It's time for episode eight of 10 Minutes to Better Painting.

I am your ethically questionable host, Marco Bucci.

Let's get into the lesson.

Champion boxer Chris Eubanks Sr. said, there is a simple explanation when one moves aside all the things that distract from the point.

This episode is about art improvement, which falls under the category of study.

You know, the intern and I, we have, okay, we've put together many different things for you to study.

Each episode gives you a single thing that can improve your paintings.

Today, we'll take the next step and look at a picture using not one lesson, not two lessons, but every lesson.

Ah, Venice, so much potential for painting.

Our episode wheel here will keep track of which lesson I'm pulling from and in turn, wheel us to episode two.

In episode two, we looked at ideas for clear visual communication.

I'm seeing an opportunity here for a C curve, a simple directional path that can curate this composition.

It leads us through all the major elements and arrives at a focal point, which I think can be these structures up here.

I'm choosing them as my focal point because there are three types of contrast at play there.

First, most of the picture is rectangular shapes, making these round shapes feel special.

Second, a contrast of busyness, lots of busyness here with less busyness up here.

And finally, it's an area of clear value contrast.

These structures silhouetting against the sky.

Your focal point is a kind of payoff element and a path can lead the viewer to it.

Here's Joseph Zabuckvich doing the same thing in this painting.

This time it's a single point from which paths emanate and take us through the composition.

Zabuckvich also pays off the image with a high contrast focal point.

What do you want?

What?

Zabuckvich?

How do you know that?

You're reading YouTube comments?

Oh dear God.

Anyway, Joseph Zabuckvich is using the same language here as I am here.

We're just rearranging the words for different meanings.

And I'll probably crop this to make sure my delivery is clear.

Of course, I can still borrow elements where I need them.

All right, intern, wheel to episode one, please.

In episode one, we talked about simplification.

Venice, like many things in real life, is beautiful, but also absolutely assaults you with information.

Everywhere you look, shapes that demand attention.

This poses a problem.

I want the most attention to be directed at my focal point, not this tangle of stuff.

So I'll do a quick pass with my special merging shapes brush.

And we're left with something that still delivers all those docks, boats, and reflections, but in a way that's less incidental and more digestible.

For instance, in this one area, the original had 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 shapes.

Such a minor area, I don't think needs nine shapes.

I think I can do it in one shape.

Also keep in mind, you can merge together entire objects too.

Instead of showing the complete silhouette of every post here, I'll go the opposite way and kind of melt them all together.

The shapes that break up that meltiness give you the necessary clues to solve this area.

It's fun to paint, and it's like a mini-mystery that engages the audience, and allows for a more active viewing experience.

Oh great, another YouTube comment.

Please enlighten us.

I sound what?

I have no idea what you're talking about.

Just spin us to episode 3, would ya?

Episode 3 was about varieties of edge, taking different shapes and values and softening them to various degrees.

Different edges make for different visual interactions.

We just looked at some of the benefits of the lost edge, so now let's look at its opposite, the hard edge.

Where lost edges create alluring mystery, hard edges make for clear readability, and you can use them together.

Anders Zorn is using lost edges here to merge the darks into nearly a single shape.

Meanwhile, the hands, beard, and highlights on the glass, as well as this part of the silhouette, draw attention with relatively harder edges.

And you don't even need a fancy brush to do this.

Check this out.

Let's bring in some hard-edged shapes.

Those edges are so sharp you can cut yourself.

But watch this.

If I just compress the value range, the whole thing looks, or perhaps feels, softer, despite the physical edges being unchanged.

And here's Walter Everett putting this into practice.

The figures feel sharper than their surroundings, not because of brushwork.

It's the value organization.

So I'll plan to use a combination of these techniques in my Venice painting.

I really enjoy working with soft and lost edges.

They just give you a... uh... what's a good way of saying it?

They give you... what?

Yeah, low resistance.

That's totally it.

Soft and lost edges, then, provide easier passage through areas of a picture.

Huh.

YouTube comments can be useful.

Any other good ones there?

Have a doi- okay.

Who is Yong Yeh?

Ugh, copycat artist.

Wheel to episode 4, please.

Episode 4 talked about how paintings are made of many shapes.

To have a painting that reads clearly, each little shape should be as readable as possible.

These shapes look like the result of accident, rather than intention.

They're prone to become muddled, and are less quickly readable.

A better home for those shapes might be- yeah.

So what I do is kind of think about where a shape is headed, and then design it the rest of the way there.

Your own design sense is important here.

Well-designed shapes will stay quickly readable, even when shrunk way down.

So with our Venice scene, not only do I want the overall shapes to be well-designed, but I will apply that scrutiny to each tiny shape as well.

Shapes are like little worker ants.

They can't do the work alone, but together, are able to achieve something complex.

Also, check for some variety in the negative spaces.

Variety is usually more interesting than repetition.

In fact, variety is at the heart of so many of these lessons.

It just seems to be one of those basic human- Okay, that does it.

Intern!

Bring Yong-Year to me, alive!

So let's put some color to this, using episode 5's color wheel to chart the progress.

I'm beginning by putting down colors from both the warm and cool sides of the color wheel, but keeping everything close to gray.

My overall plan of attack here is to branch outward into saturation.

Like right now, I'll add some more saturated blues and reds into this field of neutrals.

You don't need a lot of saturation just for things to look colorful.

Against a foundation of neutrals, even the most slight move toward saturation will feel colorful.

Because, episode 5, colors talk to each other and create context.

Of course, I hope you're also tracking all the stuff we talked about in part 1.

Color simply lays on top of those foundations.

Looking at the color wheel, you can see how I'm systematically hatching my plan to move this way.

Now, when I add a color, I try and see if I can carry it through multiple areas of the painting, not just relegate it to one spot.

That keeps the palette feeling connected, and avoids that coloring book or local color-y look.

And it helps that this scene is washed in a diffuse type of light, rather than a direct sunlight or something.

Color tends to weave together much more freely in a diffuse lighting condition.

And I do often use this kind of approach when I paint diffuse or ambient light.

When you paint direct light, like a sunset, oftentimes your colors come in two families, a warm family and a cool family.

And you can start your color conversation by blocking that out.

You know, maybe I'll do a future episode comparing direct and diffuse light.

Anyway, in episode 7, we talked about color notes.

Episode 7 really goes hand-in-hand with episode 5, by the way.

And one thing I like to do is, with the overall color trajectory in mind, that is, this direction I'm following, I can choose to exaggerate those trends, you know, break free of the main color conversation that's currently happening, and kind of go out on a limb, watch the color wheel here.

I can add, like, that red.

Also here, I can accent the cyans, like this.

Color notes can be a bit disconnected like that, but they still make sense because they're extensions of the logic that's already in place.

You could totally take the opposite route, start saturated, work in toward gray, though I do find that method slightly harder to control.

So a few notes of purple, another boat, and our Venice study is complete.

You know, if I had to sum up this whole series in a single word, that word would be design.

In order to design, you have to select.

And to select, you have to be, well, thinking.

A lot of what a good artist does really well, I think, is they effectively remove stuff that would otherwise distract from the point.

The elements that remain in the picture, then, carry a real purpose.

A purpose that allows them to add up to more than the sum of their parts.

And that's a fundamental characteristic of what I would consider good art.

Huh, Yong, yeah, face to face at last.

You've been impersonating me on your channel, Yong.

Art theft and plagiarism ring any bells?

My intern said he'd like to do unspeakable things to you, and then you'll be banished from the YouTube art communi- Game news videos?

But the YouTube comments- Oh boy.

So how about those Bioware microtransactions, huh?

What are you doing?

I don't even think he sounds like me.