blue, phthalo blue, flake white replacement, permanent orange, cadmium lemon, Venetian red, ivory black, yellow ochre, Indian yellow, Pyrrole rubine and magenta. To help establish the light value of the lower part of the sky I used a colour checker. Working fast and from back to front I established the lightest and the darkest tones to start with, so that all the rest is in between. 
The end result is above. Happy with the outcome and the execution of this painting.

I painting this waterfall some time ago. This is the way I usually tackle this subject. The palette I used is given in the video. One of the major issues that usually is encountered when painting subjects with a lot of white paint such as water is that one uses the white paint too early. As you might see the first layers of the waterfall were painted with a middle tone greyish blue, rising the value as I progressed. In this painting, as in most of my other paintings I use a combination of brushes and painting knife to create the various effects and tectures in the landscape. Hope that you enjoy.

Couple of months ago I started this small experiment to test how light affects various pigments and mixtures of paint that we commonly use in painting. I am interested in some particular pigments since although they are very popular and were traditionally used, however now we know that these are in fact not as stable as one thinks and hence they tend to disappear with time especially on exposure to light. The technical term used in labelling on tubes is "lightfast" usually graded (numbered with an ASTM prefix or starred) with 1 being the best hence meaning that that pigment is very resistant to light even if exposed to sunlight. As an artist I am always trying to use the best and most stable pigments available on the market, preferably from brands that use the minimum amount of fillers and driers, since both of these affect the stability of the paint as time passes. My objective is always to give the best quality artwork that lasts for long time to my clients. Besides that I also want that the hours that I spend working on a painting will be worth it.

The experiment is going to take at least a year and today I am reporting some of the preliminary observations I did after 5 months from the start. The paints that I used were: lead/zinc white - PW1/PW4 (Old Holland), Ultramarine Blue - PB29 (Michael Harding), Cobalt Blue light - PB28 (Norma), Pyrrole red - PR254 (Langridge), Quinacridone Magenta - PR122 (Langridge) and Rose Madder Genuine - NR9 (Michael Harding).

I prepared some colour swatches on cotton canvas after first mixing the colour and preparing tints to around mid-value 5 on the Munsell scale on a glass palette. I prepared three replicates of each colour, one for each lighting condition. 3 lighting conditions were used: (1) normal room light conditions (similar to same condition a painting is normally hanged); (2) No light stored in a dark cupboard; (3) Exposed to sunlight in a window. I used these 3 lighting conditions because I wanted to test the performance of the pigment in conditions as close to the real situation as possible. So although manufacturers test the lightfastness by exposing the pigments to light however normally paintings are kept hanged on walls in doors and are not exposed to the lighting conditions used for testing. Also one needs to remember that each pigment might behave the same in oils and acrylics and differently than watercolour, so one needs to look at the lightfastness according to medium.

After 5 months I took them out to perform the first observational analysis by first photographing them and then analyzing the photos using a photography software to measure the intensities of the values and the three primary colours of light known as the RGB system (Red, Green and Blue). Using the software I used the colour picker function taking readings from various spots across each coloured squares and then calculating an average value. I took readings from areas having a similar value, using the values to normalise the results. I then calculated ratios of red/blue to check for colour shifts in the mixtures. A common mix of grays used in landscapes is that using either ultramarine blue or cobalt blue with one of each of the above red paints toned to a mid-tone value.

What I observed? So far the results didn't show any shift in colour between the conditions for the mass tones. Mass tone refers to the colour as it comes out from the tube. A control consisting of cadmium yellow light (PY35) known to be excellent lightfast did not showed any changes.
Some slight changes were observed in the mid-tone of Rose Madder Genuine and Cobalt blue exposed to sunlight. It was expected that Rose Madder will show a difference as it is known not to be excellent lightfast, however cobalt blue was a very surprising finding.
Both mixtures of cobalt and ultramarine blue with rose madder show a decline in red colour with ratios 0.58 vs 0.45, respectively, between dark and sun exposed. There were no changes for magenta however a slight change was observed for pyrrole when exposed to sunlight which I need to follow up with more testing on this pigment.

The pigments were returned to their original conditions for further testing within couple of more months. From my observations so far it seems that magenta is the best cool red to choose. I will need to compare the pyrrole red as a cool-warm red with permanent orange PO73 that can be used to give grayer hues when mixed with ultramarine blue.

To continue on the same topic of my last post this time I am going to talk about how as an artist you can train yourself to see subtle changes in value. This is very important if you want to draw and paint realism, since it is the most important factor that allows you to create a three dimensional illusion on a flat surface.

