How to Paint a Magnolia Spray

Summers are always a very busy time for artists. It's when things really come alive in the art community. Art fairs start happening, galleries are all a buzz, art walks get under way and studios open their doors for tours. And that's exactly what I've been up to. Since I started attending atelier with Tenaya Sims six months ago, I've barely had time to paint let alone put together a lesson. And then when summer came along, well, the first paragraph says it all.

Thanks to Facebook, I've recently been connecting with old friends and one of my teenage buddies just commissioned a small painting from me. So I thought that I might as well kick off a lesson while I painted. This time I remembered to set my timer so I could take photos at regular intervals.

OK - here's the set up. My friend just wanted a spray of Magnolias without the attendant vase. Schucks! I really love painting vases, but alas, it was not to be. So the vase in the lower left hand corner will not be included in the painting. For the sake of expediency, I'll not be capitalizing the names of the paints. Now remember, the photo is for the sake of this blog. I NEVER PAINT FROM PHOTOS FOR FLOWERS! I emphasize this because it's something I'm adamant about. In fact, I almost never use photos except for the occasional landscape and then only because my bad and aching back doesn't allow for a lot of plein air junkets anymore.

I started with a sketch of the spray on a gessoed panel and then fixed it with spray fixative. Krylon spray will do for this. I followed up with a tone of raw umber - my preferred tone for floral underpaintings. Then I lifted out the lights trying to pay attention to where the shadows fell. I didn't worry too much about the stems as I paint them in last and can find them by just looking at the setup.Next I laid in a background of raw umber mixed with some cadmium yellow light, naples yellow and a tad of titanium white.

As always, I started laying in the shadow shapes keeping everything soft and not too sharp. The shadows were at this point a simple mix of ivory black, cadmium yellow and white - maybe a touch of ultramarine blue. The blue is sometimes a nice touch but not always necessary as ivory black is actually quite blue in tone. As a matter of fact, many of the masters used it before lapis blue became widely available. It's a credit to them that they managed, through a solid understanding of color theory, to make it look so blue.

The reddish tones were added by the judicious use of a little Pouzzouli Red (more about this color later). The yellow tones by the addition of a mixture of yellow ochre and white.

Of course the lights came next. Cool offsets warm and vice versa. I also used some of the background color to tie in the flowers with their background so they looked airy and not pasted on. Relative to the lights, the shadows are slightly cool. Thus the use of naples yellow and titanium white to make a warm white mixture is the trick here in making the lights pop. But here's another interesting and conflicting point - just to confuse you. Had I mixed a very small amount of ultramarine blue in with the white instead, it would have worked well also. That's because the cadmium in the shadows would have played off against the cool blue. Still, I like the way naples yellow brightens whites and I save a cool white for when I really want to throw a zinger in.

At this point I wasn't laying the paint on too thick. I wanted to keep my edges soft and add the globs of paint that would give sharper edges to the blooms after I decided where they were necessary. Things look relatively flat at this point, but hold on to your paint brushes. Things will start to improve shortly.

Here I've started to paint in the smaller flowers and buds. You can see that I've also started to add some thicker paint. Notice that I do this on the petals that are coming forward in the flowers. In order to push the ones in the back ground back, you paint those petals flatter and thinner. Thick accents thin just as warm accents cool.

Here's a closeup of the flowers.

Now on to the leaves. I generally don't carry a green on my palette but for for magnolias it's helpful to use a little thalo green. Now this is a very cool green because of a blue tint. Thalo is also a chemical color - not a natural pigment color. As a result, it has a very strong tinting strength and should never be used straight from the tube or in large amounts. I toned the thalo green with alizarin crimson which darkened it without warming it too much. Alazarin has blue in it and is a cool red. The use of cadmium red would have made the mixture too brownish (green/blue and red/orange cancel each other out). This cool mixture helped immensely when I got to the back side of some of the leaves which were a warm orangey color. Again, the play of cool against warm makes these leaves stand out.

The highlights or lighter passages on the blue/green leaves were done with a lightened background mixture.

For the orangey/brownish or golden leaves, I used a mixture of yellow ochre and touches of either naples hellow for the lighter parts or burnt umber for the darker shadows. As always, I laid in the shadows first!

Here's a closeup of the leaves.

Lastly, before I put in the stems, I punched things up a bit. The central flower was lacking color, so I warmed up the blossom by laying in touches of warm reddish tones. The color I uses is Pozzuoli Red from Rublev. It's a natural pigment but very close to burnt sienna, except it's opaque rather than transparent as is burnt sienna. However, burnt sienna should work equally as well. A bit more yellow ochre in a few places and some pinkish tones from a mixture of cadmium red light and white, and the color was right.

But I still wasn't finished. At this point, I sharpened some of the edges, deepened some of the shadows and thickened some of the lights. Then I added the center of the bloom with stamen.

