Whangarei Heads 14×28 Oil Painting - Three Painting Sessions

Jun 28

This is a first for me—I did an underpainting yesterday, and I had a bad feeling about that episode. I had a very similar subject, one of our heads, but we were painting it from the other side. The relationship between the elements just wasn’t working—no good at all. So fortunately I found this reference. We’ll have to take some liberties with the water, but it was the best I could manage. I quite like it—it’s a bit more dynamic in the water, and it has that beautiful light I was after.

The Dud That Became a Chapter

Just a little recap of what happened: I spent two hours working on that failed underpainting with burnt umber—that’s all I used. The whole time I knew it wasn’t going to work, and it’s so valuable when you get that feeling. I’m not going to say never do it—it’s valuable to do the bad paintings too. That’s how you know. The good news is I would have spent another four hours trying to make it work, but my compositional instincts are getting increasingly more refined. Funny enough, I had been working on a chapter called “The Duds” for my latest book the night before, and this dud hit me yesterday and basically completed that chapter.

Brush Care and Studio Setup

I use this expensive brush cleaner after my sessions—I clean my brushes in soybean oil and then give them a good coating of this to let them sit. That way if I don’t get back in the studio that day, there’s emollients in there. It’s great stuff, expensive though, so I don’t use it for the whole process. I finish up with my bar of soap—animal-based tallow soap is the best. If you can’t get that, use coconut soap. That’s pretty good, but nothing beats the tallow soap. You can get it online, especially if you live in the US where you can get anything you want.

Session One: Drawing and Composition

Quarter after ten, getting started on the drawing

I have such a better feeling about this composition now. I don’t worry too much about being exact—things always get a little weird, and I take license with these kinds of things. This is going to be so much easier to paint than the other one would have been, and the composition is already beautiful. It’s not super involved—it’s one shape—but this kind of composition is all about how each element is working together. The plan is: tomorrow morning come in and do the sky, then Saturday do the land and water. Make it all happen. I’m pretty happy with this reference. It doesn’t need to be complicated—there’s going to be plenty of complexity and interest in the painting itself.

Session Two: Sky Work and Color Mixing

Monday - Sky Day

A lot of times it’s good to have your photo editing program—Photoshop or Affinity Photo—open on your setup while painting. You’ll often get one color story at home and a different one at work, and you want to make those adjustments. What I did was increase the contrast and go a little deeper with the reference image. I’m getting really slick now with Substack—it has everything: the whole live session, transcript, blog post based on the transcript, summary, reference image, the actual painted image, and the color palette. I probably should have done all that years ago.

The Prussian Blue Advantage

I really love Prussian Blue—I’m really leaning into it on these sorts of scenes. I enjoy how it connects historically to the painters of the 18th and 19th century. They were overjoyed to have Prussian Blue. This is a great thing about Prussian Blue—it’s not adulterated. With phthalo, I would have had to start stepping on it, but I want the Prussian nice and pure.

Palette Breakdown

Let me talk you through what’s on the palette:

Titanium White and Titanium Buff
Cadmium Yellow (the real cadmium) and Yellow Ochre
Mars Yellow and Raw Umber
Mike’s Green (not a factor today, but it will be)
Cadmium Orange and Cadmium Red Hue from Winton
Actual Cadmium Red and Burnt Sienna
Rose Madder Deep from Rembrandt
Burnt Umber and Perylene Black/Green
Permanent Green and Dioxazine Purple
Prussian Blue and Ivory Black
Mike’s Gray (Titanium White adulterated with Zinc)

Sky Color Strategy

We’re not doing anything that original in this series as far as sky colors go, but we always have a good time painting even the most regular sorts of skies. Especially since I’ve had my epiphany about gray in the sky—it’s cool and warm because there are many rainbows in there. It could be any color. It averages out to gray, but it’s actually far more complex. I mixed our coolish gray and our warm gray, adding some support colors. When things went a little green, I used my mixing red—the cadmium red hue—which is a great problem solver for that.

Session Three: Land Work and Final Details

Another day - Land mission

Today’s mission is to get the land done. To me, that is the whole painting. In the original reference, we have a much smaller head surrounded by big sky and bigger water, but I really love the way that light was hitting it.

