The Secret to Painting Realistic Metal!

Hey, I've painted a few metal subjects in my day, so I figured that makes me an expert on the subject. And who would I be if I didn't share that knowledge with you guys? So of course, like most of my paintings, I draw it out first, I tone the canvas, and then I begin laying in that background in that foreground to sort of focus in on my subject more. And it's definitely way easier doing this when you just have one single subject to worry about. Hence why I painted this series here. Work smarter not harder kids. And if you're not a kid, well, still work smarter not harder. You get the point. So I've identified the darkest parts of the painting already and I put those in first because that helps me to get those dark colors out of the way and worry about building up to those light areas. Now you're probably wondering, how did I end up with such a strange item in my possession? All I can say is one day you walk into an antique store and next thing you know, you walk out with a mug slash cup slash pot, whatever this is. So I've just been continuing to block in the color as I see it, you kind of want to simplify things. And actually, this is a pretty fast version of this video. If you want to see the full thing, you can check out my new Skillshare class about painting realism and using this reflective surface as my subject. And that's that would be the hour long version of this video. If you're interested and want a more step by step or real speed version of this process, link down in the description below. So now that I'm done plugging, what I was getting at before was that you want to simplify things, your brain kind of wants to see the metal object and think metal. Which I mean, that's not a bad thing. But in the painting world, what you're going to want to try to do is look at it, don't think okay, metal shiny, I need to paint brighter, maybe a lot of white usage to make things seem shinier. You're going to want to just paint as you see it. And as hard as that can be sometimes that's pretty much the only way you can get to a realistic result. What do I mean by that? Glad you asked. Well, when you see the side by side here of the pretty much my view of it, and what I'm painting, my view, or the picture of my view looks like there's like one green used, and, and then just some white shiny highlights there. But when you really have it right in front of you and you're seeing it, you see all the little subtleties in the green, some greens are warmer, some are cooler, all right next to each other, all different lightness and darkness. And that's what sort of creates that illusion of the metal there. And yes, painful as it was for me to learn that. Because like I said earlier, I'm a work smarter, not harder type of dude. So just know that there aren't many shortcuts when you're painting realism or painting something like this. But again, you can keep it loose. I'm obviously not over blending here, I still have visible separation and different colors that I use. And that's sort of my way of keeping it fun. Also, one tiny, small little thing that you're going to want to know when painting this way, it will not look even remotely good until you're pretty much almost done with the whole thing. So yeah, just keep that in mind when you're if you're doing this. I mean, you see it looks pretty crusty right now, but it'll it'll get there. I mean, you saw the thumbnail it'll it'll get there. Don't worry that wasn't Photoshop. I promise. Well, now that I say that that's kind of suspicious, but I'm serious. Well, would you look at that right on cue is finally starting to look good. Like I said, near the very end of the painting when I'm putting those final details of just titanium white straight out of the tube. You breathe a sigh of relief. But honestly, it wasn't that bad. It was actually pretty fun. And if you enjoy watching my videos, I would appreciate it if you subscribe, like the video, leave comments. And yeah, stay tuned for next time. Transcribed by https://otter.ai