Technique for oil painting bricks on canvass?

Answer 1

Painting a fully lit red brick wall with no major areas of cast shadow: Burnt Sienna, cad yellow, cad red, burnt umber, yellow ochre and white. 1/4 to 1" bristle and sable bright brushes First: assume the since a real wall's surface is handmade, ergo irregular, both as individual units (bricks) and as finaished surface (wall)its color will therefore be irregular and varied as a color "field" because each brick is slightly different and the light will strike the wall unevenly. This is good news! It saves you from the tedium of "getting it just right." Choose the direction from with light falls across the brick wall, lets say from up left at about 10 o'clock high, so to speak. Now paint the entire wall as a single midtone, brick color without trying to make the color uniformly mixed. Onto this "mass tone" loosely brush in more irregularities of lighter (tending to the yellows) and darker tones (tending to the umbers). DO NOT BEGIN BY TRYING TO PAINT INDIVIDUAL BRICKS. Try to paint what you would see if you squinted just enough to be unable to see the mortar. Make the wall slightly darker in its mass tones as it draws closer to the side where the light is closest (the upper left wall) and slightly lighter on the side away from the light (lower right.) Now use the sable brush, a 1/2 or 1" is fine. Make a puddle of ochre, white and umber lighter than your brick mass tones, but now so light it looks white on the canvas. With the widest surface of the brush flat on the palette draw the brush TOWARD you through the paint repeatedly, one side then the other creating a flat, sharp chisel shape. Touch the brush lightly which will make a this straight line the width of your brush (a 1" brush will leave a 1" line), a light pressure will leave a five mark. Lift the brush, move to the end of the first mark and lightly touch again. You will now have a 2" line. Repeat, frequently wiping and re-loading the brush in the described way. Make groups of parallel mortar lines. Its not important to make them all. Youre trying to get the viewer to have a 'Hey, look, its mortar! reaction, not- geese look at all those fat lines) Make a few tiny vertical "lines" of mortar color here and there, always alternating so that each vertical line splits one brick and bumps the middle of the brick below and above it. After the first application sets you can rework the entire process with more limited applications, perhaps adding an occasional fleck of lights and darks to individual bricks (lights on the upper left which hangs out from the mortar to reach the light and darks on the lower right which is shaded by the opposite effect.) Just remember, unevenness is the nature of the real thing so don't try to be precise. JGrant Painting a fully lit red brick wall with no major areas of cast shadow: Burnt Sienna, cad yellow, cad red, burnt umber, yellow ochre and white. 1/4 to 1" bristle and sable bright brushes First: assume the since a real wall's surface is handmade, ergo irregular, both as individual units (bricks) and as finaished surface (wall)its color will therefore be irregular and varied as a color "field" because each brick is slightly different and the light will strike the wall unevenly. This is good news! It saves you from the tedium of "getting it just right." Choose the direction from with light falls across the brick wall, lets say from up left at about 10 o'clock high, so to speak. Now paint the entire wall as a single midtone, brick color without trying to make the color uniformly mixed. Onto this "mass tone" loosely brush in more irregularities of lighter (tending to the yellows) and darker tones (tending to the umbers). DO NOT BEGIN BY TRYING TO PAINT INDIVIDUAL BRICKS. Try to paint what you would see if you squinted just enough to be unable to see the mortar. Make the wall slightly darker in its mass tones as it draws closer to the side where the light is closest (the upper left wall) and slightly lighter on the side away from the light (lower right.) Now use the sable brush, a 1/2 or 1" is fine. Make a puddle of ochre, white and umber lighter than your brick mass tones, but now so light it looks white on the canvas. With the widest surface of the brush flat on the palette draw the brush TOWARD you through the paint repeatedly, one side then the other creating a flat, sharp chisel shape. Touch the brush lightly which will make a this straight line the width of your brush (a 1" brush will leave a 1" line), a light pressure will leave a five mark. Lift the brush, move to the end of the first mark and lightly touch again. You will now have a 2" line. Repeat, frequently wiping and re-loading the brush in the described way. Make groups of parallel mortar lines. Its not important to make them all. Youre trying to get the viewer to have a 'Hey, look, its mortar! reaction, not- geese look at all those fat lines) Make a few tiny vertical "lines" of mortar color here and there, always alternating so that each vertical line splits one brick and bumps the middle of the brick below and above it. After the first application sets you can rework the entire process with more limited applications, perhaps adding an occasional fleck of lights and darks to individual bricks (lights on the upper left which hangs out from the mortar to reach the light and darks on the lower right which is shaded by the opposite effect.) Just remember, unevenness is the nature of the real thing so don't try to be precise. JGrant Painting a fully lit red brick wall with no major areas of cast shadow: Burnt Sienna, cad yellow, cad red, burnt umber, yellow ochre and white. 1/4 to 1" bristle and sable bright brushes First: assume the since a real wall's surface is handmade, ergo irregular, both as individual units (bricks) and as finaished surface (wall)its color will therefore be irregular and varied as a color "field" because each brick is slightly different and the light will strike the wall unevenly. This is good news! It saves you from the tedium of "getting it just right." Choose the direction from with light falls across the brick wall, lets say from up left at about 10 o'clock high, so to speak. Now paint the entire wall as a single midtone, brick color without trying to make the color uniformly mixed. Onto this "mass tone" loosely brush in more irregularities of lighter (tending to the yellows) and darker tones (tending to the umbers). DO NOT BEGIN BY TRYING TO PAINT INDIVIDUAL BRICKS. Try to paint what you would see if you squinted just enough to be unable to see the mortar. Make the wall slightly darker in its mass tones as it draws closer to the side where the light is closest (the upper left wall) and slightly lighter on the side away from the light (lower right.) Now use the sable brush, a 1/2 or 1" is fine. Make a puddle of ochre, white and umber lighter than your brick mass tones, but now so light it looks white on the canvas. With the widest surface of the brush flat on the palette draw the brush TOWARD you through the paint repeatedly, one side then the other creating a flat, sharp chisel shape. Touch the brush lightly which will make a this straight line the width of your brush (a 1" brush will leave a 1" line), a light pressure will leave a five mark. Lift the brush, move to the end of the first mark and lightly touch again. You will now have a 2" line. Repeat, frequently wiping and re-loading the brush in the described way. Make groups of parallel mortar lines. Its not important to make them all. Youre trying to get the viewer to have a 'Hey, look, its mortar! reaction, not- geese look at all those fat lines) Make a few tiny vertical "lines" of mortar color here and there, always alternating so that each vertical line splits one brick and bumps the middle of the brick below and above it. After the first application sets you can rework the entire process with more limited applications, perhaps adding an occasional fleck of lights and darks to individual bricks (lights on the upper left which hangs out from the mortar to reach the light and darks on the lower right which is shaded by the opposite effect.) Just remember, unevenness is the nature of the real thing so don't try to be precise. JGrant