What color for blue jeans??

[PthaloBlueGirl]

I am painting a portrait for my bro of him his wife and their first baby. I am getting tired of working on it now and though I am almost done the darn blue jeans are making me nuts!! I used Ultramarine for the dark denim my bro is wearing and that is all right but just putting white in it for the light denim is not working. The blue is too light, baby blue like not ‘denimy’.

I am also having trouble with the folds and shadows in the baby’s denim jumper thing. The acrylic dries too fast! Help!

[quinacridonemagenta]

could you post a picture of it? that might generate more helpful responses for you.

when i paint blue jeans, i use a gazillion colors because there is so much play in the folds. if you are looking for something not so “active”, try indigo, or try adding a compliment to the blue to dull it up from the baby blue ….something like just a touch of raw umber in the mix…..or try going into the yellow family so that the folds will jump up more from the ultramarine….something like a hansa yellow light, but with white in it brushed gently on top of the fold and then wiped (use a slow drying medium for this type blending….like goldens acrylic glazing compound with a little water).

is this helpful???? the only thing i know to tell you without seeing the painting is what i would do. i also tend to do my garments in a style akin to Sargeant. i like it when the paint does the work. if you look at the image of the harpist….the outfit she is wearing is blue, but it also has greens and lavender. i’m pretty sure i used ultramarine as the base. also in the image of Cricket and Gidget….she has blue jean shorts on, but i painted them very lightly with just a suggestion. i once did a commission for a man that was in jeans and done much more realistically….i’ll see if i can dig a picture of that up because those jeans would actually probably be more what you are looking for.

(the picture references are on my homepage….click on my name/profile and drop down to the line for homepage and it will take you directly there)

Jeanette
Blog and art photo page: http://artintheopenair.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/81002416@N00/\

[HRH Goldie]

Have you tried cerulean blue with a touch of windsor blue to bring down the tone and for shading?
Christine

https://www.wetcanvas.com/RefLib/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=39369
Christine - HRH Goldie :c
www.christinetimson.com
[FONT=Century Gothic]"So much to paint and so little time..."

[PthaloBlueGirl]

Here are some pictures. Hope they load! I’ll type all my comments first and then the pictures will be at the end.

I’ve cropped the baby’s picture from the picture containing all three people because the bluejeans are what is being discussed. It is kind of blurry even on a high setting with the scanner.

The picture of the baby in the painting is blurry too because I had to size it down. You can see the overalls.

There is a close up of the face and the overalls. See how graggy the paint is?? I am having such trouble with the hands and arms too as well as the darn blue jeans. It isn’t smooth and realistic, soft, whatever the right term is. It is all craggy and hard edged. I paint in thin watered down layers because I don’t like brush marks and this is the technique I developed when I taught myself. The paint from the tube is a bit stiff and I guess I must be trying to get the paint to work more like pencil.

[DebSpinks]

This is a beautiful rendition! I believe this is the first time I’ve seen a sample of your work. You need to post more, girl!

The ultramarine, even with lightening, is not bringing you closer to the shade you want, mostly because UMB shifts to the red side of the spectrum. The photo looks like it is more of a yellow-blue.

To get a more closely matching light blue, try starting with cerulean or cobalt blue as your base and work darker and lighter from there. Then you won’t be using so much white, which can actually dull colors. In this case, instead of starting from scratch, see if glazing a couple of layers of ceruleun thinned with lots of regular medium or glazing medium will do the trick.

One important thing, if you are looking for a more photorealistic smoothness overall, is to use acrylic medium and some water to thin your paints, not just water. Do your medium mixing on the palette with a knife rather than your brush. The paint will disperse more evenly and be easier to blend on the canvas.

Debra

Debra
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.
Debra Spinks Art on Facebook & Instagram

[PthaloBlueGirl]

This is a beautiful rendition! I believe this is the first time I’ve seen a sample of your work. You need to post more, girl!

Thank you! I don’t post my artwork regularly because I want to try to stay annonomos as possible since I tend to make people angry. I don’t try to do it but I do have firm opinions on things and people don’t like that.

The ultramarine, even with lightening, is not bringing you closer to the shade you want, mostly because UMB shifts to the red side of the spectrum. The photo looks like it is more of a yellow-blue.

Yeah, I thought there was a greenish cast to it but wasn’t sure. I don’t have any other colors of blue except the Ultramarine and phthalo so I might play with a glaze of phthalo green. Hopefully sometime soon I can get the blues you suggest. I really like the faces of my bro and his wife. They are very soft and well blended although there is always something that you don’t like about your work. :rolleyes: Their faces were painted first when I was really excited about the painting and have many layers. I guess it is just a matter of more layers and the right color on the rest.

see if glazing a couple of layers of ceruleun thinned with lots of regular medium or glazing medium will do the trick.

