10 Quick And Easy Color Tips For Oil Painting

So tip number one is having cadmium, red and Crimson on your palate can come in handy now. If you're just working with the primaries, you don't need both. You can have either Crimson or cadmium and paint just fine. But in my experience I found it very convenient to have both on my palette. This is like one of the most asked questions I get from my students like oh like: when do you use cadmium red and when do you use Crimson, it always say for me, the biggest thing is just one's warm and one's cool. So if I'm trying to mix a purple - and I want it to be a little cooler - I'll use - Crimson in my ultramarine blue - to get a cooler purple and if it's warmer I'll use, cadmium, red and ultramarine blue to get more of a warmer purple now example - Is if I'm desaturating a green now, if I'm painting some trees and I need to sit them in the distance, so I need to cool them down a bit when it comes time to neutralize that green with greens, complement, which is red I'll reach for the Crimson, Because I know it's going to neutralize it, but also probably keep it on the cool side. But if I'm painting some trees that are up close and I need them to be warmer I'll - go for the cab medium red to desaturate, my green, to keep it more. Warm now speaking of desaturating color, that leads me to my next tip, which is never use a color straight out of the two. You know, I'm mainly talking about the primary and secondary colors. Even if you mix two of the primaries together say you mix an ultramarine, blue and cadmium lemon. You get a green you're going to want to desaturate that green there's, nothing in nature. That is just a Pure Color out of the tube. Unless you're painting, like a street light or something and the way you do saturated color, is by using the colors complement. So if you have a green, you want to desaturate it with red. If you have a blue, you want to do saturated with orange. A purple yellow always bring this up with my students when I'm talking about grains in a landscape and you're painting, trees or grass you're always going to want to desaturate that green with some red same thing goes with skin tones. I feel like the tendency with a lot of people's portraits is that they make the skin tones too vibrant. I know for me when I do like a Master Copy like if I do a master copy of one of John Singer. Sergeant'S portraits I'm always fascinated at how neutralized the colors are they struggle with skin tones, I highly suggest doing a Master Copy or, at the very least, just having an image from a master, painter's portrait and just trying to match the colors. It'S one thing to see the colors in the painting, but to actually mix them yourself and see them on your palette is a completely different thing. I think you'll be amazed at how much you have to desaturate the colors for a portrait. Also, when you get a hold of being able to desaturate Colors, it's going to make the areas that you do put saturated color in have that much more punch to them, and that actually leads me into tip number three, which is think about where you put saturated Color and this painting by Rembrandt the reason that the helmet really pops and looks shiny, isn't necessarily just because the colors are so vibrant in the helmet. It'S because they're surrounded by a bunch of desaturated colors, you know saturated color, is relative and if everything in your painting has a lot of saturated, color, nothing's going to really a pop or stand out, you need that contrast of dull colors versus vibrant colors. Another example is this fruit, still life painting that I did and the reason certain areas look transparent and almost glowing with the light shining through them is because I made sure to establish the appropriate desaturated colors. You know a lot of these colors in here are, you know, really muddy kind of browned down. So when I did go in and put those bright greens and oranges and yellows they really pop and stood out. You know values are really important, but sometimes it's the saturation of color that can make things pop like. If I put this into black and white, you don't really get that glowing effect, which tells you it's not really about light and dark. In this case, it's about saturated and desaturated color, all right tip number four is when you're painting the sky try the best you can to keep that Sky color clean. This is why a lot of painters will put the sky in first before they have a bunch of colors on their palette. That might muddy it up. I mean when I'm mixing colors on my palette. I really like to Branch off other colors and mix pools of colors with other colors and Branch off and muddy colors up. But when it comes time to paint the sky, I make sure to create a brand new pile of paint on my palette of clean color. Now sometimes I do desaturate the sky I'll put like some yellow ocher or something in there. I want to have full control over the saturation of color in that paint, because if your Sky color gets too muddy, it will have too much weight to it, and this guy shouldn't have a lot of weight. You know it's the sky, it's air, it's not supposed to be dense. This is also why, when I'm painting my sky, I'm very aware if my brush runs into another color on the canvas and if it does, I make sure to clean my brush really well. My paint thinner and wipe it with my paper towel. I always am holding paper