Nice blending demonstration, showing milky colors

PaulB

Florent Farges has a nice demonstration of blending.  He paints two spheres side by side, one with blending, one with just application of the right color/value in the right place, with a loaded brush.  He cites Speed and Sargent as examples to follow.  It confirms and vividly demonstrates what Mark is telling us.

Forgiveness

Thank you, this affirms my last painting, #2 precisely, and yes vividly demonstrates what Mark has been teaching us. I needed that!

Forgiveness

Also see Mark's video named "Wet On Dry Oil Painting Demo", found in a thread here named "What I've Been Working On" ArtistMartin1 June 8 c/o Movealonghome June 12 posting.

tassieguy

Great demonstration. There is so much more vitality in the second sphere. And if you look at Sargent's work closely you can see that he rarely blends but puts a dab of the right value/colour and shape in the right place then leaves it alone. The difficulty (and the skill) is in mixing the right value/colour and  getting a correctly shaped blob of that mixture in the right place. And, just as difficult, is then leaving it alone. I fiddle and fuss too much but will keep trying to develop this skill.

DawnTup

Great video, thanks for posting Paul.

jennie_art

I watched that before finding Mark as well. It does make more sense now that I've learned Mark's method. I feel like I am following these rules when I paint but my paintings are still just turning into big messes by the end. As I add paint steps onto the canvas, the painting just gets muddier and muddier. Maybe I'm not using a small enough brush or maybe I'm using too much paint? Not sure but I'm getting frustrated!

PaulB

@jennie_art I know what you mean there, I've done that a lot.  Here's a way to think about it:

If you place the right color in the right place, and never blend, then muddy color is not even possible.

If you do need to blend, then Mark recommends putting the darker of the two colors on the brush, and make one or two (no more) strokes along the boundary between the two colors.  No more.

It is touching the canvas as little as possible that keeps the colors pure.

tassieguy

I think that's right, @PaulB. That's why it's so important when working wet in wet to get good at mixing values/colours so that you can put a stroke down in one decisive action and just leave it. Having to go over  strokes to fix value/colour just muddies things up.

edavison

This is one of my favorite painting instructional videos...even though it's so brief. I also discovered it before finding out about Mark Carder and it made a huge difference in my work...it's not often a single video or piece of advice can be a real turning point but it was in my case with this video