- Hi, I'm Kath McCauley.

This is Care and Feeding.

If you look at this paint set, it is a dirty mess.

What we're gonna go over is how to take care of things like this, how to do it in the field how to open it and close it, how to paint in public so you don't feel that you're being observed and nobody knows whether you're good or bad.

Just a bunch of the basics that are so easy and I want you to see them all.

So come join me, we're gonna have a really good time.

(uplifting music playing) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided by Sedona Hypnosis, LLC Healing your past, creating your future.

Muriel Walsh Estate Sales.

Representing people is our business.

And by viewers like you.

- [Kath] Why on earth would you ever do this, really?

Because it's portable!

Because you can take it anywhere.

You can be creative, you can have fun and you don't have to use it unless you want to.

The advantages?

You can go hiking, you can take it to a concert, you can take it to a boring lecture.

If you sit in the back and you know the sermon's gonna be bad, you could take it to church and sit in the back and sketch.

This sketch was done in a jazz festival.

This is the pianist.

There's enough time while they're playing that you can sketch 'em.

It's amazingly portable, amazingly usable anywhere but you probably wanna know how.

So we're gonna get into that this time.

Let me show you a little difference with a couple of things.

This is me painting with oil paints.

I had to schlep this Jullian Easel.

It's loaded with paint and brushes.

It's very heavy, to wherever I was going.

Then there's the box of reagents, the paper towels, all the cleanup things.

Then you get it out, then you paint with it.

So far this is fun.

Now when you're done, you have to pick everything back up and at the very end you're gonna clean the brushes.

This takes time.

You take this on a vacation with your family, you're only gonna do it once, cuz you're only gonna get it out once because everybody's gonna be ticked at you because of how much time you spent and they had nothing to do while you're doing it.

Just for comparison, fully equipped.

This is also me.

Everything's in this bag.

I pull out what I need, use it, put it away, and there's no cleanup.

No cleanup.

That's huge!

Anyway, let me show you how it's done just a little bit.

First place, you want to have the pad in your personal space.

That means next to your body.

You put it out here and you're gonna have an audience.

They come in like flies.

You wanna keep it in.

Does anybody bother you when you're on a cell phone?

I'll pretend this is a cell phone.

No, they don't bother you.

You're in your personal space.

There's a little envelope around you that they don't invade.

You'll see 'em sneak glances cuz they wanna look but they're not gonna look.

And I'll also tell you what to do about them.

if they do look.

Now you're in public, you're sketching away.

Somebody breaks your space.

This is what you do.

You have to remember this cuz I won't be there with you.

You simply look at 'em and you say, "I'm on a timed exercise and I can't stop, but my instructor is near here.

She's got red hair, a green hat, a loud shirt, and a red bag, and you can't miss her."

And you go right back to sketching.

They will leave you alone and go try to find me.

Now, I won't be with you, but this works so well.

I use it myself.

I don't wear this shirt.

Oh, by the way, these are fly swatters.

But I probably wouldn't wear them anyway because this is part of the outfit that you sick 'em on me.

And I just tell 'em, "I'm on a timed exercise and I can't stop," I'm wearing plain clothes so I don't look unusual.

"My instructor is near here.

She has on, she has red hair, a green hat, a loud shirt, and a red bag, and you can't miss her."

And I go right back to work and I watch them go off and try to find me.

That's infallible.

It works.

That's how you get rid of 'em and that's how you can sketch in public and not worry about anybody watching you and seeing whether you're good or bad.

If you get a super, super good sketch, stick it out, hold it out farther.

They'll come in, they'll come in like flies.

But what's gonna happen if they do come in and you get into conversation with them, they're gonna tell you about their grandmother who used to paint, their mother who painted, their sister, who painted and how good and how bad you are.

And they're gonna know they have a captive audience cuz you're stuck there and pretty soon they've totally got you distracted and you can't get anything done.

So, I don't go there.

I hope you don't either.

Keep it in close so they don't see it, and then they know you're in your private space.

That really, really works.

Okay, to sketch in public you take out the pad, take out the pen.

If you're using a water soluble pen like this remember, it dries out if you don't put the lid on when you're not using it.

Then, you're sort of outta bullets.

Something that I do when I start out is I put a line.

These pads are six and a half inches long.

Have some place on your pad where you can do this.

Notice this huge wristwatch that I'm wearing?

Well, I put down my start time up here and then I put down 20 minutes later.

If I have to count 'em, that's fine.

50, and I work in 25 minutes.

I've now got 20 minutes here.

I know when that time is up, I've got five minutes to finish.

Architecture, a little bit more time.

Why do you do this?

If you spend two hours on a sketch you're gonna wreck it.

