It's not perfection I offer you today, but rather direction to perfection.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Let's get to the painting!

Wow, what excitement to anticipate doing a seascape!

I live one block from the ocean.

I forgot how many steps it was.

One block from the ocean; I go down, see that beautiful sea and have inspiration, The subject that I'm going to show you today, let me hold this up.

This is what I have, of course, I added a little bit from what I saw, and that's what we should do.

We paint from memory even while out on location.

You are looking at memory, things that-- oh that would be good and so on, or if I move that tree-- do it!

All right, here's what we have.

We have a canvas that has been primed with 6 White, 1 Payne's Gray, 1 Permanent Green Light.

Put that all over, then I have a drawing.

In my case, I've made it with, what do you call it, a dark pen, a ballpoint, so we'll be able to see the paint through it.

If you could do it with acrylic it might be helpful because when you try to cover it, you don't want anything to bleed through.

Today the halfway point, and this is what we're going to come to.

We might go a little past the halfway point, we'll see.

Now, what I've done in previous shows is-- I didn't always do this-- I'd start at the center of interest and so on.

That's all right in your studio, but for your watching I think it would be easier if I start in the sky, then come on down.

I'm going to take a fan brush and just wet the canvas a little bit.

What I'm doing with this Walnut Oil is making sure that it's thin and just barely dampening the canvas.

It'll make the paint flow that much more freely.

Now, as we said, we want to have starting at the top, so my starting at the top, we'll be making a blue.

I have some colors here that, oh, just the titles of them are so good.

I'm going to call this Phthalo Blue, but it is a "Phthalocyanine Blue Red Shart."

Wow!

"Shade," not shart.

"Shade."

Okay, so I'm taking some White.

I want to say something about this palette.

You can see all the paint on the left side and blank on the right.

I'm going to do this for today, I'll mix on this side, then next week, when I come over to the other side, I'll still have some of this paint to bring across.

So that makes sense.

So I have white, let's take some of this blue, and I'm looking at, I'm saying, okay that looks like 1 to 6.

Gee, 6 white, 1 blue.

That's powerful, we'll use that.

Then I'm going to come down and take some Nickel Azo Yellow.

Start out with equal parts.

A lot of these colors are new to me, so I'm just finding what's the best formula by mixing in front of you.

I like that, so that's what we'll do, and when we do it, we'll put on the blue first, but I'll put it on and maybe either leave a space for the yellow or whites a bit.

And my second choice is right.

We'll wipe a place for it, which means when I wipe, there will still be a small influence of the blue on it.

Love that fan brush, oo, you are a beauty.

You do the work of tons of people.

Okay, that's on.

Now we'll take, and I'll dip into the Walnut Oil and clean the brush, and when I say clean it, it still has some stain on it.

I'm not running over to the sink and saying, oh gee, there's still some blue in it.

Okay, so I'll use that same brush, cleans it, then I have the Nickel Azo Yellow and White.

And I gave you the formula, so I hope you remember it.

Whoops.

Remember how I said wipe?

This is just a dry paper towel, and I don't mind what's happening there, when a little bit of the blue comes across on the distant mountains.

In fact, I love that.

Okay, so I'll wipe a little harder.

The other thing is, as you do this, and I'll just dampen a little bit.

You notice some of the green is felt through, and I like that so it's not just a solid blue.

That's a nice serendipity moment, serendipitous.

Okay, here comes the yellow, and I'm starting right near the cliff, because that's where I want the most.

That's where the impact's going to be, that's where the sun is going to be.

So we'll push this around, wiping so that there's less paint on the brush.

Aw, it's so nice.

You are doing a good job.

Now as I come down I cut into it a little bit.

But that's all right, I'll blend back up in just a little spell.

Oh, it's always exciting when you're doing something like this you try to make it even better than it was.

More of the paint, and I often use just the corner of the brush.

All right, now let's do what we said, let's go a little bit more of this, and we'll come up in here and just spread it out a little bit more.

Just a little lighter, like that.

Now what I want to do, I hadn't intended doing it, but here's some Maroon Perylene, I think that's how you pronounce it, Maroon Perylene.

Gee, where did you get all these colors, Buck?

I'm using, let me just try that again.

So I'm saying 1 to 1, ♪ 1 to 1 ♪ Tie score.

Come up here, and I want to put this on right there while it's wet.

See, the nice thing about doing this on a second time-- once originally, now I'm doing it the second time-- you discover little things, and you think oh, that's great.