New Mars Black

There’s a new kid in town Windsor Newton —Mars Black. Not as ugly straight out of the tube as some brands. It’s a brownish black, which is what I prefer over blue-leaning blacks.

Green Mixing Strategy

I see a lot of greens in this landscape, and they’re quite earthy—not cool. The Mike’s Green is almost right where it wants to be already. Mike’s Green is wonderful, but I almost never use it on its own. It’s entirely based on the interaction between yellow and black, which gives you a lovely base green, but it almost always has to be modified. I mixed just two greens—a dark one with some burnt umber and a tiny bit of blue, and a lighter version with orange and raw umber. I’m not going to mix a zillion different greens.

The Challenge and Solution

The challenge throughout this painting was avoiding the greasy blending while still getting the atmospheric effects I wanted. The key was breaking up areas that felt too smooth and adding rim light where things felt lonely in the composition.

Platform Integration and Resources

One thing I should mention—Eve is my assistant. She takes my transcriptions from these live sessions and turns them into summary posts. One of the brilliant parts about these live painting sessions is you’re here in the studio with me as studio mates. You get to hear me talk about everything, but with the transcripts, there are nuggets throughout—nuggets and nuggets of useful information.

Book Update: The book writing is going well. I’m reviewing volume three and contemplating trimming the series to three volumes instead of four to tighten it up and give absolute gold without boring anyone.

Substack and Members Area: Everything is integrated now—full live sessions, transcripts, blog posts, reference images, painted results, and labeled color palettes. It’s all there to support your painting journey.

Final Thoughts

I’m real happy with how this turned out. The composition works, the light is convincing, and it challenged me in good ways. Sometimes you have to throw away what isn’t working and start fresh—that’s just part of the process. The thing about painting is we all struggle. I struggle just like everyone else. But having a solid process and being willing to recognize when something isn’t working—that’s how you grow as a painter.

Cheers,

Mike

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Transcript -Whangarei Heads 14x28 Oil Painting - June 15, 2025

Three Painting Sessions

Hello, well this is a first, I did an underpainting yesterday. I had a bad feeling about that episode. I had a very similar subject. This is one of our heads but this is, we were painting it from the other side. I don’t know where I can show you. If it comes up I’ll show you.

That’s not it, but curious about this. I had this in my… this is a Whangarei heads from a little closer down. This Whangarei heads, yeah, I might paint that one day. I got ideas. Anyway, I’m not saying it, it’s not refreshing properly. That’s okay, it might do.

Anyway, we probably had… but I could show you here. You had this big thing going all the way here and then you had this whole peninsula and it went all the way here and there and it’s like the relationship between that and that was just no good. So fortunately I found this. We’ll have to take some liberties with this water. It was the best I could manage. I quite like it. It’s a bit more dynamic in the water than that, but that is nice. I’ll give you one without mine. So I have a look at that for a minute while I clean my brush.

So just a little recap. I use this stuff after my session. I clean my brushes in soybean oil and then I give them a good coating of that to let them sit. So that way if I don’t maybe get back in the studio that day. There’s emollients in there and good stuff in there. This is great stuff. It’s expensive though, so I don’t use that for the whole process. Basically, soap in there. There’s some water.

All right, we’re gonna start working out now. I got this as clean with the oil as I could. You can see this paint in there and this would have been burnt umber. That’s all I used yesterday. So I spent two hours working on it. This underpainting I’m trying to find the… You gonna do it? No. No, it doesn’t. There’s too much in there. It doesn’t want to sort it.

I explained to you what was going on in two hours and then I wrote about it in my latest book. Funny enough I had a chapter called “The Duds” I was working on. I had started the night before. I had some things from a few years ago and a few new thoughts. And then this dud hit me yesterday and that basically completed a chapter, a little story, two hours.

But the good news is I would have not just spent two hours. I would have spent another four hours trying to make it work. But the whole time I knew it wasn’t going to work and it’s so valuable. If you’re getting that… I’m not going to say never do it. It’s valuable to do the bad paintings too. Don’t think it isn’t. It is. That’s how you know. I mean I hadn’t really run into that before but my compositional instincts are getting increasingly more refined.

