These COLORS Are The Secret To Painting NATURAL GREENS In Landscapes

One of the things that artists find really difficult with landscape painting is mixing greens. You might be one of those artists that just really has trouble with it. The greens just look messy or they look neon or they just look really artificial and don't look good and your painting just looks horrible. So in this video what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you how to paint a landscape that features lots of greens and I've decided to come and paint outdoors because I've just been spending way too much time in my studio. All right so I've been driving around for a bit and I think I found the spot that I'm going to paint which is just over here. So I'm parked over there and I really like this view here. So nice rolling hills, a nice stand of trees, the light angle is pretty interesting, there's some clouds. So I think this is going to be a good place to set up my Peshawar box easel and start painting. All right so I've got my easel all set up. I'll just quickly show you some of my gear here. So I'm painting on an Ala Prima Peshawar box and if you want to get one of those I'll put a link in the description box below. It's mounted to a camera tripod and then I'm painting on these. This is an 8x10 linen panel and this is made by canvaspanels.com. Again if you want to get some I'll put a link in the description box below and I'm using Blue Ridge oil paint. So the colors I'm using is titanium white, burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow medium, cadmium red light, alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, cobalt teal and phthalo green and I'm using some Liquin Original here. What that does is it thins the paint and speeds up the drying time. So there's the view I'm going to make a start. I've got my brushes down there so let's get going. So the first thing I'm going to do here is I'm going to sketch out the composition and I'm using some burnt sienna mixed with Liquin and I'm just going to make a start on the composition here. So I'm going to find the middles probably around here and then let's start getting that horizon line across the top. So when you're painting landscapes you want to go for either a high horizon or a low horizon so never have your horizon line right in the middle. It just spoils the composition and I reckon our stand of trees will be around here. So really this whole painting is really about conveying the atmosphere of the location and just getting this stand of trees here we can have that hill there. So the composition's sketched out so the first thing first I'm going to do is paint the darkest values first. So I'm going to mix up some ultramarine blue with this burnt sienna here and a bit of yellow ochre because I'm going to be painting the trees. So the reason being for painting the darks first is because then it doesn't matter if the light changes. So we've got all our darks in first and it creates a whole tonal framework for what we're going to paint. It makes it way easier to paint the areas in light. So I'm just starting off with this tree here in the foreground, this tree here as well and I'm just going to get those shadows in first of all. So I'm just painting more of the dark values. Now as these shadows recede they're going to get lighter so the shadows in the distance are going to get lighter but I want to paint this as if the background is in shadow just like it is there. It looks really dramatic and I think that'll look really awesome in this painting. So just getting the shadows in here first and we'll work on the background. All right so I'm going to paint the distant hills here and what I've done is I've mixed in ultramarine blue and some titanium white to make the value lighter. Also a little bit of alizarin crimson because the shadows in the distance have a blue cast to them. So in terms of the saturation of color we're using some desaturated color so the color is going to be dropping out as it goes into the distance but also as this is in shadow in the distance it's still relatively dark but it's not going to be as dark here as it is around here in the foreground. All right I'm painting the clouds here next so this is a mix of ultramarine blue with a bit of burnt sienna, a little alizarin crimson and some titanium white. So I'm just getting in these cloud shadows. See the clouds over there they look pretty dark. So dark values first. So basically most of my or the main shadows are all marked in here and now it's going to make it a lot easier to paint the areas in light. Okay and now to paint the greens that are in the distance. So the first thing is the shadow area. So I'm using this shadow mix already and I'm just I'm adding some yellow ochre, let's get a bit of cobalt teal in there, some ultramarine blue and it's relatively dark in value but it's got to be lighter than the tree. So that mark I've just added there is way too dark so I'm just adding some more titanium white and then we'll mark that in there so that's lighter, a bit more white in there. So these distant hills are going to be in the shadow. I'll restate the darks later on in the painting. One of the other things about painting outdoors is I'm using just really loose brush work. I can add a bit of detail later on but the key is to try and paint as quickly as you can because the light is always changing. So we want to get these colors down. So you can see that the light's changing already. I've got the main part of my darks added there into the painting so now it's time to start painting the areas in light. So I'm going to start with the highlights in the trees. So these are mostly New Zealand native trees. I'm in New Zealand, can't remember if I said that earlier and what I'll do is actually I think I'll just work off this shadow mix and I'm going to use some yellow ochre and some cadmium yellow and some ultramarine blue. This will just form the base of my green and then we want to get some kind of a red element in there so I'm using some alizarin crimson. So red is opposite to green on the color wheel. It's just going to help to balance it out a little bit. We'll get a bit of titanium white in there just to desaturate and also a bit of cobalt teal that's just going to shift the hue. So we've got a bit going on there with this green but the main thing to keep an eye on is the saturation which is the intensity of the color and the value which is how