 my artistic friends. I'm artist Susan Jenkins and I'm here in my studio today bringing you something I'm calling You Ask For It. I've been getting so many requests for a lesson on how I accomplish something that I often call punching up color. How do you like that graphic? That's a really bad hand. But it was fun. Anyway, so this is for you and I am so thankful because I am a color freak and it seems to come a little naturally for me. However, there are other things that don't come naturally for me. So I'm going to try to share with you my reasoning and my methods behind why I choose certain colors that I do and make the impact of color more explosive and beautiful in art. And first, before we can learn how to do this in our paintings, it's important that we learn a little bit more about color in general. So we're gonna be going through a little lesson. It won't be tedious. It's gonna be fun and I think you're gonna love it on how color works and why we would choose certain colors that work in harmony in a painting. Then I'm gonna go through some of my pieces where I have done this, enhanced the color, and share my reasoning behind that. Then last and probably the most fun part is we're gonna do a painting together and I will go through why I'm choosing colors and the reasoning behind those selections. So I hope you enjoy it. We're gonna have a lot of fun and let's do it punching up color. So to begin with in learning about how to enhance your color and punch it up in your artwork, the basic handy dandy little pocket color wheel, I like this little one right here, is a great tool for learning. Once you have studied it and learned from it, you don't have to always refer back to this, but it is crucial to learn about the relationships between colors in creating good paintings. So at first you can look at this and go, well, this is really confusing. Look at this thing spends around. What is that? And then if you look at all the information on the back, it's like, whoa, what is all of that? But I'm gonna go through this and explain it and I wanted to share with you something that was, wow, what a blessing. Sometimes I'm just like, God, thanks so much for that little gift right there, because I was thinking I want to arrange my pastels in a way that mimics the color wheel. And I was thinking, what do I have in my house? A big plate. How can I do that? And lo and behold, I opened my cabinet and forgot. Ta-da! I have this, basically it's a Publix container that was an appetizer tray that I had saved in case I do any kind of event, but I usually don't because I'm usually painting. I don't have time for parties. But anyway, I know you guys can relate. So how perfect is this? So I just cut out a few little paper towels in here and this is for the purpose of explaining this lesson, but I also really like this. It's really, really cool. So first and foremost, before I go into this, I'm just going to kind of show you very quickly an easy way to understand the relationships between colors. Pardon that shadow there and I'm just holding my camera as I do this. But first, I'm going to just do the three primary colors. Okay? So most of you probably already know that. We've got blue, we've got red, and we've got yellow. And if you've done any work in any other type of medium, watercolor, acrylic, or oil, you know that, and you've probably learned just even from grade school, that those colors make really every color. It's just fascinating. But what is neat is that you can do another little triangle to take your color wheel even further. Notice how it looks like a Jewish star. That might help you to remember it, okay? So you're going to do a right side up triangle and upside down triangle. And then over here we're going to do the colors that combine with this. It'd be easier if I used the actual colors instead of a pencil. Blue and red make purple, blue and yellow make green, okay? And red and yellow make orange. Okay, of course most of you is like, oh come on Susan, that is like so basic. Yes, but knowing where these are on the color wheel is what's going to help you understand the relationships between colors and whether they are cool or warm, okay? So that's why I made this little color wheel tray here. And that is what's going to help us in knowing which colors to use. We can't just take any bold color and use in a painting to punch up color. It has to be one that suits the, there are actually laws in how art works and how nature works. And if you go too far beyond that your painting is going to look amateurish and and just not correct. So that's why I'm going to go through this color wheel with you in actual pastels. Very cool. All right, so now we have a bird's-eye view of our color wheel that I have strategically placed on top of my palette of colors I've arranged to mimic the color wheel. And again, this is going to be very important in learning how to use these to enhance the color in your paintings. Now again, I have done these, not, they're not quite in the same order here. This one had the the blue up top, but it's just turned a little bit here. So we've got our yellow, our primary colors, yellow, blue and red in the triangle, okay? And then the ones in between that that would make the upside down triangle, we've got the what, what makes orange, yellow and red? What makes purple, blue and red? What makes green, blue and yellow? Okay, so all of those colors are in the in between sections. Isn't that amazing how this tray just happened to work out perfectly? Wow, very cool. Now in understanding now, I've gone over this in another video with the difference between warm and cool colors, but I am going over it