A little about shadows! || The Social Easel

Hey everybody, how's everyone doing today? So I am hopping on with you every day this week to teach you something different about painting, and today we are going to talk about shadows. So, um, I had made a post, I believe over the weekend, asking you guys what you wanted to learn about, and that can be subject matter, something like this where we talk about shadows. Yesterday we talked a little bit about palette knives, and I showed you more how to use those. So as you guys are hopping on, I see you guys popping up, um, just say hi, let me know you can hear me okay, that you're here, tell me where you're watching from, and we are gonna get started. So, um, the first thing I want to talk about is— hey, Miss Becky— is that our Spring Floral Boot Camp is now open. Thank you, Deborah. Yeah, I'm actually like put together today because I had my interview with, uh, Stu this morning. So if you guys didn't see that, I did share it on the page, or you can go to Stu McLaren's page and watch it. But most of you know I have all these awesome creative friends, and Stu asked us to do an interview with him this morning about Tribe because that is what brought us all together. So if you haven't seen it, go check it out. It's really cool just to hear all of our stories. But it's myself and Heidi from Texas Art and Soul and Tamara from Southern Adornments and Casey from Pizzazz Studio and and Sarah from Framed. So anyways, some of my, um, best friends, and it was really exciting that we got to do that together. So that's why, um, I look extra fancy today, and I'm just hoping I don't get my sleeves in my paint when we start painting. So, um, but Spring Floral Boot Camp is open, and so that's what I want to talk to you guys about really quick, and then we're going to jump into learning about shadows. So this is how the boot camp is gonna work. Let me move my paint out of the way so I don't trip on it. Boot camp starts next Monday, so Monday, May 13th, is gonna be the first lesson that I teach with you guys, and you are going to get 4 full paintings in boot camp, and I'm gonna show them to you here in just a second, but this is split up over 8 lessons. So on the Monday of each week, you're going to get mini lessons where I show you some techniques that we're going to go over in the painting. So I may show you how to get these little flowers the way they are, or how to do grass blades, so that you can be practicing on it before we do the final painting on that Thursday. So every Monday will be technique, every Thursday will be full painting. You get the full color list, full supply list, all that good stuff emailed directly to you. And it's also in our private Facebook group where everything is gonna happen as soon as you register. And Gretchen just put the link up for me, so, and that should be pinned to the top. If you can't access it while you're watching live, just wait for us to hop off and you'll be able to get on there. Sometimes people can and sometimes people can't, so I don't know what the difference with that is. So you guys want to see what the paintings are? You may already know if you joined me last week. You've already seen a sneak peek, but I'm gonna go over them again. So again, this is all about flowers. If you love flowers like I do, you're probably gonna want to do this. So this is week 1. These are my Parisian flowers. This is just a copy, obviously, because I don't know where my original is. It may be lost in the midst of of the 250 paintings that I have in the basement. But, and I don't know why, because it's one of my favorite paintings. That's gonna be week 1. So we're gonna kind of start off simple and build as we go. But number 1 question I have is, do you have to have experience to do the boot camp? And the answer is absolutely not. So I have taught thousands of people how to teach, or how to paint, that have never picked up a paintbrush before. So So you do not need any experience. I'll walk you through all the basics to get you going on this. So that is Week 1. Week 2 is our abstract flowers, which I absolutely love. I love these bright flowers, and I'm going to be making a couple more versions of this. My girls want like a trio of these hung next to each other in their bathroom. So just be thinking you can do something similar. Similar with that. And then everyone loves sunflowers, right? So this is our sunflowers painting in a mason jar that we are gonna do in week 3. And I love this because after this you're gonna know how to do a mason jar as well, and then you can use that in multiple paintings when you come up with some stuff on your own. And last but not least, if I can get that to stay put. Can you tell it's time for me to clean my studio space again? Last but not least, the spring bike with flowers. So I repainted this. This was from an original I did 3 years ago, and I redid it last week. And you guys have been very gracious and you like it a bunch. And this is gonna be our final painting in the spring floral boot camp. So I love this one. You guys will get a template for the bicycle so you don't have to worry about drawing that on there and knowing how to get your dimensions right and all that stuff. It'll all be there for you. So does anyone have any questions for me regarding the boot camp? I guess I forgot to tell you the price. So the