Haha Loublue, Hopefully your jaw is fully removed from the floor by now. You’re welcome, and thank you for your kind comments. I don’t know if you are an artist or not but the cool thing is that you too can do this and more. Do you know how to draw a circle? Yes, you can even trace a circle if you need to. Can you draw an ellipse? Yes. Can you separate light values from dark values? Yes. Can you identify a warm red vs a cool red? Yes. Can you learn how to blend all of these colors and values together? Yes, with a little practice I’m sure you can. Like some of the other commenters have mentioned, this is not a “perfect” example of light, shadow, color, and temperature but it does contain the basic ideas of color and form and some important truths. I created this video for my beginning painting class to help them understand how to control color and temperature as a practical example in a realistic lighting situation. Anyway, hopefully I can create some more of these videos soon. Have a lovely holiday. - Jeff

Dark Tone is simply the dark red(aka Alizarin Crimson). You probably want to use something that is lightfast like an Alizarin Permanent or madder lake deep. The dark red colors are cool (more towards purple) than the cadmiums (cad red light) which are really warm. Dark colors tend to be transparent. Most tubes of paint will say if they are transparent or opaque. The transparent quality of these dark colors like your alizarins, ultramarine blue and dark green like Rembrandt sap Green are great for painting shadows because of their transparency. Happy painting!

@@jeffmerrill2456 Thank you so much. New subscriber here.

Oil

Both! I like several different surfaces. This is just 1/4” plywood with several thin Coates of Liquitex Professional Gesso. It comes in a white bottle and is fluid. I apply at least three layers and sand (220) between each layer. The goal is to seal the board and get a really smooth surface. I also really like oil primed linen (fine, portrait).

Of course you can use whatever medium you want. You could do this with any dry or wet media. Having said that I would recommend using oil over acrylic. Acrylic is tricky because it dries a different value and doesn’t stay wet as long as oil. Good luck!

@@jeffmerrill2456 Thanks so much, Jeff. I'm having issues with oils, so I'm trying to do acrylic so I don't have to give up painting. I'm trying Golden Open Acrylic now. Much better than stamdard acrylic, but still not as good as oil. Thanks for your great videos.

Sorry to hear. I think acrylic will be good. Golden=Gold standard in acrylic paint. The whole point of this exercise is to help you learn how to “see by comparison.” I struggled for years doing Plein air painting because I couldn’t see values. It was really hard to know how light or dark something was, standing outdoors. Now it’s like second nature. When I look at something I can tell immediately what color, value, and temperature it is, not because it’s inherently obvious, but because I am comparing it to what it’s next to. When I started teaching 15 years ago, I quickly learned how important this skill is. So, I have all my painting students do this exercise. They hate it-they think it’s too elementary-and as a result its importance is lost on most of them. However, I’m certain with time they’ll come to appreciate it. I’ll try posting some new videos soon, what would you like to learn? -Jeff

Hey Pooja! Soo good to hear from you. I can. I’m busy with other painting projects, so I haven’t made any new ones recently. I have ideas for lots of them but just haven’t taken time to create them.

The thing that matters most about blending smooth transitions is using a softer bristle brush. The brush starts out dry but once you start blending it picks up wet paint and it wet from there on out.

Hi Ryan, yes I would normally show the reference image. However, this is a painting done from imagination based on principles of light and shadow, warm and cool colors, and edges. It’s something you can do to practice or test your knowledge on how well you understand form and these other principles.

Hi Ryan, yes I would normally show the reference image. However, this is a painting done from imagination based on principles of light and shadow, warm and cool colors, and edges. It’s something you can do to practice or test your knowledge on how well you understand form and these other principles.

The "thicker paint" is more in terms of quantity, loading up the brush with more dry paint. It came from the color mixtures I already had on my palette, just a little bit dryer and more impasto to load the brush. I start out most of my paintings with thin almost washy layers, a little bit like watercolor. I just need to establish the large value shapes, cover the canvas and get a sense of the basic color progression first. Then as that thin layer starts to dry I need to add thicker paint that can spread around on the canvas, like putting frosting on a cupcake.

@@jeffmerrill2456 Thank you Jeff! I enjoy watching you paint art.

No, but you could add a dark green and that could work. It would just look different. I wanted the shadow side to still feel red so i used a darker/cooler red (alizarin permanent).The light side of the sphere is a cadmium red light or something. It's higher in chroma and more opaque. I was taught to paint the shadows transparently, with transparent colors like transparent oxide red, or alizarin crimson, or most of the really dark looking colors straight out of the tube. Most paint manufacturers indicate on the tubes if the colors are transparent, opaque or semi-opaque. So, the shadow side is made from alizarin permanent with probably some ultramarine blue and perhaps a touch of transparent oxide red (all three are transparent in nature). The trans. oxide red, is a transparent version of burnt sienna and is very orange in nature. So, adding blue to the TOR will create a muted color since orange and blue are complements. I added the ultramarine to make the alizarin perm lean more towards purple. Mor