Using Colours - mixing and characteristics

Placing colours on the pallette

When you decide which colours to use in the painting you are planning to do, you can place an amount from each colour from the tube onto the pallette. Always try to keep the same order of how you place the colours, usually using the order of the colour wheel. I usually place the colours in the order starting from reds on the left hand side, yellows and blues on the right hand side. I place White on the right hand side and browns just after the reds. Always place the colours on the upper part of the pallette and leave a lot of space for mixing colours.

Diluting colours

Most of the time we will need to dilute colours since they are usually too thick to use directly from the tube. You thin the colours by using one of the several media that are available. However for oil colours the most common diluents used are pure gum terpentine, odourless mineral spirits and refined linseed oil.

Since you want the underpainting to dry very quickly the best to use are odourless spirits or pure gum terpentine. I prefer the former due to lack of odour. You can dilute the paints either by dipping the brush in the mdium before picking the colours obviously adding amount of mineral spirit depending on what you want to achieve. The more diluent you add the thinner the paint and the more it dries quickly. This is good to do a wash for the underpainting. You can thin the colour especially white by adding drops of diluent onto it while mixing with painting knife until the paint has a consistency like a toothpaste.

For the next layer of paint I will dilute using a mix of 1:4 linseed oil with mineral spirit.

To decrease the drying time it is also wise to use liquin which decreases drying to almost 1/3 of the normal time.

In the case of acrylics usually you dilute with water or else one of the several media available that usually are used to increase drying time since acrylics dry very quickly especially in hot and dry conditions.

Drying Times

Different oil colours have different drying times. This is because oil colours do not dry by evaporation but by oxidation. Here are some examples:

Fast drying times (1 - 2 days) cobalt blue, Prussian blue, Raw sienna, umbers, Flake white

Medium drying times (5 days) permanent alizarin, cadmiums, ultramarine blue, ochres, burnt sienna, titanium white, zinc white

Long drying time (> 5 days) acrylamides, alizarin crimson, quinacridones

Use of colour in landscape painting

In order to create the illusion of distance as well as other characteristics such as time of the day or seasonal variations one has to know which colours to use in a landscape. As a general rule, very cool colours will recede in distance while warm colours appear to be at the foreground. However there are different blues, reds and yellows available that can in themselves be warm or cool. Here are some examples:

• Cobalt and cerulean blues are cool blues very good for skies and distant objects especially when mixed with white. Add crimson as you move closer (turning purple) and a touch of raw sienna to change it to grey.
• Ultramarine blue is a warmer blue and can be used for objects that are closer
• Alizarin crimson is a cool red and so it is ideal for backrounds, to darken mountains and other objects as they come closer and to create shadows in the clouds or purplish colours in the skies. When mixing will alizarin crimson be cautious as the colour is very intense and you will only need to use very small amounts
• Cad red, vermillion are warm reds with cadmiums being the warmer, so usually these are used for nearby objects
• Cadmium yellow or orange are warm while lemon yellow is a cool colour. For background yellows or greens one can use raw sienna which can look yellow especially when mixed with white
• Vermillion is a pure and very intense green but rarely used on its own due to its strong and artificial looking colour. You can use touches of vermillion mixed with other colours such as raw sienna to give a green tint.
• Burnt umber can be used for foreground and the same for burnt sienna. Burnt umber creates an interesting green when mixed with veridian
• Always try to darken a colour by using the opposite colour (complementary) on the colour wheel.
• Indian yellow or Australian red gold forms a bright yellow (golden) when mixed with white.

Composition 3 - Oil Painting Landscape

Composition 3 - The Three Sisters

This is a painting I recently finished showing the iconic Three Sisters at the Blue Mountains. This is an oil on canvas board. I used 10oz cotton canvas on MDF board.

I am going to use this painting to go through the basic techniques of landscape painting. 

To start with, most landscape paintings have a background which usually includes the sky. The furthest mountains in this painting are part of the background. 

The midground refers to the closer mountains and the rock formations themselves.
The foreground at the bottom of the painting is the closest to the viewer.

To create the sense of distance and depth one has to use colour and also relationship of different objects to each other, i.e. the closer the subject is to you it looks bigger, more detailed and darker in colour.

Aerial perspective. When you look at a distant object like looking at mountains that are kilometers away, one tends to see them having a bluish colour. This is because there is atmosphere between the mountains and the viewer and this atmosphere is made up of gasses and humidity that scatters light coming from the sun while absorbing most colours leaving only blue to reach your eyes. So in a painting we need to create this effect. In the morning since there are more water droplets in the atmosphere the bluish colour seems to be stronger.

