Painting is very easy when you don't know how.

It's more difficult when you do.

But I will show you how to do it.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ Welcome to the painting called "Gold Hill."

It's an actual place.

It's near Carson City, Nevada.

I was teaching in Carson City, and then they took me on a little road tour, and I saw this beautiful scene.

It was at sunset time, and I photographed that, and I painted from the photograph.

This is going to be stage 1 today, and we'll do stage 1 over here, and then we'll put color on and stage 2 with oil paint, and then stage 3, a little more refinement.

So you're seeing the middle stage as what I'm working towards today.

So on this side you see a canvas that has been primed with Naphthol Red and White, and then it has an outline that is very easy to see.

and that will be a help.

So we'll begin, and let me repeat, this is acrylics, we're going to take Raw Sienna and White, and I'll see if I can give you a little formula here in a minute.

I'll hold this up to the painting.

That's pretty light, so I need to have more.

I was having about, well, no reason to say what I was having about, let's just give you the finished amounts.

So right now I'm working with equal parts of White and Raw Sienna.

Boy, I can even go darker than that.

Okay 3 Raw Sienna.

Perfect!

I'd say that on the third one.

It's just like batting in baseball.

Third strike, perfect!

Okay, I have put water on the brush, big bristle brush.

You're going to notice, and I need to notice it myself as I'm doing it that this has a little bit of the pink showing through.

I'm not quite sure on the original how much we use of that, but this a nice effect.

If you sometimes do it this way where you put on the acrylic, and then wipe a little bit, and allow some of the pink to come through.

So over here you can see it more a bare spot.

Here it's more like a glaze, and I quite like that.

This eventually will have some highlights in the sky too.

Notice as I go across, you can see the tracing through the gold that I'm just placing on.

So this will go across the whole sky, and then we'll come back lighter with the little highlights in it.

You'll find very early the sky, the cliffs, the tree, and even the building are quite simply colored, and then we'll put some detail on.

The detail is what makes that old rickety thing work.

So I can start right now by going lighter.

So we'll take some White and just touch it into the edge of the gold.

I think it'd be too light unless I do it this way.

Sometimes you can put the light on and it mixes with what's in there and becomes what you want.

Well, this, see I showed that to you, and then I jumped down.

So this still is lighter, and it'll blend in a little bit with what's already on.

Let's see.

Do you come in there?

Yes.

Twilight time.

Sunset time.

That's when this was done.

It was so neat where the sun was just, and you'll see it on the finished product, the little character over in the distance on the right as it hits the mountains.

And in here.

What I notice there, and we'll find this more as we work on the sky, but it just has a little upbeat there.

Now, let's go over to the right.

This is too much of a distance of being blank, so we'll put a little cloud in there too.

Now, I'm not really blending this much, and the minute I say that, I'm thinking, should I?

Well, let's take a fan brush for just a small amount of feathering.

Okay, coming down to the cliffs.

Let's go ahead and mix up the color I have for the cliffs.

We have a dark color-- the Payne's Gray plus Ultramarine Blue and White.

Here's Payne's Gray.

Here's Ultramarine Blue, and White.

See did I put anything else in that?

I'm looking over here at some notes.

"A touch of Phthalo Blue," it says, so I have Phthalo Blue right close by; we'll put just a little touch in.

I almost feel that's a little strong on the blue.

What would happen if I put a little Alizarin into it?

And then White.

And you find you're going to have favorite colors and you might say okay, I want it to look more like that.

I like what this does, so I'll use this.

This again is quite simple as far as this application, because you're just going to the edge.

Notice how I wave that line just slightly so it's not too straight.

And then we come down in, and no big mystery-- you're just going to come down, fill in the lines.

It's so helpful to have a nice drawing on, and some artists that I know would even go a little more detailed in their drawings, and that's fine.

I like to do more of the detail with the oil.

Now I need to sneak through here.

Where's through here?

Okay, we have a little bit there.

