5 Rembrandt Secrets Every Painter Should Know

I made this sketch into this painting using Rembrandt style. Let's get into it. The idea behind this video is to get you guys to learn how to use glazing the way Rembrandt did to achieve a sense of glow. I'm going to show you how to do this using materials you probably have at home. Here are the materials I'm using to start this piece. I'm also using these six oil colors. This is what is known as the dead layer. I got a full range of both shapes and values and all it now needs is color. Now before I get into lesson two, which is the glazing part, which is what you're seeing here, it's helpful to know that the Dutch and Flemish masters worked exactly this way and the reason is because paint was extremely expensive, difficult to get a hold of, and very inconsistent. So the way that they resolved this is to start off with essentially a black and white dead layer painting in which they would glaze color on top. Now I'm using a much more modern version of just simply sketching it out and the effect is that of a glowing luminous painting. So the idea here is to get your shapes and values as accurately as you can and then allowing the paint to do all the work in terms of creating color and edge. You can also start off with charcoal but the only difficulty with that is that it may not bind to the canvas as well as you'd like it to so that when you come to spray it with fixative, which is what I did before putting on any paint, it doesn't really quite lock in and as a result there may be some smudging. So I advise using pencil over charcoal. So what I'm doing is I'm working from thin transparent layers into thicker more opaque layers but usually the opaque colors land largely where the light is. In the darks, I want to generally keep them as transparent as I can. Now what I'm using is oil paints mixed with alkyd oil and alkyd is an additive that they add to oil, in my case walnut oil, that speeds up the dry time without making the paint too thin and most importantly it makes the paint transparent. Now I did add a little bit of paint thinner to make the dry time even quicker but any mixture of alkyd oil with paint will work. One warning about using alkyd is that it does make the paint look shiny, almost enamel-like. Nearly all fast dryers do that so if you want to avoid that you can use oil and thinner but just know that your dry time doubles. One thing I want you to remember is that when you actually put the paint down on the surface, depending on how thick it is, is really how opaque it's going to become. Now you'll notice before I got too involved with painting my flower, I made sure of painting in my background and that's because I need an appropriate range of colors, values, edges, and shapes to make informed decisions about what to do with my flower and the reason for that is because what I'm mixing on my palette is not the same color as what actually goes down on the painting and what I mean by that is I can't tell you how many times I mix the color and then put it on the canvas and it didn't look right and so if the colors are too hot or too cold and I slap on a color it may look completely different within that context so I never judge a color on what it looks like on the palette but rather within the context of the painting and what's sitting all around it and that's true for the leaves just as much as it is for the flowers so before I finalize any colors up top I'm gonna add a little bit of context around the leaves and then put those colors in as well. So a good rule of thumb is build the context first then decide on the colors of your main subject. So now let's go back to the rose where we're really going to build out each and every plane. What that means is that you look at every part of the rose and ask yourself if this was a facet of a diamond what would that shape look like and how light or dark would it be within the context of what I'm painting? So another way of thinking about it is if this was a mosaic and you're laying in color tile by tile what would that look like? So I'm thinking of each of these individual shapes that eventually will meld together as individual facets and I actually paint in that direction so that you really get a sense of movement moving across the form and that's something that I've learned directly from Rembrandt. So the color that I'm using here is Quinacridone Rose which is a modern synthetic color. What Rembrandt had was known as Red Lake and I used that color specifically because it glazed well because it was a semi-transparent tone. Now watch how I'm laying in color. I squint and I look for shapes and what squinting does is blurs out all unnecessary detail. That way I can decide if my color needs a little more white or even a little more blue without getting overwhelmed with all the details and while there's a certain softness to these petals notice that I'm really painting it in plane by plane and then and only then softening the edges. Now I don't know for sure whether Rembrandt was actually squinting or not there's no documentation on it but one thing I do know is he understood his values very well and the only way that I know of to really get a good read as to where your lights your mediums and your darks are is to squint. Now one of the greatest things that I've ever learned about how Rembrandt painted is that he would frequently take the color of the background and the color of the skin or whatever it is that he was painting and mix those two colors on his palette and then place them right between the subject and the very edge of where the background met the foreground. Those few strokes of color would give his subjects the kind of glow that he was so famous for. So at this point I'm going to continue to paint in my background and build in a stronger sense of tone by saturating the colors which does require me to be a little bit more opaque but I'm able to lay in all of those background colors with absolute confidence because I know what the underlying value color edge and shape is and that's why I love this technique so much. So now that I've got my background in I'm going to start laying in the leaves and I'm again keeping my eyes squinted and focusing on what parts of the leaves are darker lighter warmer or cooler and that's how I'm laying in color. You'll also notice that there is a very specific direction to the movement of my brush which is going along the contour so that it really feels like my brush is gliding in the direction of the leaves. And now for the best part the finishing and this is where I'm going to reinforce certain colors particularly my lights and get in a little bit of that glazing technique again with nice thin paint giving the rose its final glow. So now that that's done I'm going to add just a few more darks and really start to bring in my favorite part of all which is vignetting the corners and this is something that Rembrandt is famous for. This is where he would glaze in these dark corners to get the center of the painting to look like it's glowing. I'm also going to add it to some areas where I can create a bit more contrast. I'm going to finalize the piece with the veins of the leaves add one or two more highlights to get the rose to pop and I'm done. Here's the final piece. Please try this at home and let me know the results. So this method takes a while to get used to. But once you get the hang of it you can expect amazing results. I agree. Thank you guys so much for watching and we will see you in the next video. Bye. Bye guys. Amazing results. Fantastic results. Phenomenal results. Exactly. It's imaginary scotch for me and imaginary scotch for you. Thank you.