I want a very similar brush but I don’t want this one to get dirty. I only had two of these sixes but I got more coming now thanks to you. Thank you. I freaking love these. This is going to do a lot of heavy lifting. We’re going to hit this with some linseed oil as well. I use the soybean oil wipe off. I’ve been wiping it off for… Yesterday I wiped and wiped and wiped. Today I came back in and wiped a bunch more. I got all this hazy burn number off.

Anyway so I’m going to throw that. Just get a little water in there and you know you actually have quite enough. Just probably enough to clean the brush. But I finish up with my bar of soap. That’s animal based soap. That’s the best. If you can’t get that use the coconut. That’s really pretty good. Pretty good but nothing beats the tallow soap. Just you know all you got to do is go on the internet type tallow soap and especially heck if you live in the US where you can get anything you want. You got no excuse. I can even get it out here. I can get most of the things I want in New Zealand but not everything I want. God knows.

This isn’t working. Forget it. I tried. I tried to show you that. It’s gone. New scenes are done. Might be a new scene. That might pop up quicker. You can pop up quicker now. Well I’m trying to get it to sort by date. Oh that was new scenes. Duh. Duh. Let’s see. Yeah okay. Yeah here that’s more like a 2000. Here it is right here. Dang. Yeah I’ll show you. Oh I’m sorry. Sorry about that. Threw everything I had at this.

Okay. You can see it’s got bad composition written all over it. I don’t care. It ain’t gonna work. I tried everything. I tried making this a little smaller. Everything, everything, everything. Forget this thing. It sucks. About the only thing that’s good. That is gonna have beauty, drama, richness and color. Good shadows. It’s nice. It’s gonna be a really good painting. I’m really excited.

So the cleaner brushes now. Let me talk to you now. Yeah I don’t even use the soap. There’s enough of the… So I use a bar of soap to just you know make it all go further. This is that’s pricey but worth it. It lasts for a while. Definitely it’s cheaper than buying a bunch of brushes. Yeah. Okay now we’ll take your time up at the grid and everything. We’ll get back and I’ll do that and we’ll be better way and we’ll be into it.

Session Break

Hello. Well I just figured out how to remove a bunch of glare from the top of the painting. It was coming in from the top of the lens. So that’s looking pretty killer really. You got this big circle there. It’s only actually cutting a slice. Okay so it’s quarter after ten. This and that and the other thing. Freaking light. But we got enough time to basically start roughing this in. A lot more actually. Not so rough. I’m just gonna start drawing. This is our horizon.

I have such a better feeling about this now. That’s great. It’s super helpful. I don’t worry too much about being exact. Things always get a little weird out there. We’re done. Now we can take care of itself. Yeah I always have some license with these kind of things.

I got that song up in the roof of my head today big time. Hopefully you won’t end up having to watch an ad. Of course if you’re seeing this on substack that’s a new thing. I’ve got three subscribers there now.

Yeah it’s not my favorite doing this kind of thing but it’s a skill and you might even think “oh I could just project it” and honestly I probably could it’d probably be fine but I had such a bad experience. I think it’s better the authenticity that comes through from the actual drawing is better.

It’s working out. This is going pretty well. Let’s see if we’ve done the exact same thing. This is gonna be so much easier to paint than the other one would have been and the composition is already beautiful. Yes it’s not like super involved it’s one shape but so this kind of composition is all about how this is working, how that’s working, how that’s working, how this is working.

I’m going to coil on the water here. And make it work. We can get out a big brush. So far though I haven’t had that many problems. This is getting a little weird here. Nice stuff to work out, but compared to the last one, the hole in the rock, I got it pretty good I’d say. This will take less time.

I don’t think we have much to do this afternoon. And so the plan is tomorrow morning, Thursday come in, do the sky. Saturday. Plant and water. Boom. Make it all happen. Although to be honest I’m not really trying to describe that today. I will probably flip a coin. That’s what I do sometimes. I got lots of things going right now. I got this book going. I got these. I was supposed to be much further ahead today. I didn’t make you listen to that water kettle for nothing. I’m going to have me a cup of tea.

