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Each day at 3 o'clock. We're giving you samples of the over 600 videos that we've produced that are art instruction. You're going to love this one.
It's called Outdoor Painting Secrets. It's with Brian Blood. I hope you enjoy it. Good morning.
My name's Brian Blood. And I'm going to be painting this morning for you along the Pacific coast here at Pacific Grove. We're going to be walking out to the scene and we're going to recon it and I want to talk to you a little bit about design and composition and things that I look for when I come out on location.
So why don't you come on out with me now and let's take a look. Let's travel out this way. This is a great spot though when it's sunny and stuff. But even on a gray day There's a lot of great things to look at out here for compositions.
So we're just traveling along the path here. We have the lovely ocean. You might even see some whales jumping. It's very scenic.
Now, this is a good spot here. We have a good setup of design and stuff. So what I like to look for when I go out on location is strong, overlapping shapes, interesting color nuances. There's some design elements. I like to have the viewer lead the viewer into the picture plane.
So right here we have a path. that sort of walks you through the ice plant. This is not native to the west coast of California.
It was brought here years ago, but it just grows crazy. And it has some great color that changes. But I like this because again, the composition, that winding path is gonna lead us back into the dunes.
The Point Pinas Lighthouse is right off in the distance there by the large cypress tree over there. So we're gonna get that in there as well. But there's just nice forms, overlapping shapes, and some color that we're going to get.
Hopefully, if the sun comes out, we can get some good popping, warm cadmiums and stuff in there. But overall, we have a good design that we can work with right now, right here. So just give me a second.
I'm going to get set up. Basically, this is all I bring when I go out. I'm very mobile. I have my whole studio here with me.
It works great. Everything I need is right in this backpack. Right here we have a lightweight Gitzo carbon fiber tripod with a Bogen head.
And that's useful because of weight. When you go out painting on location, sometimes you don't have the convenience of just driving up to a spot and having, you know, the scene be right there in front of you. You have to hike out to it and... Weight becomes an issue, so everything you can trim back poundage-wise is important. And that's what I try to think.
So a tripod especially, as some of you may or may not know, can be very heavy. So this only weighs about a pound at most, which is great. My field box that I like to use is an Openbox M. It's a little beat up.
It's gotten used. It gets a lot of use. But they're workhorses.
They work really well. And the thing I like about it is again it's small, it's compact, sturdy, and it has a little mount here that you can put a tripod mount on. And it clips right on the top here.
You open it up, it has a nice open area here, clean area for your pallet to work on. And it's spring-loaded so you can adjust these springs out and you can do anything from a 6x8 to a 16x20 on this. Just snaps right on.
Click, click, click, bing, bang, boom. We're gonna just set up like this. I mean you can be set up really quick if you have to be.
And then I have a little panel holder for my canvas panels. I actually make my own panels. I prefer that way.
But I use birch veneer plywood and I cut that to size and then I glue on. Pre-primed canvas sheets that I cut. I over cut them and then I glue them, I trim them with a razor blade afterwards so it's nice and neat.
But this is great because again it's inexpensive and you can decide what kind of a surface you want on your canvas. Some people like linen, some people like smooth rough canvas. So really you can it's a great inexpensive way to experiment with different surfaces.
They make them, other companies make them and that's fine. This, I just prefer to make my own. It's easier for me. Well, let's just get that up on here.
It just snaps right into place. I have my handy dandy turp can. Snaps right on the front like that. Hangs nice and easily, so easy access. My paints that I brought, probably more paint than I'll need.
I usually just bring out a lot less, but... But again, be prepared. You know, I don't know exactly what palette I might want to use because it is a gray day. So sometimes you have to sort of accommodate yourself for that. So be prepared with that.
And I got my brushes in my little handy brush holder here. I prefer to use mostly flats and rounds. I like hog bristle brushes. So again, these are Robert Simmons Signet brushes.
They're rather inexpensive. You can get them at most, any most art stores or online. And the nice thing is, like I say, they're hard bristle, so they're good for oils. They keep their shape well, and they'll last you quite a long time if you take care of them. So it's important to take care of your brushes because they're pretty important when you're out here painting.
Okay, well, why don't you give me a second. Let me lay the paint out, and then we'll get started, okay? Great. Okay, we're all set up now.
It took me a few minutes to get my paints out and get organized, but again, I didn't really have to bring out a lot of things, but I'm ready to go. My palette is similar to what I would use in the studio. I brought a few extra colors out just in case it stays foggy or cloudy, so I have that at my disposal. But again, running through my palette, we have a titanium white. And that's a Utrecht Titanium White.
I have a Winsor & Newton Cadmium Yellow Light, a Winsor & Newton Cadmium Yellow Deep, a Winsor & Newton Scarlet, a Winsor & Newton Alizarin, Permanent Alizarin Crimson, not a regular Alizarin Crimson, buy the permanent if you can afford it. An Ultramarine Blue that's made by Winsor & Newton, a Vasari Cinnabar Green Light. And then I have a Viridian, a Winsor & Newton Viridian, a Vasari, Sap Green.
I chose Sap Green today because I knew I'd be doing some ice plant and I like to have an extra green when I do the ice plant because this is a warmer green. So I have a cool green and I have a warm green. And that'll help me with the transition from the reds to the greens in the ice plant.
Burnt Sienna and Burnt Umber, and both of those are Winsor & Newton brands as well. On this side... This is the side that changes often during different painting sessions.
But today I'm going to bring out a golden ochre from Vasari. And I usually don't use that, but I thought just in case it stays sort of overcast, this would come in handy. And then I have a silver point, or rather, I'm sorry, this is a Vasari Shiprock color.
A cedar, which is made by Vasari. shale and slate by Varsari. And then this is a Rembrandt paint. It's called quinacterine red.
It's going to assist me too with the ice plant color if it gets a little brighter and it's just an extra red to have again so I can perhaps hit that temperature that I'm trying to get when I go out there. I have them laid out the same way every time whenever I go out. I try to keep as much space as I can in the field here available for mixing. And I suggest, you know, organize your palette the same way each time so you become, you know, accustomed to where colors are and give yourself as much space as you can for mixing.
That's important. I'm going to sit down. I decided it would be nice to sit down and take my time today for you guys.
And so you want to be relaxed and comfortable and things, obviously, while you're all painting. Again, you want to be comfortable when you're packing up what you need to bring, be light and mobile, but also, too, when you're actually set up. relax, be comfortable so you can enjoy and take in the scenery and hopefully compose a good study to bring back in the studio. And that's what I do with these. Not so often am I out here with the intention of creating, you know, like this epic painting if it were, or this, you know, the great scene.
I'm trying to capture information. Your job as an artist, as a plein air painter, Out on location is to go after relationships. It might be color, it might be composition. You're gathering information and that's an important, really a very important, integral part of an artist creating of his work.