again here because it's one of the most important things with learning how to punch up your color in your paintings is knowing where and when to use a certain bright or bold color. Now I'm going to explain warm and cool again very quickly. Now, if you notice in this color wheel, if I was to take it and just break it in half like this, all right, we're going to have our cool colors are going to be on this side, okay? Our blues, our purples and our greens in general, okay? Our warm colors are going to be on this side, our reds and our yellows, okay? Now, this is just the basic description of warm and cool, but each color can lean more towards warm or cool based on where it is on the color wheel. Let's start, for example, well, we'll start with the reds here, all right? So if we've got a red that's just a red red, this one's probably closer to just a red red, okay? Although they have a little bit of blue in them too that lean more this way. The red reds are going to be more like right in the middle, but as a red gets a little bit more blue in it, it's going to get a little bit of a cooler red, okay? Notice how these are closer, they're going this direction to the cool side. So if they're moving in this direction, they're going to be cooler reds, okay? And if they're moving in this direction, they're going to be warmer reds, all right? Getting more towards the orangey, they're getting more yellow in them. These are getting more blue in them, these are getting more yellow in them. Now, the same thing with the purples. We could have just a purple purple, but if it's leaning a little bit more this way, it's going to be a warmer purple versus a cooler purple, okay? Cooler's going towards the blue. Now, we can do the same thing with the blue. We've got the blue here and if a blue is leaning more towards the purple side, it's going to be a warmer blue. If it leans more towards this side, it's going to be a cooler blue, okay? So we're kind of getting the idea. Each one kind of works the same way. If you've got the greens here, now they're sitting right next to the yellows, okay? So they're right at this line here. So if you've got greens that are more towards the yellow, they're going to be more of a warm green. If you've got them kind of in between the yellow and the green, these would be cooler greens, okay? Because they do have a bit of blue in them, all right? So that's basically, and the same thing applies for the yellows. That's basically how you would know the difference between warm and cool colors. And again, it's very, very crucial in knowing how to punch up color. So now I'm going to go over a little bit more about the color wheel. And this should be educational and fun. Now, let's talk about the color wheel. I think sometimes we don't even realize what a wealth of information we have at our fingertips with just a simple pocket color wheel. Again, we've got our colors, our primary colors in the triangle. And then we've got our secondary colors in the upside down triangle, okay? So I might not have this turned exactly right, but you get the idea. Now, this right here is an amazing little tool that works really well for acrylic and oil and watercolor painting with color mixing. Now, we don't get as much of an ability to do color mixing with pastels, but we do to a degree, we can do a little bit of blending. I've talked a little bit about my handy dandy pipe foam insulation blending tool that I learned from Karen Margolis. I actually also talked to another artist, a new found artist friend who said it works just as well with a pool noodle. So if you don't feel like going out to the hardware store, but you have a pool noodle in your pool, that should work for blending. But we typically don't blend a whole lot in pastel paintings. But anyway, this is still a very useful tool for just learning how color works in general. So for example, I've got them lined up this blue with the blue right now. But if you added yellow to blue, you're going to get green. If you add red to blue, you're going to get purple. So that's how all these three work. They work going around every single color here. Now, another one that's helpful is they've got the red, the yellow, the blue, then they've got what happens if you add white to a color. It's going to lighten it obviously, add black, it's going to darken it. So that is just a really neat tool that is on the color wheel. This is another one. Some people may not have even known it's in here. Value. That's upside down. Let me go right side up. Value is what I talk about all the time. So you have a little basic value scale here, okay? So you can kind of get an idea of what value is a color, okay? So if we were just looking at this orange, oh, sorry for that cut on my finger. That's terrible. We would scroll this little value thing around to see what value it is. Now, that's too dark for it. Boy, I got cuts. That's not going to cut. That's pastels. Anyway, you scroll it around here to find what value it is. Now, if we can see that, it's not that light. It's not that light. We're getting closer. It's going to be somewhere more, maybe kind of in here somewhere. So isn't that neat that we've got a little value scale right there? All right. Now, I'm going to read a couple of these little definitions for you because this is also important to know. We talked about our primary colors. Red, yellow, and blue, okay? Nothing, oh, there's my doggy. Nothing can be mixed. Other colors cannot mix to make that. That's why they're called primary. They just, that's what they are. It's a way God made them. You can't mix to get them. Secondary colors are what we said. You mix two of the primaries