I don’t need to do much more in that sky. There’s going to be a lot of interest that comes into the sky obviously from when I paint it. Yeah. I’m pretty happy with this reference. It doesn’t need to be complicated. That’s the thing. There’s going to be plenty of complexity and interest here. The sky is going to support it. It’s going to be more complicated but less so than the last two. Mostly because I have less jiggy reference. I just wasn’t able to get the action that I wanted. It does have movement in it. It has great beautiful light in it. I think it’s going to be just fine.

Now you see why we have this brush. One thing I didn’t like is how this point I had kept working with. I’ll put the point here. These are very much like structures. They’re just temporary water structures.

There’s a lot more. Light here. I may take another pass with this reference tonight. No, I’ll just fake it. I’m getting okay at that. I did a lot of fake green on the last two.

This is quite far away. We’ll have some little white waves there. Everything that the Photoshop thing was doing the scale was wrong.

Alright, we’ll be back.

Session Two

Hello. Yes, it’s cold. You’re probably quite warm. Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t even know. Yeah, well, I can show you what I was doing here. Can you see? You can’t really see. It’s okay. I’m in Photoshop. Now, it’s just getting ready. We’re going to do some colors. Oh, no. I don’t want that. We’re going to do our color mixing. We’re going for the sky today. Which is Monday. So, you know, sky today. Land tomorrow. Probably the sea the next day. Unless the land goes really quick. Good, dude. Cool.

Alright, yeah, so we, a lot of times, that’s why I think it’s good to have your, you know, your, whatever program you’re using, Photoshop or Affinity Photo. Whatever you’re using to adjust your photos. I think it’s good to have it on, on your setup for your painting. Because a lot of times you’ll, like, I get one sort of color story at home. This is actually since the new monitor at home, it’s been way better, I have to say. But, a different color story often times at work here. And, you want to just make that adjustment.

So, what I did was I increased the contrast. I went a little deeper. Can you see all that? Oh, it’s cutting off, is it? We don’t need it that big. You’ll have access. Actually, I’m getting really slick now. Substack has the, has everything. The, not the 4K. It doesn’t have 4K. But, that’s the whole live session. You have up to a 20 GB limit there. Upload. The one I uploaded yesterday to YouTube at 4K was 44 GB. But, the one I uploaded to Substack…

Oh, anyway, getting to what I was saying. You’ve got, a transcript. It’s sort of a blog post based on the transcript. It’s a summary. You’ve got the reference image. You’ve got the actual painted image. You’ve got the color palette. Hey, hey! I’m finally getting my act together. I probably should have done all that years ago, and then I’d have a zillion members, and they’d all be very happy. But, voila! Here we go!

Oh! Oh, you’re dry! Oh, man! Look at all that waste! I’m gonna get some of that out of there. They don’t want chunks. I better sort that out.

Yeah, I really love Prussian Blue. I’m really leaning into it on these sorts of scenes. I really enjoy it. I enjoy how it connects historically to the painters of the 18th and 19th century. They were overjoyed to have Prussian Blue. I wish I had some more. I think I have some more. Well, I could switch to Phthalo. I’m almost saying that, and then I go back to Prussian Blue, because I love it. I love it. I like it. I love it. I should get me some more, actually.

Well, I haven’t been selling very many paintings though, so I’m just wearing down my account. Especially with all this printing stuff I’m into. I just blew 500 bucks on ink and paper yesterday. Enough to maybe make, I don’t know, 10 prints. 10 good size prints, though. Not this big. But good size. Not complaining. Because, yeah, I was looking that up. It would cost me at least 30 bucks more to print New Zealand. Yeah, that’s 500 New Zealand by the way, so.

Well, I need a lot more Prussian Blue than this. This ain’t gonna do it. I got Prussian Blue for days going on. Well, we’ll see how it goes. Well, that’s everything. I was gonna top up my Titanium White. Gettin’ low. Look. I use that, by the way, if you don’t have one of these. It’s called the Tube Ringer. Patent pending. It’s a mechanical company. Eugene, Oregon. USA. You put your tube in there, and you give it a turn, and you get it like nice, like that. You get all your paint out. Get yourself one. I was put onto that by a very talented lady that used to be here, to Cory. She was old. She never told me how old she died. As it happens, and, put me onto the Tube Ringer.