So you want to be out here, you're creating, you're collecting information, you're gathering notes, you're looking at your scene, discerning and deciding on what Elements are important compositionally, but also you're recording color notes. Your camera is good to record the scene. That captures the technical and any specific, you know, scenery that you need to have, you know, have present.
But you're interpreting that scene and your human eye, the human eye is the best camera you have. You can zoom in on areas, you can compare color relationships, value relationships, temperature relationships. All that's very important.
Your camera may or may not capture that. And certainly, you know, if you don't have any notes of that, you're not going to be able to translate that if you choose to do larger paintings from these. So these are just that.
They're references. They're notes. They're like pages in a notebook that you would take in class. So think of it in that regard. It's not that you're trying to, again, capture the entire scene.
You can change. I'm going to move a few little things around just for compositional purposes. But overall, put yourself in a position where you're able to see your painting and the scene in a comfortable way.
The lighting, we're lucky today, it's a little bit of an overcast day, so I don't have strong sunlight blazing down on me. But if I did, and I see this in a lot of people's work, is you want to have the same lighting hitting your canvas that's hitting your palette. If you're set up in such a way that your canvas is in shadow and your palette is in light, You're doing yourself a great disservice because what you're doing is you're seeing a brighter color mixed on your palette and then when you Transfer it to your to your canvas. You're gonna get a different reaction So I would suggest be a little mobile move move your palette around and make sure that you have a consistent Preferably side lit kind of a lighting source to help you when you're composing this again if you find that the lights behind you and you're casting a shadow on your On your board, that's probably not the greatest spot to be in. Again, it's going to be distracting, and you're not going to get a true sense of relationships.
As is if you're squinting and you're looking right into the sun. One, that's probably bad for your eyes. And two, it's obviously uncomfortable.
Well, and three, why do that? I mean, you can do it, but it's not the greatest point of view to have. So like I say, to have consistent lighting is always a better thing. On gray days, we don't necessarily have that inherent problem. We have a nice even light source on here, so that's ideal.
Okay, as I say, I use my own toned boards and I glue my own canvas down. And this is a Fredericks Scholastic pre-primed cotton duck canvas that I glued down here. And I toned the board with just some cheap acrylic paint.
I use burnt umber and cadmium yellow light. And I just mix that together and get a warm tone. I brush it on with a throwaway brush, just one of those cheap brushes you can buy at Home Depot for a dollar or two.
And I brush it on, wipe it down with a paper towel, and then I sort of just buff it and kind of try to get all the brush strokes out. Just make a nice sort of soft, honey, warm tone. The color, you know, you could have warm grays or warm earth tones, but have them be very subtle.
Don't use... bright cadmiums or blues or things like that, I find that can be very distracting. So if you have just a neutral, simple tone that's not really distracting, it's probably preferable.
Coincidentally, it also, in my case, and this was sort of over time, this evolved this way as I achieved this tone, and it also sort of matches my palette. So when I am mixing on here, I'm getting a sense of how they're going to relate on my canvas as well. So that, you know, that's a bonus.
And, you know, perhaps you might want to pursue that. But let's get started. I want to talk to you a little bit about composition, what I have in mind here, and we're going to block in and go through the process. So for this morning, like I say, we're stationed here right on the coast in Pacific Grove.
We are in the dunes just north of Asilomar Beach. My intention here is to have a lot of foreground. I like how the...
pathway that sort of weaves through the ice plant and there's a great pattern here that will lead us back through the dunes over into the corner by that large cypress tree where the Point Pinos lighthouse is and I just like to have that that's sort of a little bit of a target it's not necessarily a focal point but I like the way that design wise I can use the positive negative shapes the ice plants positive the sand can be negative and I like the way that we can work that pattern and how these large masses interact with the smaller masses. They overlap, there's large shapes, small shapes. So that's what you want when you're looking for a proper scene that can be artistically and aesthetically pleasing, is to have a good arrangement of large and small shapes, a variety of angles and color.
and have some foreground, middle ground, and background to your painting. Ideally, if you can have all that present, you have a good starting point to perform for. So, like I say, we're going to start looking at this. I'm going to block in very quickly just some simple shapes. What I do is I use my three brushes that I'm going to use today.
I have a number six flat hard bristle brush. I have a number four flat hog bristle brush and I have a number two round. And that's generally what I bring out when I'm working on a painting this size.
This is an 11 by 14 panel and, you know, I don't do large paintings outside. I very rarely do I do that rather. I tend to work 9 by 12, 11 by 14, 12 by 16. They're manageable and, you know, you're not...
in case the weather gets a little windy and stuff, they don't act as sails and, you know... you have to hold on to your canvas and stuff. So I would suggest work small to start, and then once you get your pace going, once you get, you know, a bunch of paintings under your belt, you feel more comfortable, maybe perhaps then you can go a little larger, but this is a good manageable size.
Okay, so let's get started. I'm using basically just Gamsol in my Turp can here. It's all I really use. I don't bring mediums out with me or anything, and I'm... I just use this to help thin the paint down a little and help it move across the canvas and clean my brushes.
I don't use anything else, Liquin or any of those other things. I find they get the paint too slippery sometimes and it causes more problems than it's worth. So again, in the theory of less is more, keep your palette and your equipment to a minimal. Keep your spirits and your mediums to a minimum. I'm going to use some burnt umber just to start a basic drawing of shapes.
And I'm going to go after just the big masses first and just in a linear way. And the one, obviously the one big form I see is this foreground mass of ice plant, which is going to predominantly take up two-thirds of my picture plane. So I'm going to have less sky, a little less sky, probably, you know, 15%, 10% sky, 15%, 20% background. 50, 60, 70% foreground.
But let's go. So we're just going to kind of use this horizon line right here. I see the biggest obvious shapes and lines I go for first.
So plot those in. So again, I see this big mass coming across here. And we're just going to get that angle going.
There's another overlapping dune that comes down a little bit lower. Alright, we're going to block this in and we're going to kind of just get these angles going like in like that And then we're going to bring this down something like that. That's what you want. You want you want overlapping shapes So let's just sort of try to really exaggerate them because I'm going to have the path come around like this and this you know, this is going to This will change a little bit, but this is the sort of overall idea we have.
Maybe we'll move this over a little bit like that and bring it in. Just be nice and loose with it. And it doesn't have to be, I mean, it doesn't have to mimic it exactly, obviously, but you know, you want to just sort of get that sort of feel.
And I'll paint through this a little bit. If it gets a little too shaky, wipe it down a little bit because you don't want to have extra product on there if you can help it. So let's just let this come down. This will sort of come from behind, come through like that there.
That's a little better. Rides up. And we want just to get the perspective thin, a little thicker, maybe it disappears, comes around, just something like this. And then it gets a little larger or fatter as it comes towards you, just so you get that little bit of perspective.