towels in my left hand and pinching the paint out of my bristles to make sure my brush is really clean, a lot of times with students. I can tell that they didn't fully clean their brush with the paper towel for reaching back into their pool of Sky paint. All right now, if you struggle with color mixing in general - and you just don't know where to begin - I actually offer the color mixing video for my foundations of oil painting course for free. If you want to check that out, I have a link to it in the description of this video all right tip number five: this is a fun one. A quick shortcut to a good grain for trees in the distance is ultramarine. Blue and yellow ocher see colors change when they get further in the distance. This is atmospheric perspective. They'Re going to get desaturated and yellows are going to drop outs and there's going to be more Reds and more Blues. So if I wanted to mix up a green for some trees in the distance, I would first mix some ultramarine blue some cadmium lemon and get a green and then desaturate it with some red and then push a little more blue into it. And then I probably have to fiddle with it a little bit to get it to where I wanted, but since yellow ocher is already desaturated, I kind of get to skip a step so I'll just mix some blue, some yellow ocher. I still might need to play around with it. Maybe that's some white, maybe a little bit of crimson, but just mixing those two colors is going to quickly get me in the ballpark of a good grain for trees in the distance. You'Re welcome all right tip number. Six is never use Pure White now, yes, you might use Pure White for like glare sparkling in the ocean, or you know glare on some metallic objects, but other than that. Try not to use Pure White. I feel, like a lot of students fall into this trap because in photos a lot of brights are pure white, but you need to learn how to adjust for that and understand that the photo is lying to you. The contrast in photos is always greater than real life, meaning the darks are going to be darker and the lights are going to be lighter. This is why I always say when you're just walking around outside going about your day-to-day life. Taking note of things take note that when you squint your eyes and look out there, nothing is pure white, even areas in my paintings that look like they're Pure White. They are not a lot of times I'll see. People put pure white for snow on like mountain tops, and it's always too bright. You know that snow is very far away. There'S lot of atmosphere between it a lot of times I'll mix in a little bit of blue some burnt sienna, maybe yellow ocher. But it's never exactly Pure White. I feel like the tendency with beginners is to always make the lights in their painting brighter than they really are. I know this was definitely the case. For me, there was a time when I'd always paint the sand on a beach way too bright. I forget exactly which old Master did this. I think it's saroya, but when they were painting they would actually stick a cloth or handkerchief out on a stick in front of their easel. To have that white and the sunlight to compare all their other bright values to and make sure that nothing in their painting was as bright as that white cloth in the sunlight. I do a similar thing with my students when I see them paint clouds way too bright. I always will ask them all right. Well, what color would you go to if there was a seagull flying in front of that white cloud? All right number seven value is more important than color. I always say that you can paint subject, but the complete wrong colors, but if the values of those colors are correct, the painting will still read the opposite is not true. If you use the right colors, but the values are all off, it's not going to look good so always be checking your values. Whenever you're painting take a picture of your painting, while you're working put it in the black and white on your phone. Put your reference in the black and white or you can buy some Red film and hold it up and that gets rid of colors, so you can see just values. Another helpful thing you can do. I actually first saw this in Kevin McPherson's book landscape, painting inside and out, and a way that you can start a painting is by finding the lightest light and darkest dark and getting those in first. That way, you have boundaries, and you know where the rest of all the values in your painting should fall. Another strategy that I do a lot of times is: I will get my darkest value in first and then work dark to light. That way, I can use that darkest dark to compare other values, as I put them in and I can gauge okay. You know this next value is a little bit lighter than my Marcus dark, but how much lighter then, once I get that in then I can use that second color as a key as well. Now it's progressively get lighter and lighter and don't be afraid to bounce back and forth from dark to light you're not going to get it perfectly right on the first try you know this is what I mean when I talk about pushing and pulling the paint pushing And pulling the values, you know you put a dark in you work other parts of the pan, you put other lights and then you realize like. Oh, I need to lighten up that dark previously, and so you lighten that up and then that might affect how you see other values in the pan. You keep adjusting things as you go. All right. Number eight is start