White Cad Yellow Light PAINTING WHAT YOU SEE S Mixed Orange Brent Jensen Plein Air Guide P.O. Box 22388 San Francisco, CA 94126 415 307 77799 www.brentjensenart.com Cad Red Med SUGGESTED PALETTEE Alizarinn Crimson Ultra Marine Mixed Purple Blue Mixed Green There are 12 colors on the color wheel. The suggested palette will give you the color from the tube or mixed with one of its neighbors. Use a small piece of cardboard with a hole punched out to isolate the viewed color. Make it easier to identify and mix a resemblancee of any color you see by: Name the color you see from one of the 12 colors on the wheel. Start with a puddle of that color. Decide if it is a pure color, slightly grayed,, medium grayed or very grayed. Add the opposite color (on the wheel) until it is grayed as desired. Try to approximate how light or dark it is and add white to a very dark color until it is the right value. At this point, adjustments probably need to be made in the mixture by adding more of the original colors or white.
MIXING COLORS Three things to consider when mixing a color: 1. HUE the color on the wheel 2. INTENSITY how pure or gray it is 3. VALUE how light or dark it is This is only one way to approach your color mixing process. There is a warm and cool version of each primary color on the suggested palette. You can obtain an amazing amount of color variation with three primary colors (Cad Yellow, Cadmium Red, and Ultramarine Blue). You achieve good color harmony because of the palette simplicity. When you mix into your color puddle, start mixing at the edge, working into it as needed. Don t start mixing by adding new colors to the middle of the puddle. As you begin to paint the scene in front of you, first find the darkest dark and put that down on your canvas. Find the lightest light and put that down next. Now, you have the two extremes to paint between. Paint thinly at the beginning so you can make corrections without getting gobs of paint that are unmanageable. Get thicker as you near the end, especially on the lights. Leave the darks as transparent as possible. Paint slightly stronger color than you see at the beginning. It is easy to kill a color but harder to strengthen a color. Work to cover the canvas with correct color and simple values (just 3 or 4 at the beginning) that have good visual separation. Keep your brush clean between mixtures or use several brushes. The contamination of opposite colors happens with dirty brushes and creates dirty colors.
Constantly ask yourself these questions: Is my value too light or too dark? Do I need more red/yellow/blue in the color I m mixing? Do I have this too bright/too dull? What is the difference between what I see and what I ve painted? Do I want it to be different? Why?
PLEIN AIR FUNDAMENTALS COMPOSITION Determine a statement or reason for painting the scene. Walk around to determine the most interesting view for you. What will be the focal point? LANDSCAPE BOUNDARIES Generally, a landscape is divided into four separate boundaries which create the aerial perspective in a scene and should be established early in a painting Foreground (closest to you) Middle Distance Distance Sky The farther an object is in a scene, the less we see of its true color, value and edge quality. Landscape elements (trees, hills, buildings, etc.) are perceived cooler as they go farther back in the distance. The value intensity lessens as the object recedes in the distance. BORDERING EDGES A variety of entrances and exits makes a painting more interesting. Avoid equal entrances and exits on each side of a painting. FOCAL POINT Place dominance to an object or area within a painting so other areas in the painting don t compete with it. Objects outside the focal area are less clear because they are becoming part of your peripheral vision. Set the stage in your painting with a primary point of interest. It may be the part with the most contrast in value, light and shadow or it could be an area of intense color, converging lines or a figure within a landscape. Objects outside the focal point are painted with less value contrast, less color intensity and less edge quality. VALUE AND COLOR TEMPERATURE When sunlight illuminates an object, it has a light side and a shadow side. The sunlit side reflects back to our eyes a value with a tonal range with an associated color. The shadow side of an object reflects less light back to our eyes so it appears to us as a darker tone or value and has an associated color
as well. A painter can give the illusion of the object being lit from the right, left, top or bottom through the proper use of value. Often it is best to start a painting by looking for the darkest value in the scene and start with that shape. Then, look for the lightest value in the scene and paint that area. Every other value must fall between these two and determines the value range of your painting. An object in a landscape may appear to have the same value throughout its entire shape, but the color temperature changes. (e.g. the side of a building is painted with a color mix that cools off as it recedes in the distance). EDGES Edges occur where the perimeter shape of an object touches or overlaps another shape. What distinguishes there characteristics is the tone or value contrast of each shape to one another. A sharper edge exists between two shapes where one is dark in value and the other is very light in value. Edge quality is not noticeable when the tone or value of two shapes is relatively close to one another. Squinting eliminates the details in the scene and allows you to see the more obvious changes in value from one shape to another. EDITING A SCENE Artistic license is a fundamental artist s privilege. You don t have to paint what everything you see. Less is often better so edit out parts of your composition that don t add to overall interest. Change colors (e.g. houses, cars, and umbrellas) for added to scene harmony. Add details (e.g. windows on side of house, arch instead of square bridge) if the painting would look better what the added elements.