light or dark it is. So let me just explain a couple of rules about painting landscapes in general and as I said the value is how light or dark your subject is. So we'll find our darkest darks and our lightest lights in the foreground and then as landforms recede the darks aren't as dark and the lights aren't as light. So that's something to consider. So I'm always thinking about value, the value of the color when I'm painting. If your color's not completely right then as long as your values are okay then usually you can get away with it but if your values are off then you're just not going to get the depth and distance in your painting. So at the moment what I'm doing here is I'm just starting to mark some of the highlights and as I'm using Liquin Original I'm going to take advantage of the fact that when I come back to it a bit later on it will have dried a little bit and then what I can do is I can layer on lighter color later on in the painting. So once I've worked on the area it'll give it a bit of a chance to dry but I'm just starting to mark in these highlights. Really the main aim right now is just to get the paint on the canvas as quickly as possible. So moving along here and I want to start painting the grass and I'm going to use the same brush that I've used for the tree here and the same mix but I'm just going to add more Titanium White and let's get some Yellow Ochre in there, some Cadmium Yellow and we'll get a bit of Ultramarine Blue and a little bit of Alizarin Crimson and what I want to do is I just want to get some of these light straw colored tones in the grass there. Again I'm just painting them a little bit darker at this stage so I've got room that I can add my lighter layers of paint once it's dry a little bit. So another tip for painting greens or just values in the landscape. So green, especially the green of the grass, is one of the more lighter values to be found in the landscapes yet the trees are some of the darkest values. So that's something to think about. So a lot of the greens, especially in conifer trees, are actually quite dark. Deciduous trees, the greens tend to be a bit lighter but they're still usually darker than the grass. So if you want to make the trees stand out you've got to make sure that the value of the tree is darker than the grass. Now I can increase the saturation of the grass here even just by mixing in a tiny bit of Phthalo Green to the mix. You can just get some more saturated greens especially for around the foreground here. You can balance it out with some red like some Cadmium Red Light for example just to balance out the green. It doesn't matter that it's a bit darker at this stage it's just going to give us plenty of room to add lighter layers of paint. But at this stage of the plein air painting the most important thing is just to get that colour down and then once we've done that then we can start working on some detail and making tonal adjustments and things like that. Still working on the the grass here so I'm going to start painting the grass that's in the foreground and one of the ways you can paint more convincing looking grass especially if you're painting outdoors is to perhaps do some horizontal brush marks like this and then up and down motions like that in the direction that the grass is growing in. So that's just going to help to convey thick looking grass. As I say I'm using a darker tone at the moment so that I've got room to add my lighter layers. There's also quite a bit of straw coloured grass as well so we can add that in as well. So the time I'm making this video it's March in New Zealand so it's the end of summer so you know our seasons are in reverse because I'm in the southern hemisphere but the weather's still been really pretty good still quite warm but everything's looking pretty dry and just in need of water so we've got quite a few you know golden tones and things like that in the landscape that we can convey in our painting. All right so I'm going to paint the sky and clouds next whilst I just wait for this to just dry a little bit with the Liquin Original that I've used. So for the cloud highlights I'm just going to use some Titanium White with just a little bit of Burnt Sienna for now and then I'll probably come back and add some highlight to it right at the end to finish the painting so we'll just add that for the moment. Now one of the things if you remember I mentioned at the start of the painting is I paint the darks first. I paint in the exact same way in the studio and I learned this from studio painting but if you have a look already look it's clouded over quite a bit and the foreground here is in shadow but it doesn't matter that it's clouded over because I've painted my darks first so I can see where the lights are going to go so that's one of the reasons for doing that. It just makes everything easier as well when you're painting whether it's painting outdoors or you're painting in the studio. I paint in the studio in the same way I paint outdoors so even if you're not a plein air outdoor painter the way I'm painting here is just as applicable to studio work. Okay so let's paint the sky next so I'm just going to use some Titanium White, a bit of Ultramarine Blue and a bit of Cobalt Teal. You could always use Phthalo Green if you wanted to before we get that sky down. All right so I've got the main colours down, I've got the sky done and what I'm going to do now is I'm going to start working in some detail and restating some of these darks so hopefully the Liquin that I've been using will have dried just a little bit just to make it a little bit more sticky or so it gives it a bit more of a tack so that I can just layer thicker paint on and I'm going to start conveying just some detail. Probably what I'll do is I'll switch up my brushes shortly and get some synthetic brushes out. Now if you're enjoying this video so far or I hope you are but if you want to learn more about painting landscapes especially if you're struggling with things like mixing greens or just conveying depth and distance or struggling with composition then I invite you to join my art school and starting in a few days at the time of making this video we're doing a whole painting course for 10 weeks where we're going to paint a landscape that's got loads of green rolling hills in it so if you're struggling with mixing greens then by the end of this landscape painting course you should be able to confidently