together. Tertiary colors are mixing one primary and one secondary, okay? So it'd be like mixing a blue and an orange, okay? So that would be a tertiary color or intermediate color. Aggressive colors are warm colors. Receeding colors are cool. We talked about that in multiple videos. Warm colors come forward in a scene. Cool colors recede. You want to use those cool colors in the distance. Now, again, over here, we've got more definitions. Hue is just another name for color. Tint is color plus white. Tone is color plus gray. Shade is color plus black. Key color is a dominant color in a color scheme or mixture Anyway, there's a ton of these. And here's the most important one I talk about all the time. Value, like we said, the lightness or darkness of a color. Now I'm going to flip this over and we're going to talk about the backside very quickly. All right. Now on the backside, we have more useful information. It's just awesome. But if you didn't know what it, all this meant, you could, like I said, get intimidated by it, perhaps. But it's nothing's all that hard. This right here is a great little tool for you to learn how to choose a color palette in your painting. Some people are like, how do you choose your color palette? And a lot of it I do by simply looking at my reference photo or where I happen to be on location painting. And the more you do it, the more this just comes naturally, okay? So a complementary colors we've talked about are just opposites on the color wheel. And that's why I've talked a lot about how it's very, very beneficial in doing a painting. If you're going to do an underpainting to put down a complementary color underneath. So if your scene is going to have a lot of trees and maybe water, those are cool colors, you would put down a complementary underpainting, the ones that are directly across from it as an underpainting. And it's just going to make these colors pop even more. So that's a little bit about how to punch up color right there. And then also you have this, that shows you how to do what's called a triad or a triad in colors. You notice the little triangle. This is basically, once again, back to the primary colors. But you can turn this little thing, I've got this taped down. Let me try not to turn the actual background as well. You can turn this little thing to any triad that you want, okay? So you could do a triad of this purple, this green, and this rusty orange color, okay? Now the other one on here is called a tetrad. A tetrad is the more like a rectangle. So it's allowing you to see four colors that would be harmonious in a painting together. So again, that's incredibly useful information. But I'm going to go again and look at some of these little teeny weeny letters here and just quickly go over a couple of these. Monochromatic simply means using any shade or tint of one color in a painting. So what would be like, a lot of times you might see where people do like a sepia tone painting where all of the colors are in this family, okay? So it's the same color just with the different hues and tints and, I'm sorry, values of that color. And then the next one over here is analogous color using any shade or tint or tones of colors that lie adjacent to each other on the wheel. So it's just analogous they're close to each other, okay? So it would be doing a painting that has kind of like these all within the painting, all right? And acromatic is basically what it sounds like. It's no color, okay? It means without color, a colorless scheme. Color and light, this is interesting. Subdued light, let's say it's a candlelit painting or reference photo or something at night where there's just a few little light source, is the colors that are near the light are going to be the boldest, okay? They're going to have more intensity than the dark areas. The dark areas are going to have less intensity. The warm areas are going to have more intensity. That's kind of easy, really. Color and distance, I talk about this one all the time. Of course, we know that colors in the distance tend to black out. That's kind of a confusing term. Black out means to lose the black is what they mean. You tend to get paler and weaker in color when you go to the distance. Not adding more black, losing more black. Consequently, of course, lighter values of color should be employed for greater emphasis in the background, okay? So that creates distance when color is lighter and more pale in the distance. It's not punched up color in the distance, okay? Over here, we've got a couple more complementary colors we've already talked about. Split combinations is using one color, choosing one color and using the color on each side of its complement on the color with. Anyway, on and on and on it goes, and this just describes some of the ones that I already talked about in the middle here, okay? So there is our lesson that I thought would be quick on the color wheel, but it is important to get to know, let the color wheel be your friend. One other point in, before we go on to talking about punching up color and how to accomplish it, is simply in the arrangement that I've made here on my little makeshift color wheel with pastels, is if you notice I have them in order of value. I did this very quickly so it's not perfect, but in general, from light to dark into the center. The lighter values are on the outside, moving into the darker values, okay, in the center. All right, now that is also incredibly important when punching up color. You don't want to get the value wrong. You can get the color different, but you don't want to get the value wrong, and so that is one of the first lessons in punching up color, is