with big shapes of flat color. When you look at a subject or a scene, it can get really overwhelming with all the colors that you've seen you're like all right like. Where do I start, I always say no matter what you're painting portrait still life or landscape squint your eyes, which will help you see the big shapes and help give you an average color of those big shapes and block those in first getting the color relationships of Those big shapes set now, while they're very simple, is going to be a lot easier than later down the road in the painting when there's a whole bunch of other shapes and colors. These don't have to be a hundred percent perfect. You are going to add in darks and lights and other colors into these and you'll be able to push them lighter or darker warmer or cooler, but you need somewhere to start. Take it one color at a time, and the most important thing with the scene are the big shapes of color. You want to get those big relationships set first, I always say that you want to try and get the entire canvas covered with paint as soon as you can and your painting should be working to some degree at this point now. Yes, there are other ways of starting a painting like starting at the focal point which I've talked about before, but it's the same idea it's about getting the right, color and value relationships of a group of shapes, touching each other and kind of once. You figure out that one small area you can use it as a key to fill in the rest of the painting, but the main idea is that you're figuring out these simple color relationships right at the beginning, all right nine look to push color, compliments, meaning when You'Re painting a subject or a scene look for areas where color Compliments are next to each other and see if you can't play them up against each other. An example of this that I see a lot is when painters push the Reds and the rocks and mountains, to contrast with the greens and the trees around them, because a lot of times the mountains look pretty gray. You know they don't look like they have that much red in them, but you can get away by pushing them a little more red. But another example is pushing the you know, purples and blues and the shadows and then pushing the yellows and oranges in the sunlight. Color, compliments also help me choose a background when I'm doing a portrait, I look at the face and see what colors I see in the face a lot. You know if it's a lot of oranges, I might go with them. Blue. If I see more Reds, I might choose more of a green for the background when I'm setting up a still life, I'm always thinking about color compliments. If I have some yellow lemons, I might push the purples on the table around. It also think about this. In terms of a focal point, if I'm painting a landscape and there's a lot of greens, a lot of trees - and I want the focal point to be a little person in it - I'll probably choose to make the shirt on that person red. To contrast with all of the greens so always keep color compliments in mind. All right tip number 10 is when it comes to portraits, try the Zorn palette. I mean I, for one, am a big fan of limited palettes. I most of the time I use just the primaries, maybe a couple other colors, but the more and more I use the Zorn palette. The more I feel like it just really helps you take a shortcut to skin tones. But if you don't know, the Zorn palette is Ivory, black cadmium, red, yellow, ocher and titanium white, and so it's pretty much the primaries it's just. The blue is a black which you can just think of as a very desaturated blue and the yellow is yellow ocher. It'S a very saturated yellow, so it's pretty hard to get colors that are too saturated for a portrait which I find a lot of times is the issue with people just starting out with portraits, like, I feel like. If you had Ivory black and cadmium red, you quickly get a great, very dark shadow color. You can add a little bit of white to that and it's like good desaturated purple for the Shadows. Probably my favorite color that I use in portraits is when I mix yellow ocher and ivory black together. It'S like a very desaturated green, to find very helpful and actually shows up a lot when I'm painting uh hair, also just putting yellow ocher and cambium red a little bit of white you're already at a very close light skin tone. It'S just like. I feel like the biggest issue with students when it comes to color mixing, is having too many options. A lot of people think that all the more colors they have the easier it will be to get certain colors, and I feel like it's the opposite, because there's many different ways to get to a certain color there's, no one right way. I just find it really helpful to simplify your palette and specifically with portraits the Zorn palette. I feel like makes things a lot easier now, but if you struggle with mixing skin tones, I actually offer these skin tones lesson from my poor portrait painting course for free. If you want to check that out I'll put a link to that in the description of this video, alright, that's it for this video hope you enjoyed. If you have any questions about oil paint, please leave those questions in the comments section. I love reading those. That'S how I come up with these videos and if you want to see what I'm painting on a daily basis, you can follow me on Instagram at forza43. I'M Chris fornatero here telling you to go. Get painting