I started the painting with a rough sketch and underpaint using a wash of basic colours. I diluted the paints with odourless mineral spirit for fast drying.The underpainting was done using cobalt blue and titanium white for sky and background mountains, adding more alizarin crimson to the forground mountains and rock formations and dark burnt umber for the forground rocks.

Backround.
As a diluent for the rest of the painting I used a mix of 1:4 linseed oil with odourless mineral spirit.
After the first wash I left the painting to dry overnight. The next day the paint was almost completely dry.
Using a mix of titanium/zinc white I started from below the horizon line up into the sky. The distant sky has to be close to white. Cobalt blue was used for the upper part of the sky, darker at the corners and using a criss-cross brush stroke blended into the white of the distant sky creating a gradient.
The cloud was painted using a purplish shadow from cobalt blue and alizarin red. Using a 8 filbert brush I added the white highlights with a touch of burnt sienna, blending the colour into the shadow in a circular movement. Using a clean dry brush I softened the brush strokes using a diagonal brush stroke up into the right hand corner. The horizontal distant mountain at the horizon was done using a single brush stroke with cobalt blue onto the white underpaint. The lower part within the valley was left as white as possible to give the illusion of mist.
Midground
Using a mix of ultramarine blue + titanium white with a touch of alizarin I created the background mountain on the left hand side. Adding more blue and slightly more alizarin red I did the other mountain on the left hand side just behind the rock formations.
To the same mix I added slightly more ultra blue and more alizarin crimson creating a reddish purple. With this mix I painted the right hand side middle mountain.
The underpaint of the three sisters was painted using a mix of ultramarine blue + white + vermillion.
I started adding the details to the background mountains. The cliffs were painted with a mix of white with a touch of alizarin. I added a touch of very lemon yellow mix with white to the mountain behind the three sisters giving the hint of trees. The cliffs on the right handside mountain where painted with titanium white + alizarin + touch of burnt sienna (not completely mixed but left as marbled).
Using a mix of titanium white + raw sienna I started adding the grass and hint of trees to the right hand side mountain. The highlights were done by adding more white to the raw sienna. Using a filbert brush I added more trees from back to front, enhancing the brush stroke and leaving shadows from teh underpaint in between them. Using a liner brush and a mix of blue/white I added the tree trunks randomly throughout, increasing the size as I come forward.
The rock formations of the tree sisters were painted using a mix of white + alizarin + more burnt sienna partially mixed. I used a flat brush and a small painting knife to create the rock effect.
The trees around the three sisters were painted using a filbert brush loaded with a mix of titanium white + raw sienna + gray (made up of alizarin + ultramarine blue + touch of raw sienna) + very tiny spec of viridian green. Highlights were added randomly using a mix of white with Australian red gold (or if you want Indian yellow).
Foreground
Using a painting knife I sculptured the rock formation at the forground using a very dark mix of burnt umber, Payne's gray + burnt sienna. I partially mized these colours with titanium/zinc white and using the knife strokes in the direction the rocks are positioned. The shadow of the cliff edges was left with Payne's gray and burnt umber. I added a little bit of green colour (ultramarine blue and cadmium yellow medium) to the rock and also a touch of vermillion (red).
The bush was painted with the same mix of Payne's gray, burnt umber and viridian green. Highlights of the bush was painted with cadmium yellow medium, Australian red gold, white mix. I used pallette knife for most of the foreground including tree trunk of bush as it creates a really nice bold effect.

Hope you enjoy and that you found this information usefull.
Happy painting

Work in progress

Sydney City at sunset

This is an oil on canvas, still in progress of Sydney city as seen from the northern shore of the harbour, with a dramatic sunset sky. Most of the painting is still in underpainting stage. The size of the painting is 1.2 metre X 0.9 metre.

Linear perspective - Composition 2

 

One of the major challenges when painting a landscape is to create a sense of space and distance, i.e a 3D image on a 2D surface, i.e your canvas or any other support. This can be achieved by understanding some basic principles:

1. Nearby objects appear larger than distant ones. One has also to look at the relationship in size of each object as they recede into distance. To acheive this you can draw a series of lines as shown in the image below.

As shown in the above image, I first drew the horizon line which has to be set at eye level. Every object will recede into distance to a single vanishing point (VP) on the horizon line. In this sketch I drew a road with some trees on the side. As you can observe the width of the road decreased as one looks into distance in a proportional way until it reaches the vanishing point. Looking at the trees on the side, one can also observe that they decreased in size but remained in between the two lines of perspective pointing toward the vanishing point. Besides that the distance in between the trees (a) is greater at the front.Trees at the back appears to be closer to each other.