use the correct value. The second lesson is what we talked about before, use the correct temperature. So temperature would be the second, is make sure if it's something in a shadowy area, it's going to be cooler. You can punch that color up to something bolder than is in the area, but have it the correct value and have it the correct temperature, okay. So that's just two points for our first beginning exploration in punching up color. Now these in the middle, just on a side note, I put in my more neutral colors. Neutral colors are ones that look kind of dead and lifeless. They just don't have a lot of color, like for example, take this orange compared to that. You could totally see how much more dead that color is. So when you're punching up color, you obviously wouldn't use these, although you're going to have to use some neutrals in your scene, or your painting is going to look tacky. So three lessons in punching up color. So far is use the correct value to use the correct temperature. And three, don't use all bold colors. You know, have some neutrals in your scene as well. So use, you punch up your color sparingly. All right, now let's go on to talking about how to implement this into your artwork. Now onto some examples of how I have actually punched up color in some of my previous artwork. This painting is actually a great example, because you notice in the photo on the left that I got from Paint My Photo is very dull and gray. It's a beautiful photograph, which is why I chose it, but it doesn't have much color to speak of other than some gray neutral tones. So what I did in this case was I, and some of the things we've already talked about, is I have actually not straight away too much from value, even though the color seems very bold and rich. And I'm going to show you that right now by converting this to black and white. I did, however, make the clouds darker. I wanted it to look a little bit more ominous like a storm. So let's look at the black and white and I'll show you what I mean. Now in this converted to black and white example, you can see that even though the color was very punched up in the painting, the values are pretty close. Again, I did my clouds a little darker and more ominous on purpose. And the foreground in the right side where the water is washing up is a little bit darker, but kind of reflects the sky. So in general, the values are pretty close. So that's exactly the lesson that I'm trying to get across is that if you get your values right and you get your temperatures right, I'm going to talk about that too, then you can actually punch up the color with similar values. Now for the second part of how to punch up color, we're going to talk about color temperature. I've zoomed in on the reference photo a little bit and you can see again that there is some color in this and it's really pretty. But in order to punch it up, I'm going to show you by oversaturating this photograph to get a good idea of the color temperature. All right, now look at that. I've basically just increased the saturation in Photoshop, but there's lots of little photo editing tools that you can use to do the same thing. And like I said before, the more you do this, the more you just see it with your eyes instead of having to convert it in a photo program. So you can see now that where those purples and magintas are in the sky, you can also see how the sand is warmer because of course, like I mentioned before, you want to follow what is that item. Sand is typically warm, so in the foreground that sand is going to have a warmer tone. So again, this is about following correct color temperature and a tip for how to do that is to increase the saturation until you get to where you can do it automatically with your own eyes. Now here are just a few other examples of paintings that I've done where I've punched up the color. The first two I have side by side so you can just get an idea. And this one of the beach scene actually was quite dull but I know that at night beaches are typically the sand is cooler so I punched that up by making it more of that beautiful blue color. And again these are just some examples and now we're going to actually go on and do a painting and I'll talk through the process of punching up color. I wanted to make a quick point also about the color in this particular painting I did. I think I make a comment later to be sure not to punch up color in the background. You don't want to overdo it but in cases like this you can see you actually can do that as long as you're following the the rules that I spoke of before using the correct value and the correct color temperature. Notice those mountains look really purple and the field in the background is really punched up turquoise or teal and and it works here because it is correct value and correct temperature. Just wanted to make that point. Now we can paint. Now here is my reference photo that I chose from the Paint My Photo website. I've mentioned that quite a few times. I believe it's pmp-art.com you can find some great reference photos to work from. And I purposely chose a photo that was a little more dull in color just to be able to punch up color like is the point of this video. So this has you know it has some color but nothing is very vibrant or bold and I wanted to be able to demonstrate how to increase the intensity of the color in a scene such as this. Now the first thing I want to do in analyzing this photo is to determine the light source. Where is my light? And as I can see pretty easily it's coming from the upper left hand side. I can look at that darkest dark in the whole reference photo which is the tree. And I can see