The finishing touches came with the stems. These were executed with mixtures of alizarin crimson and Pouzzouli Red for the darks and touches of the leaf mixtures for highlights and some additional darks.

Here's the final piece. Hope you like it....hope my friend likes it.

"Magnolia Spray", 11" x 14", Oil on Panel

How to paint Magnolias and Brass in Oils

My apologies for not having published here for the past two weeks. Sometimes the necessities of making a living can really keep me busy - or too tired to do anything. I actually started to prepare for a session a couple of times and found myself 1/2 way through a painting before I remembered to take a picture! Well...here I am and I have a good session for you.

Here's the set up. I recently swept into an antique shop and found this beautiful brass pitcher. I'm a sucker for brass and copper. They're both such fun to paint! The set up doesn't look very impressive here but the light in the studio was just perfect when I started to paint. Besides, the rest comes from artistic license and vision. My concept was for the light to pool a the round base of the pitcher and around the first flower. I wanted the rest of the fruit to gradually catch the light and then fade into shadow.

I've recently started working on linen for my larger pieces. I love the stuff. It's a medium grade oil primed linen that comes in a large roll. I ordered it from Art Supply Wharehouse.

I usually paint on boards which I prime myself with gesso or face with canvas. In order to prepare this board, I cut out the linen, primed the board to seal it and then using Golden's Medium Gell, I adhered it to the board and burnished it down with a brayer. A quick imprimatura of burnt umber and cad red and I was ready to paint. I laid in the drawing with raw umber, keeping everything simple. Then I mixed my background color - raw umber, cad yellow and a touch of cobalt blue. The lighter area is mixed with a bit more of naples yellow to lighten it. Next, I brushed in shadows on the table top.

Oops! I got carried away here and totally forgot to take a picture. This easily happens to me and I wised up after this and started setting my timer to remind me to stop and take a picture. The pitcher came together rather quickly. I mixed together some of the background color and some raw sienna. Another mixture a bit lighter with yellow ochre and a third mixture of yellow ochre and cad yellow. I have touches of cad yellow medium which is a sort of orangy yellow also. The highlights were built of cad yellow and white. At this point, the pitcher is in but not completed. I'll save the finishing tuches for later. Oh...black was used in sections around the edges to lose edges against the background and for depth. The black was tempered with umber.

A couple of more tweaks done here to the handle. Highlights with with more of the cad yellow mixture were laid in to the scrolling work.

I also lifted out some of the color where the flowers would be. That's one of the things I found strange about linen - how easily wet paint can lift from it.

I had to keep turning the easel around to take it out of the glare of the window, so I apologize for the strange angle of the canvas in these shots. Here I've laid in the shadow color of the lemons. I used some background color modified with cad yellow medium and cad orange to create the warm shadow color. The tough thing to remember about painting shadow color is that the thing to do is not necessarily try to match the color of the shadow, but the relationship of the color to the list side as well as the other colors around it. That's a trickey thing to do right. Once you understand this, however, you will understand that paint is not light or the object you are trying to represent. It has it's own qualities and laws. Understanding them is crucial to getting your objects to come to life.

Next I made a mixture from cobalt blue, cad orange and naples yellow for the shadow color of the blossoms. I also mixed in a bit of cad yellow for areas where light was shining through the petals. I laid this in carefully wherever there were petals that were showing in shadow.

A mixture of naples yellow and white made up my petals. I also made up a separate mixture a bit lighter for brighter highlights. I laid the petals in carefully - taking my time here to keep each petal separate. It's allright to let the bottom levels blurr into each other. This creates a soft admosphere. But on the upper petals, if you want the flower to be recognizeable, you need to keep each petal distinct from it's neighbor. Don't belabor the petals. Paint them with a large brush and pay attention to their character. Load your brush with generous paint. The underblooms should be painted thinly while the uper ones should have body.

Once the blossoms were in, I laid in the center of the flowers with touches of burnt umber and cad orange. The pollen laden stamen were just tiny bits of naples yellow.

Here's a closeup of one of the blooms with it's colors and all its nuances.

The lemons were next. Using cad yellow light and cad medium, I laid in the lemons. I watched out here for the warm reflected light in the shadows. It's lovely ahd can really help to set off the cool yellow.

I wasn't happy here with the strokes on the lemon. I soon found that if the paint wasn't laid in thickly, I'd be picking up paint already laid in. I intend to go over these tomorrow to correct stroke direction and refine the cast shadows a bit.

The last step was to put in the reflections on the table top and to lay in a few leaves and stems. Colors already on the palette were used here and nothing special in the way of mixtures was used. Tomorrow I may rework the lemons a bit but for now the piece is finished and on EBay.

Feel free to leave comments on this blog. I welcome questions and will try to answer them as best as I can.