Yeah, I’m pretty cash, ‘cause I’m gonna mix my colors and maybe get started this morning, come back. Some of the things I don’t love. I don’t, I do love the diagonals there, but, this I’m not gonna paint that. Can you see all of it? Freakin’ hell. Zoom out. I hope the focus stays. There we go. Hope the focus stays. I think it does. It’s kind of focused on this whole middle area anyway. I think you’ll be alright. If not, you still can see what’s up with the colors.

Now, so what’s great is, you know, I can tell you, I can just tell you what’s on the palette real quick, 'cause I don’t mind. But, I’m putting up a shot of the palette now with little, little words coming in and telling you what each color is. It’s on every post going forward. And then, you know, we’ll try and do it for the past. We’ll go back. I think it’s tougher because I was looking at, yeah, I did all those courses last year, which, they didn’t really go anywhere. That’s probably my fault. There’s a spot in the setup, but, you know, whatever. I learned a lot.

And one of the things that came out of those courses was my mixing red, which is great. Okay, so this is one thing I love about, Prussian Blue. Oh, anyway, yeah, the palette’s changed since then, and that was a year ago, so I’m always thinking it doesn’t change much. And the fundamentals don’t. I mean, if that likes green, it likes gray forever, but Caroline, Black/Greens come in and replace the phthalo for a while. Back then, I had both. And Caroline didn’t need the phthalo when using it. That’s pretty nice.

Now, this is a great thing about Prussian Blue. It’s not adulterated. Now, with phthalo, I would have had to start stepping on it. And I think I’m fine with it. I want it nice and pure. Yeah, so this is spread all over the show. Like that.

The book writing is going good. I’ve been, reviewing, volume three on my phone, volume four. I am actually contemplating trimming it to a three volume series instead of four volumes just to tighten it up. Because I know how bored people get. I don’t want to bore anyone. I want to give them absolute gold. But how I do that and what I do with that, it’s like I got limited resources.

Although, amazingly, we have access to, like, this AI now, which can really help. It’s really helped me with structuring things. It doesn’t write, it doesn’t write like me. I don’t want that. So, it’s taken a while to get, to leave my stuff alone and let me, let me come through. I was definitely finding it more in the early volumes. I think a lot of it is since, I started using, I was using Claude 3.7. I think that the four is smarter and those to leave me alone can respect, respects what I do more for what it is.

Yeah, because I don’t want it writing. I don’t want it editing. I like how it structures things. There we go. That’s nice. I don’t want that nice. Blue is done!

Yeah, we’re not doing anything that original in these series as far as sky colors go, but we, we always have a good time painting even the most regular sorts of sky. Especially since I’ve had my epiphany about the gray in the sky. Why is it cool and warm? Well, it’s because there’s many rainbows in there. It could be any color. It averages out to gray, but it’s actually far more complex. And gray is incredibly complex to be honest.

Okay. I think we’ll just put a big chunk of regular old gray in there. There we go. That’s our coolish gray. I can go cooler, but I don’t need to worry about it. I just need to worry about spreading things out. And then here’s our warm gray. I’m gonna put some of this in just to give us some support.

And this is a place in the town that’s going green, hasn’t it? Very green. That’s okay. I got a solution for that. That’s why I say I got that. I got that mixing red. I got my cad red hue. Which is the great problem solver for that. Check it out. See? That’s green. Yeah, that’s quite brown. I feel like I was putting in all that raw umber a second ago. Raw umber, you’re weak. I don’t mind that actually. I think that’s pretty gravy. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, it still tilts a little green, but not bad. Yeah.

You guys have seen me do this plenty. Hey, whatcha doing? What are you doing? Yeah, let’s do our light blue. That one’s too hot to me. Alright. Certainly muddier though, isn’t it? Okay. I may have too much chrome in there. Any color. Get some of that side. I recommend that. If you think you got too much, you don’t want to make giant piles when you’re pre-mixing.

