If I paint what I see, will it be a sea?

Today it will be.

You wait and see!

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We're going to have a great time for 3 shows in a row.

We're going to work on a seascape.

Today we'll do stage 1, which is a monochrome, and then we'll progress from there, but let me show you stage one.

This is the painting in a monochrome, which generally means one color scaled from dark up to light.

There was a famous artist whose name was George Inness, and he once said, "Just give me some yellow ochre and black and white."

He was going to show somebody how to start a painting.

Well, this is almost the same, but we're using Blue, Ultramarine Blue, and Yellow Ochre and White.

Now we'll go from this, which is done in acrylic.

We'll come over to the canvas, which has been prepared for stage one.

This is 6 White, 1 Permanent Green Light, 1 Payne's Gray.

That has been put on in acrylic, and it is dry.

Then I outlined it with Ultramarine Blue acrylic so that you can see the drawing and it gives a little bit of a help on how to progress.

The way that I will start this, and I'll have you come down to the palette is, I'm going to mix up some White and Ultramarine Blue, and this will be more like a middle value.

Now I'll hold this up to make sure that it's all right.

Oo, you're a little bit light.

I have to be darker, so let's put more of this out.

It's very helpful if you can match things before you just put them on.

Okay I think that'll work.

That works!

I have a large brush.

Can I say something about the brushes?

I sent some brushes to PBS studio for the paining, and then at home-- I'd already sent them-- I was still doing some painting and I had a couple brushes that I normally wouldn't use.

It reminds me, I was in Canada one day coaching a basketball game.

Right in the middle of the game, tight game, from down on the end of the bench, "Mr. Paulson!

Mr.

Paulson!"

"What, Dennis, what?"

"What do we have for science tomorrow?"

You know what he was saying?

Notice me too!

So that's what the brush was saying-- "Mr. Paulson!

Mr. Paulson!

What are we going to paint tomorrow?"

Oh, okay, I'll use you too!

This is a large bristle brush!

We're taking this.

I'm going to wet it in the water and then come over and get the paint, and this will start like the cloud.

Oh, I'm glad I brought this brush along.

I don't know what we had in science tomorrow, but I'm sure glad we brought you off the bench.

[soft scraping] Now, I don't have any real special quality in that yet.

It's more placing the position.

Now we have another cloud down here, but I notice on my drawing it doesn't show it, but it goes up there.

So we have just a little space between those two, and this comes down.

This will be the cloud that will house the sun.

The sun will be right there.

Okay, I see over on the the side, look at those two little clouds.

Gee, you are so insignificant.

Let's give you a little quality too.

You'll ask, "What do we have for science today?"

Oh see, now that gets a little more character, doesn't it?

So does this one down here.

Where are you?

Right in there.

Okay.

It's nice when you can have a monochrome, and you use it throughout the picture and you either have to adjust it a little bit-- a little darker, a little lighter-- that's all right.

Now, we'll come over to the cliff, and I'll dip it down, get some more water, get some more paint.

[soft scraping] The stage 2 on this will also be done with acrylics, but it'll be done with color.

The nice thing about using acrylics is that it dries very quickly, and then you can paint quite quickly on top of it.

But nevertheless, I have seen acrylic artists paint just as much quality as you would ever want.

So they would just go with more care and so on.

We're putting this on to establish a quick foundation.

One thing I noticed on this drawing where I'm working right now-- this is the rock behind.

Let me point this out over here.

See, this goes up.

Now, I'll come back to the one I'm working on.

That goes down.

And I would prefer the up-swing.

So I'm adding a little more Blue in it to make sure I can see the difference between those two cliffs.

And I'll bring this down here.

So we'll just take that little nubbins down here.

You won't be quite as dark.

And let's see, where else?

Okay now I think, yeah, we'll come down on the rocks.

Here's a rock... and this is a rock.

I know as I look at the original, we're calling this the original at this time, is that there's some good darks in there.

Well, I'm going to put the darks in.

I'm just kind of adding this tone in all the places it will go, and then we'll come back and go darker dark.

[soft scraping] That looks pretty good there.

Now this is going to be quite dark.

This is going to be quite dark, quite dark, quite dark, and a little dark there.

All right, now I need to have this foam in here.

Maybe we should wait until we put that in.

So let's go ahead with the darkest dark.

I'm cleaning the brush; I don't know why, well, I was going to say I don't know why I had to clean it so much.

That's because now I want to come out with pure Ultramarine Blue.

This is such a good spot here.

I don't know who gave it the name, but they've called it the dump of the wave.

And notice the direction.

You want the feeling like it's moving, so that's very helpful.

And then I'll come down inside the big wave.

This is underneath and then if I go over further, I'll save a little area for the eye of the wave to be.

I'll go up just a little higher, and then under the wave on the right.

And that extends down just a little ways.

Boy, I love that brush.