In 20 minutes, you've got time to get one focal point, not three.

Three ruins it totally.

Your brush strokes are fresh and you're truly interested in what you're looking at.

You start spending more time and you get bored and you have to put in one more detail, one more detail, one more detail.

You ruin the sketch, you're ruin your interest and you also ruin your interest in coming back and sketching again.

Keep it short.

At 20 minutes, by the way, if it's bad, it's wonderful to just take a walk.

I'm outta here.

I don't have to finish.

My mom's not around.

I can walk off and leave it, finish it some other day maybe.

If it's bad in 20 minutes, you have a much better chance of getting a good one on a fresh start.

So just don't beat that one to death.

Anyway.

We've got it out.

You keep it in your personal space so that you can sketch.

You don't want it out here where someone's gonna bother you.

You want it in here.

Now, if you're pulling out your paint set what is the order of doing this?

Let's say you've got a sketch all done, okay.

Put the pen away.

First, put the pad away.

Where do you put it?

Under your wing.

Put the pen away.

Done.

Take out the paint set.

But there's one thing first.

Take out the water.

Now in my set, I've got a flap that comes down.

If the flap is tucked in it means I'm using the water or it's dirty.

Let's see if I can put this someplace where you can truly see it.

This is dirty water.

If I left that all night it's gonna have a precipitate on the bottom.

If I touch that with my paintbrush, my brush gets gummed up, then I'm gonna have to clean it.

I am into super efficiency.

I'm not gonna be cleaning a brush in the field if I can avoid it.

So vet it's dirty water, leave that one alone.

I've got a clean one, it's under the flap.

I like to open these with my teeth.

You squeeze the container, it's easy to open.

You wanna be able to get to your stuff easily.

So now I've got the water out.

Now pull out the paint set, open it, oh, I didn't tell you how If it's my paint set, put it in your stomach whatever you have, make sure you can hold it securely so that when you open it, you don't dump it.

I've got hold of it.

Open it up.

Now pull out the paint set.

First, get the brush.

This is one of two types of travel brushes.

This one screws together.

The other one pushes together.

But they're both, they both give you an extended handle.

They're really nice to have.

Now there's a lovely little brush in here but I wanna go a little bit faster.

So I use the big one.

Take the pad out, put it on the paint set.

Now again, you're in your personal space.

See how this works?

You're not out in public.

This is with the pad out vertically, here it is out horizontally.

One thumb holds the pad in the paper.

Don't put anything down.

If you put anything down, they'll come in.

If you have an easel, they'll come in.

If you have a table, they'll come in.

Plus you'll probably forget stuff when you pick up.

Try to not do that.

So now I'm gonna do the reverse.

Let's say I have a wet painting and I need to go away, finger over it.

Brush goes in first.

So put the brush away first.

I still have a wet painting, so I can't put it down.

I can't tuck it away right now.

Put that down.

Hold on the corners, leave the corners a little bit clean.

Close the paint set.

Tuck it.

Now the water, there's the lid.

And I wouldn't have put this down, I would've put it in my set as I was going.

This is a problem, right down that corner.

Now I can put the lid on.

If you leave this with the lid open and you're carrying it a bag, when you lean over, you're gonna have cold water running down your leg.

You only do that once if the weather's cold.

And then carry the pad with the wet painting horizontal until it's dry, then tuck it away.

Whoops!

Then I like to tuck it away with the cover out.

Next, this is one that you're gonna wanna know what to do.

By the way, abbreviations on the lid of my box, that tells me what's under in each case.

If you drop the paint box and they all fall out and you put 'em back in a random order your brain has a really hard time because it's memorized this subliminally and it's trying to find colors, expects to be in certain places.

So if you put abbreviations for the colors like that's yellow ochre, that's burnt sienna, that's white, that's burnt umber, and that's - just stick it on with a Sharpie.

Stick it on your paint set somewhere so you can find it.

Now I'll show you how to clean this.

This is a mess.

How do you clean the paint set?

That's why I have a glass of water here.

Paper towel.

This isn't, this isn't rocket science.

This is pretty simple.

I want the near side clean and the far side can be dirty.

Just brush across it.

There you go.

If you have a white paper towel, it's easier to see when you've got clean paint.

Then roll it over and do another one.

You lose a little bit of paint, no big deal.

They last, probably last you a year, for your first set, then you can order refills online.

Okay, how do you get a deep one clean?

Like this one's probably pretty easy to see the paintbrush.

Now I would be doing this in the field if I needed to with my little supply of dirty water.

This one's easier to see.

You paint across it.

Now the far side can be dirty.

I want this near edge clean.

Put it in the water.

It's amazing how much you can get away with this.

Now come back and clean a little bit more so the near side is clean.