And instead of buff, I’m going to go with the stronger. It is stronger. I don’t know why. Normally I probably would have done buff there. That’s really pretty good. It’s got that greenish feel. It’s bright. Ooh, that’s looking good. And you know what? We’ll finish that up. I’ll throw that back in now. So you can throw that back in, and things come together pretty, that’s a little muddy. Still, pretty good. Oh, nice, nice. A little more of this, yellow over, I think. I don’t want to go too light. I can add white, obviously, as I’m painting. That’s, that’s pretty good. I like that. I think I could even bring a little more blue in there. I’m not going to do that. I’m going to work off my blade. That’s also a little prettier. That’s nice.

That sets us up, combined with that. And that is just, as we know, just white and, titanium. I mean, just titanium and prussian. Oh, you make very much of that, Mike. That’s okay. Yeah, because I didn’t, though, I think I might make a light gray, too. Just something with a little atmosphere to it. Let’s go with this. This pinkish. Yeah, that’s pretty good. I can leave that.

Yeah, so red, green, it’s moving in between those two, as is everything here. And then we’re going to do a cream. Okay. This guy was still a little… There’s a lot of oil coming up. It don’t matter. The paint goes down. It is what it is. This part is pretty dry. That’s dry. This is… See? Mostly dry. That was two or three days ago. Let’s not put you in there. This is my special spot for newer pigments. And I even put this in. I’m not using it right now. I might use it on this. I don’t know. I don’t need it.

Okay, last thing, cream. Cream. You can see why it’s wonderful this buff is. That is not inspiring. I’ve never used it on my paintings straight up. However, it’s incredibly useful. Probably saved. Actually, yellow ochre is not an expensive pigment, but definitely use less yellow ochre now than I brought in the buff. Even a tiny amount. If I just want to turn that into cream real quick, bring in a little nice color with that. And then a little bit of complexity with this. We don’t even need a lot. Look. That brings in some interest. Right? Nice. That’s pretty good.

What do you got there? You got some dry paint? A chunk of dry paint? Bastard. Actually, that’s okay because I think I’m going to bring in some of the regular titanium to just clean it up a little. That’s nice. There you go. That’s another chunk.

Yeah, I’m going to put Poor Night’s Island up on the channel. The thing is, I recorded the palette for that. I think I’m probably just going to throw all that out. Maybe you don’t agree. It’s just a giant pain. I don’t have I don’t have the resources with hard drives to keep track of all that either, really. The thing is, too, if you’re in the members’ area, I’m telling you what I’m doing with color. Especially now, if you have the printout or the photo of the palette. You’re golden.

Speaking of, let’s talk you through what’s here. Titanium White, Titanium Buff, Cad Yellow. The real Cad Yellow. That’s a Yellow Ochre. Mars Yellow, Raw Umber. Mike’s Green. Not going to be a factor today, but it will be. Definitely will be. Cadmium Orange. That’s Cad Red Hue from Winton. Actual Cad Red. Burnt Sienna. Rose Madder. Deep from Rembrandt. Burnt Umber. Perylene Black/Green. That’s Permanent Green. That’s Dioxazine Purple. That’s Prussian Blue. Ivory Black. Mike’s Gray.

Did you see me make that? No, maybe you didn’t. That is the Titanium White that’s been adulterated with Zinc. The big tube from Georgian, actually. So, you must hear Titanium White being adulterated with Zinc. Okay, I’ll clean that up down here.

Alright, so that’s it. Colors mixed. Let’s jump in. Let’s start doing some work. What have we got? Oh, we’ve got at least an hour. At least an hour. Okay, well that took a minute. I got this cardboard contraption above. Which I know you don’t care about. I was telling Eve. Eve is my assistant. So, what she does is she takes my transcription from both my 50-minute underline and turns that into some sort of summary post.