All right. That will be another thing I get at the art store with the new blues. I’ll have to refer to the other thread about mediums to remember all what people have said. Glazing medium is slow drying too like slow drying medium right? Or was that blending medium? :confused: The only blending medium that I am familiar with is Grumbacher’s Blending Clear which isn’t clear and dries just as fast if not faster than just the paint with water. I am uncertain which medium I will need and I can’t afford both. Very limited funds and I haven’t sold a painting for a while…

[DebSpinks]

A thin glaze of pthalo green may just do the trick.

If you have limited funds, then I suggest you get the following:

-Largish bottle of acrylic gloss medium
-Small jar of gel retarder (I like the gel because it’s easier to control the measurement – you should add no more than 10% volume or your paint will be gummy and the lower layers will lift)

Here is how you can use them so it is similar to using the slow drying blending medium:

Put about an inch of paint on your palette. Add a dab of retarder gel and mix thoroughly. Add a few drops of gloss medium and mix thoroughly. Pull some of the paint to the side and add about half again in volume of the gloss medium. Do the same with the other color you intend to put alongside. Apply each color to canvas and blend edges. The blended layer will take a bit longer to dry overall than you are used to, so be patient and wait until thoroughly dry before adding a new layer.

Here is how you can use them so it is similar to the fast drying glazing medium:

Start again with about an inch of paint. Since you want glaze layers to dry relatively quickly, don’t add retarder this time, but only a few drops of gloss medium. Pour a largish pool of gloss medium on the side – about 10 times larger than your paint stack. Add just a dab of your paint and mix thoroughly. Do a thin layer over the color you want to tweak. Let dry, evaluate if it shifted the color and/or value to your satisfaction, add more layers as necessary. You can also add a bit more color to the pool. You can do some blending with this method, but you need to be a bit quicker. Let dry completely between layers or the under layers will lift. The layers should dry pretty quickly.

When you can afford more, or if you can afford the smallest bottles, try experimenting with:

-Liquitex slow dry blending medium OR Golden slow drying glazing medium

-Liquitex fast dry glazing medium

Hope this helps.

Debra

Debra
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.
Debra Spinks Art on Facebook & Instagram

[HRH Goldie]

Great work PBG! You’ve captured the expression on the baby’s face so well.
I actually like the blue you have created in your painting I think it sits well against the baby’s complexion. That being said if you want the same colour as photo then as I said earlier and Debra has said Cerulean blue seems your best option. I use Cryla for two reasons. One there doesn’t seem to be much of a colour shift once dry and secondly it works out more economically because it being heavy bodied – when watered down it seems to go an awful lot further without detriment to colour.
I just bought some yesterday and it cost me £6.75 I know this is a lot for 75ml but it has worked out cheaper for me than buying student quality as the pigment in it is so much better. I’m pretty broke too so know exactly where you are coming from.

Debra – great tips and advice and I shall be trying out your recipe myself Thanks.
Christine

https://www.wetcanvas.com/RefLib/showgallery.php?cat=500&ppuser=39369
Christine - HRH Goldie :c
www.christinetimson.com
[FONT=Century Gothic]"So much to paint and so little time..."

[Deborah Robinson]

Nice painting . . . I agree, I would like to see you post more, PthaloBlueGirl. What a good idea dspinks: starting with a lighter blue instead of adding more white. I never thought of that. I don’t like to add much white. Thanks for the tip.

Blumoon
https://www.deborah-robinson.com/fine-art/
https://www.facebook.com/DeborahRobinsonArtist/
"Art is an outsider, a gypsy over the face of the earth." ~ Robert Henri

[champagneharley]

In watercolour I used Cerulean Blue, then toned it with Prussian Blue.
I won an award, so must have worked, tho it was a painting of cowboy’s behinds! *huge grin*
Don’t know if that mix would work for acrylics, but definitely would start with cerulean.
Regards,
Jillian

My Website Jillian Crider: Artist, Illustrator

[IAmLeavingEbay4Ever]

The color of the blue jeans in the photo looks a lot like cyan, and I get cyan when I mix pthalo green with white. You might try mixing pthalo green with a lot of white and a little bit of phalo blue, then maybe a little bit of a complementary color if you need to darken or dull it.