I don't care about the far side because I mix there a lot.

That's that.

It's that simple.

Even when you have any of these, if I wanted to know if they were clean or dirty, I want this edge clean.

I don't care about that edge, because when I'm mixing, I will just simply mix right on it.

Okay, how do you clean the top of the paint set, should you want to?

I happen to love all that dilute paint up there.

It's the same deal.

A damp paper towel and simply, you know I hate to clean any one of these up because I mix with all this stuff.

This one's pretty similar to that one.

There you go.

That's clean.

That's clean enough.

When you're using it and you're holding it, the lid bends a little bit and you get slightly darker stuff down here, lighter stuff up there.

It works.

Then how do you clean the brush?

We're getting down to all the equipment piece by piece.

Put this aside, watch out for these.

By the way, probably you don't have staining colors in your paint set, and so if you get it on your clothes, it doesn't hurt a thing.

How do you clean the brush itself?

I happen to use ivory soap because it works and it never hurts a brush.

In this case, I can actually have running water running over the bar of soap.

Never hot, baby food cool or cold, it doesn't matter but never, never hot.

With a round brush, you do a figure eight on the bar of soap.

If it leaves paint behind, let me make sure at least paint behind.

If it leaves paint behind, you're gonna do this three times.

Put the bar of soap down.

Under running water, figure eight on your hand.

I'm bumping the brush against the heel so it'll dislodge any paint that's stuck right up there.

That's a round brush.

Now, if it left color on the bar of soap you're gonna do this three times.

If it left no color, you do it once.

Incidentally, if you have a brush that's frazzled and it's spread all over the place, you used hot water at some time in the past, make a lather like meringue.

Take the brush, shape it.

Now put a blob of that soap on the end, leave it upright, as the bubbles pop they will pull all the hairs in.

You may have to do that three times.

In all the years I've painted I've had only one brush, and it was an Asiatic brush, it's the only one I couldn't get back into shape.

If you've left a brush sitting in a container of water, I don't do this, but if you did.

I really can't do it.

If it's sitting in water like that, then it gets a bend in it.

It's far easier to just simply clean the brush.

In the process of cleaning, it'll straighten out.

I've had very few that didn't straighten out.

Some really cheap kids brushes won't straighten out but any other brush will straighten out when you do that.

So it's bent over like that and you simply clean it and shape it.

It straightens out.

To shape the brush.

This is a round, Oh I didn't show you what to do with the flat.

I'll go back to that.

Flat brush, you go back and forth on your hand, you go back and forth.

That's a flat brush.

So now to shape the brush, flat brush two fingers.

These don't go together.

Two fingers round.

Round brush, three fingers.

Don't ever shape it in your mouth.

It works beautifully.

It shapes perfectly.

Then you put it away, wet, warm, to grow because you just inoculated it with bacteria.

Sorry about that.

And when you take it back out, I've done this only once.

When you take it back out you'll have a dried plug of bacteria.

Mine was white.

That shaped was exactly the shape of this.

It took two and a half hours to clean the brush took longer to clean the tube and I had to disinfect both of them.

You're not gonna poison yourself but you're certainly gonna have a mess to clean up.

So don't do that.

It's that, it's relatively simple.

Okay, now we've gone through what to do, oh by the way, I didn't tell you, that was clean up.

Let me do that again.

Remember, if you're doing oil paints or watercolors real ones, you know the big kind in the field, you clean everything at night when you go home.

Okay, let me get a bunch of pigment.

Here we go.

I got a bunch in this brush now.

And you do this right with your painting water.

That was cleanup.

That's all there is.

Put it away.

Do you clean the paint set?

No.

You want this dilute paint available.

If you don't have dilute paint available you can't change colors slightly.

Let's see if I can find something in here.

I could probably do it to this.

Okay, I wanna change something on this slightly, or maybe quite a bit.

Oh, I need to use the dilute paint to do this, Not that, okay.

Little bit of this.

It'll darken that ever so little.

This is where you get your slight changes.

This is where you get your full color.

If I wanted that same color, full color come down here and get it.

Add a little green to it.

Did you notice that I was getting that green by taking the dark blue directly to the far side of the paint?

That's where I mix paints.

Then come in and darken it more noticeably.

But when you want a slight change, this stuff is what you want.

Let's say I want a little sunshine on the building.

Don't go here.

Go up into here.

This is gonna change the sketch, but let's do a little bit of that.

There you go.

There's sunshine on the building.

That's not much, but it's enough to make a difference.

That's when you want dilute paint.

It always bothers me when I see an empty little square up there.

And by the way, that was cleanup.

And there's not enough water in here to stop me from - enough paint in here to stop me from drinking it.

That's very easy to go right ahead and use it.