The above is a single point perspective, however you can also have a two point perspective where there are 2 vanishing points on the horizon. 

The above figure shows an example of 2 point perspective. The same as in the previous example you will need to draw the horizon line which in this case it is further up in my painting and hence it gives the impression of looking from above. Then I marked to vanishing points on the horizon and constracted all straight lines to create the front building leading to these two VPs. If you add windows or doors you need to do the same. I decided to place my light source to the left and hence the side of the building in shadow will be on the right. This creates an 3D impression. If you add other buildings on the street to the right you will need to follow the same perspective lines leading to VP2 while constructing new ones towards VP1.

Landscape Painting - Composition 1

It is very important that you find a subject to paint and you should direct all attention of the viewer towards your subject. The subject could be a house or a particular tree, or what ever you find interesting and want to show to your audience. You might be painting from photos or plein air, in both cases you should have something that attracted you to paint that particular scene and so you want it to be the subject of your painting.

Usually the subject is not placed at the centre of the painting  but somewhere in the lower quadrant on the right hand side of the painting (Fig 1). The human eye tends to travel more from left to right and you want to leed the viewer's eye into the picture and towards that subject.

As shown above, the canvas was divided into four quadrants and the subject was placed in the lower right hand side quadrant. However although this model is used quite often, this is not a rule. There are other ways of constructing a good composition. The most important is not to place the subject at the centre of your painting. The subject can also be anything or it could simply be an area of very bright light as in the image below.

To keep the viewer's eye in the picture and leading it to the subject it is important to place secondary objects pointing towards the subject. As in the painting above the path is leading towards that light and into the unknown. You can have branches, trees, a winding road etc to do this job. Never place objects facing out of the picture as this will distract the viewer's eye and will leed it out of the picture.

Aother issue to be considered is the viewpoint or whether you are looking at your subject at level or like you are looking at it from over the top of a hill (facing down). When looking from above you will see more objects into distance than if you are looking at level. So high viewpoint paintings will usually include less sky and more land, however it is challenging to demonstrate the effect of distance. If looking at level, then usually you will have more sky and objects at the back are partly or almost completely covered by those at the front.

Painting Tools & Equipment

Canvas

You can paint on any type of surface as support such as paper, wood panels, metal etc. For oil painting the most commonly used is canvas, either stretched or unstretched. You can buy canvas either in roll or ready stretched, however buying a roll will turn out to be a cheaper alternative. You can buy this canvas either already primed or unprimed. The primer acts as a base for the oil (or acrylic) paint to adhere to without cracking, peeling, wrinkling or shrinking. The most commonly used primer is gesso and it can be applied either as a single layer or double layer.

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​There are different types of canvas of which cotton is the most commonly used. The other type is linen that is very expensive. It is important to use good quality canvas and this usually has to be of a minimum of 10 oz and 12 oz for bigger paintings. Ready made canvases found in stores are barely 8 oz and even less. If you buy canvas by roll you can have a better quality canvas with the same price that you buy a similar size but of an inferior one from a store. 

Brushes, Knives and Palettes

For oil and acrylic painting it is very important that you buy good quality brushes. Inferior brushes will start losing hair while painting and it is really annoying to stop every minute to remove hair from the surface of your painting. Do not buy synthetic ones but only buy those having natural hair such as hogs hair. Brushes come in various shapes and sizes. You must have a selection of round, flat, filbert, fan and liners (for fine and delicate work). You must also have a selection of sizes usually numbered from 0 to 12 (12 being the largest). Different brushes are used for various techniques. A good brush must maintain its shape when being used. You must also have a 2 inches brush for background colouring (and underpainting), that you can buy from an ironmonger (also used for house painting). The most important is to clean the brushes while using them and after you finish as if you do not do so then you will end up wasting money. While painting you have to clean the brush before picking up colour and this is done using tissues. Do not clean the brush with turpentine while painting unless you are going to go from a dark colour to a lighter colour. When you finish first remove excess colours using a tissue and then clean the brush in mineral solvent followed by rinsing it in water with a dishwashing detergent. Do not throw away old brushes as you might find them useful to create different effects.

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Painting knives are used to mix paints on the palette as well as to paint, usually very useful to lay thick layers of paint onto the canvas and to create structures like tree trunks and rocks. You can also use them to create fine but straight lines, snowy mountain peaks or to create small waves or ripples on a water surface. Same as brushes, painting knives come in different sizes and shapes. Always clean your knife before picking up colour from the palette.