I'm glad you asked about coming along on the trip!

The nice thing about it too, I can use it a little bit more in a dry brush technique, which I'm doing.

Then we have a distant wave just a little bit underneath there, and this, I just I want to make sure that I know where it is, and that's the distant horizon.

So we have this on; we have this on.

This can be just a little fuller.

And we'll come down to the next area, which is down in here.

I'm pointing over at what we're calling the original.

Right along in here, in here and down there.

I see a little green showing.

I probably will add gray there rather than save that.

So let's see, this is one wave right in here.

[soft scraping] And the next, this goes over all the way, all the way to there.

[soft scraping] All right now let's come down to the one below that.

Still taking Ultramarine Blue, just a wee bit of water, and that would be in here.

The thing is, when you start this-- now, I've already had it drawn in, and there will be a line drawn for it.

But how do you relate this to your doing a seascape?

Well, the things to kind of remember is, you have one center of interest, and you'll see this as we progress through the painting, but the sun is the dramatic sky, and then we come down and you'll have light along the path.

And then you want a feeling of rhythm.

This has a nice curve, goes back up in the cliffs.

You're going to have some contrast there.

So it has nice movement through it.

That's the thing you need to have with a seascape, is movement.

And the thing that I find most offensive, and we'll be talking about this probably more in the finish painting, is that when you have the splash-up foam, so often people think well, if I just put a bunch of white on there, it'll be powerful and that!

But it's hard.

It's surprising how little highlight you actually put on the lightest light, and it still looks good.

So there's several things you need to consider as you're doing oceans.

Let's see, this is this one, and then this is this one.

And if you paint the easel, then they know that you've been there.

Okay now, as we said earlier, on the rocks, that we have put on a middle tone.

Now I'll change brushes.

You can take a time out.

We're ahead in the game.

So we'll go down here and pick up a flat sable, wet it, and come in again with the Ultramarine Blue.

It's kind of helpful at this stage-- see, this is almost dry already.

That blue was there from breakfast.

Yeah, that's already dry.

So when you put this on, it's not to blend in.

It's just to sort of outline and then make sure you come down through the middle and get a little crevice in between.

And because of this big foam splashing against it, you can have a benefit of this very dark accent that'll be against that.

And you know, you can always make adjustments.

What you do in the first stage isn't necessarily a sign-off and a final thing.

Now I'll put a little bit down here too.

Okay now, let's see what else do we need to do on the darks?

Let's go ahead with the next step, which is taking the gray, which is the Blue and White and see what we can use on that.

Should we bring up our favorite brush?

Oh-oh!

Do you hear the rattle?

I said "favorite brush."

You don't say favorite brush!

One of my favorite brushes.

They're all of my favorite brushes.

So let's mix some White with the Blue.

And we'll put this up to check it against the model.

Oops, you're a little-- wasn't mixed as well as I thought it was.

I was just going to say isn't that great?

I did it just perfectly, then I had to have that blue chunk showing-- wasn't fair.

We may, as we come down in here, we may go just a little darker, we'll see.

You're going to find that your acrylics will dry just a little bit darker than when you first place them on.

I don't know if that's true in all cases, but I found it to be in a lot of it.

Okay, I have the fan brush, I've wet it, and I'm really mushing the brush into the paint.

Now when I come here-- when I tell somebody, I say you use about half of the brush, and that's enough full-- I have just the little privilege of kind of drawing if I lean on a corner of the brush.

[soft scraping] I'll come carefully against the rock.

And you'll find, when you look at the original, in this case stage 1 original, there's a lot of the little green showing through.

Which isn't necessarily on purpose, but it's no problem, because the value is so close together that when you come with the next color it takes care of everything.

Now I'll splash up just a little bit.

The thing that I like to do is consider, as I was talking about earlier, that this foam is very fluffy and fleecy, and we need to represent it that way.

Got you.

♪ I got you under my skin!

Let's go on this side.

[in high voice] Excuse me for the high C. Oh it is a high sea!

Oops, it's also a high rock!

On this side, notice-- let me just look at the original there for a minute.

See that little kind of greenish tone?

That's going to be a see-through.

So we might have to go a little darker here.

The priming of the canvas might have been a little darker here than we were here.

So this isn't quite dark enough.

I'm going to take my, not my ring finger, my other finger and just put a little bit of paint in there.

So I truly get a feeling that that's not foam.

Okay, coming down through the rocks, and I'm using very much the corner of the brush.

Let me point out one thing where I just put the paint.

See where I just put that?

That is not great, because it has too much of a just a rectangular shape.

So if I bring it in just slightly a little bit like that maybe hit from the top.

Those are small things, but if you do it in every stage, make it helpful.

If you were to have to let the painting go, never touch it again, that there's an accuracy in it.

Here as I fill in the foam, I'm conscious of the direction of the water.