price is $127 for the 4-week boot camp. So thank you, Becky. If you are a Tribe member, make sure you go into our Tribe membership because you have a different, different sales page to register from. But those are the 4 paintings, and you get 8 lessons with me, so it's over 6 hours worth of video content for $127, and you get lifetime access to this. So a lot of people say, well, what if I can't be there? Becky, no, they will not. They're exclusive to the boot camp. If, if you can't be there when I am teaching, it's not one of those things where you have to know my schedule and be there on my schedule. As soon as the videos are posted in the group, they stay in the group so you can go back and watch them whenever you want to. And then I will also email you the links at the end of each week so you can go back and watch those videos. You have access to them 24/7 whenever you want. So that is how that is gonna work. Let me know if I forgot anything or if you have any more questions for me. I'm gonna move this stuff out of the way. We'll see where I can hang it while I'm trying to show you guys something. Good, Kelly. Yeah, it's gonna be fun. Scoot some things around here. We'll just tape this up on the wall for now. So today we are going to talk about shadows. How many of you feel like that is an area of concern that you're not sure where to put them in your paintings? Leave me some comments. Let me know what you think. I am going to pull you guys up on my iPad really quick, so I'm gonna move this camera so you can get a better angle of my canvas. Registration is open until next Monday, so I will close registration on Monday, May 13th. Kelly says, yep, no clue. "Please give us suggestions for other flowers for a grouping." Yeah, you know, I don't know what I'm gonna do just yet, but I'm probably just gonna kind of rotate things around and play probably very similar color scheme to that and just kind of change it up a bit. All right. So I've got you pulled up here so I can glance down and see a little bit easier. So I was trying to figure out what I wanted to use to teach you this, and you know, it's different depending on the subject matter, but I still want to give you a general idea. So I was thinking about a jar, but then I did jars with you guys the other day, so I didn't want to do that again. And then I was talking about how I find inspiration for things, and so this is one of my older calendars. I don't know if you can see that. And then I was looking at this tree on here, and I thought a tree would be a great way to show you guys what I'm talking about, because we can add some shadows into the trees and we can add some shadow onto the ground. Does that make sense? The size— this is a 12 by 12, Nancy. So who wants to learn how to make a tree? That sound good with you guys? I'm gonna get some paint here. And Linda says she has the same problem with highlights. So here is the thing that I want you guys to remember when you are doing either one of them. The first thing you have to decide in your painting, if you're not going off of like a piece or a photo or something where it's decided for for you and you're coming up with your own, your own composition, you want to decide where your light source is coming from. So that is the most important thing. Let me grab my brush. I think I want to use this guy, and this brush set is I love these new brushes. I've been using them like non-stop. This is from my Addie's Art Set in my Amazon store. Gretchen, I don't know if you have access to that link, but if you're still on here and you do, you can post that for them. But all of my favorite supplies are in my Amazon store, and that's an affiliate store for me, so I get a little small piece, a tiny percentage off of your sales. But it's awesome because I can put all my favorite stuff in one spot for you guys. So I'm just getting some basic colors here. I've got like a burnt umber, this is nutmeg, white, and like a pale yellow. And the reason I have some pale yellow in there is again just to add another dimension to it. You can use yellows as highlights too. It doesn't always just have to be a lighter shade of whatever color you are working with. But I love these brushes because the bristles are nice and stiff and it just gives you a little bit more control. So I'm using like a number 4 round right now. Can you guys see this okay? See if I need to scoot you a little closer. Does that work? Yeah, Linda, they are awesome. You will definitely like them if you get them. So I don't know if it'll help you guys to kind of see this. See if I can get this propped up here. No, maybe it's not gonna work for me. I don't think I have anything to hold it. Aha! So that helps a little, right? Kind of gives you a little bit of an idea of what I'm going off of. So we're just going to start down here at the bottom. This is going to be my base, and I'm just doing just a basic mixture of my browns right now. And again, I'm not worried about making this perfectly realistic or anything. We're just going to start kind of getting a basic tree shape down here. When you are making a tree, I do want you to notice what I'm doing right now. Notice how I did not start on one side over here and then jump over and decide the other side. I kind of just went thicker as I went along, and that way you don't end up with a tree way, way bigger on than