that the left side of the tree is lighter than the right side of the tree. That gives me a great indication of the light source. And so I'm going to judge that or use that as a measurement in how to approach my painting as to where the the lighter places in value are in the grasses and where the cooler shadows are going to be. You notice those grasses growing to the left side about midway up. Those have a pretty distinct shadow on this front side to them. So they're going to be darker and cooler in value because it's more of a shadow and it's darker also on the side of the grasses immediately in the foreground to the right side. So that are those are just a few things that I notice in beginning to approach how I'm going to choose color and value for this scene. Now after determining the light source I'm going to evaluate the values and a good way to do that is to convert your photo to black and white. After you've done it a while you don't need to do that but it's a great way to get used to this. And so this is a really easy way for me to see the values. So now without further ado I'm going to do a value study. I'm going to speed it up a bit because I want to get to the part more about color than a value study. It's the time when I start choosing a direction to go with this okay. The value study that I got underneath is not all that important to choosing my color palette right now it was just basically like a template for me to get started. And so now I have to get my idea of okay where do I want to head with a color palette. And so this is a actually a lesson more than just punching up color it's also on you basically just choosing your color palette. A lot of times I will start with the sky. Now when I was first starting out as an artist I would paint this color okay. I'd be like oh it's blue let me look down here let me see okay is this kind of in here you know let's see. And I would do it basically just on trying to match colors okay. And when you get a little bit more adventurous and knowledgeable with art and experienced you will learn that you can set the mood of your color palette as long as you follow the same values. Again like like we noticed on our color wheel I could choose all analogous colors right here. I could do the whole thing working in in like this this area. And I've done that in another one of my lessons. I took the same black and white photo and I did analogous color with a blue one with a green I think one with a red one with a yellow orange something like that. So you can totally change the color of what's in the scene as long as you follow the rules correctly with value and with warmth and coolness. So now I'm going to decide all right and I'm doing this live right here we're not live but recorded when you see it I'm just gonna look at this right down pick a color I haven't predetermined this. I think I want a lavender sky okay and the reason I'm doing that is because this looks like it's late evening or very early morning it's still kind of foggy and misty. And if I chose an orange sky or red or a pink sky it would indicate that there was more sunlight somewhere and this looks more like it's cloudy there's not a lot of sun. So I'm going to go more with those cooler tones but I don't want so much blue in it that is like here so I'm going to go with some lavenders maybe and and I've spoken about this before typically your darker values in a sky are up in the upper horizon okay I think it's called the Aurora it's up higher in the sky something like that sounds good anyway. And then gradually your sky is almost always not always almost always get lighter as you get down to the horizon line. Okay so I'm going to work with darker or not darker purple values that are darker than down here and I think I'm going to gradient it down to more bluer cooler tones down here okay. Now what's going to happen is you can already kind of see this happening the same thing is going to happen in the reflection of the water. You notice how this looks a little darker up here? Well look how that is so beautifully reflected in the water we've got that same darker if I do the lavenders up here I'm going to do the lavenders down here. What is that? More pastels on my fingers. And then these lighter colors of the sky here are reflected here. And reflections basically work like a mirror okay. So if you took this here and just flopped it down here bloop that's going to be it's going to follow the same rules. Whoops wrong reference picture. Okay so basically that's how I'm going to approach the sky and then I'm going to let that be my my guide as to how I work the rest of the painting with those cooler values. All right so I found a lavender that I like it's not too dark and not too light and I think it will make a nice value in the upper part of the sky. A little dark but that's okay and lighten it up. Actually I like that. All right now if you notice it does get lighter on this side of the sky. So I'm going to accentuate that and look at how yummy that beautiful underpainting is showing through. That just if this was a white piece of paper it wouldn't have nearly the same effect. Or if this was if I had toned this all blue this color behind it just gives such a richness. All right so now I've got that lavender. Now I'm choosing some blues. I'm resisting using terry Ludwigs right now. Sometimes you just have to work with what you have but it's because terry Ludwigs are so they fill up the tooth so quickly. They're so soft and yummy that they fill up the tooth. Now I happen to like this shade it's it's like a primrose that's just it's in between a blue and a purple. It's so gorgeous. So I'm going to show