In a sequential way of teaching usually students wanting to learn to paint realism will need to master their drawing skills using graphite and later on charcoal. In my opinion charcoal is a better and easier to manipulate than graphite for this purpose. However with both media one is only dealing with black and white (usually of the surface) and so one only needs to control how light or dark the application is...known as value. When one moves to colour this becomes more complicated as it is not easy to see value in colour and besides that another factor becomes part of the equation..known as chroma (saturation or intensity).

So before moving to color one can use black and white paint to render tonal studies from casts. Using a white cast is the first step since one can clearly see all the elements of the effect of light on form, that are highlights, mid-tones, form shadow and cast shadows. And you can accomplish this by simply mixing various shades of gray starting from at least 5 main tones and then intermixing these together to create the intermediates as you progress and you realise that actually there are much more variations in tones than you first observed.

Doing it from life rather than from a photo is better because our eyes are sensitive to an unlimited range of values to which the photographic camera is not sensitive enough and hence not able to capture. Beside that painting from life gives you more skill to measure proportions accurately.

The image above shows the setup, where I hanged the cast on a black board standing on an easel and I positioned my working easel to the right to the front. The illumination was from the light at the top on my painting easel. I used an averaged light colour temperature from 2 LED tubes (4000K and 6000K). At the front of the cast I hanged a plumb line which helps me to align myself to the same view point to the cast at all time. As paints I used Mars Black (Langridge) and Flake white replacement (Gamblin). Please note that in the photo the angle and position of the camera were different from my eye level. It took approximately 6 hours to finish this small study (15 x 20 cm).

One of the most difficult tasks for any artist that wants to paint realism is to get the right values. Without getting the right values, painted objects will remain flat. Value change in colour is what gives the illusion of form. Certain colours have a high or low inherent value, that is naturally they are either dark or light.

In order to start seeing value changes and mix colours of the right values one needs to first understand the basic concept of how light affects various shapes. Starting from simple geometric shapes one can move to more complex objects. One needs to train the eyes and brain to see these subtle changes in values sometimes not that obvious to the untrained eye especially when it comes to light coloured objects. There are various ways how you can check yourself while painting to see that you are mixing the right colurs of the correct values, or to check whether you have the right values on the canvas. The easiest way to do it is to move back and to look at the canvas from a distance. Most of the time you will immediately observe a darker area that looks odd when compared to the adjacent values.
The other way is to move back and squint at the painting and objects. Squinting your eyes will filter the amount of light entering your eyes and the colours in front of you will become grey and hence easier to judge their values.
Another way which works for me is to compare to a grey scale. You can prepare one yourself from your own paints and keep it as a reference. When doing a still life like above I place the grey scale next to the object and compare the darkness of the coloured object with the scale. By squinting you should be able to judge well. I compare in a way like bracketing in a camera, where I compare to a lighter and a darker tone to confirm the real tone. With time your eyes will immediately judge the values correctly. Taking a photo of the finished painting and converting it to black and white using software will also help you to check your values. Both the apple and the landscape were checked in this way.
Finally if you want to develop a sensitivity to colour and to judge values (and chroma) correctly when mixing paint you will need to do a number of exercises using simple still life objects and trying to match the exact colours as you see them. Even half an hour every couple of days should be good enough. You will be amazed how the body quickly learns what to do.

Today I wanted to share with you some comparison tests that I did on various paints I have in my collection. One of the most important characteristics of paints that reflects the quality of that particular paint is its tinting strength or else the ability of that paint to retain its colour after the addition of white to increase the value of that colour.

In the first set of 12 squares at the top I tested four kinds of white paints I use in my paintings mixed with Ultramarine blue from Gamblin.
Column 1        zinc/titanium (Gamblin)
Column 2  titanium / lead (Michael Harding)
Column 3       Zinc / lead (Old Holland)
Column 4      Flake white replacement as titanium white (Gamblin)

The first row shows each white directly from the tube. As expected Zinc/titanium in Row 1 column 1 is the coolest white compared to the ones containing lead.

Row 2 is 75% white and row 3 is 25% white.
Important to note that I mixed equal amounts of paint from each tube.

 Ultramarine Blue retained its best vibrancy when mixed with zinc/lead mixture in column 3 even when mixed with 75% white. Second best was Flake white replacement. Worst was with zinc/titanium mix in column 1.

In the second set of 12 boxes at the bottom I used zinc/lead white from Old Holland and mixed it with 3 ultramarine Blue from three different brands, Gamblin, Old Holland and Michael Harding.  Best tinting strength was observed with Michael Harding and worst for Gamblin.