You always try to make it better, so I hope that is helpful to you.

For you, to you.

Thank you for watching PBS.

Oh, they are great!

And here... this is my 20th year with Prairie Public Television!

20th year.

I did 5 years with the Alexander art company, so it's 25 years.

Is there anyone that's been doing PBS longer?

I don't mean reruns.

I mean doing the shows.

Gosh, that is a great record.

And I intend to do more.

Did you know that?

I intend to do more.

Okay, now let's go ahead with the next color.

And I'm looking at probably, this is something I hadn't done before, but let's try it.

Let's take some Maroon Perylene and some Burnt Umber.

Let's take equal parts, and let's just add a little White.

Oo, that's great.

So it looks like it's 2 Umber, 2 Maroon Perylene, and 1 white.

This will be the first color I'll put on that cliff.

You are cliffs, but what you call it?

Is it an island?

I guess, I don't know.

Okay, I've changed brushes.

This is a badger, bristle badger.

Oh shoot, you surprised me.

I'm not going to use you.

Forget it!

I'm going to use pure Umber.

Oh gosh, good choice.

Good choice, thank you for being there Umber.

I remember watching Bill Alexander paint.

He used to ♪ sing to the people.

♪ I thought gosh, if I could only sing.

I was teaching an art class once, and I was kind of humming and this gal said, "When I was young"-- you've heard this before-- "I wished I could sing.

Now I wish you could sing!"

[laughs] That was nice.

She was fun and funny.

Okay, so I have that on.

I have a little part on the island out here.

What's happening up here?

I better put another little tree up there, or we'll have a bare spot.

And bears want this spot to be good.

Okay, so let's leave that a minute.

I'm going to come down to mix up for some water.

And I have, oo, this is great.

Where are you?

Van Dyke Brown... and some Permanent Green Light.

The amount, it looks like equal parts.

This is going to be for my water.

Or we say your water.

I'm using just a little bit of Walnut Oil in it to make it move.

Even though there was Walnut Oil on the canvas, this is a good help to have a little bit in the brush, but it's very little.

♪ So pretty ♪ There we go, there we go, there we go.

I hope you've followed some of my ramblings and shows on my web page and Facebook, It's just so neat, we can talk about different things.

It's nice to have people contact me and say I really like, or would you consider doing this?

So I love that aspect.

Be sure and let me know your feelings.

It would be better if I did this or that.

It would be more meaningful to you.

Be sure and feel free in doing that.

Okay now, I still have some more water to do, but I want to continue back on that.

Did we use Umber, or did we use Payne's Gray?

We used Umber.

Did we use Umber?

Ah, so good to have a great floor manager.

Okay, this is the Umber and Green again.

And I told you, next week we'll use this half, and I'll put off stage, I'll put some Saran Wrap on this side so that it stays fresh.

I know some people say that they put their paint palettes in the refrigerator.

I hope they have Saran Wrap over it, anything that keeps the same palette going.

Or you can write down the formulas and do it as you need it.

If you're tuning in for the first time, you think, gee, that's not very good.

It's the first stage!

[chuckles] Okay, I'll use some more of this on the tree.

I think it would be much easier if I put the foam in first and then the tree.

Boy, that dark there looks pretty reddish.

Doesn't it?

I'm going to push this over just a little bit with this brush.

It's a number three.

Okay, like that.

Now let's put on some foam before we go any further with that.

The foam color; I'm going to use the blue again.

This is blue and Payne's Gray This blue is very powerful.

Equal parts.

Let's see what happens.

I'm going to take a lot of white down here.

Okay, there is my equal parts.

Now I'll add just a little bit of this in, and when I say a little bit, it's about 10 to 1.

And I'm going to hold this up to the model.

Yeah, that's pretty close.

Let's try that again.

Yeah, that'll work.

If anything, and this is anything, we'll use just a little extra Payne's gray.

So it's just a little over equal parts.

Okay, let's see, let's take a clean fan brush.

I dipped in just a little Walnut Oil, and kind of wiped it off, just because it's new, new to the team.

Now, see where I started?

Now as I go higher, I have less paint.

Just goes right off into kind of mystery.

I'm letting it blend, like that.

I'll clean the brush to get rid of the little red I might've accumulated.

I'll come down and just pick up where I left off.

I haven't put any extra paint on the brush This is one thing you want to make sure you're careful of.

If you do have the line drawn, then with whatever you're using, acrylic or dark pen, you want to be sure to cover those lines.