And again, you may add or subtract with this obviously. And then you want another shape over here, some of this dead gray stuff. I'm not sure what it is. It's just some old dead stuff. Just to sort of balance this, we'll have a few little openings of that perhaps.
And again, so just maybe make a few marks to sort of balance it, maybe a few over here. Okay. Then we got some overlapping dunes up here, smaller dunes, but now we want to just keep everything kind of small. So let's get another dune. Maybe coming like this.
And then there's another little dune right there. We'll just go to edit that a little bit, but we'll have him in there too. So you have something like that.
And I'm not worried about all the little undulations and growths and stuff that are happening on there. I'm going to create those in my brush when I get painting. But I just want to sort of have those basic masses, those simple shapes at present. The background, again.
if we bring our brush and you use you just follow this angle back and through here we go back that way I'm gonna have it really almost overlaps so that's we starting point can be and maybe that's that big dune with the ice with a lighthouse rather is going to be on so let's just bring him across there and tilt it down and just create an interesting moving line something that in other words you don't want anything just to look like very you don't want any of these angles to have a very clean and clear trimmed shape the rougher you can make them the more undulations you have the more natural you'll probably get take a second and just we're gonna have a little spot for the for the lighthouse there but let's get that large cypress tree and over there we're just gonna kind of block him and then again just it's just for placement right now so maybe something like that he's sort of windblown so your strokes can all go in this direction the lighthouse again is just simply going to be there's a little A hint of the roof line there, and of the tower. Something just like this. And again, when we get to painting it, we'll try to get it to look a little bit more the flavor of a lighthouse that should be.
But again, it's just basically a simple shape. You just want something for scale. And these trees and things, again, I'm really not going to even worry about drawing them right now because I'm going to do that more freehand with the actual color I want. But they're going to kind of come up more like this and across.
So again, just sort of indicate more or less. where they're going to be, but you don't have to, you know, it doesn't have to be a slave to that. They can change. So, but, but, but really right now that's about all I need. I have my background.
I have some foreground, I have some middle ground and I have a bunch of foreground. Okay. So, and again, the, the, the, the burnt umber I'm using, I'm just drawing very lightly. I didn't use hardly any thinner. I just had enough just so I could draw with it.
Now I'm going to take my number six flat. I'm going to paint with that for a little bit. Let me put my brushes down here. It's nice when you have sand, you can just stick your brushes in the sand like a little stand holder there.
So that works out pretty nice. And again, just wet your brush, wipe it off. I have a rag sitting here on my lap so I can clean my stuff up.
And I'm just going to start to lay in some of the big shapes now. So this is more or less a block in. So I squint my eye and I'm just staring at the color and stuff.
And it's it's obviously quite red and it has a green trans you know turns transitions into green each day is a little different so i'm gonna just start with alizarin crimson and take a little cadmium cadmium yellow light And I want to kind of, I'm just going to make some color swatches here because I want to sort of see what recipe is going to work the best for today under these lighting conditions. And we're just going to take up a little bit, make a little soup here of some cadmium yellow light and some alizarin crimson and just make a little mark over in the corner. And you go, yeah, that's not too bad.
I think go a little darker, but let's just lay that in. And that's a little too bright, so we're going to go back to the original recipe, so to speak. But let's just lay that in. And then I come down a little bit, and there's this nice little transition into the green.
So I want to just sort of experiment with that and make sure that I have the right idea. So I'm going to take a little sap green. It feels like it wants to have a little bit of sap green with a little bit of cadmium yellow deep in it.
And I'm going to come down here and I just want to sort of see what that looks like. And that's a little dark. So we want to lighten that up a little bit more. So maybe even take a little cadmium. yellow or even some of this gold ochre so it can keep it a little dull.
So we're just going to mix this up with the sap green. And that's a little bit better. It can go lighter still. So again, just get sort of tuned in on what we need.
And that's probably not too bad to start. So, okay. So you have your sort of basic red transitioning into green kind of theory. On gray days, it's kind of a good little break.
You can take your time and just Focus on doing a good painting. So I'm just going to make sure I got enough product mixed. I never do mix enough. I always happen to keep mixing it, but that's okay.
So let's just get a little thinner on here and just come around. I'll swipe a whole bunch of paint tubes. I do want it to be a little more duller since it is a gray day.
Oh, not that dull though. Oh dear. Okay, we're mixing, we're mixing.
Okay, here we go. Okay, we're back in business. So then once you get it mixed up, bring it around and just start to loosely block in.
short choppy strokes like that of fun. You can actually create a little bit of texture with it. If you see that this line is getting a little stiff, you can sort of make little adjustments if you want.
There you go. Just again to think about a little more of a creative line, a little more interest. There's some green that can happen up over here, and I'm just going to think of pattern.
I'm going to think of ways that I can stain the board lightly and then introduce some greens into it, but just blocking them real quick. If this were a sunny day, I would have to work pretty rapidly. You know, you have to move quick, especially if there's sunlight out, because otherwise your whole scene is going to change a lot. So we're going to just let that sort of connect back there. Bring this along through here.
The white of my board, or I should say the tone that I toned my board, right now it's helping me a great, it's going to help me a great deal too throughout the painting because I can just leave that alone and that can represent all the light negative spaces, the sand or whatever it is, you know, that I don't, that is painting around the ice plant. So it can help me out a great deal. So right now again, all we're going to do is just think of that path and how I want to design that. Maybe there's a break over there as we come in through here.
Move some of it over here a little bit. And I'm just squinting my eye, and all I'm doing is I'm just seeing areas that I'm going to start introducing both reds and greens. And I want those to sort of have a mix.
I may lighten or darken areas as the painting progresses, but I'm keeping it very, as you see, I'm just sort of chopping in some strokes here. And I'm moving around the picture plane. At the same time, if you want, you can start to bring in some greens.
Along the edges here, I noticed like along the edge of the path for some reason, you know, they have little hints of green in there and stuff. So, you know, you can start to introduce that. So you can start to bring these two tones together.
There may be a little burnt sienna in there too. I mean, so just that's just it. You're squinting your eye, you're making notes, mental notes, as well as visual color notes with this.
And that's what you want. As we get closer, as the scene comes towards you, you want to have more, your brushwork wants to perhaps start to emulate the actual growth of the ice plant. They, you know, they are succulent, they're a plant that comes up out of the ground. So obviously, you know, you may want to be a little bit more conscious of that texture, if you will. While we're looking back, it could be more of a blanket or more less, quite less, a lot less detail.
And that's what you're looking for in paintings anyways. Even when I'm on location, I'm conscious of looking for atmospheric perspective. I'm looking for linear perspective.
There's all kinds of things. And as I say, when you're looking at your subject, just remind yourself that there's distance between you and it. So elements off in the distance will have a lot simpler pattern with less detail. There'll be softer colors and the overall inherent color back there will be muted and a little bit softer. And then as your scene comes towards you, elements in your scene that comes towards you will have more clarity.