that color there in comparison with this lavender. You see how the lavender is warmer and this is cooler. This is a great color for distant mountains if you have a lighter sky. All right so I'm just going to play around with that color in here. And sometimes that's all I'm doing is I'm just playing. But I'm going to give this side of it a little bit more of the coolness. It's a little dark and blend it a little. See how we we can blend a little bit. And I do think I am going to take my my pipe foam insulation and blend the sky a little bit just so I don't have so much of that showing through. All right so now I need a much lighter value for down at the horizon line here. And I'm examining what I have on my palette here. This is lighter but it might be too much lighter. Okay so here we go. That's getting lighter. Now what I'm going to do is get this in above these mountains. And I'm still keeping a fairly light touch. Sometimes I look for a flat spot. Okay that's better. We've got some lighter back in here behind these trees and I'll carve this tree out later. Again I'm just getting my values in. But you can see how I mean I wouldn't say I've punched up color yet but I have enhanced to the color definitely by not just making this a totally gray sky. Okay and I could have done the same thing if I had chosen pinks or yellowy colors. All right. So dark down to light. All right. So my color is already a little bit lively there which is nice. Put more of this down in here. Maybe a little bit more of this purple in here. And when I go to carve out the trees I will use these darker values to carve out the trees. Usually sky holes and trees look better if they're just a hint of a value darker rather than lighter so they don't look like popcorn in the trees you know. All right. Blend a little bit of this down in here. So I'm just trying to create a sense of harmony and again a little blending. I might even get a little bit darker with a lavender up there and check this. That's close to the center. That's a little lighter than that actually. And this one is darker but it may be too dark. But I'm going to put just a tad right here just for interest in the sky and then I'll blend it a little bit more with the lighter lavender. Yeah see that already created some interest be a tad over here. All right. Now I already know these colors are going to be reflected in the water. So while I have these pastels out that would be a really good idea. And again this is some trees or something growing across the water here. I'm going to go ahead and scumble in some of the water. And it is definitely darker down here. But see how I'm giving the same shape to the values in this. And also while I'm just getting in basic colors right now it's always a good idea when you're laying down your final marks to go in the direction of how the water is. Like right now this water here is very flat. And so instead of making my lines like this you want to accentuate the flatness of that water. Now I'm going to have some reflections of these grasses soon. But right now I'm just getting the values of these in. Oh yeah I really like this color here. Sometimes certain areas you can drag down. Again there's some water back in here but it's kind of covered up by grasses. We'll kind of scumble that in a minute. And back here these are even going to be lighter values in this water back here. But I'm just getting the basics in right now. Again this is a little darker down here still. Again directional strokes. I almost sometimes feel how it's supposed to go. It's flat but sometimes I feel there's a little more of an angle here. And another really important thing to do as an artist is to be a student of nature. You're probably already doing that because as artists you just oh my gosh you just your eyes never stop. You're just looking at things all the time. Now there are some nice little highlights right here of these of this water. Like maybe some light that's on this side that's coming down because the the lights over here. And the same thing there's going to be some lights in the water through here. Okay and again I haven't incredibly punched up color yet but we'll get there to a degree I have because that's not the colors that you see in the scene. It's just the same values. Okay. All right. Looking good there. All right now I think I am going to go ahead right now just to set the mood and blend in the sky at least a little. And notice I'm cleaning it off. I don't want to take that beautiful light sky and get any of that dark on there. All right that's pretty good. And I'm working top to bottom and again wiping it off some. This is just going to soften it up some and and make it recede. It's one of the main reasons for doing this with the sky. Sometimes I have skies where I let all the marks show but often I will blend it some because you want to push it back and prospectively detail decreases as you go back. All right. I might even punch up that sky color a little bit more but we have a general idea. We don't want the sky. You don't your eye doesn't want to be drawn to that first. This what I can see is the most interest is this water is this front area right in here. You're just going to I love a big wide opening of a river. It just draws your eye in then let your eye just flit around and play in the scene. Okay. So maybe let me see about blending this water. Maybe just a tad just a tad did I say but this is going to give it a softness. All right. So we're getting a soft sky some soft water and I am going to add more marks to the water. Now I'm just turning this on its corner kind of doing a little blending. And again, this is going to get covered