And here is so important.

Look at me, will you?

Look at me.

Foam is soft.

The thing that offends me most on seascapes that I see is the hardness of the splash-up foam.

It's just either too hard or it's too light.

It takes away, so here, I have softened it as it goes out in the distance, but right below here, see, I'm going to put this on but then I want to avoid the hardness right in there.

So you can see on here the little bit of softness that goes there, a little bit of fluff up.

More of this.

And some more.

This I find works quite well, and this being that I put the foam on before the rocks.

Because if you put the rocks in first, you are always good to hit them and it's going to make some dirty looking foam.

But if you put the rocks in later, it'll just cut into the foam.

You can soften a little bit which will blend them together were needed.

But otherwise that's pretty much what I adhere to is rocks last.

Rocks, scissor, last.

Okay now, when I look at the lower wave; let's go further across with that.

What would be helpful is even here to want a little character.

Look at this one, see how that sways over like that?

This one, I'll push the dark down so you get a little bit of that feeling of movement, like that.

Then the other aspect is again, watch the lower edges.

We talked about the upper foam, the edges.

Now this is also where you watch the edges.

And right in here, I'll just take a finger and just soften that a little bit.

Okay, we still have more foam to put on that big wave.

So we'll take the brush, I dipped into the Walnut Oil a lot to kind of clean it, but then I wipe it, so this is pretty dry.

We have this, we need this one.

And what I find is so helpful-- I'm going to do this at the same time-- not necessarily in the oceans, but in all the paintings is that you kind of address the edges, the movement.

What kind of movement do you want?

Okay let's do this-- oh gee, we've still got a cloud to come in the sky, but that's okay.

Let's do this.

I'd like very much where we can wipe away where the eye is going to go.

I know when I look at the original, see, the eye is right in there, but notice that it's down just a little bit more.

I really like the power of this and then the eye.

So typically, people make the eye right at the top.

I'm going to do what I just suggested.

I'm pushing the dark back there a little bit more, then the eye will be down in here.

So what color do we want for the eye?

Let's try some of that, um, I don't know.

Let's take some Permanent Green Light and some of the Nickel Yellow, Nickel Azo Yellow.

Yeah, that-- you're doing it.

The green is kind of powerful.

Right in here.

And this is what I was speaking about.

Instead of going up to the top, I'm down just a little bit more.

I don't know why, but it gives me such a feeling of power and movement by having it there.

And you be sure and come back next week because we're going to be talking about foam patterns and different things.

Oh, we have to rush just a little bit.

Let's put on this tree green.

This is kind of like a football game.

We may go to overtime.

[laughs] No we're not Buck, no we're not.

We'll talk more about the edges of that when we get to the final stage.

But notice it's not sharp, it's not sharp Then I'll take some of my Van Dyke Brown, a little medium Van Dyke Brown right there.

Oh, we're going to make it.

It's almost the end of the game, and we still need to score a touchdown or hit a home run.

Let's go for the home run, I love baseball.

I think week 3 and 4 is when we are going to have you looking at some baseball.

Okay, now I want to take a little bit, let's see, we've got the Burnt Umber we put on.

Let's have Burnt Umber and Payne's Gray.

Burnt Umber and Van Dyke Brown.

Make up your mind.

Payne's Gray, Van Dyke Brown Just a little bit of character on the rock.

So you can take, like with the foam there and just soften a little bit, it touches against, to get rid of that hard line, but it doesn't make where we have a lot of problem caused by the foam mixing into the rock.

One last big item.

We'll take let's see, we're going to take, you're Blue, and you're Mineral Violet, equal parts I have 2 white and one each of those.

And here we are.

Ah!

Good night!

I thought we were going to have a cloudless day!

This is great, I love doing this, I love doing these shows.

It never gets boring, I've got a great crew to work with.

They make me look good, make me look good.

Don't you like that?

Maybe a touch over there.

Oh, great.

All right, we kind of have done what we need to do.

If we had just a little feeling of some of the blue out there, so you know where the bottom of the cliff is.

And just a little bit in the trough of the wave to come up like that.

It will be helpful.

We're going to say see you soon.

See you next week.

You stay tuned, oh, for the second part of our seascape.

Okay, see you later, bye.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (woman) Funding for "Painting With Paulson" is made possible by... To order the complete 13 episode series 20 of "Painting with Paulson" on DVD including Bonus Features and Line Drawings, please visit or call...