They'll be sharper, edges will be sharper, the color will be a little more intense, they tend to be warmer. If there were shadows, the shadows would be defined and perhaps a little warmer as they come towards you. As they move away, they could be a little cooler.
That's not always the case. It depends on the time of day. But again, each painting is different.
I can come out to the same scene day after day, and every day it's a different painting. So that's the excitement of coming out and playing air painting, is that you don't have to go to different scenes all the time. Each time you come out to a scene, it can be a different experience.
And I would suggest you do that. I would suggest you do go out and practice different places. And practice going to rather the same places and just seeing what happens at different times of the day. Okay, so we're still, we're just painting.
Hold your brush back like this. When you're first drawing out your scene, you can be a little more... pen-oriented, so to speak.
But I would encourage you to learn how to hold your brush back in the Faro like this, so you get a little bit more of a looser, spontaneous action to your brushwork. Get a little more fluidity, if you will, a little more motion with your strokes. Just want to start covering the canvas. You know, I actually enjoy very much coming out of doors like this, especially along the coast here, especially on a day like today. You can just sit here, take your time, have a nice relaxing experience, listen to the ocean in the background.
you know it really doesn't get a whole lot better and and that's a lot of it too even if i even if for some reason i don't get a you know an earth-shattering painting out of this just the fact that again this is what i do this is an average day for me um i feel very lucky so you know painting can be that for you it doesn't have to be always a money maker some will disagree with me but That's alright. It can be a very relaxing, almost therapeutic kind of release that you can enjoy for yourself. Hopefully you don't put too much pressure on yourself.
Hopefully... Hopefully you don't get angry with yourself when you're out here, but you can just sort of relax and take it in. Okay, like I said, I'm starting to block in the color. I'm going to start to get a little more opaque now with things.
I'm going to get a little more clear with some of the stuff in the foreground. I want to get moving along. So again, mixing up my Cadmium Yellow and Alizarin Crimson. And just take my time tweaking. I'm going to leave some vacant spots because, again, I still may want to have some green dancing through here.
But back here, again, just sort of let that happen. The other dunes back, these next dunes back here, again, we'll just put a little bit of some indications for them back there. Maybe even take a little bit of burnt sienna, put some of that in there.
But I see that they're pretty light. So actually I don't want to get too dark with that. I'm not using really any white to lighten my colors. I'm just trying to keep it nice and crisp and pure using some cadmium yellow. If I did use white, and I will, you just want to be careful you don't get too heavy handed with it.
Keep it simple. And don't, because that will milk the color out. You want this color to stay rich. So right now again, I'm looking at those dunes and I'm just looking at the The positive and negative shapes, they're very clearly defined.
There's a nice, you know, the red ice plant and the white of the sand. And I'm just going to kind of think of how that pattern and those angles... We're going to interplay with one another. So we're just going to kind of do something like this. I'm not going to try to get everything in, obviously.
But at the same time, I want something that hopefully will stylistically work for me. Same with over here. Now this sort of overlaps a little.
So we want that to overlap. Maybe this shape comes up, comes down. Looks like the sun's going to come out. So. That could be a good thing.
We'll see. It should be. It was. It'll do.
It'll brighten up. It'll give me a little color in the sky back there, too. So that's fine.
But let's go after the background now, too, because I like how the cloud patterned. Rather than just be a blue sky, I want there to be something happening in the sky back there, too. So while we see the clouds parting, let's clean your brush up nice because you had a lot of red on it. So clean your brush off good. And I want to kind of just lay it in this background.
real quick, the tree line back there. So let's take some Ultramarine. Let's find another spot on my palette too.
I like to sort of keep my palette organized. So let's take some Ultramarine and some Scarlet. Take some white and just lighten it up so you can see it.
Well, that's too light, but that's okay. Let's just make up a nice muted violet. Take a little cadmium yellow deep and add that in there. It's going to have to go darker than that, obviously, so we're going to have to get a little...
I may have added a little too much white to it to start, which was a mistake. But that's okay. You want to get a good, dark, rich tone. Come over in that side area like that just to take a look at it and go, yeah, that'll work.
Okay, get a little thinner on your brush, wipe it off on your rag, and just come over this side over here, or as we say in New England, over here, and just start to block in an interesting tree line, leaving space for the dunes here and stuff. You might want to get a little bit wetter. It's a little dry.
Okay, here we go. Perfect. And we're just going to bring that down, bring it across, just silhouette shapes. I'm not even worried about our little breaks.
I'm more worried about, or conscious looking at, just creating an interesting movement in that background. Right across here. A little tree next to the lighthouse. Big tree.
We'll get a little darker with the big tree. Add a little bit, just a little more ultramarine blue. Maybe a little burnt umber. That's a little too cool, so I want to go a little bit darker with that. We'll add some earth tones into it.
That's better. That's better. There we go.
Okay, and then we just sort of scrub that in like that. Okay, maybe grabbing my number four flat just so We're gonna go and we're gonna be into a little bit of a tighter real estate here. So Now let's take some ultramarine blue, let's find another pile, another place rather to mix.
A little ultramarine blue, because I want to mix up sort of a muted green. So the ultramarine blue and take a little bit of the cadmium yellow deep. Take a little scarlet, a little bit of some gray. We now have, the sun has come out a little bit, so we've had to sort of shift around slightly, but we're back in business, and what I want to do is I want to start to block in the sky and cloud pattern a little bit.
I kind of like how it's unfolding for me now. So as a design element, it was pretty flat before, so as a design element, I like what I'm seeing now. So when you're out, you know, react to that. If you see something happening that you find interesting and or a helpful, go for that, you know, go after that if you can.
Visit the Pacific Coast with artist Brian Blood as you discover his expert tips to create gorgeous landscape paintings. We're going to be walking out to the scene and we're going to recon it and I want to talk to you a little bit about design and composition and things that I look for when I come out on location. Let's travel out this way.
This is a great spot though when it's sunny and stuff, but even on a gray day. There's a lot of great things to look at out here for compositions. This is a good spot here. We have a good setup of design and stuff.
So what I like to look for when I go out on location is strong, overlapping shapes, interesting color nuances, there's some design elements. I like to have the viewer lead the viewer into the picture plane. So right here we have a path.
Plein air painting is one of the most rewarding skills that you can add to your repertoire as an artist. and Brian will walk you through the entire process. Lily Doll Video Productions is proud to partner with Brian as he shares his best kept secrets learned and applied during his years of study and experience, all of which will help you become a better painter.
My palette is similar to what I would use in the studio. I brought a few extra colors out just in case it stays foggy or cloudy, so I have that at my disposal. I have them laid out the same way every time whenever I go out.