what you meant. So hopefully that makes sense. So that's gonna be— oh, awesome, Gretchen found it. Yeah, I know I don't have like a super clear— I mean, there's several spots you can get to my store, but it's not super clear. So anyways, I wanted you to kind of see how I did that, and then we've got— they kind of separate about right here. and this one already— can you see that is a little bit lighter in the background? These are darker because they're on the back. The sun is coming from that other side, so this side of our tree is getting the shadow. So I'm going to go with some lighter brown and even grab a little bit of my yellow for this back area. and I'm still going to pull something across here, but I'm just getting this light color on here first. Okay, then coming up here, and ours is going to be a little shorter than that tree on the painting or the picture. So we'll just kind of pull it up like this, and then it's got some branches that kind of just pull across here. Okay, so this side, this is a little bit lighter up here, so I'm gonna pull some, a little bit of that light yellow into my brown. Just to change that color a little bit. Oh, you know what else I need on here is black. That's not black. And you guys just let me know if you have any questions as we are going along. So I'm grabbing a little black with my brown now, and I've got this area right here where I want this tree to kind of overlap. So it's a little bit darker right here, and then it's going to cut across, and this kind of goes up. Again, we're going to make ours just a little bit different here. This is a gnarly little tree with lots of bumps, and so if you worry about having a shaky hand, this is the kind of tree you want to paint because it's supposed to have all these crazy little bumps and grooves in it. So can you see right there already the difference in the lighting. So this part of the tree trunk versus the front part. Hopefully you guys can see that. You can shoot me some thumbs up and hearts if you can see what I'm talking about there. If not, we'll try to make it a little bit more apparent for you. But I want this section in the front to appear darker than that section in the back. And then over on this side, all that underneath side, I want this to have more of a shadow, so I'm gonna actually lighten this brown up just a tiny bit. Same thing here. My light is coming from up here, so everything on the top of my branches is going to be lighter than what's at the bottom of my branches. So I'm going to grab some of this black. Again, I don't want it to just be straight black. I'm mixing it with my brown a little bit, and we're just going to start coming in and adding some of these darker areas underneath here. I'm just doing that underneath all of them, even on these ones that are higher up and they're a lighter brown. They're still going to be darker on that side of the tree. So you just kind of want to choose where your light source is coming from so that you can start adding those shadows in. We're just going to make it a little extra dark over on this side and down here. I'd say it's a pretty intense shadow, so I'm just gonna go all darker over here. I'm gonna pull a little bit of green in here. We can get some kind of a green mossy color going, but still pretty dark on that side, and this side's got more light coming to it. So we could even accentuate that more by pulling in some yellow over here. Maybe this ground is coming back behind that tree a little bit. So we've got this light yellow where the sun's hitting the grass, so it's a little brighter over on this side, and then as we get over here, we're gonna start seeing it get darker because of the shadow of the tree. And you can decide how intense you want it. You could have it really dark like this, and that, you know, just depends on how intense your light is. If your light is very, very intense and say that's a very bright sun out, it will cast a strong shadow like that. If it's kind of cloudy out, it's not going to be that much of a difference. Yes, Linda said, so you're actually mixing on the piece. I do that a lot, so you don't have to premix your colors on your plate. Now I will show you, my plate is plenty messy and I mix a little bit, but I am definitely blending on here as well. And I'm even going to add just a little bit of green just in a couple areas up here because there's a little bit of moss on that tree. Grab some more of my yellow, and you can decide how bold you want your highlights to be too. And this is something where you guys hear me say it all the time, to either step back from your paintings or take pictures of them and then go back to it. Because when you're doing this— and I'm going to show you what I mean here— when I put this yellow line on here as my highlight, let me grab a little bit of white too. Let's come in, add it over on this other side. As well. So can you guys see that highlight from where you're at? You're a little further back, so let me know. Thumbs up, yes, you can see that pretty good. But what I want you to notice— this is probably gonna fall when I do this. What I want you to notice is when you are close to it— can you see that? It's gonna seem like really bold, and like maybe that's not what you want it to look like, right? Because like, if you saw that on your canvas, would you be worried that that's just way