[Larry Seiler]

I don’t care personally, if it is blue jeans, someone’s nose, a plein air landscape of trees and water…a painting is nothing more than one spot of color put down next to another until the work is finished. Back up…taken in as a whole the painting appears to the viewer to be what you intend.

I use a split primary palette for the most part with acrylics…which is based on warm and cool colors. A warm and cool primary…ultramarine blue and phthalo blue, scarlet (alizarin) or cadmium red medium…cadmium yellow med, and yellow pale…etc;

When you learn to see in terms of color temperature you learn to see present more color than other artists might tend to see because for one you know to look for it. Cool color tends to go back in space….warm color comes forward. Darks are darker nearer to you…getting lighter as they go away.

Looking at the subject…I’ll squint my eyes to get the initial impression, then I look for evidence of the surrounding atmosphere and adjacent masses/objects that might have an influence upon an area.

When I look at the baby’s jeans here….I see neutrals to be made using opposites or complementaries, shadows that would benefit with cooler mixes, areas of highlights where the addition of warmth would create dimension.

The problem with a photo is that darks are muddied and made to lose color as the film chemistry and “F” stops push to favor light. So the cools in the shadows are often missed. Warm color that would greatly add to dimension and the spark of life are often washed out from the camera’s flash. The end result is even captured EXACTLY like the photo…the painting will appear flat compared to what could be done.

It can help to take a photo and try to tweak it a bit in a photo editing program to add warmths and more dimension as I have here…

Here’s one I did a long time ago…an acrylic when my son was four years of age. I used black on my palette back then, which I do not use now…but you can see how reflected light is put in, the use of warm and cool color to add dimension…and though there is no jeans here…you get an idea from some of the blues in the hat. Good luck…

Larry

Larry Seiler- Signature Member IPAP; Signature Member American Impressionist Society AIS
Main website! https://larryseiler-artist.com/

[PthaloBlueGirl]

Hi. All right I got the bluejeans on the baby to look all right I guess. But now i am still concerned over the skin on the woman’s hand around the baby. She is part philipino and has a year round tan. I put a bit of raw umber in my usual mix of red iron oxide, naples yellow and white that I use for flesh and here and there just used my regular flesh. I don’t know why it was easy to paint her face and it looks all right. I am happy with it at this point in my painting level but the hands are making me crazy. She has a lot of brown in them and I tried to glaze on some watery raw umber here and there and all that does is make her look dirty. The hand now, as in the picture posted of the baby’s jeans earlier, is just a impressionistic style shape or suggestion and I don’t like that. I can’t seem to get any sharpness to it.

Jewelry and white shirts and white sweaters are also a real pain in the you know what. I tried to paint what I saw and match the colors and sometimes it works sometimes it does not.

Anyone know an article or something showing how to paint white??

[PthaloBlueGirl]

Here are two pictures. They show the hand that gets too brown and the other that is cut in the picture. I am having trouble painting that one too. Also the baby’s shoe is not all in the photograph and I am not able to paint it.

The scan of the painting is too bright and blurry because of having to resize it for wetcanvas. The scan of the photograph is slightly darker.

[DebSpinks]

I haven’t painted portraiture or figures, so please take this advice with a grain of salt. I’m giving it just from the perspective of what I know of color theory in general.

Much of the darkness in the hand is the result of shadows. My experience is that to achieve the shadows, a good technique is to glaze with the complement of the local color. In this case, due to the slightly orange cast of her skin, I would experiment with a darkish blue glaze.

Also, I would add a bit of skin color to the nail area – you’ve kept them quite white, but if you look closely at the photo, they are semitransparent and show a lightened version of your skin color.

The one painting I have done that has a lot of white with colors is the hibiscus here: https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1983888&postcount=6. After I laid in the stronger, veiny shadows with a purple/grey made of pthalo blue and alizarin crimson with a touch of lemon yellow, I used lots of Liquitex quick-drying glazing medium and just a touch of color to lay very thin layers of lemon yellow and pthalo blue. The overlapping yellow and blue created the greens.

Regarding jewelry, I was surprised in one of my first paintings to find that adding touches of red and green to yellow ochre or raw sienna made a pretty nice gold color. I used white and the yellow to make the highlights. In my painting it was lettering so it was pretty flat, but for something like a ring I would use maybe raw umber for the deeper contrast caused by the curve of the metal. If you want a look, see the gold lettering here: https://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showpost.php?p=426452&postcount=1

Hope this helps.

Debra

Debra
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can't live long enough to make them all yourself.
Debra Spinks Art on Facebook & Instagram

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