This project is really an exercise in how to paint white. It won't make any difference whether it is snow, a white cat, a table cloth, a wedding dress or any other thing that is basically white, everything we will be painting for the snow is applicable to any other white subject you might paint so even if you really aren't interested in snow – and with it being so cold lately I don't blame you – these demos and projects are designed to give you information and practice painting a variety of things so that when you go to paint your "masterpiece" you will have the knowledge and the skill to accomplish your goal.
A basic mistake that a lot of beginners make is starting out trying to paint white with white. A blank canvas could be titled "Polar Bear in a Snow Storm" because that is about as much success as you will have when you paint white on white. A key thing to remember in all your paintings is: You must have dark to show light. This is part of the value system and values are the lightness or the darkness of a color.
Some colors like yellow will never get very dark on a scale of 1 – 10, 1 being the lightest; yellow might get to a 4 if the color is straight out of the tube. On-the-other-hand, blue can get all the way to a 10 depending how much white you have put into it and the hue or color of blue. I think we will do a value scale next week so you can see what I'm talking about. Again, not the most exciting thing in the world but value is so important for you as beginners to understand and for any one who is trying to be a better artist. Value lets you create depth in your painting, it can also creates excitement in your painting so it shouldn't be overlooked.
That said, the first thing I need to do is make the background darker. In class I had a canvas that I had already toned with a grey/blue color however, I showed how to mix colors on your canvas to cover the white to create a darker background so your white will show up later. What I may not have explained as well as I should have, was direction of brush strokes. The direction of your brush strokes are so important in acrylics, oils, pastels and to a lesser extent, watercolor because as subtle as they are, our eyes pick up on the movement of those brush strokes and can send conflicting messages to the viewer. Trees grow vertically so we want our brush strokes to be mostly vertical (up and down) as opposed to horizontal (side to side). As the different paint colors mix on your canvas, those vertical strokes can suggest a forest of trees without you ever thinking about it; keep this in mind when you are painting your background. Think about what you are painting and how your strokes can mimic the texture or direction of the thing you are painting.
I used my #10 flat bristle brush, some ultramarine blue (since this is the only blue I use I will just call it blue from now on), some burnt sienna (sienna) white (either titanium or gesso will work, my gesso has gone bad so I used titanium this time) and a bit of the dioxizine purple (purple). Rather than mixing a homogeneous color on my palette, I "brush mixed" on the canvas picking up paint as I went along, using vertical strokes and a "scrubbing" action and the flat side of my brush (I was pressing pretty hard on my brush so I could get the paint into all the texture of the canvas). I ended up with a medium dark blue/gray color. I also showed how you can lift out some shapes of trees using the same brush by first cleaning it then wiping out all the excess water and using just the edge into the still wet paint and "lifting" out tree shapes. This is more a watercolor technique but it will work in acrylics as long as the paint is still wet.
Once the background is dry, using my soft vine charcoal, I made a simple sketch of a tree trunk with the snow piled up around it. You do not need a detailed sketch, just some guide lines, also I should mention that we usually sketch as we go so don't draw an elaborate sketch on your canvas before you start because we are going to paint over most of it.
Once I had my sketch on, I had to determine where my light source was coming from. This is important because it is how we determine what gets highlights and what gets shadows. I selected my light coming in from the upper right hand side of the canvas. Now I know which side will be lighter and warmer and where my cool colors will be.
Still using the #10 bristle brush, I picked up some orange and sienna and holding the brush perpendicular to the canvas and the edge of the brush was vertical, I used short choppy strokes along the right edge of the tree. Again, I am thinking of what I am painting: Rough tree bark that runs vertically up the tree, so my brush strokes need to mimic the way the bark grows. As my brush moves away from the light source, I pick up just the sienna (I'm about in the middle of the trunk now), work it in to the lighter color a little bit, still using the short choppy stroke. When I get to about ¾ around from the light, I pick up some blue along with my sienna and a tiny touch of purple to finish off the tree trunk. There is also a part of a tree root that you can use this same color on just remember to follow the direction it is growing because it is not vertical but at an angle with a bit of a curve.
The under painting for the snow is next and while the base color will be white, we will be adding mostly blue with touches of sienna to gray it and touches of purple. Depending on how dark your background is, you will want the first color for your snow to be maybe a shade or so lighter than the background (values again). Still using the same brush but this time on its flat side using a stroke called scumbling, which is basically any and all directions, start scrubbing this color into the snow area.
While this scumbling stroke is kinda wild, you should remember the "rule" about direction of your stroke. This snow is piled up over the roots and there may be rocks under it and there may be depressions between the roots so when you are going over a root this stroke can be an upside down "U" shape, in the depressions a regular "U" shape. It may not show it now, but in the next layers you will start to see how effective this is, it is also good to "get in the habit" of thinking about what you are painting and the goal you are trying to reach.
I think I did another layer on the tree to give it a bit of detail, still using the same brush and the same stroke I used orange with a touch of white again starting on the sun lit side and working my way around, I don't want to cover up everything I did before, I am just adding texture. As I moved away from the light source I picked up more sienna with the orange, then sienna and blue and lastly I picked up some purple and a little touch of white for the reflected light on the shadowed side of the stump. Then on the trunk where the snow was casting a shadow I used blue, sienna and purple to create a dark color for the shadow.
This is where we stopped for the day, we will do a bit more so you can see a bit more of the process, it will come in handy when we get to the trees on our project. Have your paints and canvas ready and remember you can click on the slideshow to get to the picture page to download the reference photo. There are two similar but slightly different photos either one is fine or if you have your own photo you want to work from that is fine also. Next time we should get started on our project.
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