How to Prep Your Canvas
Prepping your canvas with a toned layer of primer is such a great shortcut to achieving better realism. Not only does the color help you read your values better, but it also adds a subtle warmth to your entire painting. Sanding this layer once it’s dried lets your brushes glide smoothly, which makes the painting process so much more enjoyable. I like to repeat this process at least twice before painting the edges black and adding in the drawing.
If you’re looking for more details on canvas prep, I’ve written two free eBooks on acrylic and oil painting that you can download. They cover everything you need to know, and I’ve linked them at the bottom of this post!
Limiting Your Palette
Another easy way to achieve realism in your work is to limit your palette. For this painting, I’m using titanium white, burnt umber, ultramarine blue, quinacridone violet, and cadmium yellow deep. Using only a few colors guarantees harmony within the painting, almost like creating a common color DNA that runs through the entire piece.
For the background, I’m combining titanium white, burnt umber, and ultramarine blue, with a little quinacridone violet to warm it up. If you’re looking at my reference photo, you’ll notice the background in my painting is more blue than the original. That’s deliberate! The coolness of the blues makes the yellow of the train pop, which is exactly the kind of contrast that helps a painting feel expressive while still maintaining realism.
Values: The Secret to Realism
Richard Schmid’s book Alla Prima II has been a game-changer for me, especially his focus on values. Value—how light or dark a color is—matters more than getting the “perfect” color when it comes to creating realism.
Take the trees in this painting as an example. Even though I’m playing with color by adding more blue to the background, I’m making sure the values are accurate. That’s what keeps the scene grounded in realism.
Here’s a landscape painting trick: objects further away have less contrast, fade in detail, and appear mistier, while objects closer to the viewer have more detail, contrast, and color. It’s such a simple concept, but it makes a huge difference in creating depth in your work.
The Art of Rendering
Rendering is all about refining the details in your painting. Richard Schmid argues that true mastery comes from identifying the most important brushstrokes and applying only those. That means you don’t need to paint every single branch on a tree or every detail on a train car. Instead, squint your eyes and focus on recreating the most important shapes, suggesting the rest with loose strokes.
When I was starting out, I used to feel like I was cheating if I didn’t include every single detail from my reference photo. But now I realize that being selective can actually make a painting feel more alive. It’s less about copying a photo and more about capturing the way the human eye sees the scene, which is often softer and more atmospheric.
Tips for Tricky Details
If your landscape includes text—like the lettering on the side of this train—try to forget that you’re reading words. Instead, paint the letters as lines and shapes. Keep the edges soft, and trust that the viewer’s brain will fill in the rest. It’s a little trick that takes the pressure off perfectionism.
Speaking of details, yellow is one of the hardest colors to work with, especially when you need to darken it. For this painting, I chose cadmium yellow deep because it’s darker to begin with, and I paired it with quinacridone violet. The violet helps neutralize any green tones that can creep in when you try to darken yellow with blue or burnt umber. Together, these colors create a rich amber brown that’s perfect for twilight scenes.
Creating Glow and Depth
One of my favorite parts of this painting is adding the snowy mist at the base of the train. It’s so simple! Take an old fluffy brush, dip it in snow-colored paint, and swirl it gently. Keep your brush as dry as possible to get those soft, feathered edges.
For glowing light sources, like the train’s headlights, a little trick I use is adding a halo of pale yellow around the light and softly blending it out. This creates the illusion of a glow, especially when paired with a touch of shadow for contrast.
The Finishing Touches
As you get closer to the focal point—in this case, the front of the train—this is where you can add more rendering and detail. Just don’t overdo it! Highlight the key areas with sharp contrasts of light and dark while keeping some painterly softness in your brushstrokes.
If you notice a “sticky spot” in your painting—an area that keeps tugging at your eyes in the wrong way—take a step back. Sometimes, lightening a shadow or softening a line can make all the difference between a good painting and a great one.
Final Thoughts
And there you have it! The final painting is a combination of thoughtful preparation, smart use of values, and selective rendering. If you have any questions or want to learn more, don’t forget to download my free eBooks. Keep making your life beautiful!
FREE 36 PAGE "INTRODUCTION TO ACRYLIC PAINTING" EBOOK (click here)
FREE 28 PAGE "INTRODUCTION TO OIL PAINTING" EBOOK (click here)
Thank you so much for the wonderful opportunities you have created for artists everywhere!
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