How to Paint a Background on Canvas

Video Transcript

"So, let's focus on some of the colors that I have on my palette, to begin with. Notice that I have a nice flesh-colored pigment. I have some sap green and burnt umber. Also, I have some raw sienna; some medium yellow. There's yellow ochre and brilliant red. I also have some black; this is going to be a very important color starting off here. Of course, I have some white and some media. Let's start by applying paint to the background of our canvas. At the point that is the furtherest away from you, the viewer. I am going to start by doing something a little strange. I am going to start doing little areas of black. They are loosely framing our subjects here. This is because, this back layer is going to be largely, at first, seeming to appear as a rather dull gray. That is not how we are going to leave it. So then, I start adding in some white. The background's purpose is to be both interesting, but at the same time still very much in the background. So what I am doing is, I am doing in this largely gray layer, but I am going to start adding in color highlights. For example, see the red that I added here. I want to make sure that the color is thin, but that it also covers up the canvas. You can see here that I have also added in some yellow. Now, you'll also notice that my brushwork is chaotic, to say the best. I'm making small circular patterns, but I am going back over and through a couple of times. Now, if there's an area where it seems a little faint, you can also add in some black. There are going to be some darker regions, especially, as you get further away from the subject. Basically, you want to have these light highlights, kind of, following around our main subject and then more black around the edges, which is going to emphasize, the viewer, on our main subjects."