Happy Veterans Day!
A big Thank You to all of our honorable veterans who have served or are still serving! My two oldest sons are currently serving in the United States Air Force, and it brings joy to my heart to see people come together on days like this to support and care for each other.
The Master Oil Painting community has members from all over the world, and I want to make it clear that I am thankful for anyone in any country who fights to support freedom. Much of the world is divided right now and it’s amazing to see how a love for art has brought our diverse group together regardless.
Thank you for all you do to help spread beauty!
Today I wanted to share some quick insights about the newest addition to our Master Oil Painting Monthly Membership, as well as the fast motion video I created with instruction.
[This video is excerpts from the full 6 hour video available HERE for Monthly Members]
Finding Gold in Estes Park was inspired by a day of hiking around with Kristie while we waited for the opening that night of an Oil Painters of America show I was in. There is so much to see in that beautiful Colorado town, we made sure we arrived with the early morning commuters.
We were exploring the outskirts of town when I saw this bend in the river. It had such a wonderful variety of trees and bushes, bright rocks with deep shadows, and a kaleidoscope of colors in the water. The dry climate of Colorado creates some fantastic value and color shifts between the sparse yellow grasses and the deep dark greens of the fir trees.
That dry climate and thin atmosphere also tend to desaturate and brighten all the colors a little more than I generally want in my paintings. This painting was a wonderful opportunity for me to increase the saturation of those colors by moving those brighter earth tones from about a 2-3 brightness on the value scale to a 3-6.
After painting plein air for more than 30 years I have found that I often like to punch up the colors a bit. The greatest saturation of, or most vibrant color is found in those middle values, especially in the 3-7 range. I definitely like to use the full range of the value scale, but once we hit the lightest lights there is so much white involved that the colors are much cooler and grayed down. In the darkest areas we can play a bit with warm and cool, but the distinct hue or color is much more difficult to identify.
So keeping most of my colors in the middle value range, with some bright highlights and darks to give the painting spark and shimmer, gives the painting a much stronger vitality and richness.
If you feel like one of your paintings is feeling a bit boring, try sprucing up the middle value areas and adding some sparks of light and dark to give it gusto!
Happy Painting!
Bill
P.S. If you are a veteran be sure to use discount code VETERAN at checkout to receive your 40% discount on the 6 Week Course and Monthly Membership anytime at https://www.masteroilpainting.com/
You have a beautiful family thank you for sharing!
What a great photo of your boys. I was in the Air Force myself and I cherish that time in the Service. I got to go to Germany for four years. I was able to explore Europe and was amazed at the sights. I hope your boys get the same opportunity. Thank you so much for sharing it brought back so many great memories. I am having a blast painting, even my daughter can see the difference your teachings are making in my painting, I can’t wait for the weather to change so I can get out doors. Thank You Bill for making a difference in my life.