I don't think there is anything more lovely than a tree.

Especially when it's spring, and it's an apple tree.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ We're going to have a great journey, a great journey that will take us through 3 weeks.

This will be part one, which will be all acrylics.

The next one will be oils and the final one will be refinement with oils.

Let me just point out a few things about our project for today.

On the left, you will see a canvas that has been completed in the acrylic stage.

It will be a very limited palette and I'll explain to that when we go down to the palette.

But this is the composition.

It has a nice balance, you see the designs and the quality here.

You follow the shadow and the little blossoms down there on up to here, and then you have the nice circular motion with the plate and the little bird inside.

Let me point out the priming on the canvas that we're going to begin with today.

This has been made with, then I'll go down to the palette just to show you, it is 2 parts Naphthol Red, 2 parts white and a little touch of Ultramarine Blue, so it's just the blue cuts the pink slightly.

Now let me go back to the canvas, I have put on the drawing, then I've outlined it with blue acrylics so it will be able to be seen when I put little washes on it.

I want you now just to follow over to the demonstration, the acrylic one for a moment, and you can see how much of the priming shows through.

So even though we do the acrylics, we're not destroying the priming of the canvas and this will all have a play as we put on our final colors in oils.

So we'll go down and I have a large fan brush and I'm going to have a small brush too, maybe a couple others too.

This I'll use the fan brush for the large areas, and then as we come near objects, we'll make sure we have a little more refinement and come closely with the smaller brush.

So here is pure Ultramarine Blue and I have a lot of water on it-- in it.

I'm just going to dip down and pick up some more water just to make that a little less dark.

The way I like to work when I'm doing a large area is to make sure I have a paper towel nearby in case I want to smooth out anything.

And look what's going to happen as we come down here.

We have no fear of going right across the vase.

We'll be coming back to that.

I was talking about coming close to something, being careful, well, when does that happen?

It'll happen more later I guess.

So while I'm down on the vase I'll kinda put it across there, but I will want to wipe just a little bit.

See how nice, how nicely that drawing is retained?

And I'll do more on the vase, that is not considered done.

What I will have is kind of a general wash on this, and it looks like I can do it just completely with the one brush and then by the wiping, I'll accomplish the same thing as if I went carefully and used a smaller brush.

So this is going to have, what would you say, a Thursday night bath?

Because it's not Saturday night bath.

Saturday night bath is color over color.

This is just over the canvas priming.

Now, I'm rushing quite fast on this for two reasons.

One, just because of the timeframe, and the second is, I want to be able to still wipe this around when it's a little bit moist.

[soft scraping] Okay, that that will work, because when I wipe, I'll spread some of this around where it needs to go.

Oo, that is very smooth and nice.

And I kinda like the idea of some of the roughness still staying in the background, but on the interior objects, just a little bit more smoothly applied, like that.

Come over by the birdie, take the feather off the tail while you're there.

Isn't that pretty when you have the new color as a result of what's underneath and what's over it playing together.

That works very very pleasingly.

I don't know if that's proper grammar.

My my English teacher, boy she lived a long time, but I don't think she's around now, but she'd tell me what was right or wrong.

I will use a small flat, sable brush, and I want just to pick up the paint without any extra water, and I'll come on the side.

So when I'm doing this, I'm thinking of form.

The light is coming from the left.

As I do this, I'm putting on the dark value, but I certainly will have to have just a little feeling on the inside.

See where I stopped?

I want that to be less sharp.

However, when I do put on the light, it might mix into that anyway.

If it were oil, I would say well, that's okay, because the light paint will mix into it.

This way, I'm not sure, it may dry too quickly, so you see, I do one at a time.

And the other thing with acrylics as compared oil, if I were doing oil, I might put all the darks on, then come back and work with them a little bit.

But I don't want to chance that now, so you find what works best for you.

The next one over.

And the final test question for you at home will be which one is a salt, which one is a pepper shaker?

Huh?

Well, there is a little clue, you've looked at the top of them and you find that little "T" that you can kinda turn.

That will be the pepper shaker.

These are a beautiful set.

I have this set.

I have this plate, I have this vase, in my home.

Ooo, a lot of paint on that paper towel, so this is a lot of paper towel working on that.

Now, just say for instance that I waited too long and it it wasn't quite moving with the paper towel.

I just wet the brush a little bit without any additional paint, and I can do that.

It's funny how as things happen you kinda learn new techniques maybe that you hadn't decided to use.

Just smoothing this out a little bit more.