too thick or way too bold? But then when you step back, you get that nice contrast. So again, be thinking about where, where are you going to be looking at your piece of art? Is it going to be something that you're 6 inches away from all the time, or is it gonna be something that's hanging on your wall? So you want to think about what it's going to look like when it's on your wall, and sometimes that's hard for us when we're so close to the paintings. So I just try to get people to think about that, and I use Monet as an example because if you follow or have followed or watched or seen any of his artwork, you know that up close it's just really, really messy. Same with Van Gogh. And then when you step back from them and they're on the wall, everything comes together. So trying to break you guys from in your head telling yourselves things have to look like a photograph or that they have to look realistic— they don't. And sometimes they're more interesting when they don't. So I hope that makes sense on how you can see. So I'm just going to use this little accident here. We're just going to pull that and make another branch and pull that back in to my tree. We'll do the same thing here and add that shadow underneath here. And of course, this is a very, you know, simple, quick lesson for you. These are just little 20-minute sessions that I'm doing with y'all each, each day this week. But hopefully this will help you with kind of the general idea of how to play with your highlights and your lowlights or your shadows. And you can do the same thing in your grassy area. One of the questions was, do you always have to like add black to have a shadow, and the answer is no to that as well. And I'm going to show you here. So in the grass, one, I've got this lighter green that I was already using. Now I've picked up some of this darker, like, grass green. So even just throwing in that other color. Can you guys see the difference there? It still looks darker, right? It still looks like it's darker on this side of the tree than this side of the tree, and that's just a transition in colors too. So if you were looking at these greens on a scale, because they're the same color, right, essentially, If you were looking at these on a scale, and let's say you turned it black and white— this is another tip that you can do. You can, most phones, you can edit your photos and you can turn them black and white. So that's a good thing when you're trying to get value in your paintings and you want there to be depth and contrast. Turn your photo, turn your paintings black and white on your phone and look at it. Does everything look the same? Is it all just like the same tone, all the same grays? Or do you have some areas of bright white and dark darks? And if you do, is it all in one spot and your eyes only focus on that point, or does it make you kind of jump around? So the point in me saying all of that is if you turned these greens black and white or grays, this one would be on the darker side of the scale and this one would be on the lighter side of the scale. So again, you can use that in your paintings as well by getting lighter shades. And I could even keep playing with this and come and add more yellow to it. I've got too much green in there. Let me get some of that off. And see how it just keeps getting lighter and lighter? So you don't always have to add white to your color. And then on the flip side of that, So that's adding yellow going that way, and then we've got our regular dark green, and I've got my regular dark green down here. I'm gonna make this all dark on this side. Instead of using black to darken this, I'm gonna use red. Does anyone know why? I'll give you a second before I tell you. I'll wait for the comments to pop up here, and if they don't, I'll tell you, but I'm betting somebody on here knows why I am using red to make my green darker. No? Not quite. It does have to do with the color wheel. It has to do with the placement on the color wheel. Someone said it. Who's the first one? Miss Becky. Yes, so I don't think I have my— hang on, let me see if I have it really quick. I thought I might have had it in that drawer, but I don't. So if you're looking at a color wheel, Again, if you really want to learn more about art and study this instead of just, you know, painting step by step, get yourself a color wheel, get yourself a color mixing guide. They're awesome to have, and you're going to learn how to create all your own colors. But you can make neutrals, you can make darker colors of whatever color you're working with by using the opposite on the color wheel. So for green, that's red. For orange it's blue, for yellow it's purple. So anytime you get those, it gives you a neutral. In this case, I'm gonna use— I've got dark green, and then I'm gonna use a little bit of red. And watch what happens. The more red I add to it, the darker it gets. And now you've got this really nice dark mossy green. And this is the crazy part. This is what I want to show you and explain to you guys, that you don't have to go buy every individual color. I know people like to know the exact brand and the exact name and all that stuff of what I use, but I want to get past that, and I want you guys to learn how to make your own colors. So look, these were the two colors that I used. Can you see that? This is Christmas Green and Bright