up with some grasses and things. All right. Now I definitely need to get in and establish my darker values of the tree. I'm just going to blend it in a little bit right now to give it a base. And then I'm going to add more darks on top of that. Again, I'm just setting a mood here. I love the fogginess of this scene. I guess I'm going to end up blending the whole thing. Why not? Don't always do this, but it just feels right for this foggy scene. And it also kind of helps me with my shapes. Again, I'm using just a little corner section. If I was to use the whole wide thing, I would kind of mess up my initial compositional drawing here. Okay. So now if you squint your eyes, you're starting to see the values in this scene. And that they're getting pretty close to correct, which is good. All right. Okay. When I squint my eyes, I can see that these values of the grasses, if you see in the reference photo, are darker than this. Okay. So that's going to be established as I keep working. But I really already can see I'm loving this yummy purple right here. That's already giving me a direction to punching up the color. Okay. I can go ahead and see that I'm going to work with that purple. Okay. Again, that's not really the local color or the color that you see naturally on the scene. But I'm seeing that color. Again, I've got my my value correct. Okay. It's not the same color. All right. It's not this dull, dead blue here. And I've got my temperature correct. It's a cooler blue. But I mean, a cooler temperature because it's water, but it's still a little warmer on the scale. You see my palette here. It's not as close over here to these blues. It's moving a little more warmer in the purpley department. And that always looks good in the foreground. And actually, it reflects the sky, which is accurate as well. Okay. So just getting just getting that down already starts to help me punch up color a little bit. Blending, blending, blending. And again, don't want to overdo it. Sometimes it's nice just to have some of those marks and that paper, the glow of the paper shining through. And again, you can do this underpainting color on any surface that you're working on. Say, for example, you're working on watercolor paper. I've done the videos to where I'll do an underpainting with watercolor and let it dry and often to keep your watercolor paper from curling. Put water on the back of it as well. Then it won't buckle and curl as much. And then after you do your underpainting with the watercolor paper, then you paint the clear gesso on it. You've got a gritty surface and bam, you've got something to work on. So I have various videos showing how to create underpaintings on various surfaces. Okay. So now I'm just going to paint a little bit and give some commentary along the way. I thought I'd turn off my music here for a second to chime in notice how I'm seeing in the reference photo, I happen to know these grasses very well. They grow a lot in Florida on marshy areas. And they have warm tones. They have their green grasses but as some of them die, they're going to have more that orangey tone which is really a beautiful color. But to make this more interesting, noticed I held up the one that would be more natural to the scene. Okay. This is still even a little bolder than the picture. But if I was to use that, that'd be very dull as I'm making a little marks here. By the way, this does not have a lot of tooth to it. I accidentally put this underpainting on the wrong side of the mat board. That's the smooth side. This is the rough side. That's why you're seeing the graininess and I'm not getting as many layers. So I'm being really ultra careful here. But my point was that instead of using that orangey color, I punched it up with more of a magenta. Okay. So that's not what I see in the scene. But I know it's already in the same, leans more towards warm. Whereas some of the tops of these grasses are more warm because the sun's hitting them. And it's close to the right value. Okay. So we're already obeying the two rules that I talked about which is warmth and value. Now these back here are getting a little on the cooler side because they're in the distance. So we're going to have to I already have those cooler back there. There's not a lot of oranges and greens back. There's a little bit of green. I might do a really, you know, I already have something down there but maybe a really cool green if I have the right, right shade of green. Now that's going to be too, see this is too bold in color for back there. Colors recede, I mean colors pale out in the distance. That's not pale enough to put back here. That's too bold. Okay. So if I could find a correct dull neutral green back there, that would be better. And I'm not seeing one in my palette that I have. So I'll just do that later if I even do it. Kind of like the cooler colors back here. Okay. So you've already seen I've punched up the purples. They're the correct value and they're in the cooler area. So we've got the right value and the right temperature. So I added purple instead of adding black or gray or a deep blue which is, you know, more like what you see in here. So that purple was a lot more interesting. This is more of the medium value. I had a darker value purple wherever that was. So this is a rich, pretty purple too. And again, a lot of times I just test colors. Yeah, I like the darkness here. Of course my darkest darks are going to be right up here in the front. Okay. So and you noticed I was adding a little bit of those shadows in the in the water or reflections, I should say, not shadows. And again, they're going to do just like the sky. They mimic, if you