| What colours are used in this painting ? |
Alizarin Crimson
Cadmium Red
Cadmium Orange
Cadmium Yellow
White
Burnt Umber
Raw Umber
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Medium Used : Oil on Canvas
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General
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Painting with fan brushes is a very under used practice. It is such a pity as they are a very powerfull painting tool. You can get fine detail, crisp effects AND cover large areas quickly all with the same brush! Here we are going to paint a simple sunset to explore some of these advantages.
The tutorial painting was painted on a 16" x 20" canvas but works just as well on any other size. Throughout this painting ONLY a fan brush is used. You can use the size most suited to your canvas.
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Background
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There isn't much drawing to be done here. Simply draw a line across the canvas around a third of the way up to represent the horizon. To add interest don't make the horizon horizontal, give it a rough slope (not too steep though).
Using your Alizarin Crimson, Cadmium Red, Cadmium Orange and Cadmium Yellow block in the sky, cleaning your brush between colours. You will see that it has been blocked in in a circular motion as the rays of the sun radiate outward. When blocking the sky colours in don't let the colours overlap at this stage otherwise they will contaminate each other and the sky will become too dark.
Clean your brush. Starting from the inside (Yellow), scrub the line we have between the yellow and white away so that no more canvas is exposed. Without cleaning your brush do the same for the other lines.
You should now have a roughly blended sky with no canvas exposed. To smooth the sky out, clean your brush and using left to right strokes from the yellow upwards, gently brush over the sky. By the time you get to the top of the canvas your sky should be nice and smoothly blended. If it isn't, clean your brush and do it again untill it is. Just remember not to press too hard. You may also find that you have some darker streaks running horizontally through the lighter colours. Leave them as they represent far off streaky clouds. You can now clean your brush and use some white to paint in the sun as shown below. |
Clouds
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We can now start to add some clouds. Using a tiny amount of thinned Alizarin Crimson, add some clouds. You do this by using only the tip of the fan brush. Work in small circular motions to build up the shape of the cloud. When you use these circular motions you will find that the paint goes on thicker when you start and thinner as you progress. Use this to your advantage - start at the point where you want the shadows to be and work out toward the highlight of the cloud. These clouds are flat at the bottom and tend to dissapear into the sky. To get this effect we clean the brush and gently fade out the bottoms of the clouds.
When you look at the clouds in the picture above you will notice that they become smaller as we near the horizon. The reason for this is that the clouds near the horizon are far away and thus appear smaller - we call this the canopy effect.
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Foreground
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We can now start to block in the foreground. Using Raw Umber, then Burnt Umber add streaks with the thin edge of the fan brush. You will notice that the streaks are generally following the horizon line, but vary their angles slightly to add interst to the foreground. You will also see that the streaks are painted in long waves with canvas exposed between the lines. This allows us to add other colours later. What is extra important here is to ensure that these wavy lines you paint don't all follow each other like parallel lines. Let some of them overlap and touch each other in places. Start with the Raw Umber and put in a few lines around the bottom of the canvas. Then switch to the Burnt Umber and add more lines untill the canvas is covered as much as shown above.
We can now add some Cadmium Orange to the Burnt Umber to lighten it and add more streaks inbetween the ones we have already painted. Ensure that these streaks are mainly around the horizon as this is the area closest to the sun. If you see that the bottom area of the foreground is becoming too light, add more raw umber streaks (You can also darken your Burnt Umber with some French Ultramarine for a dark instead of Raw Umber). Now add some more orange to the Orange/Burnt Umber mix to lighten it even more. Add more streaks near the horizon. Your foreground should be completely covered in streaks now.
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Grass
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To mix the colour for the grass you add Cadmium Yellow to the lightest foreground mix. Thin the paint down quite a lot and pick up quite a bit on the fan brush. Using the tip of the brush add the grass with quick upward flicks. The most effective way to get realistic grass is to make the grass long around the middle of the patch and let them get shorter as you move toward the end of the patch. If you find that the paint is not 'flicking' well, your paint is probably too thick, thin it down some more. To get nice long grass, turn the brush so that the bristles are vertical, you can then just use the tips of the one end of the brush to flick them in.
Start near the bottom of the canvas and add some patches of grass. As you move toward the horizon, you add more yellow, orange and white to the mix to lighten it up (add more sun). Don't forget to add some grass on the horizon line. This grass must also be painted in in patches and not one long continuous line to make it look realistic. Take a look at the picture below to see how it has been put in.
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Trees
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We are almost done. Let's add a few trees over the ridge.
Using well thinned Cadmium Orange, put in a vertical stripe where you want the trunk of the tree to be. To ensure that you don't go over the horizon, hold your painting knife on the horizon to block the foreground paint. You can now turn your brush horizontally and add the branches. start at the top of the tree using the edge of the bristles to get a small dab, slowly turning the brush so that you are using more of the bristles as you move down the length of the tree. Give the tree a friend or two ensuring the they are different sizes to keep them interesting.
The focal point of this painting is a large tree in the foreground. We use Burnt Umber to block in the shape of the tree as shown above. To add some detail in the tree we use the light Orange/Burnt Umber mixes we used in the foreground.
Using the fan brush held horizontally add the detail (leaves) to the tree with a dabbing motion. You can add more than one highlight to the leaves, but don't over do it as we can't see much detail during a sunset. Use the Same colour and dabbing motion to highlight the trunk of the tree on the sunny side.
To anchor the tree into the ground use the grass mix and add some grass at the base of the tree where it enters the ground. You can also add some movement to your painting by adding a bird or two in the distance. Although it is not shown in the picture below, it is as easy as using very thinned Raw Umber to paint in upside down W's.
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Well done you have completed another stunning painting.