Red. So you probably would not think that these two colors would make this color, right? Am I getting too much light on there? But it does. So, you know, this is just again why I love having a mixed media pad. This would just be something fun for you guys to do, not even talking about making painting, but just learning about color mixing and how you can use what I'm teaching you today to add value and to add shadows to your paintings. So play with your reds and greens and see how many different colors you can get out of the same two bottles of paint. Or play with your, you know, blues and orange or yellow and purple, whatever colors you want to play with, and do this as a little challenge for yourself. But I did want to cover that. I want to explain where the shadows go. Decide your light source. Is number one, and number two is adding the shadows on that darker side where it's in the dark, your highlights on the top side, but also not feeling like you can only use black and white to add your highlights and lowlights. So when I was in my color theory class in college, this was my absolute favorite class, and we I mean, it was all about color mixing, and so I'm kind of obsessed with it. We had to do a full painting. She hated it when we used black. Like, in fact, she would probably knock down our grade, a whole letter grade, if we did use black in any of our paintings. And her challenge to us was to not use that. Don't fall back on that, that you can create your own darks from colors that you have. So maybe challenge yourself to that. Try not using black in a painting but using different colors to create those dark values that you want. So kind of an in-depth paint lesson for you guys today, but what I want— what I hope you understand from, from what I taught you today— sorry, ignore that, it's my paper towel dispenser, automatic. What I hope you learned from this today is that it doesn't have to be hard. That wasn't hard. So all I did was just start playing with my paints and learning what different colors do. So if that's interesting to you, get yourself a color wheel, get yourself a color mixing guide, which is just this big grid, and it will tell you if you mix cobalt blue and, you know, I don't know, whatever, red together, and then you meet those two in the middle of the grid, it'll tell you what color you're gonna get. And so you start playing with colors enough and you start figuring it out. So, I mean, it's happened to me more than once at my local paint nights that if I forgot a paint color and I start to panic and I'm like, oh, what am I gonna do? Luckily, I have had enough of the right other colors that I'm like, okay, it's fine, we're just gonna mix it, we're just gonna mix that color, it doesn't matter that I didn't have it. And it really doesn't. Um, so anyways, I hope that was a fun tip for you, um, that you can learn a little bit about values and shadows and highlights. And also a little about color mixing. So this tutorial kind of turned into something different, but it was fun and you guys seemed to think it was interesting too, so that's good. Yes, I have all of that in my Amazon store. So the color mixing guide, the color wheel, all that stuff I'm talking about is all in there if you want to see what it looks like. And you can go to your like local craft store, Hobby Lobby or Michaels has those as well, and you can get mini versions or big versions. Yes, Linda, happy accidents. Say, sometimes God just has a better plan than what my plan was, so I just kind of go with it. Let me make sure I'm not missing any of your comments here. Okay, Pat. Okay, Pat said, are you mixing the color on here or mixing it on top of? So I kind of did a little bit of both. You can see where I've mixed them together, but then I would go back and just grab some of my red and mix it into my green. As long as it's still wet, it doesn't matter. You can keep blending and keep mixing your colors. Barb, this is a mixed media pad, also in my store. So when you guys get off here, Gretchen, put that link in It's my Amazon store. Um, and I believe it's just amazon.com/shop/TheSocialEasel, but all my favorite supplies are listed in there and they're all in one group. This is my mixed media pad, which I adore. You'll hear me talk about it all the time. If you decide to do my bootcamp, I highly recommend that you get one. So it's an 11 by 14. It's got 60 sheets in it and they can handle canvas. You know, they can handle canvas, they can handle thick paint. So you can kind of see I just use this as my sketchbook to practice in. So again, you don't have to like get something expensive or use canvas every time you're painting. If you missed yesterday, this is what I did yesterday, and that was done with a palette knife. So you can go back and watch that. All my videos stay on my Facebook page, so you can always go to the videos tab and go back and learn some more stuff. So that is what I got for you today. If you are interested in boot camp, registration ends on Monday and it starts on Monday. So it's $127 for 4 full paintings with me, 8 lessons broken up into 1 mini lesson and 1 full painting, and it starts on the 13th, May 13th, and it runs for 4 weeks. And that link is also pinned to the top of these comments. So I hope you guys enjoyed that, and I will jump back on with you tomorrow for something else. Thanks guys, bye!