Bill continues his work on his Grand Canyon Painting.  He already painted the distant cliffs and plateaus.  He starts out saying he is going to mix a “closer color.”  What does that even mean?  Have you ever looked off in the distance as you drive down the road?  Next time you do, notice what you see.  You will find that colors are all very light and mostly in blue and violet tones.  Did you know that our eyes can’t see vivid colors at far away distances?  This has nothing to do with today’s video but while you are looking also notice how horizontal and vertical everything is.  When you paint a landscape and want to create the appearance of depth in your painting, keep these principles in mind.

Points To Consider:

• Bill is painting on a wet canvas.
• Keep in mind, blue and grey are far away.  Brown is in the foreground.  Tom Anderson teaches these concepts in our Master Class.
• Bill is mixing darker, richer colors for the cliffs that appear closer to the viewer.  We can see more color as things move closer.
• Bill mixes to a “marbled” effect, which means that he barely mixes the colors together.  This is because he wants several colors to show up instead of mixing until he has one color.  Remember when you were young stirring multiple flavors of ice cream together until it was soft and all one color?  This is the same concept.  He wants to avoid this result.
• The paint is thick and as he lays it on the canvas with the palette knife it breaks.  Bill says this is when he gets the thousand little details.
• Bill is always thinking of the direction of the light source.
• He adds color to create shapes.
• The sky reflects on flat surfaces.  He adds highlights on the tops of the plateaus to show this.
• Bill is painting from memory.  At some point, he had to have studied extensively the details of a desert scene to be able to paint it as well as he does here.  We know that in the early years when Bill first started painting he used reference material.  It is ok to do that.  Maybe someday you will be painting from memory in the way Bill does today.  It truly is a freeing way to paint.  Even in the later years if Bill wanted to paint a specific mountain, he would look at a reference photo.  If he wanted to paint just any mountain he would paint from his head.

We hope you enjoyed this video.  I don’t know about you but we never tire of watching Bill paint.  What is on your easel?  Please reply to this email and send us a photo of your work.  We love to see what others are painting.

Happy Painting!
Laurie and Dawn

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