Okay, now let's go inside the plate.

I'm doing all the darks first, then we'll come back and put lights on.

Why is there a dark there?

Because it has a little scoop, that would be in a shaded area.

I don't give you a chance to answer the questions.

I'm kinda, what was that guy on "Jeopardy?"

Was it Jennings?

I wonder if he would've, if he would know all the answers to the questions I ask you at home.

Okay, this I'll kinda rub it around with the brush to blend more, just for softness.

Okay now let's take, let's come down to the vase here and then before we finish the acrylics stage, I will take and put just a little more paint here and there to just make it a little more exciting or pleasing, because it's a little rough over on the right side.

But if I take and do the main things first, that's that will be my goal.

So here, and you watch very carefully that you're right to the line.

As we've said a couple times, that you might just save the lines so you know you're in the boundary.

Just a little lower... then as I come up, I go very gently.

I want to be sure and save the bird!

Let's go under the neck.

You're not going to see a lot of the inside of the top, because of the apple blossoms being there.

have a little bit on this side.

You'll you'll find as I work on this with the highlights eventually, you're going to be very pleased as you watch it develop.

I really like the feeling of the pink showing through.

That's that makes underpriming, the underpriming with color so very valuable.

The other thing is, if you're painting on a white canvas and all of the sudden you wanna go lighter, how do you go lighter?

But if you paint on a tinted canvas, then you need to go lighter and you go up towards white, it's very logical, you can do it; there's the contrast.

Okay, I think that'll be enough of that.

What I'll do now is just take a little bit of a sweep with a large brush again.

This is the the fan brush, and I'm going to just kinda put a double feeling on there.

Isn't that neat with acrylics?

You can come and glaze over it very quickly because it dries rather rapidly.

There are extenders with acrylics, so you can slow down the drying time if you need to.

We're going to have a shadow, and you don't have to say what's causing it, but there's a shadow that comes right here on the wall and it comes past over here.

Then we have a shadow from the vase on towards the shakers.

That's a very helpful shadow, because you come right along here and you go right up into the shakers-- as far as a compositional line.

These are spread around just a little bit.

I want to retain that edge of the vase, so I come closely to it without touching it, or without losing it, I should say.

So what I suggested this line over on this side, so all this wall is dark down to that line.

[soft scraping] Okay, that'll be enough of that.

Now the fun part is to start putting lights on.

Let's go ahead with the shakers.

This is cad yellow and white.

That'll be my mixture for lights.

On the painting, just glance at the the, I'll call it my original, which it isn't the completed painting, but the acrylic stage, there's a breaking of the monochrome with the flowers.

I just felt that when I did the flowers, if I have those in an acrylic but with color, then it would be a little easier glazing over them and spotting where they are rather than having them yellow and white, then going to red and then going to red.

Each of these little sections, I can do a few before I blend them.

Okay, now I'll blend.

I take this and just push around, push around.

You want to make sure your brush is very dry so that you get, achieve a little bit of a gradation as you're doing it.

You leave space in-between, that becomes a shadow.

This is what I mean, with the space in-between.

And you blend oh, slightly, slightly on top of the blue over there so it's a little more of a gradation.

It's not perfect by the standards we're going to set for the oil to do.

This is merely to show you a technique.

Just like that.

Then I'll go down to the next one here.

See, why is the light there?

When you look at this side, this side shows you what's happening in there.

So this is the valley and then you, it's just like my teacher used to say.

This is the mountains; put lights on the mountains.

This is a valley; put the light in the valley.

So here we've put light on the mountains, the part that sticks out the furthest, and here in the valley, the part that's the lowest and would cup shape and capture light.

And never let it go!

Isn't that pretty?

And what's very nice here is, you push this on and then it's a little dry and you push right over it and you have that little glow which is very nice.

Now the way I'm going to do this, I'll finish this shaker, then we'll go over to the birds to make sure we have plenty of time.

Because this one would receive the same work as this, so it's a little bit repetitious and may not be necessary to show you before we complete the birds.

Okay then down here, these are just, there's a little dark there, so this is here.

This is here, and this is the length.

Again it's the outside that always shows you what's happening on the inside.

These are slightly curved, slightly curved.

This is straight down.

That's why this goes from top to bottom and these with the curve don't quite go top to bottom.

And I'm talking top to bottom on that little individual section.

This works so well where you have it on, it dries a little bit, and as you push hard over it, you get just enough of a sheen to give you a change in value.

And the light, your light source is coming here so that's why it's a little bit towards the middle.