DEFINITIONS Drawing: Getting the right shape to the right size and in the right position in relationship to everything around it. Shape: The form characteristic of a particular thing, person or structure. Proportion: The comparative relationship between parts. Length: The distance from one important point to another important point. To denote distance in a proportion. Direction: The degree of slant or angle of a shape or plane. Seeing: The tremendous difference between casual observation and analyzed visual comparative study. The difference between looking and seeing is called comparison. Looking without studying relationships is a luxury you can t afford to indulge in. Gesture: A movement or mode of action. Outline: An outward boundary. Contour: Shows outside shapes as well as inside ones as when a muscle or bone comes in front of or goes behind another one. Silhouette: An outline drawing of an object (e.g. a profile portrait filled in wit a solid color; a dark shape against a light background). Tangent: A line or plane that touches but doesn t intersect. Sky Plane: Lightest value (not white or chalky). It is the source of light and should be considered lightest no matter what type of weather conditions. Ground Plane: Second lightest value. This is the flat ground that is exposed to more light than any other plane. Squint your eyes so as not to see too much detail or highlights that make the ground lighter than the sky. Slanting Plane: A middle value or semi dark. Any mountain, hill or foothills that rise from the flat plane at varying degrees.
DEFINITIONS (continued) Upright Planes: The darkest value. Upright objects receive the least amount of light. There are exceptions. For example, when the sun is low, upright objects receive more light. But, in general, vertical objects don t receive direct light so they are darker in comparison to slanted or horizontal objects. Primary Colors: Red, yellow, blue. Secondary Colors: Orange, green, violet. Complimentary Colors: Red and green; blue and orange; yellow and violet. Color Temperature Warm Colors: Yellows, oranges, reds Color Temperature Cool Colors: Blues, violets, greens Color Masses: Each color mass has a predominant primary color with smaller amounts of one or two of the remaining primary colors. See large color masses instead of individual color spots. Mix the colors or temperatures that best suggest the type of light you see.
ART SUPPLY LIST & RESOURCES Oil Paints White Cadmium yellow light Mixed orange Cadmium red medium Alizarin crimson Ultramarine blue Mixed purple Mixed green I usually use the Gamblin paint brand. Brushes & Palette Knife I use Daler Rowney bristle flat brushes #2, #4, #6, and #10 and filberts #2, #4, and #8. I also use Rigger brushes. A palette knife is another essential item. Canvases For small studies, I use as small as 4 x 6 canvases. The largest canvas size I paint plein air is 24 x 36. Generally, I paint outdoors in the range below 16 x 20. My preference is to use a quality Source Tek canvas panels. I mount linen on Birchwood boards. Wet Panel Carrier is a great resource to transport wet canvases back to your studio. Equipment Most plein air painters use a French easel or pochade box. An umbrella attachment is often helpful. A portable chair is a personal preference for some painters. Other Items Paper towel roll and discard bag, and container to hold turpentine solvent. Retail Information Pochade Box Open Box M & Wet Panel Storage Boxes 1392 Southfork Road
Cody, WY 82414 800 473 8098 Easel Essentials www.artworkessentials.com 949 856 2196 Val U Viewer Murphy Enterprises P.O. Box 3881 Torrance, CA 90610 310 320 4343 Paint Gamblin; Utrech, or Windsor Newton Art Supplies Jerry s Catalog 800 uartist Dick Blick www.dickblick.com Canvas Panels Source Tek P.O. Box 14765 Scottsdale, AZ 85267 480 483 6883 Umbrella Patrick Korch, Artist 858 679 9599 www.pkorch.com
RECOMMENDED READING Composition of Outdoor Painting by Edgar Payne Guide to Landscape Painting by John F. Carlson Richard Schmid Paints Landscapes by Richard Schmid Alla Prima by Richard Schmid Fill Your Paintings with Light and Color by Kevin Macpherson Landscape Painting Inside and Out by Kevin Macpherson