I try to keep as much space as I can in the field here available for mixing. And I suggest, you know, organize your palette the same way each time so you become, you know, accustomed to where colors are and give yourself as much space as you can for mixing. That's important.
Throughout each step, you'll discover Brian's techniques to really capture the heart of the scene. You'll then be able to quickly apply these principles in your own work. His instruction on working quickly but carefully will be a game changer for your plein air painting experience. And that's what I do with these.
Not so often am I out here with the intention of creating, you know, like this, this, this, you know, epic painting if it were, or this, you know, the great scene. I'm trying to capture information. Your job as an artist, as a plein air painter, out on location is to go after Relationships, it might be color, it might be composition. You're gathering information and that's an important, really a very important integral part of an artist's creating of his work. Brian continually encourages the idea of enjoyment, of using your precious time spent painting as a creative outlet in life.
He will remind you to enjoy the process by keeping things simple, yet show you how you can be very pleased with the outcome of your work every time. You'll be so glad that you have this video in your own resource collection to refer to again and again as you improve your skills as a plein air artist. Don't miss your chance to get this video now so you can create beautiful outdoor paintings that you'll be proud to show off to family, friends, and other artists.
Brian Blood, Outdoor Painting Secrets. Well, that is Brian Blood, and it's called Outdoor Painting Secrets, and you can learn about the entire full-length video at lilyartvideo.com. And today, there's a discount on it. If you go to the comments section and look up the discount code, you'll see it there.
You can use it today only. All right? Now, let's get right to our interview with Brian Blood.
Well we're here with Brian Blood. We're going to find out a little bit about Brian and his art and what makes him tick. Welcome. Thanks, thanks.
I'm glad to be here. How long have you been doing this? Pretty much most of my life. I mean professionally making a living at this for the last say 23 years or so I think I can remember back 1990 I started I decided to turned completely professional in that. I had side jobs, but I had already started with galleries, and they started to take off pretty well.
So we transitioned around 1990 into full-time painting and never looked back. It's been a good journey so far, knock on wood. Well, let's talk about that since we're there. What was that transition like for you?
Was it a frightening time? Well sure if you think about it, I mean it goes back to you know people who have day jobs and nine-to-five jobs You know they they're in that because it's a there's a security about that You know if you show up each and every day on time and and such and you get benefits you get a paycheck every week So there's that security Choosing to kind of break away from that on your own certainly is at the start would be a very scary thing and I had to decide well you know one it was nice I was young so I didn't need a lot of money so to speak to start I could live pretty modestly so the pressures weren't so great. If I had had perhaps a family or something I had to worry about as well. So those responsibilities would certainly play into it, but it was it was a challenge on the outset for a year or two.
I was living in San Francisco. Luckily my rent wasn't terribly high. so that was nice.
But I had a great studio and I enjoyed the process and I was motivated. And like I said, I had the good fortune to have a few galleries already under my belt that were working for me pretty well and I was making sales. So I saw a revenue stream established pretty well and it was up to me then to continue that process.
So like I say, at some point I just kind of got sick and tired of I was a house painter I used to hang off the side of the buildings downtown in San Francisco and paint buildings and which was kind of cool because I was rappelling around it's like a window wash I was I'd rappel down you know a 300-foot building and and do and do work on him and scare secretaries because I could be like spider-man I would jump around from window to window and stuff doing work but at the same time you know you got paid peanuts for doing that and The other guys never really understood, you know, why, what do you want to be an artist for? You'll never make any money at that. You know, they wanted me to stay there.
But anyways, long story short, I didn't see a longevity of the future of doing that. I always wanted to, again, be an artist. So there came a time and place where I just decided, you know what, I'm making some money here.
I can make more than what I do at that job. It's a lot safer. I had to create work and keep the galleries going, but like I said, the public responded. It was a very satisfying and lo and behold year after year it kept just continuing and mushrooming and got me here to you know today to where I am now so I have no regrets.
So if you had to for the people who are viewing this who might be. Considering making that leap, trying to figure out how to get out of what they're doing now so that they can go paint full time, assuming that they've got the skill sets and so on, what would you do differently versus what you did then? It's not so much what I would do differently because I think the advice I could give people would be, you know, it's a business.
If you have a talent or a desire. And you're motivated. That's the key.
That's the key to it. Luck plays into it a lot, meeting the right people, but also networking and meeting the right people. So you have to be kind of, you have to wear, as I say, you have to wear a lot of hats at the beginning, especially.
You'll have to be an artist. You'll have to be a businessman. You have to be a promoter.
You have to be a secretary. You have to be a bookkeeper. I mean, all these little jobs you discover that. are important because they all tie into the overall picture that you're creating, the overall career path.
You have to go to openings and go schmooze with people and collectors and get your face kind of out there. Be prepared for opportunities if they arise in that, if you do end up with gallery people or you do get selected in the competitions and you want to go out and go to the openings and stuff. have your sort of bio or your information ready to kind of talk about you know what achievements you've done or what kind of work you like to do, what kind of subjects you like to do, what kind of medium you work in, all these different things. I mean be able to articulate it is what you're about and communicate that efficiently to people I think is important because then that instills to them a confidence if they choose to maybe represent you or something.
Be confident in your ability. You know, not having this overwhelming ego, but yet you have to have one, but also having confidence in your ability and your work and believe in it and convey that to people. I think that's very important because they, if you're going to go into business with people, they want to feel confident that we're going to be in this together and be successful. And that can be hard because some people are very shy.
I mean, you have to have a certain personality, obviously, but At the same time, you'll make mistakes. You'll hopefully not say too many of the wrong things at the wrong time, but inevitably humans do that. So be aware of that.
Try to minimize those moments and correct them and move forward from that. is a good start really and just you know be eager to try new things to be a part of each and every opportunity that might come your way and take take advantage of it really. So you mentioned that it's a business. It is. Are you an artist or a businessman?
Both. I'm probably as involved with the business side of it as I am with the art side. You have to still produce the artwork obviously, but I think they work hand-in-hand very much. The one thing I see a lot is some artists are very timid about marketing themselves or dealing with galleries. They just sort of allow the gallery to potentially run their lives and they tell them what to do.
Sadly, I don't agree with that. I mean, I tell my galleries I'm the boss and I run the show. You work for me. Your people work for me.
Not that I am being hard fast about that, but that's kind of the reality of it. At the same time, it's a balancing act. You have to work together, but just don't let them manipulate you to do things perhaps that you don't want to do.
In other words, I tell my students and I tell collectors and things, I'm going to paint what I want to paint for myself. And then once that's done, I put it all in the marketplace. So as a businessman, I have to decide what...
subject or what themes I'm confident I can deliver and make that work and place that in the right gallery or right venue that gets the most audience. At the same time you know you have to watch expenses and overhead and things like that. Not that I have I mean that much but at the same time if you're not give if not much incomes coming in not much income can go out. to invest in yourself.