One thing I went on about my innovation with this cardboard here which is I’m so stoked because, you know, instead of having it all blanched and weird now it looks great. And that’s important to me. To you, I wouldn’t think very important. But one of the things about these live painting sessions is you’re here in the studio with me. We are studio mates. So, you get to hear me blather on. About things you may not care about. The brilliant part is though with the transcripts, there’s nuggets. I just passed nuggets along. There’s nuggets and nuggets and nuggets and nuggets and nuggets and nuggets.

Okay, let’s clean up this palette. We are going to start painting. Brush. Think the 6. Think the trickle 6. And… Think we’ll need that. Think we’ll need that. We got this. Good. Let’s open this. What’s this say? Whoa! What’s this trickle? Hey! Did this come all the way from the United States of America? Doesn’t have their address here. But, yes it did. Oh, come on. I just had a knife here. Did I put it in here? Yes. Yeah, great question.

Rich asked on the last line, “What’s up with the trickle? Why should… I have so many brushes already. Tell me why I need a trickle.” Well… You don’t. I do. Alright, so there we go. We are golden. I had 2. Now I have 8. Wow. It’s factory sealed. That was the perfect quantity. I don’t need these right now. I want to break one up and use it. Put that there in my drawer, in my brush drawer. In that brush drawer, there’s a little plastic drawer. $700, $900 worth of brushes in that one drawer.

Okay, actually I’m going to use these facilities. I’ll be right back.

Yo. Yeah, I’m so ecstatic about my cardboard. You’ll hear me keep talking about it. Yeah, I know you don’t care. It’s really making your experience better. Okay, glasses off. Reference quite small on that monitor. Smaller than when you saw it. Coffee’s made. Oh, get some oil. I finally did have oil dry in this. It was the tiniest little bit at the bottom though. I’ve lost maybe I don’t know, 2 or 3 grams as opposed to losing the 20 I might normally have lost. Let’s get rid of this. I call that modern life. Put that in the archive there which is a round archive.

Okay. We’ve got everything we need. You’re all on board. Just double check everything’s copacetic. Yeah, this is where we’re recording when we’re ready to start. We need to bring in some paper towels this afternoon. Yeah, I don’t want to go too thin. That happens sometimes. Let’s get a little oil in that brush.

Okay, so that as you know is pure Prussian. Now it’s going to be adulterated and bent. A little darker. See how the black kills it and it brings in the slime on the green. But I’m actually liking that. That’s good. So far it’s not enough paint. We need to really up the… That’s a little prettier than that. Loose. We’re stair-stepping there. We’re going to have a gray stuff come in there. That’s pretty nice.

So, I’m going to start lighting in it. And I want to bring in some more purity as well.

[Content continues with the detailed painting process, color mixing, and technique discussions throughout the remaining sessions…]

The challenge is just to avoid the greasy thing. We don’t want that blending, but I don’t want to turn this into a greasy mess. Obviously, over here things can be looser. They’re pretty loose everywhere.

It’s bothering me. I’m breaking it up. Okay, I hope I don’t regret this. It’s always challenging. Put a little rim light on things. This feels a bit lonely here. Let’s see how it looks on the camera. Nice.

Okay, all colors scraped up. Which means I am doing a little more finishing, but we’re out of here in ten. Folks want to get walked. We’re not in the interest of perfection. Well, we’re not that capable of it. That’s really the…

I’m going to look brilliant tomorrow. I did solve this issue pretty well, I think. I know it was a problem in the reference. So much so I contemplated… I tried a bunch of different skies anyway, I was able to pull that off.

Okay, we are done. The battery crapped out, but that was pretty much it. I’m real happy with it. I think that looks nice. Perhaps I might open that up a little more, but I’m pretty happy with it. I think it’s working fine. So, we’ll see tomorrow.

Final Session

Hello. Okay, another day. We’re going to make some colors real quick though. I see that… It doesn’t look bad in the camera, I will say. I just don’t really like lines like that. It’s gone a little dull. Yeah, I get a little problematic, but that’s okay.

It feels like that paint is still kind of wet, which is great. Yes, it is. I’m pretty happy with that. That does fix it. I’m not going to get my brain all wired up into that. But, that’s a nice little fix, I think. Whoops. I need to do that. It’s just starting to cure. We’re not going to worry too much about that. We’re going to go ahead and get our land colors mixed right now.