This is a mountain being seen through the trees.

And the thing is, you can always adjust this later.

You can put more foliage in or you can put more of the mountain color on.

I notice as I'm doing this, when I look at the model and the same thing comes to my mind, there's a lot of pink showing through there.

Does that show through on the original?

Well, if we cover too much pink now, we can always add it with the oil.

So just kind of work with what you think is right and go for it.

That's the edge of the trees right there.

Do we have any of this anywhere else?

I don't think so.

Okay, so for the cliffs, Raw Sienna and White, plus Red.

So let's see what that looks like.

Raw Sienna and White... and what else did I say?

White, Red, Red.

Okay, where's my red?

Right here!

Naphthol Red!

Speak up!

I'm talking to you.

Okay, that's pretty bright.

Let's take a little Umber.

Umber is such a good one.

He's always available.

He'll help on whatever I want him to do it.

This may be just a little warmer than I see there.

I could go a little more Umber, although I like what I see.

Let's take the bristle brush.

The thing I like about this filbert is that I can draw a little bit with just the edge, and then I can blend it out larger where I need more.

Over in here.

This is so nice to be doing this as a 3-part series.

I was telling somebody when we first started years ago with the Alexander Art Company doing the television shows.

1988!

You figure out how long Buck's been doing this, but we would do shows where you'd do one show per, so you'd do 13 different shows, 13 different paintings in a series.

Boy that was really moving along, but we wouldn't do any acrylics first.

We'd do just right with the oils.

And I had a rule that anytime I finished my painting, when I was off camera I could destroy it, because it looked good on camera, but it wasn't great.

Okay, I'm going back to some of the color we put up-- where did you put this?

Oh, I haven't put any of you anywhere yet.

So you get back in the box.

I'll take some of this blue and just kind of push down a little bit there.

Great, you worked out just right.

So it's nice to have time to do the 2 shows per painting.

This one is a 3-parter.

Okay, I can still see the drawing there, so I will take now and put some lights on in that one area.

So I have some Orange, Cadmium Orange, and I'm working it into the color that I had in the sky, and we'll put this on in here.

It'll be very dramatic when we put the greens and that against it.

So now we'll go ahead with the greens, and the greens are going to be Permanent Green, excuse me.

Permanent Green Light plus Payne's Gray.

Okay, you're the Permanent Green Light, and I think I'll put a little more of the Payne's Gray out, and then some White.

I wonder why I don't know the quantities.

This is kind of exciting doing it this way.

Feel like you're needing the instructions as you jump out skydiving, and where did they say the ripcord was?

[chuckles] Okay then, let's put just a little up there and see--that looks pretty good.

I think I'll use that.

My notes say a little White.

I'm going to put the smallest amount of White in.

It won't change that much.

It just a little more opaque-ish.

Now, this covers a lot of territory.

Boom, boom boom!

I'm starting below the line so that when I push up to the line I have less paint on the brush.

A little more control, a little more feathered, so it isn't too sharp, although that will end up being a nice contrast.

I'll go across here.

I do have a little tree trunk there.

I can still see where that needs to go.

This comes right down to the roof.

My mother-in-law's name was Ruth.

So we used to say "Who hit the most home runs in the world?

Ruth!"

"What's it called on the top part a house?

Roof!"

Everything was named after her.

Famous ballplayers, and she was a fine artist!

Oh my gosh.

[soft scraping] Just ask my wife, her daughter, if she wasn't the best.

I once asked my wife I said "Do you know how many great artists there are on television?"

And she says "Probably one less than you think there are."

[chuckles] No, she really is supportive.

I once did a video, a teaching video.

I went over to this studio, and let's see, I guess you paid rent and they had the camera and all that, and I'm talking along and going real well and I look over and my wife is [snores] sleeping!

[laughing] I asked her a question on air.

"What do you think about this, Tweet?

Does it look good?"

[snores] It was a little embarrassing.

All right, now let's take and come down in here.