So you just have to be aware of that and you know you want to live some form of life so you're not in some living in some little shoebox in the middle of the road or something like that. You want to you know have at least a decent life at least that's the intent. I mean early on as I say when you're young it's not quite as concerning. You can live in a little apartment and things but eventually you'd like to believe you can kind of move up in the world a little bit.
But no being a businessman is just what I mean by that. It's just you know being on top of situations. Don't Be unorganized, don't be a slacker, be motivated and pursue opportunities, advertise, write articles, you know try to get your work out in front of the public as in any way you can like any no different than a product would be and reach as many eyeballs as you can because you don't know where your next sale either through a gallery or through yourself could come from so. You have to just keep, it's like fishing, you have to just keep throwing that line out there and trying to catch that fish that's out in the middle of the stream.
You know, it's really as simple as that. And you have to have the inventory and the desire to continue that inventory as a stockpile to sort of keep enticing people to come back. To see what you're doing. Working with galleries, the same thing.
You have to think of events or shows or working with clients. All these little things. Talking to the staff. I mean a lot of times I go into my galleries and I have meetings with the staff and just say, you know, what is it that you're hearing?
How are people responding to the work? Is there something else I can do? How are you presenting my work to the clients too?
When people come in, how do you do it? Now some galleries receive that better than others and you have to be a little diplomatic about how you approach it so again you're not pushing this on them. But again it comes back to being kind of in control and not just sitting idly by and thinking they're doing everything they can in your best interest.
Help them and educate them. to what it is that you want them to do and together hopefully that comes through and the client and collectors respond to it so you know being a businessman part of it is to just be organized and and be on top of things like that so when you're working with the galleries. Tell me about the journey to get here you You discovered art that you were really excited about it at what age? If you think about all kids are artists when they're young like that they enjoy drawing and sketching and noodling around I certainly was that way.
My parents were very, very supportive in that they would buy me art supplies all the time and I'd be always drawing. I grew up in New England, so in the winter time if I wasn't out playing and it was really cold I was inside basically just drawing and painting and making a mess in my room. But my mother was very good about it.
She said, as long as it all happens in here, you're fine. You can't migrate that around the house and stuff. And that was fun.
That was a good experience. express myself that way. And growing up again in school I always, you know, the teachers seemed to realize that I had a talent so I was always helping them with visuals and such like that.
That was fun. And I went to art school and I really discovered once in art school what a, you know, how fun that is and how excited I was to be there and I did well there. I went to many different, you know, several different rather universities and things and did well so it was all encouragement in that regard. And it was just, again, getting back to making that leap. You know, it's from one thing going from drawing and painting, things that you enjoy, and then moving into a career.
That transition doesn't just happen at the snap of a finger. It does take time. There are ups and downs that certainly occur. You know, there are realities that, you know, family and life and things that come into play, but again, if you commit yourself to your craft, if you're dedicated, if you're motivated, if you have perseverance, you find ways to advance yourself and to keep opportunities and things happening. I did that, you know, I started off in graphics.
I first, you know, I went to a commercial arts school, and back in... 1980, I mean, that's what you did. The art schools really, there wasn't really a lot of fine art per se.
It was all modern art and things like that was still going on, express yourself kind of classes and things, which in my mind, you know, were not for me. So I wanted to go into art. I thought, okay, commercial art's the way to go and worked at publishing companies and graphic design houses and ad agencies, did, you know, I did freelance jobs for them. And at the time, I mean, I thought that was going to be it. and I never was really that happy with it.
It was actually quite boring, frankly. But I was working with illustrations and things, and it was somewhat interesting, but I wasn't very thrilled with it. So what was the leap then in terms of going into final?
Well, computers. Computers came into play. It was right around like 1984 or 85, I remember, the representative from Apple came in to our boardroom and put down this...
Tower about this big and had a little screen on it and he had this thing that he called a mouse And we're all looking at that thing and he goes this is going to replace that whole production department out there pointing out into the other room with all the typesetting machines and all that paste up and layout RS4 and all this thing and We're all kind of baffled by this, but it was you know I kind of realized you know I don't know anything about computers or these things so you know and I wasn't really too excited about staying in graphics anyways so that's when I went back to school and started pursuing painting and fine art more or less in illustration more vigorously getting out of the graphic side of it and I always thought you know I enjoyed being in art school I always seemed to do well and I made connections so I went back and got another degree in fine art and Lo and behold, again, that's where I met certain people that helped me get galleries, that helped me understand about how to enter shows, that were supportive of what I was doing, you know, so that encouragement motivated and fueled me to keep driving forward with that. And I think, you know, so that's a timing thing too, that's what I mean by saying sometimes you have to be in the right place at the right time, you have to have a little luck. But you have to also be prepared for that.
Again, mentally and creatively, I think I was ready for that. So it worked out fairly well in that regard. So what I would recommend to people if they were in the same place is, make sure you have a solid, or if you can, obviously, if that's possible, take classes that teach you about design, about the fundamentals of layout and design. and working with your medium.
All these types of classes of figure drawing and still life painting and location painting, all those classes that they offer at different schools, you know, take those classes if you can. If you can afford it and you can afford the time. All that seasoning is going to come back and reward you because it builds confidence in when you do want to go back up because you have those tools.
It's like the tools in your toolbox. And if you're a plumber, you have... You have all kinds of tools to work on different projects that come up. If you're an artist, you need to have that up here in your brain. You need to have the understanding of how to...
Look at your subject and understand the different, you know, the disciplines of form and structure and things like that. School does that so and you also meet people and that's what I mean. You also can make contacts there.
If it's a good school they have a good placement department and I mean you know they can help you with that but the teachers, the students, all that experience I think is really important and that's what I use to sort of springboard into my career. All that, all those memories, teaching. things like that, you know, all that came from there. You know, I modeled myself after a lot of different teachers I had over the years. Unconsciously, I didn't realize I was doing that, but when I think back, I find myself repeating a lot of the things that they said.
Because again, you know, you're just like a sponge. You absorb as much information as you can, and it comes back out in different ways, different times in your life. In terms of the teaching that you do, you do a lot of workshops.
You taught for a lot of years. Beyond these other fundamentals that artists need to be out there getting on their own before they can really develop their work, once you start teaching them painting, plein air painting, etc. what are the basics, what are the fundamentals that you try to push to the students that you're teaching in your workshops? The first thing would be training yourself to see what's happening in nature. Like I'm a landscape painter so I talk to them more about understanding. What to look for when you're out working.
Being able to simplify your subject down. Very often when you go out on location especially, you're bombarded with a myriad of sights and sounds, textures, you know, detail, I mean, grandeur of the scene you're at. And it can be very distracting, it can be very overwhelming, and very, you know, confusing, so...