It isn't right on the side, which it could be, and then you have to accommodate that by having the light start over there.

Okay, let's go inside the plate.

I have the same yellow and white, and I'll just push this around.

Come closely to the shaker, but retain the line.

Come close to the bird, but retain the bird.

I need to be careful here, because I don't want to lose your legs.

I want Uncle Buck to be able to find those.

Good outline on the bird's beak so it's easy enough to see.

Okay now let's take a small brush and still yellow and white and we'll come down with the leg, it goes this way and then this way, and then just a little line off it.

Ooo, that's that's not good.

The little ones off it isn't good.

Isn't that nice where you could take, because it was still wet, you could just wipe it right off?

Okay, here's just the, ah that's a much better claw.

And the same way here.

This one comes down first this way, then this way.

The neat thing about, if you're going to do this, if you happen to have the DVD it will have downloadable tracings, and that's such a help.

You know, drawing is important.

Now, I'm outlining the bird with the yellow and white.

Arch, arch, arch, arch-- there you go.

And a little bit down here.

And a little bit in here.

That inside, I'll put just a little blue just to kinda narrow that a little bit.

I got just a little wide there and then come back with the yellow and white.

Now down on the other bird-- Oo, let's put a little bit, again, it surrounds his head-- right on the outline that comes down on his back.

What's a little different on this guy is we put a little shading on the interior with the yellow and white and do it right as I'm doing it.

And then he has, there's an edge here for the tree, so you see a little separation between the two.

If I outline him on the right side, then you can see where the edge of the neck is, there it is.

So it's way it's away from the dark background color.

All right, a little bit on the leg.

Just, he's on one leg comin' down there and he has little claws there and this branch that he's on too has a little bit of light.

Okay now over on the left side, we'll put on, this is the larger, this is the flat brush.

We'll tap this around and we want this to to have just a little bit of, what would you say, just a little bit of power in it, so it's not overly blended.

It just does have a little smash like that, and then when you come with the acrylics, it certainly will do its part.

On the neck, I'll put first on the rim, on the lip.

Because we have form, we don't go all the way across, then on the neck, there's just a little speck of light, that is right there.

And on the bottom of the base, base of the vase, "boz" of the "voz," we have this.

I want to put a little bit of light down below before we go any further on the blossoms.

Okay this is yellow and white and we're coming down here.

This gives just a little feeling of where the table edge is compared to where the shadow is.

I'm wiping that slightly, I don't desire it to be too strong.

A little bit coming there and a little bit here.

And I'll wipe that just for softness.

This is a little bit of crudeness, but it's going to work.

Okay now let's take the reeds.

What're you calling reeds?

Those are apple blossoms.

This is white and Naphthol Red.

We'll have, let's see we're going to have one reed here, so we'll just tap a couple of these on there.

You'll really enjoy what happens when we work further on these.

What I would suggest would be to have a blue line so you know where those lines are.

I was kinda cheating.

I was kinda guessing, but put those lines in.

Then you can more easily place on the red and white, you know where it goes.

Let me just again just go to another area even though that isn't totally fixed yet, but you're getting to that stage.

You see what we're doing.

We wanna make sure you have some of those down on the foreground, because this having these setting in the shadows really helps you come across that bridge from the vase over to the shakers.

I want to put a little bit more light on the plate.

This is yellow and white and I like to use the, not analogy, I guess a little symbolism.

You say that this plate is a clock.

So we want to have a strong light at 9:00, let's see, 9:00 down to 8:00 and then you have on this side to show that the shakers are away from the plate, we have just a little light in there.

See, then you have the shadow, you have the shadow cast from there to there, and then on this side, you have a little light and it shows again the shaker away from the plate.

Now this this is just a little bit of rush, but I'll I'll put just a little bit on this on.

I won't blend it, but you can get the picture of that being a little more completed too.

So let's push this around just a little bit.

Water, water, water, I got water!

What happens down below and when I say "below" is right with the cherry, the apple blossoms, is that you want some of these to come across there.

Then you break up just the circle which holds your eye at an area, so you break up that line and you go into that.

Those are very helpful.

They're subtle little things, but they do their job.

They do their job well.

I'm going to put just, we have to say good-bye.

Just a couple little touches around like leaves.

Thank you for watching this!

You be sure and come back next week because we'll throw out some water and little nutrients and this, these things will grow!

So we'll see you next time.

Ah, it's exciting!

We're going to do "Apple Blossoms" with you two more days, two more weeks.

See you then, and then.

Bye-bye.

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