Free art and design tutorials Archives

Painting Foregrounds: Creating a Foundation

April 5, 2021 By Sandy Breckenridge 2 Comments

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.” —William James

Mama bear and cub at the water’s edge. — Mama and Cub at the Bay

The Perfect Palette series has taught us how color choice, value, and intensity—combined with a thoughtful deliverance of the creator’s intent—are essential for building a scene. It’s a satisfying outcome when a viewer is captivated by an artist’s rendering.

The quote by William James articulates how an artist interprets a scene from their chosen reality, keeping the gems and asking the viewer to step into the image to discover its essence.

A well-executed image moves the audience’s eye through the image to discover various treats. Hopefully, they deeply engage and find it hard to break away, like they’re in a captivating spell!

If you’d like to explore purchasing a poster of the above print, please click > Mama Bear and Cub Poster

Building the Foreground

The first two layers when creating the foreground foundation — The first two layers of the foreground foundation before adding the detail.

Painting foreground rocks, trees and their root mounds, grasslands, twigs, gravel, flowers, weeds, all start with a foundation.

Steps for painting the foreground foundation before adding the final detail:

When laying out a foreground plan, move the brush inward with every stroke to represent a thoughtful execution. This is one way to define and record the experience you wish to give the viewer.
Always note the light source so you can begin to define the shadows and the highlights.
Change color and hue about every four brush strokes.
Use a balance of red, yellow, blue based hues using simple abstract shapes.
The percentage values are in the lower range in the foundation layer while still consisting of a combination of 2 bright and 1 dull color.
A perfect shadow tone combines Ultramarine Blue and Raw Sienna, and uses a little black and Alizarin Crimson for the holes in the soil, rocks, trees, etc.

Now it’s time to add the rest of the foreground detail:

Adding the foreground detail — After the first two layers now add the next layer of the foreground detail.

Three Steps When Painting Rocks

How to Paint Rocks — The three steps to painting rocks.

After painting the foreground base foundation, if the image contains elements like rocks, add another light wash to further build the rock’s next layer of detail.

Note the warm side of the rock and the cool side. The intensity is heavier in the middle value of the rock.

Warm area: the middle value of grey plus a little Yellow Ochre
Cool area: the middle value of grey plus a little Ultramarine Blue
Core: and a little black to your mix

Add another wash using a dry mix over your current rock’s foundation.

Now, begin to build additional detail using whatever technique supports creating greater dimension. Some favorites are dry brushing, a toothbrush, dry brush or tool to flick paint, course airbrushing, or even squirts of spray paint.

Painting a Seamless Transition

The painting is complete when all three fields, foreground, middle ground, and background seamlessly flow together.

The following images illustrate how foreground, middle ground, and background combine to complete the painting and go on to capture the viewer’s eye. Hopefully, they feel enticed to step into the painting to explore this new reality.

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The eye might first notice the focal point or it may be intrigued by the small rusty orange flowers in the foreground and move on to see bears. Or the eye may first see the bears, move to the sky, the sunrise, back to the foreground while noticing the detail in the grasslands, and then back to the bears.

- To where do your eyes naturally move?
- Did you notice where your attention first landed in the scene?
- Did you notice if your eyes moved to other elements in the painting?
- Did your eyes interpret the light source?
- Did you find the scene comforting?
- Was your imagination engaged?
- Did you feel your eyes wanted to return for a second view?

When an artist gets their audience to consciously and unconsciously respond to this list of questions in a positive way, it’s time to celebrate. You’re on your way to becoming a master artist. Congratulations!

Please feel free to share this series with other artists or anyone who may want to deepen their knowledge and understanding of color, theory, and atmospheric perspective.

Our next art series will describe all the Basic Graphic Design Elements. What a fun series to learn how design can be interpreted mathematically and be combined into recognizable marks and shapes!

Table of Contents for the Perfect Palette Series

Stepping Into the Foreground

March 15, 2021 By Sandy Breckenridge 2 Comments

Wheat stalks in the foreground — A picture with a grassy foreground of a farm and Mt. Baker’s snowy cap in the background. I took this picture in Mt. Vernon in Washington state.

“Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.” Vincent Van Gogh

The foreground of a painting acts as an invitation to allow the eye to move comfortably to the focal point.

In a way, it is a promise that the viewer will enjoy the journey. An inviting foreground is like an eye-catching welcome mat against a front door. It makes one eager to ring the bell, gain entry, and explore the internal spaces.

If the foreground is out of balance or lacks harmony with the other planes in the image it can be compared to a home lacking curb appeal. If there is too much clutter upfront the viewer can get lost in the distractions and lose interest before discovering your intended feature of the painting.

Two Brights and One Dull

Painting palette, mixing foreground colors — 2 Bright Colors + 1 Dull Color mixing examples for creating foreground colors.