The main thing I try to get people to do is train your eye to look beyond all the detail and all that and just break it down to a very basic flat pattern to start and establish your composition that way. Your brain lies to you all the time. Your brain tells you, you know, when you look at a tree your brain automatically has this generic picture of what a tree should look like. and really any subject like that. So you have to learn how to sort of override that.
There should be a little button that you press and it just sort of, no, no, no, no, no. I'm going to back up. I'm just going to see it as a silhouetted shape.
I'm going to block that in very simply and then I'm going to pick out the necessary information that I need from that. And that's the hardest thing to teach people because, again, they're used to being literal. They're used to being very specific about what they want to try to go after. I try to convey...
A sense of be intuitive, be you know react to what you're looking at but react in such a way where again you don't need to get everything in the kitchen sink in there it can be just a very simple abbreviation and if you can get that statement down on the canvas you can expand upon that a little bit if you need to but at least if you were to step up and leave from that spot you would have a very nice simple breakdown of that scene. It might be just a tonal breakdown where you're just going after simple light and shadow patterns. It might be a tonal breakdown with some accents of color and mood maybe where you add a little drama into it. But it all starts from just a basic simple foundational kind of painting. And that's what art school can teach you.
Again, if you go to a class you know they'll teach you about Silhouettes of design and of breakdown of color of value patterns things like that You learn sort of these little not tricks, but but disciplines And that's the hardest thing I find when I'm conveying to people because they want to and then and then you know And so you learn the process and then the medium is the other issue, but that's but that's a learned process You know you know learning how to paint Using the paint takes time and practice But most people can learn that. Now, color theory and things like that's a different, a little bit more complex and a little more cerebral, so that requires a little bit more of a study. But the actual action of mixing and using paint just requires, again, time and practice. And I try to convey that into them too, that it doesn't happen overnight, but again, it all comes to a sense of, you have to sort of be disciplined and motivated and committed.
and find how that can work into your life, all those ingredients hopefully will melt down into a sort of stew of a successful painting idea, painting process. So you talked about color theory. There are a lot of theories about that. Worms, cools, Moncel.
Do you have a particular way that you approach things? I mean, color theory to me, you know, there's many different layers to it. But I try to keep things as simple as I can. I'm not the brightest, you know, bulb in the box here. So I don't want to try to, I'm not going to be writing any...
you know, encyclopedias about color or anything like that, getting into, you know, wavelengths and things like that. But basically learning how to mute your colors down. Ideally what I try to stress to people is, you know, often I have people that come into my workshops, for instance, they have perhaps 30 or 40 colors on their palettes. I mean, for one thing, it's just, you know, they're lugging around a 20-pound box full of paint, which I go, you're not going to need all that stuff.
That's crazy. And you don't use those colors. So I try to first convey, about using a simplified palette because what you want to do is you want to be able to mute down colors in nature like that and they have black on their palettes or things like that and I go throw that away I don't I don't use black on my paints or anything like that so I try to convey how to use complementary and split complementary color schemes to sort of implement that into my paintings in nature because really if you look at it the show form and to break structures down to interpret scenes. All you really need is a primary palette and then have some secondary colors to use to complement the primary palette. If you can work with that, you'll be fine.
If you know how to mute colors down using the complements, that is going to make the painting look so much more harmonious. It's going to convey structure and form efficiently. You're going to have a harmonized painting. If you start entering, if you start using your whole art store as your palette, it's really, you're just fighting an uphill battle.
I think that's a maturity for painters. My tendency was to just make everything a lot of chroma, a lot of color, and I realized that what was really pleasing was, you know, The muted colors, as you say, I refer to them as various forms of grays. And not really a lot of chroma in the painting, but sometimes a spot or two that really make it pop. But if you study most of the great painters, not all of them, but even Sorolla to a great degree. I was at the Sorolla show recently, and there's a lot of gray and then some spots that just pop.
Some highlights, some accents, some punch colors, yeah. Well, it's true. I mean, good paintings certainly can be vibrant and can have a lot of intensity to them. There's no doubt about it. And I think when you're starting out, that's what you're going after.
I think over time, you're right. You start developing an awareness and a sensitivity to nuance and color and subtlety. ...is a trick. And that's hard because that's an area that takes time to sort of see and to understand. And then the design part of it, again, if you had good design classes or if you had a background where you were aware of targeting, of focal points, of leading the viewer's eye around the picture plane, if you're aware of those design techniques...
Impact in like a splash of color you like you said to you know you know you know to emphasize a Moment on a painting a sunlight or something like that a highlight on a vase or something like that is you know Those are those are definitely Tricks or moments. I don't recall them tricks but they're but but they're but they're they're they're moments that are that are going to make that painting it's going to push it that much further and certainly practicing with your palette, experiment with other colors, introducing them into palettes, using limited palettes. I often talk to people a lot about, you know, try using just a limited palette. Try taking, you know, because really all you need is a red, yellow, and a blue.
And that could be burnt sienna, yellow ochre, and you know, could be a Payne's gray even. I hate to say it, but you know, even Payne's gray in a limited palette can be very efficient. Or you could use like an indotherium blue, and a, you know, cadmium red, and sap green, and... burnt umber, all those muted tones can create wonderful arrays and wonderful palettes that can be used to convey information. So don't just be held fast to one palette.
Practice using various colors, but that doesn't mean then you bring them all together into one humongous palette and expect to create a great painting. It's just going to create confusion. So, like I say, less is more. A smaller but organized and efficient palette will always yield you, I think, a better result.
You'll have less problems mixing. Your colors will be probably more harmonious and more pleasing and more interesting. And you'll...
Hopefully get better results over time. Well, you also get more harmony Just just the mere fact that you're only using those three basics everything starts falling into harmony and each manufacturer makes the same named Paints, but the name of the colors, but sometimes their colors are slightly different So I suggest you try different manufacturers as well because again They don't all like to kind of play well together if you will I use the dysfunctional Thanksgiving dinner type of analogy where you know it's not it's a nice idea we all want to get together and have a dinner you know once a year but some families don't quite play well when they get together you know you know the you know so you have your main family your normal palette but then sometimes you bring in other colors and they don't always work well together so you have to be aware of that and and and and and and usually you can discover when that is but it's important like I said to be to be willing to experiment to explore Try new products, try new paints, try new surfaces, try new makers of brushes, things like that, because everybody's different and they receive that differently. So, is there a particular painter that you wish you could have met and asked a particular question of?
Probably, I mean, I grew up in Boston, so I liked people like Dennis Bunker. William Paxton, Sargent, people like that. I probably would have liked to have actually talked to Sargent.
He seems like he would have been probably a pretty interesting character, running around smoking his Egyptian cigarettes and being flamboyant and living the, you know, being well taken care of by his patrons and stuff. He goes and hangs out with rich people, you know, around the world for months on end on their dime. I mean, that doesn't sound like a bad gig. You're doing that, right?
No, not right yet. I live the dream here. I'm not so concerned about conquering the world.