This is also grass... and some over on the side.

What I would like to do there is to go right through that little railing, and see, I can still see where the lines are, but it will be easier than trying to work in between each little line.

This goes here, down a little bit.

Okay, for the ground in front, and then we'll get to the-- oh, I have one more green to do!

Greens to do.

I'm going to put a little extra Payne's Gray in it for over in here.

This goes right above the roof a little bit... and a little bit under it.

In here, in here.

Okay, now I have a color that I mixed up earlier, and it's going to work well.

I haven't done the front yet.

Well, let's do it.

Let's put some-- what do you want?

I want some green, and what color are you?

Where did you come from?

I guess someplace.

So I have Red, and Green, and White; a lot of Green.

It's sort of a dried grass look to it.

Okay, now I have plenty of color for the buildings.

This is the one that I used.

This is the, let's see, this is the side walls of the building.

2 Alizarin Crimson, 1 Payne's Gray, and White.

That's this one right here.

And as I put this on, it's done so that I can see the lines through it.

Come right down here, because I can see the lines through it.

The roof is a little bit different color.

I'll use some of this color that we put up on the side of the mountain.

And while I have that there, I'll go right on the sign with this color too.

And I'll wipe so I can see the Gold Hill, Gold Hill Mercantile.

I always thought that was a hotel, but it says Mercantile.

So what does that mean?

Did they have rooms, hotel rooms, plus?

I don't know.

Okay, we've come along the side, then come on the front side.

Use just a little care, Buck.

Be a little careful!

This is going to be beautiful.

It's a lot of building to do.

I'm glad it's a 3-parter.

Some of this I need to show you just without completing it, and that would be, for example, down below.

I'll get there in just a minute.

So underneath, I have Burnt Umber down in here, and same thing there I'm coming right over the railings, and I'm wiping so that I can see them.

I hope you can see them, or that you can see what I'm doing.

And at the near side.

Are you sure?

Are you sure that's the time?

Here's the color that we've been putting on the side of the Mercantile building.

I'm going to take some of this green and go up in the foliage up here, and it's very dry brush so that you can kind of control a casual approach on the ends of these clumps.

I'll quickly take some Burnt Umber, I wonder if I want to do that.

Burnt Umber, let's try it, see if it's dark enough.

Yeah, that works.

I was going to put a little Payne's Gray in it, and I just did!

I won't take time to finish those, but they are established there by the drawing.

So you're just going to put a little line on them.

What I want to show down below, and again I can only show you part of it-- let's go across that, and let's go under this.

A little more of the building color.

Okay, now here's one thing I want us to see.

Taking a little of the Blue and White... and it's best if these are dry.

See, I'll just do a few of those so you get the idea.

And then that would go across there as well.

And on the left side, we'll use more of the White.

So just take your time.

I lean a little bit on the one hand with the other so I can have control.

So all of that needs to be done.

It's nothing magic, it just takes time to do it.

Put a light in the window, light in the window.

There is a little light alongside here, a little of the bluish tone.

It's an old building.

So that doesn't need to be ruler straight.

A little dark Umber.

Boy, it'd be nice if we had another half hour, but the thing I want you to realize is that a lot of this is so repetitious.

You just take your time and do it well, and then we'll show you next time how to go up the next step, then you'll even find the final one, a little more refinement.

That's so pleasing to have that opportunity.

So the first one, which this is, is a little bit casual.

Tell me that you will come back!

If you be here, Buck, we'll be here!

Oh, okay!

What else do I want to tell you?

Just do the best you can, and just hurry up as you do it!

Oh, we have a little peeking window on the side!

Okay, I think we've kind of established what we want.

It's a lot of work, and yet with the drawing and that, it's easy to follow.

So you take your time and do a good job on it, and you wait for the next one, which is oil step and then oil step 2!

So we'll see you next time.

Bye, bye.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ (woman) Funding for "Painting With Paulson" is made possible by...