When choosing the color hues for this first visual field two bright colors and one dull color are blended, adding a little white or black (if needed) to match your reference scrap. This process ensures the foreground has the necessary intensity.

The foreground color choices are richer in value and intensity than the middle ground or background. The percentage of detail increases, too. Additional warmth can act as an invitation. Another option is even larger brushstrokes to suggest to the viewer’s eye the foreground plane is closer.

Too much detail in the foreground can also distract the eye from establishing an enticing relationship with the focal point.

Increasing Color Values in the Foreground

We previously learned the color’s scale percentages in the background are best between 20 and 35. In the middle ground, the range is between 40 and 55. In the foreground, we step up the percentages between 45 to 70 percent.

Some compositions may defer from the suggested values. They could be as much as 100 or as little as 10 percent which depends on the reference scrap.

Layering the Foreground

The painting’s foreground usually includes natural elements like tree mounds and roots, rocks and boulders, textured soil, varied grass mounds, water, natural vegetation like weeds, grasses, and flowers. Sometimes a man-made element like a swing, bench, or bicycle is added for interest as long as it does not take away from the focal point.

In our next post in this series, you will learn how to lay down a base foreground foundation to give the impression of texture, color harmony, shadow, and atmospheric depth. After this step, additional layers of detail bring the foreground to life.

Be sure and check back soon for our next tutorial lesson.

Table of Contents for the Perfect Palette Series

Steps-by-Step Guide for Painting Snowcap Mountains

February 22, 2021 By Sandy Breckenridge 2 Comments

View when hiking from Paradise in Mt. Rainier National Park.

“Our task, regarding creativity, is to help children climb their own mountains, as high as possible. No one can do more.” – Loris Malaguzzi

Mountain illustrations can be challenging and overwhelming subjects for many artists. A photo contains so much detail it’s often hard to know where to start.

It’s a good idea to take time to explore the landscape after you choose the mountain you’d like to paint.

Ask the questions:

“What sold me on this image?
Was it the contrast of the elements, the light source, the shape?
Where does my eye naturally flow?”

Now create a preliminary pencil comp to determine the best layout. A quick drawing can help with proportion and how much of the painting you want to allocate to the foreground, middle ground, and background as you determine the main point of interest.

Mountain Painting Process

After you have a plan it’s time to set up your Double Primary Palette and gather your supplies. Use the image guide below as a reference to help you in mixing the hues.

Mixing colors for Snowcap mountains — Use 3 dull colors plus white, and maybe a little black to match your scrap for: light now, dark snow, light rock, and dark rock.

Then follow the following steps.

First, prepare your paint mixes to match the scrap for all areas of your mountain:

Dark Snow,
Light Snow,
Dark Rocks,
Light Mountain Rocks.

Note: The overlap in your paints will define the medium shaded area.

1. With a #2 pencil, draw your mountain outline. Pencil in the fall lines and any additional detail that helps to define the light and dark areas. Later you can erase the graphite using a kneaded eraser that will not harm your painting surface.

2. Apply frisket or mask off your mountain area and apply a wash of color in the blue, mixed blue, and cloudy or cloudy sky and let the paint fully dry.

3. Now wash in the light snow on the major shaded areas. While wet, add additional wash in some of the darker areas. Then let this layer dry.

4. Now apply a single color wash over your entire mountain, building up the color to a darker tone at the bottom and lighter at the top. While still wet you can take a tissue and lift off paint to reveal the nearly pure white areas where you determine the light is brightest. Let this layer dry.

5. Now go back in and add detail to reflect the darkest crevices, caverns, small rocks, shadows, etc. so the highlights also appear brighter.

6. Add detail at the base of the mountain to reflect the shadows at the base of the mountain and where the middle ground will meet the mountain.

The following slide show provides a simple guide of the detailed steps.

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Developing A Style

After painting several life-like reproductions you’ll soon identify and develop a personal style. Mountain illustrations can be whimsical and fairytale-like or highly graphic with high contrast.

They can feature unique brush strokes, lines, and tones. The reference scrap can inspire you to choose how much detail you’d like to include. They can be painted digitally or painted by hand using gauche, acrylic, oil, or watercolor paint and brushes or even colored pencils and markers.

Painting Tips

Remember mountains shaped like cylinders, or a combination of cylinders that have areas that protrude and recede—cliffs, crevices, ledges, rocks, etc. The lightest tones are where edges protrude and the light shines the brightest. The tones get darker as they recede into the shadows.

You can use a combination of washes and dry brushing. The washes cover the largest areas and some will overlap creating medium tones. The dry brushing techniques help define the darker areas of the greatest detail.

In our next Tutorial we will cover painting the middle ground and how it creates harmony. Hope to see you there!

Table of Contents for the Perfect Palette Series