Going back to the whites I used in the first testing my approach when painting is to use a fast drying but more flexible white (especially on stretched canvas) for the lower layers of a painting and for this the best choice is lead white/titanium mix from Michael Harding with linseed oil as vehicle. Then I usually switch to flake white replacement (Gamblin) for most of the rest of the painting. This kind of white is also manufactured in linseed oil, it is very thick in texture and retains the vibrancy of the colours mixed with it. It also dries very slowly. If in some cases I need to push a colour to a very high value without loosing its vibrancy and making it look chalky (very common when using titanium white) I will then switch to a mix of zinc / lead by Old Holland. However, since lead dries very quickly I delay its drying time by adding walnut oil into the paint.

Simple colour studies are important to train yourself to see and mix colour using paint. This is even more important if you want to paint realism. Landscape painting is not the best platform to do so, unless you go painting outdoors, something very difficult to do if you are a beginner. The reason is that landscapes are very complicated as one needs to take a lot of care to distance and light effects that varies a lot.

In the studio you are in full control of setting up the subject and most important you are in control of the light. So usually I try to pick up a simple subject like a fruit that is not too complicated in shape and I just stage it in a dark shadow box with a single light on it. The canvas is next to the object and to help me with drawing I use a view finder with a grid, the same size of the canvas. The next step is to look at the object and identify the hues, in this case there were green and red hues. I then chose the paints to use to manage to mix those hues. The palette consisted of cadmium scarlet, permanent alizarin, ultramarine blue, cadmium lemon, burnt umber and white. The next step was to determine the range of values using a Munsell scale by identifying the darkest and the lightest spots in the painting. Unlike what one expects, the brightest parts in the highlight were only mid-range on the value scale. So obviously the rest was darker, in all identifying like 5 steps. I used a colour checker to check my colours and values, comparing my paint to the real object. When I was happy with the hue of mid range value, I started adjusting the value and chroma step by step and laying the paint where it belongs on the canvas starting from the very dark canvas and moving on to the subject.

Today I am going to talk briefly about my current palette of paints that I use for most of my work. The artist palette always evolve with time and hence my current selection of paints is based upon not only my needs to create the actual painting but also on background knowledge about pigments and paints. Knowing about what actually is in your paint tube is important for two main reasons. Paint manufacturers, like any other kind of manufacturer, are always looking at making profits and to do this they are very creative in creating as many paint tubes as possible for you to buy. This can be overwhelming especially for a beginner painter, to go to the art store and you face a never ending variety of paints and colours. The reality is that you do not need to buy that many colours and most of those colours you see are actually made up of combination of the same basic pigments that you can easily prepare yourself on the palette. So one needs to have a look at the label and check the pigment numbers and ignore completely the fancy names sometimes given on the tubes. Pigment numbers are standardised and hence they should be the same for a particular colour irrelevant of the brand. There are also certain pigments that are very unstable and negatively affected when exposed to even normal day light, and some of these are very popular and expensive. Manufacturers still produce them as there is still high demand for them, since most artists do not have the knowledge to know what is in the tube.

Since I paint mostly landscapes my basic palette is made up of a selection of paints coming from the traditional master painters as well as impressionist artists. I find this combination to give me a wider range of colours that I can mix from them. As a quality of paint I always use artist grade paints that contains only pigment and oil with no additives. My preferred brands are Michael Harding, Art Spectrum, Old Holland, Gamblin, Langridge and MasterClass.

My basic palette consists of:
Ultramarine blue deep  PB29
Cadmium yellow light   PY35 (still my preferred yellow although I occasionally use Arylide lemon PY3)
Permanent Alizarin Crimson (this is the permanent alternative to alizarin crimson) I also replace this with Quinacridone magenta PR122
Burnt Umber (Michael Harding as I find it to be very dark compared to other brands)
Burnt Sienna
Indian Yellow (Masterclass as the pigment PY83 is very stable)

The above colours (plus white) are enough to produce a wide range of mixes to paint most realistic paintings, still life and portraits. For landscape painting I have an extended palette of paints that I use to a lesser degree but that are useful to expand the variety of colour. Here they are:

Yellow Ochre
Lemon yellow (Michael Harding since this is the only company that prepares real lemon yellow)
Indian red
Phthalo Blue
Cadmium scarlet
Phthalo green (I replaced viridian with this one since it has a more intense colour)
Cadmium orange (that I find slightly warmer than the scarlet and hence better for highlight)
Blue Black (very rarely used)

As white I use three kinds:
As a basic white I use a blend of titanium white and zinc white (from either Gamblin or Norma) This is a relatively cool white with a very soft texture.
I also use flake white replacement by Gamblin that is thicker in texture and warmer in tone. However this is titanium white in linseed oil which gives the yellowish tone.
For the main highlights I use a mix of lead and zinc white prepared by Old Holland that is warmer in colour and thicker in texture. I usually reserve this to mix with highlight colour.
I always keep a tube of pure titanium white to add if I need an opaque white to create mist etc.