It's coming over and down through there.

Oh, I love doing these shows, and I love hearing from you.

And the thing that I enjoy is when you write and say "Buck, I like your show."

And then you say, "I'm sending a photograph of what I did from that painting."

And wow, some of them are good, and others will write and say, "Buck, I'm not an artist, but I enjoy listening to you."

And I hope that's the case for some of you that aren't artists that there is a kind of a positive approach, and we can all benefit from each other's enthusiasm and energy and desires.

Okay this, I love the grace of this one.

See, that's very beautiful.

I used to describe it as being a snail with a headache.

Because you have kind of almost the same thing then all of a sudden it kind of enlarges, so that's the snail with a headache.

This one, I'm going to choose to go under it with some dark.

See, I don't want to bring the light down quite that far, so this, maybe just a little more grace that way.

And continuing with the foam; we have foam here.

[soft scraping] And we have foam on the side of this wave.

The very top for now, if I look at this, I almost feel this has happened before the highlight, just a little bit of light and a little bit of movement.

See, all those things help you, so when you come to the next stage, you decide what you can leave and what you can change.

Okay, over in here.

[soft scraping] And just a little bit, a distant one.

Can you see that if I step back?

I hear you saying yes.

All right, I want to have, let's go back to my-- oh you're a bigger brush.

Okay, I'm going to take some Gray, I'm mixing just a little blue with that so it's just a touch darker.

Oh shoot, I don't want that.

I want you.

You have to be just, yeah, there you are.

A little lighter.

I didn't mean to swear at you, brush.

My uncles, I guess they were my mom's uncles, they were so great.

They were on a farm, and they were such good people, and if they'd have problems, they'd say "Oh, tomato juice!"

or "Sugar!"

And I've always loved that, to use that.

I love the guys.

I met them, and I ended up saying sugar when I had problems, and I was playing in a touch football league for about 20 years, and I had everybody saying "sugar" when they'd make a mistake.

And then when I got older and couldn't pass as well, they went back to their normal use of words.

[chuckles] Okay let's do this.

I'm going to take a little bit of that Blue, and we'll come down into this area.

Gee it's great.

It's fun to watch it develop, isn't it?

You can say yes.

Shake the camera, and I know you're listening!

Back in here and back in there.

Let's go just a little darker on those two places.

I noticed that on the model, they're just a little darker.

Okay, now I think we will go with the lights.

This is Yellow Ochre and White, and I say that with-- oh, it's Yellow and White.

Yellow and white.

There you go, you climbed aboard.

You're going to be beautiful.

I'll hold this up too.

Now really what I have there... yes, that's Yellow Ochre and White.

Excuse me!

That's Cad Yellow and Blue.

♪ Blue, blue, blue, blue, blue!

♪ Yellow and white.

Cad Yellow and White, but I have just a touch of the blue in it.

So it softens it a little bit.

Okay, coming with the fan brush.

It doesn't matter where you start.

It's going to be the same thing all the way.

So this is up on the cliff.

When you see the finished painting, and you have to come back a couple more weeks, you're going to see the drama of that.

Now I'll put this on the sun area.

A little bit up in here, smaller amount there.

Now I've placed those-- I'll come back and just wiggle it a little bit.

And here, not just wiggling it, but let's give some directional rays.

You know, let me tell you about this.

When you paint an ocean, or it could even be a landscape, you have that powerful sun.

You have the strong lights here.

But you sometimes need to include the rays!

You're showing the beginning.

You're showing the end, but what happens in the middle?

All right, here comes for, on the light on the big wave.

And as we did with the gray, we just pull it down just slightly, just slightly.

Now, there's a powerful one right in here and a little bit in there.

That really needs to be strong, because it's under the sun.

We'll let some of this splash up too, and that further helps the rhythm as we've talked about.

The flow of the eye through the canvas.

The nice thing about painting with acrylics and then oil, you can always refine the little overglazing and that.

So if anything's a little rough now, I'm not quite as concerned about that.

Now, I have a great what you call trough, and that's going to be showing the foam patterns as they move up into the wave.

That truly helps the wave move, and that's what we're after.

We just got about a minute left.

We'll put this on, and then the dynamite spot is the eye of the wave.

Right in here.

I guess we'll have just a little more yellow in that.

Yeah, a little more yellow.

Oo, isn't that powerful?

And then what's very helpful here is if this were an oil, we could zigzag those together, but we'll zigzag, and what you're doing is thinning out the color over the dark if it doesn't blend.

But you want to have a nice gradation there so that you get a feeling of the gradation.

Okay, I think that's just about it.

I might put just a touch of yellow right close there so it's a little more powerful.

We don't have any horizon to put on, but there we are.

We have reached stage one!

Thank you for rolling up your pant legs and walking into the water with me.

See you next time!

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (woman) Funding for "Painting With Paulson" is made possible by...