If I can live here and have a good, quiet life, I'm just as happy with that. Make a good living, I'm fine with that. But he sounded like he would be a pretty interesting guy to sit down and have a... have a drink with and pick his brain.
And what were the three questions you'd ask? Well, I mean, if you look at his paintings, certainly his portraits and things, and others will, I'm sure, corroborate this, is that you look at just the stuff that he did, how he interpreted even just fabrics and his subject. You look at his paintings, and whenever I go to museums, I'm always fascinated by, again, the simplicity of the way he did it. Most of his painting, if you look at it, I mean sure he spends time on the portrait and things like that which is obviously important and when I was studying years ago in Boston we did site-sized drawings.
I spent months and months on plaster cast drawings and we would have figures and you know we didn't get chance even use paint for the first couple of years and you know and he sort of came from that discipline as well. He was obviously far better than I was at it needless to say but the fact is You know, he would, he was a, I think, a master at balancing out, capturing, you know, a likeness, an expression, a personality in his subjects. Some of which I'm sure he was not exactly in love with doing, but he did it because it was part of the necessity of his lifestyle at the time, and it perpetuated.
But he would have to focus on that. But then, you know, he would have these wonderful stages, if you will, you know, with the... The background, the couches, and the flowing gowns, and these wonderful, almost like still lives, you know, that he would have to paint.
But he made them look effortless. And I remember I was in Boston, I went years ago, I went to the Sargent exhibit there at the Museum of Fine Arts, and it was fabulous. I mean, there was a hundred and something wonderful paintings, many of which had not been shown before. But I remember looking at a lot of them, not so much at the portraits of who they were and things like that. The little vignettes and still lifes that were in the portraits, you know, the cups of coffee on the table next to the model and just how simple they were.
Done. But the color, the anatomy of them, the delivery and the technique was just, you know, really exciting. And just the gutsiness of the, you know, of his brush strokes, of how to show, you know, highlights on satin and things, and the modeling he did. All those things. I mean, so I would ask him pretty much how, you know, what are you thinking when you're doing that?
You know, like, what goes through your mind? And I have no doubt he would come up with some, you know, grand answer, and then probably... second it with some little snide remark about how Mrs. Gardner was, you know, barking at him for this or that or, you know, I remember reading how he just hated, he did some scenes in a waterfall, like he had to go camp out by a waterfall for, you know, a number of weeks or something to paint these damn pictures for Mrs. Gardner because, you know, she wanted to do a show for him or something and he hated mushrooms were growing in his boots and the tent kept getting flooded, you know, because the waterfall would, you know, overrun the camp and...
So I just imagine, you know, he would have probably some good stories to tell, but that's probably who I guess Sargent would be probably one of my favorites. So in terms of what people don't know about you that maybe you'd like them to know. I have as many bad paintings as good paintings in some ways.
You know, there's a line I use, you have to get the bad paintings out of your system before you start painting good paintings. And everybody has a different... number of them.
You might have a hundred or two hundred and I might have five hundred, who knows, you know everybody has a different number and you got to work through that and so even to this day not every painting I do certainly is a good painting that I like and you know the thing is you just you know the public doesn't get to see them. They get to see the ones that I think are worthy and are good. But if I could convey that everybody, no matter how good you are, has good days and have bad days.
So if you're, you know, not doing so hot one day and you're painting and you're feeling a little kind of down, that's not an uncommon thing, so don't be discouraged by that. Wake up the next day, pull yourself up with your bootstraps and just try it again. And don't repeat perhaps the same error you made the day before. So not every day is a... There's a fabulous walk in the park where it's, you know, your ode to joy kind of dancing around and just, you know, life is great and grand and beautiful.
That's not to say that I'm miserable. I'm not at all. I'm very blessed and very fortunate. But we're all human and it's your attitude and your motivation and your love for what you do that moves you on each day.
And I think that's the message I would probably give to everybody. Just keep... just keep stabbing away at it because it does it does happen if it happened to me I mean I was not a great or a good artist when I started I don't think I'm a great or good artist now but the fact is I had to work at it and it you know very few people have I ever met in my life that were just so talented they could just you know they could just scribble something and it's it's great it took time and and that's that's the message you have to just It's a long journey.
This is today. Tomorrow's another part of it. You just keep going forward with it, and hopefully you're happy, and that's really all you can do. This was great.
Thank you. Well, that was Brian Blood in Outdoor Painting Secrets. You can learn more about the full-length video at lilyartvideo.com.
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We'll see you tomorrow at 12 noon on Facebook. And again, more free video samples at 3 p.m. Take care. I'm Eric Rhodes. Visit the Pacific Coast with artist Brian Blood as you discover his expert tips to create gorgeous landscape paintings.
We're going to be walking out to the scene and we're going to recon it and I want to talk to you a little bit about design and composition and things that I look for when I come out on location. Let's travel out this way. This is a great spot though when it's sunny and stuff, but even on a gray day.
There's a lot of great things to look at out here for compositions. This is a good spot here. We have a good setup of design and stuff. So what I like to look for when I go out on location is strong, overlapping shapes, interesting color nuances, there's some design elements.
I like to have the viewer lead the viewer into the picture plane. So right here we have a path. Plein air painting is one of the most rewarding skills that you can add to your repertoire as an artist. and Brian will walk you through the entire process. Lily Doll Video Productions is proud to partner with Brian as he shares his best kept secrets learned and applied during his years of study and experience, all of which will help you become a better painter.
My palette is similar to what I would use in the studio. I brought a few extra colors out just in case it stays foggy or cloudy, so I have that at my disposal. I have them laid out the same way every time whenever I go out. I try to keep as much space as I can in the field here available for mixing.
And I suggest, you know, organize your palette the same way each time so you become, you know, accustomed to where colors are and give yourself as much space as you can for mixing. That's important. Throughout each step, you'll discover Brian's techniques to really capture the heart of the scene. You'll then be able to quickly apply these principles in your own work. His instruction on working quickly but carefully will be a game changer for your plein air painting experience.
And that's what I do with these. Not so often am I out here with the intention of creating, you know, like this, this, this, you know, epic painting if it were, or this, you know, the great scene. I'm trying to capture information. Your job as an artist, as a plein air painter, out on location is to go after Relationships, it might be color, it might be composition.
You're gathering information and that's an important, really a very important integral part of an artist's creating of his work. Brian continually encourages the idea of enjoyment, of using your precious time spent painting as a creative outlet in life. He will remind you to enjoy the process by keeping things simple, yet show you how you can be very pleased with the outcome of your work every time.
You'll be so glad that you have this video in your own resource collection to refer to again and again as you improve your skills as a plein air artist. Don't miss your chance to get this video now so you can create beautiful outdoor paintings that you'll be proud to show off to family, friends, and other artists. Brian Blood, Outdoor Painting Secrets