would have turned it sideways, it's like a mirror image of each other. So wherever I have those darker marks, I'm just adding a few and you just kind of pull down. See, I just added that one there. Pull it down. One there. And then I'm going to make the water flow over those marks. So that's what's actually going to give that illusion. I might add a little. No, that's too dark a value. Back there. It's just too dark. That's going to look wrong. Okay. So let's see here. I want to get a little bit more interest in these grasses and maybe continue a little bit more with some of these warmer greens in here. Now I'm ready to add some greens. All right. Since I added that beautiful turquoisey color in here, notice. Oh, that's the lightest one. I had a darker one, I think. That is just a gorge. Oh, it was this one. That is just a gorgeous, gorgeous color. See how I put that value down? That was too light. I could just instantly see that was too light. See how it stood out right there? Yeah, this is the better color here. And I think I'm going to, because these are in the distance, you know? Well, that might be that. Yeah, add a little bit more of the tops of these grasses back here. A little bit more of that deeper blue. Almost like you're creating just little layers of grasses and things. And again, I'm keeping these cooler greens more in this area. Might even need a little bit more darker value right at the bases there. Okay, I think I'm going to go ahead and just continue with a little bit more of this rich turquoisey blue. And then I might add in some warmer greens to blend in with that. Okay, so you can already see we are definitely punching up color here. And I have kept a color palette that I'll have to show you when I can show you the color wheel. That is definitely harmonious. Now, if you notice, I'm not drawing individual grass blades. And I think that's what a lot of you guys, including myself, like, is we like Impressionism. When you start drawing individual every little thing, we lose that just the beautiful looseness of art. And it becomes, it looks more like art when you're loose instead of a photograph. So I'm throwing in a little bit of this again, because you want to keep some harmony in your painting, even though I might throw in some warmer greens down here at the bottom as well. I'll intensify that water soon, but for now, just getting more of these richer blues in here. And see the magentas and the purples? They are now my shadowy cooler areas. Much cooler here, more towards the blue, because it's darker and it's really hidden behind the grasses. And here it's a little warmer. So this one was a cooler purple. And where's that other one? And this one was a magenta, more closer to warmer because of the sunlight, okay? I hope I'm making sense. I might throw in a few of these magentas here. Oh yeah, because these are peeking out a little bit more into the sunlight. But see, so far I have not used the typical colors of marsh grasses, which would be greens and oranges and yellows. I'm using punched up color, just a little bit of that back there to indicate that water meandering around darker in here in some places. You notice this value, it's darker. I've added it for some of the grasses, but where it comes to the deep parts of those grasses, they're darkest here because they're close. They're not going to be as dark back there. That's why I'm using more of a medium to dark value back here to indicate that. And you know, it's kind of like I was saying before, sometimes it's just a mood, it's a feeling. And I'm finding myself not needing to add a lot of the, like I said, the typical colors of some of these grasses when the sun would shine on it, because I have that warm underpainting glowing through this. You know, it would almost be kind of pointless to add too much of that color back again. It's doing its job just as an underpainting. And I really do like it when it peeks through like that. So something else that I've learned too is to start slowing down when you get to this point and you don't want to overwork this. There's a tendency to just fill up that tooth and get too carried away when that would be, oh, just so terrible to mess up a painting you'd worked so hard on. So anyway, I'm going to work on this a little bit more and add my comments as I go. Cover up a little bit of that pink there. It was a little strong. I'm going to paint for a little while and maybe adds a little bit more commentary, but I wanted to make a point here that you can see that other than the complimentary color for the background, I've used mostly what we learned from the color wheel is an analogous color scheme. Using shades or tints or colors that lie adjacent to each other. And you can see that most of what I've used, I'm going to arrange my palette down here too so you can see it after I'm done, is more of this range. You see I've got the magintas, I've got the purples, blue violets, blue greens, and the most warm color that I have is some of the greens in the grasses and I even have a, a not too light of a value of a green. Okay, it's going to be, it's a warmer green like right in here. And then of course, the only other complimentary warm color that I have would be the underpainting itself, which is more in this orange, yellow, orange, which gives the glow. So, so definitely this was more of an an analogous color scheme palette, which I like. And I didn't necessarily plan it that way, but that just felt right. And I think it probably comes from just looking at a lot of art and painting for a few years now, quite a few years now, and feeling that those colors just feel harmonious and work well together.