So probably have forgot a few things.

Always keep in mind you want extreme portability.

You wanna be able to go in public, oh, you know I just forgot to take this thing off.

There you go.

I probably feel a little better now without having a hat on.

Oh, when you go outside, bring something for shade.

That works.

And, and by the way, I love these.

They're super cheap.

They don't wreck your hairdo.

If you've got a hairdo, that's important.

That's something you always wanna know.

Opening and closing.

How to close the paint set.

If it's on a table like this, stick a finger in it and bring the lid down.

Now I wanna get it back open again.

I'm holding the bottom.

There you go.

Don't close it like this because everything falls out.

I like to refer to that as 28 pickup because these are half pans.

The half pan falls out separately from the paint itself, which is half pan paint.

As these, oh, I didn't notice that.

Good to notice it right now.

There's some paint down in there.

As paint gets down around the edges, they stick in beautifully.

But when you first have paints like this you might wanna use double-sided scotch tape to get 'em to stick in.

That's if they bother you when they move around.

I really don't notice it.

This side's clean.

I can push on it there.

I really don't notice it then.

And you have the time on the top of the paper so that you don't spend more than 25 minutes.

And, are there any other little things I really wanna think about?

That I wanna tell you at this point.

The pen.

Always be sure if you're using the water soluble pen, they dry out.

When you put 'em away, you'll hear it click.

Now you know it's not gonna dry out.

How long do these last?

Probably 10 years if you don't have the lid off.

And there's some things that are really really valuable to know about them.

Let me put this away.

There.

Saw how that got put away.

I can take out a sketch.

This isn't much of a sketch, but you'll get the idea.

I can take out a sketch that I might have done years and years and years ago.

Add water at any time.

You can't do this with a ball point.

Watch it work up now.

So this means I can sketch it here and finish it there.

That is really, really important.

So you're in a hurry, you get a quick line sketch but if you put anything on paper you will put it into the computer of your brain and you'll be able to work it up later when you're someplace else.

So let's say your friends wanna leave and you were just at the beginning of a sketch, but you can finish it later.

Incidentally.

This is important.

This is a tree.

It has foliage that cuts across the trunk.

But notice I can do that now, not sometime later.

I can take this, pull that line away.

Now watch it shape up.

This was a piece of architecture about a week ago.

See how beautifully that worked?

It's amazing that you can do this.

The pen is your total skeleton of a sketch and your source of your values.

So you can do anything that Ansel Adams could do with a pen in the field.

It's pretty awesome.

Something we never ever think about is an art collection for kids.

While you're doing other things, why wouldn't you do this?

You have grandkids, you have nieces and nephews.

Your friends have kids.

Here's a teddy bear.

I made it for a grandson.

All I have to do is sign it.

I'm gonna frame it in a frame that I can replace next year.

And the kid starts an art collection.

It's signed art.

Nobody buys children originals.

Mom puts stuff on the wall that mom thinks ought to be there.

Why not start an art collection for kids?

More fun than you could possibly imagine.

And they know they have an art collection.

I bet none of their friends have one.

That's done just for them.

And you change it every now and then when you get a new sketch that you think would be absolutely perfect.

It's fun.

You'd be surprised.

Enjoy.

What are we gonna do next?

Well, we're actually gonna do trees and shrubs.

People ask me over and over for three different things, water, trees, clouds.

So we're gonna include 'em.

So trees and shrubs, you have to be observant.

We'll show you a few shortcuts on how to do it, some things that need to be there, and what to look for when you're actually looking because you really have to see 'em to be able to do it.

But it's fun.

And again, it's totally experimental.

We'll have fun.

You'll see how to put a tree together, and then how to put shrubs together.

Just have to look, see how they're made, and then practice.

And it doesn't matter how many bad ones you get, you'll learn as you do it.

I like to call it miles on the brush.

The more time you put on a brush, the more likely you're gonna be able to do it.

In fact, I just happen to have a little bit here.

This is sort of the beginning of looking at a tree.

We'll go farther than this and you'll see a whole lot more about 'em.

Thank you so much for being here.

I mean, this is just some of the stuff that I don't take the time in a regular show to show you how I'm doing it, and you really have to know.

Thanks for being here.

Happy sketching.

Want to learn more about the wonderful world of pocket sketching?

Then visit my website at pocketsketching.com.

We have so much there for you to explore including free tips and training videos, the pocket sketching supplies, photo galleries and how to access additional training.

All this and more is available at pocketsketching.com.

Learn enough to play for a lifetime.

- [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided by Sedona Hypnosis, LLC.

Healing your past, creating your future.

Muriel Walsh Estate Sales.

Representing people is our business.

And by viewers like you.

(upbeat music playing)