Oil painting gets way easier when you think like this

Oil painting gets a lot easier when you think big to small, meaning only focus on seeing and painting the big general shapes first. And then you progressively work your way into smaller, more specific shapes. In this video I'm going to show you exactly what that looks like with this painting of some roses. I'm also going to talk about working dark to light and thin to thick. So let's jump on into it. Now on my palette I have Ultramarine Blue, Alizarin Crimson, Burnt Sienna, Chamomile Red, Yellow Ochre, Chamomile Lemon, and Titanium White. So at the very beginning here, even with my drawing, I'm thinking big. I'm keeping everything really simple, really broad. I'm not worrying about getting every little detail exactly right. Because the reality is, I'm going to cover all of this with paint. So there's no reason to draw it in like a coloring book where I'm filling everything in later. I just want to get the main shapes and placement. And I always tell my students, in this early stage this is your opportunity to be loose and to be expressive. You can always tighten things up as you go, but it's really hard to take something that's tight and detailed and make it feel loose again. So now I'm going in with a big brush and I'm just blocking in the darks of the background. And you can see the paint is really thin here. This is just paint mixed with Gamsol, you know, just mineral spirits. So throughout this painting I want to keep three things in mind. I'm working big to small, I'm working thin to thick, and I'm working dark to light. That's really the foundation of this whole approach. So I'm squinting my eyes a bit and I'm just trying to simplify everything into big simple shapes. Big shapes of light and dark. For example, with these flowers, I'm not painting petals. I'm just putting in one color and one value for the shadowed side. The same thing goes with the roses. I'm asking myself, is this mostly in shadow or is this mostly in light? And then I just block that in. And I tend to lean more toward the shadow side at first. Because it's a lot easier to lay in your darks and then build your lights on top of that than it is to try and go back in and force darks into really thick light paint. Again, you can see how thin this paint is. I'm letting it mix into the paint that's already there. I'm using that wet into wet to get soft natural edges without overworking anything. Then when I move into the light side, I'm still holding back. I'm not going to the lightest light that I can. I'm thinking in terms of the darkest version of the light. So everything is still kind of compressed in value at this stage. So now the entire canvas is covered. This is really where you want to get to. Everything is broken down into simple shapes of light and shadow. Nothing is detailed. Nothing is overworked. But the whole painting should really feel like it's working. And this is really important because if it's not working at this stage, it's not going to magically fix itself later with more detail. So this is where you want to pause, adjust, and make sure everything feels right. Alright, I want to take a quick break from the lesson to let you know that if you struggle with mixing color, you're not alone. That's why I made my free color coaching guide. It's a series of quick and easy to understand videos that simplifies color mixing so you can learn it and implement it in your next painting. If you want to check that out, I'll put a link to it in the description of this video. So from here, I move into what I call the shape phase. If you've seen my other videos, I talk about the paint coach method, which is simplify, shape, and sharpen. We've already simplified. Now we're starting to shape things. Now I'm going in and adding more values. And one of the first things I like to do is add in some of my darkest darks. These are the deepest areas where the light isn't reaching. And just adding that extra value starts to create form. It gives things depth. And I'm still thinking big to small here. I'm not jumping into tiny details. I'm just going a little more specific than what I was before. That's really important. You don't want to go too far too fast. You don't want to start identifying tiny shapes before the bigger ones are working. So now, for example, in this white flower, I can start finding smaller shapes within it. I can start to describe the form a bit more. But I'm still not going to the smallest detail yet. I'm just gradually working my way down. Same thing with the roses. Now I can come in with some lighter values. Still not the brightest lights, but I'm starting to get more specific with the shapes. And at this point, my paint is also starting to get thicker. I'm not using as much solvent. I'm using more paint straight from the tube. And I'm really trying to hold off on my brightest, thickest paint until I absolutely need it. Because once you use that, there's nowhere higher to go. And the reason this whole process works is because I built a solid foundation underneath it. I started with big, simple shapes. I got the whole painting working early. And then I gradually worked towards smaller, more specific shapes. So now when I add these smaller details, they actually sit on something solid. They make sense. They don't feel random or overworked. And this is really the main idea I want you to take from this video. If there's one thing, it's thinking in terms of big to small shapes. Seeing the big general idea first, and then slowly refining it into something more specific. Because once you understand that, you can take a painting as far as you want. Some people like to keep things more simple. Some like to go really detailed. But the process is the same. So that's really the whole approach here. Big to small, dark to light, then thick. If you can start thinking about your paintings this way, you'll find that the whole process feels a lot more manageable. Now, if you want to see this full tutorial and a whole bunch of others like it, and dive deeper into this process, you can inside PaintCoach Studio. I'll put a link in the description of this video where you can try it free for 7 days. Alright, I'm Chris Fornitero, here telling you to go get painting.