be able to mix greens. So right now I'm giving away a seven day free trial all you need to do is just click the link below to join and yeah I hope to see you there. Right next I want to start getting some lighter tone in the grass here so I'm still using my green mix that I've made and now I'm just going to add some lighter color to it so we'll get some titanium white that's going to help to desaturate it as well and then there's a lot of golden tones in there because of the the dead grass so let's start with that for the moment so mainly just this existing green mix I've just added titanium white and yellow ochre so we'll start getting some some highlights on there and see how we do so we can start marking these in now one of the things especially as I'm using oil paints here luckily the Liquin it has started to dry a little bit but another way you can layer on thicker paint is to just gently brush the paint over the top so it's not mixing in so much if I apply more pressure it will start to mix in more but you can just gently mix in the paint and just start getting some highlights here I'm just trying to build up a bit more depth in the hill here and just get some different hues some different greens but what I'm going to be doing now is adding some highlight to these trees here and then I can tidy up these shadows so we'll work off our existing green again and really I'm just adding to it so let's get some more ultramarine blue we'll get some yellow sorry cadmium yellow medium there and we'll just create a variety of different tones we can use some yellow ochre we use a bit of cadmium red light as well some olive tones in some of those trees you can even use a bit of cobalt teal a bit of alizarin crimson and yeah basically I've just got a variety of greens here they're not mixed together thoroughly so we've just got some broken color and we'll just start adding the highlights to the to the edges of the tree canopies now what I'm doing here is I'm using a number three synthetic flat brush so this is going to get a much more defined edge than the bristle brushes I've been using so far so now I'm just getting into a bit of detail all right so next I want to restate some of the shadows in this trees especially this one in the foreground so this is where the darkest shadows are going to be so I'm going to just create a just a fresh mix here so I've got ultramarine blue and we'll get some yellow ochre so actually just these two combined yellow ochre ultramarine blue it creates just a nice shadow green mix for tree shadows so it helps to desaturate the blue and it's got a nice green cast I'm also just going to add a little bit of of burnt sienna there just to darken it up a bit more and now what I'm going to do is I'm just going to be painting my darkest shadows here so this is where my darkest darks are going to be and this tree in the foreground so even the shadows behind are going to be a little bit lighter which is just going to help to push them in the distance but I just want this tree to be a bit more dominant in the landscape here so we've got some nice dark tone also the initial layer of paint underneath this just started to dry a little bit which is the advantage of using liquin original I don't use liquin in the studio at all because it's it's a little bit toxic but if you're using outdoors in the fresh air it's absolutely fine all right so now I'm getting more of these shadows in there's some shadows on the side of the hill here especially as the the light's moving now I'm just restating some more of these shadows that are in the mid-ground so this part of painting it as if it's in shadow so I'm just adding some the suggestion of more trees and things like that all right so I've been painting probably for about a couple of hours now and it's really time to think about getting this painting finished so what I'm doing now is I'm just adding a few highlights to some of these trees so I'm saving my lightest values until the end it's the best thing to do when you're painting landscapes is you start off darker and then you build up those lighter tones and then you can just add these last little highlights right at the end yeah one of the last things I want to do is just convey some more of this like warm light that's on the grass especially here in the foreground and I've increased the saturation a little bit so I'm using some some cadmium yellow medium and a bit of cadmium red light and titanium white and that can mix in with the green as well but just to get a few highlights here just to communicate the evening sun there just highlighting some of these areas of grass so we always save our lightest lights until last so we're just adding the last highlights and that's easy when your painting really starts to pop now with a plain air like painting like this um obviously because I'm painting in oils uh it's a little tricky to get strong detail in it so it's more uh you know impressionism and just conveying the the feeling and the atmosphere of the location you're painting but just also really focusing on the color mixing and tonal values I often use these plein air paintings as reference for studio painting so it's all about information gathering I've taken some photos as well um who knows perhaps I might even do a studio painting of this we'll see but it's just nice to just get outside in the fresh air especially in the sunlight get some sunlight on your skin and just be out in nature where it's quiet I spend so much time in my studio and in my office so it's really nice to get outside okay so this is the moment of truth now let's turn it around for the light and see what it looks like so I've got it out in the light and I'm just adding just just last little bits here just tidying up just some of the just the form of some of these trees here this painting's pretty much finished now there we go there we go I think that's finished so I hope you enjoyed that painting demonstration here um if you check out my other videos on my youtube channel they're mostly studio paintings but I think it's really nice to just go outside and paint outdoors and actually just show you more of a sort of vlog style point of view perspective of me painting so I hope you enjoyed this video I'm going to make some more of these if you'd like to learn more about painting outdoors or painting landscapes outdoors check out this video here thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video