Use a flat palette for oils and acrylics as it will be very difficult to pick up paint from palettes used for watercolour. You can have a wooden or a perspex palette, or even simply a disposable plate. Alternatively you can use a tear off palette, which is very useful and you do not need to clean it afterwards.

Paints and diluents

Always use artist quality paints for both oils and acrylics. Artist quality paints have more pigments rather then binders. Artist quality paints do not fade away when mixing and also they will last longer. Artist quality oil and acrylics are usually heavy bodied and thus easier to paint using painting knives.

When painting with acrylics, paints are usually diluted to a creamy consistency with water. To increase drying time you can use one of the many retarders that are commercially available.​

Turpentine is usually used to dilute oil paints for underpainting to decrease drying time. Try to use odour free turpentine especially when working indoors. Oil colours can be diluted with linseed oil for upper layers of a painting, thus increasing drying time. Poppy oil is another diluent that can be used to dilute oil paints. The more oil you add the more you increase the drying time. The consistency of the paint should be creamy and should be in a way that the paint is easily released from the brush onto the previous layer. Liquin is another excellent medium that decrease the drying time of oils and is very good for glazes.

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Varnishes

Varnishes are used to protect the painting and colours from deteriorating with time besides making it easier to clean. There are two types, matt and gloss. Matt varnish do not reflect light and hence will give a uniformity to the painting, since oil paints have different glare when dry.

Allow the painting to dry well ideally about 6 months. You can apply varnish either using a brush or using aerosol spray. To apply the varnish lay the painting horizontal on a clean surface (dust free) and apply onto the surface in a uniform manner. Apply in a well ventilated place or outside, and beware of any flying insects that can rest on it accidentally. Matt varnish can sometimes form a cloudy appearance after drying sometimes affected by humidity.

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Understanding Colour

When white light, coming from the sun or another light source, strikes an object it is then reflected back to our eyes by that object. Different surfaces absorb, reflect and mix light differently due to their structures and this is why we see different colours. So in painting, different pigments on the surface of the canvas are able to do the same. There are 3 different properties in colour: ​

1. Hue: or the colour itself eg. Blue, red, yellow

2. Value: or else the darkness or lightness of colour and this is what creates contrasts

3. Intensity or tone: pure colour comes from the tube but it is rarely used as pure and so it has to be mixed. 

 

Hue

​The above picture shows the colour wheel. There are 3 primary colours from which all the other colours can be mixed.....Yellow, red, blue.

Secondary colours are those mixed from two of the primaries eg: blue + yellow = green

Tertiary colours are those mixed from a secondary and a primary eg: orange + yellow

Colours are said to be either warm or cool. Red is warm while blue is cool.

However there are warm blues (eg: ultramarine blue) and cool blues such as cerulean, cobalt and phtalo blue. There are also warm reds such as the cadmiums and cool reds (alizarin red).

The earth colours such as raw sienna, raw umber, burnt sienna and burnt umber are located at the inner part of the wheel towards the orange side. ​

Using cool colours for early morning scenes as well as for winter scenes while warm colours are used for afternoon or summer/Autumn scenes.

Appropriate use of warm and cool colours in a painting will give you depth and perspective, that is using blues for distant objects such as distant mountains and warm colours for foreground objects.

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​Value

​​The darkness and lightness of colour will give contrast and hence also useful for perspective. White is the lightest colours while black is the darkest...however black is rarely used in a painting as it is too strong (use Payne's grey instead). The addition of white to a colour will create a tint. Always keep an abundant amout of white available to use. Colours are usually darkened with a grey to create a tone. The addition of white or greys will affect the intensity of the colour. Adding black will create shade.​​

Suggestions applicable for oil painting

Always use artist quality oil paints (these contain more pigment and so do not fade when mixing). Also it will be easier to create texture when using knife for painting. You cannot work well with runny colours.

If oil colours are too thick then thin them with gum turpentine or linseed oil, only to a creamy consistency. The more oil you add the more time it takes for the painting to dry. Gum turpentine is usually added to colours used for the underpainting for fast drying.

Add more oil to the top layers of a painting as these has to dry the last., this is known as FAT over LEAN. If upper layers dry before the lower ones then this can cause cracking. Always paint in adequate ventilation as oil colours are toxic even if they do not smell. When starting painting, start from very dark (usually monochrome) underpainting, just indicating the basic shapes and structures and light/dark areas. Always keep in mind that there is no light if there is no dark and so you have to create contrast by putting highlights over darker areas. I will give more details how to use colours when discussing landscape painting.