Beauty will be in the eye of the beholder when it has been in the heart of the creator.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ It's going to be a great day!

We'll both come out very happy 'cause you'll have flowers and I'll have flowers.

And I'll feel the fragrance, and you'll see the beauty.

Let me tell you a little bit about the project.

I'm doing a painting from a pochade, so this is stage one.

Which means we will complete it in acrylics, this has been done in acrylics.

And then we'll go on with oil stage two.

No finished painting to look at, so you know it's pure excitement and joy.

Let me say just a little thing about flowers.

The feeling of beauty generated by an arrangement of flowers is always very pleasing.

It's something that you can almost feel the fragrance.

I guess you'd say smell the fragrance of it as you look at it.

It's something that makes an elegant gift.

It could be a time of, you know, sorrow, of great happiness, achievement and so on, and I think what is kind of nice when you watch a little grandchild bring in some flowers to a grandmother from their own yard.

From the grandmother's yard.

Picked her own flowers and gave to her.

And she's very appreciative because it's the idea.

So we'll go forth with this and start putting some color on.

I'm going to begin by putting some color in the background, which will just allow then some of the pink priming of the canvas to show through as we do the flowers and the leaves.

This canvas has been primed with Cadmium Red Light and white.

It's about, I would say four white one red.

Okay, so we'll come down to the palette using acrylics.

Purple, Dioxazine Purple and some white.

Now there are several rules in painting with flowers.

Let me just emphasize one before we go on.

If you were to look at this arrangement from a top view, it's sort of round, as you look from a top view, and therefore you have to decide, and I know in advance, the lightest light is coming from here, so on the flowers themselves, my lightest light needs to be in there, and as I go around I need to make sure I'm not as light there.

Then you get a feeling of form.

That's so important to consider when you're doing an arrangement of flowers.

Okay, this is purple.

Let's take a fan brush dipped into water.

We'll come up to the canvas.

I think what I've done is put just a little bit of Payne's Gray in there too.

So purple and white with a little Payne's Gray.

it just takes away some of that loudness a little bit.

See, you can see the difference.

It's very slight, but it's just what I want.

And you know, you're relating this not to the final picture at the moment, you're more or less relating it to the pink that's there.

So you put it on the best you can in relationship to what the priming is.

[soft scraping] I'm coming over so my window, meeting of the background will be about there.

You don't see a hard edge showing that the window ends there.

But you get the feeling that there's all the sudden a change from background into the sky.

Now let's see, is there any other place I need this?

I don't think so.

Now, I've outlined this, which I highly suggest you do.

So see if I've gone over it a little bit, I can still see the drawing through it and please use a drawing that has acrylics, so that you can cover it.

All right, now we'll come to the window itself and I have some Ultramarine Blue and white.

Oh, it's so exciting to paint!

I just love doing this for you, because being able to show you something that I've discovered or has been shown to me is a lot of fun.

Okay I'll put that on.

When we get to oils, we might use a little turquoise in there, but let's do this now.

It's a little cooler blue.

You cool blue!

And you know what I appreciate?

It's not that each one of you out there-- look at me because I want to talk to you.

I so appreciate you being there, whether you paint or not, it's nice to have you in the room and I hope you gain something just as far as watching and listening and enjoying whether you are going to use it in a painting or if you paint or your family does or whatever.

So that's the purpose of these shows, to bring joy.

It might be just like bringing flowers from your own yard to you.

I need to make one other point I think is very necessary, and that is-- I don't necessarily have to look at you as I'm saying this but let me say it-- I'm wiping just a bit there.

That let's the pink show through a little bit, and you're making use of the priming.

Okay, the point I wanted to make is, I was teaching an art class down south someplace and, I'll go a bit darker here, then we'll keep talking to you.

And this gal said, and she's the one who ran the workshop, and at that time, I was with the Alexander art company.

Now, I painted my style, but nevertheless, I was with them.

This is blue and Payne's Gray.

I want a little more of this.

We'll get to that story in just a minute.

More blue.

So it's blue and Payne's Gray and white.

And this gal said, "Oh, Bill Alexander.

I can paint better than him."

And I said, "You miss the point."

Bill never says I can paint better than you or I can teach you how to paint better than you are.

His point was-- I can teach you to paint for those who don't know how to paint.

So he was doing what he felt could help others, not saying I'm better than anybody else.

But those that can gain from what I'm giving and that's the same here.

There's artists out there all over the world that are better than me as far as an artist.

People like their paintings better, how they do it and so on, but I'm just giving you what I have.

And I hope you can enjoy it.

I hope that-- I needed to make that point.

Okay, let's come down here and I'll do the same thing here as I did on the window wall, and that's to wipe a little bit.

There'll be places where we can have texture.

Often I'll wait a little bit until we get to the acrylics stage-- boy that was generous.

That must have been my Bill Alexander story that did that.