Today’s mission, get the land done. Of course, to me, that is the whole painting. Now, in the original reference, we have a much smaller head surrounded by a big sky and a bigger water. But, I really love the way that light was hitting it. Let’s just rinse this out. You ain’t going to get no more sky. I ain’t going to do no more sky today. I just saw that bit.

I’m sure Shishkin and those guys don’t have any problems with me. I’ve got to struggle, you know. I struggle just like everyone else. Alright. We’re going to use this knife. There’s a lot of colors there. Can you see all that? Oh yeah, you can see it.

I don’t want to get too crazy with it because it’s kind of almost a photo thing. When you go too blue in the shadows, that always reminds of photos, you know. More than reality. Where’s our Mars Black? Here’s a new kid in town. His name is Mars Black. Just don’t let that crowd in on my little Mars Black area. Mars Black, here you go. It can be a problem sometimes when I’m picking up the palette. Be careful.

Nice. Not as ugly straight out of the tube as the Gamblin, I would say. Although, I’m not comparing it. That’s a lot. It did have a mild, it was mildly dry. See those? That’s not blue at all. Brownish black. That’s what I prefer.

Hopefully with my new photography set up here, I’m not going to be having that. I only prepped the last photo on the channel and that had a few anomalies from the cardboard over the top. I was giving it haze in the drawing portion, but the color portion was so ecstatic because it really was quite accurate. I don’t think I even had to make any adjustments, which is what I’ve been struggling with for a while now.

Well, I see a lot of greens. They’re quite earthy too. They’re not cool. The Mike’s Green is almost right in there already, right where it wants to be. I’m taking a little addition of some. I don’t always mix the burnt umber with the Mike’s Green. Also, that’s lacking in some complexity. The Mike’s Green is wonderful, but on its own. I almost never use it on its own. I like that. That’s my dark green.

Let’s get a, well this is counterintuitive, but I was just talking about a tiny bit of blue in there. I do like that. I don’t really, I rarely do that either. Take a little blue in there. That’s nice. I was thinking of black, but why didn’t I do black? Well, it’s made out of black. Mike’s Green is entirely based on the interaction between yellow and black, which gives you a lovely base green, but it almost always is going to have to be modified. I don’t like that.

I’m not going to mix a zillion different greens here. Just two. Maybe I’ll just mix a lighter one. There we go. Orange. I see the orange. I don’t want too much though. Yeah, I didn’t even know I was going to reach for that raw umber, but I did. That’s a little bit, but it’s really not. That’s perfect. We’re going to go lighter in spots, but that’ll be something nice mixed for when we get ready to get into those areas. That’ll be this afternoon. I started with some darks this morning.

I’ve got a couple of browns. I’m going to mix all that. I think I’m going to go after this color. You’ll see it’ll have a base. That’s quite a lot. You see why I have Mars Yellow? It makes so many grades, and it has built-in opacity. It works great. It’s a great problem solver. I like that. I think I’m going to go a little redder. I should save some time and just do the actual cad red. That’s gotten redder than I maybe wanted. I don’t usually like that.

You know what I think we can do? My Mars. Let me down on that Mars. Be good on the earth tones. I’ve got nothing bad to say about your burnt umber. I’ve got nothing bad to say. Middle of the week videos. I don’t think they’re happening anymore because with the substack thing and all the extra content in the members area. Maybe. We’ll see. I’ve got to. I’m wrangling with it. I built my whole deal on minimum amounts of my effort in that regard.

Which you know is obviously reflected in the membership count. I don’t have hundreds of members and it’s probably because they’re not getting much of what they want. But it’s there. What you want is actually there. That’s why I’m trying to do a better idea of showing you. That’s the deal.

I see that last video I made live and nothing special about it. It went to 40 views. Of course. That’s maybe adding up to six dollars. I don’t know. No probably not. Oh maybe. I don’t know. It’s a two and a half hour video. I don’t even care. I just want to paint. Like everyone else I’ve got to monetize what I do somewhat. I’ve got to pay my money with it if I can.

But yeah. Training up my assistants. You know

Mike McCarthy