That's better, see you can feel the pink coming through and I'm going to go right down on the edge of the table with this too, just a little darker so it's still the blue and Payne's Gray and white, but not quite as much white.

As I go over to the right, let's see what we can do about, this was what we put on the window.

And I'm going to add just a little bit of Yellow Ochre or Raw Sienna.

Raw sienna.

It will gray it slightly.

Need more.

Perfect!

And you have to say that after the second attempt or you lose your audience.

"Perfect!"

And I notice there's just a couple little gleams there too that are kind of nice to put on while you're doing it.

Okay on the back side, let's go with the same thing, but oh, a lot of water, which means you're thinning it out.

I kind of jump all over, I hope you can follow that.

Okay, there that, see, that's the same thing I put on the table, but it's thinned out.

All right, let's put just a little of the dark.

This is the blue and the black.

I'm going to put a little red in there and I'm going to take Naphthol red.

This will give me the window frame, has just a little brownness to it.

This is quite a nice brush.

I'm doing everything with that.

But you can use another brush.

There is that need for speed that a fan brush can accomplish when you're doing a presentation on television!

But you could use any brush you want for careful work there.

In my home studio, I'll have what you call the maulstick, which is a long stick and then you can lean against, then you're very steady with it.

So that's very helpful, in fact, if I were to come against that line, being right-handed, I'd turn it up side down so I could see it like here.

See, I can see the edge so I can go along here, But there I can't see where I am, so you do the best you can.

Okay?

Now, what happens at the bottom, just slightly disguise that.

Okay now let's go on the inside of the flowers.

And what I'll use on that, we'll take, this is a large sable brush.

And I kind of want to have a little bit of this purple again.

I don't see it so much on the one here, but I see it up there.

So well, you want it done like this one.

Okay, I hear you.

Let's take some gold, Raw Sienna.

And I'm gonna push this on.

Where are you flowers?

The big one right here.

Now, thinly putting this on-- two things to watch-- one is, you go over the line a little bit.

See, I'm not staying right in tight line; then the other thing is, you-- I can't remember what the other thing is!

[laughs] You let some of the pink show through.

See you thought I forgot, didn't you?

You sit back in that seat, don't turn the channel!

He knows what he's doing.

Alright, that's my main flower, so then I can go up here.

Once you have that established, then you get a little bit of clue where this one is.

And it's the same approach.

You have the area-- look at the outline there-- I've gone right over it.

There's another one up here.

And I know you've heard stories on how you set up flowers.

You make sure you have an odd number, not an even number.

Well, we got kind of an even number, we may have to push this one over a little bit, so they're not all equal.

Here's another one in here.

And as I was doing, you just spot a little bit around, there's a couple other little flowers.

Okay, let's take next the green, When we do the green, we'll go ahead and put some reds and so on after that.

So that the greens, the green family, Sap Green.

I will use just a little bit of the blue with that, if I had some.

Here it is.

And when I put this on, the blue and the green, it's almost like, don't worry about it being totally mixed.

What I should do rather than just starting at the top and coming down-- to have a center of interest, which this is the area I want to be the center of interest, then I need to make sure that I have the kind of the contrast-- the contrast of light against dark, and that's certainly going to happen there.

This at this stage, the acrylic stage, you're going to find that I'm a little bit sharp on the edges, and we certainly won't let that stay when we come to the oil.

Now the other thing about this, we have sort of a center of interest there, we come on the other side and it's almost like bookends, bookends for this one.

Light in the middle and dark on each side... then this hangs down into the background a little bit.

No matter how quickly and all this you do, you're always under the time frame of we need to get this done.

I'm so pleased that these are two-parters.

We used to do 13 half-hour shows, and boy, you were really laboring, and I think the audience could feel it a little bit.

I know the artist did!

Okay, then a little bit on the inside.

There's some in here that sort of separates the flowers a little bit.

Now I'll come with a little bit of the red.

Let's use, this is Quinacridone, no you're not Quinacridone.

You are, yeah you're Quinacridone, but you're Quinacridone Violet.

This this going right on top of the wet green, so I'm using sort of the corner of the brush doing it.

This is more the flowers outside.

When we come to the inside, middle of these, we'll put some other little different reds, a little warmer reds in.

It's so neat to do this.

You have an idea where you're going to go, you have something to look at, of course, setting up the real flowers was a lot of fun, and you know, day two they're kind of hanging down a little bit, but that's okay.

You're painting, whatever you're painting, you're painting a little bit from memory.

Okay then there's some over in here too.

This little side thing is kind of a helpful balance to the outdoors look through there.

Just a little bit more there.

Then let's go ahead with the lower, I mean rather the middle of them.

This is Naphthol Red.

It's just a little softer as you can see on the palette between those two.

So this is taking just the Naphthol Red.

And you're conscious of the direction of the flowers.

See, that one looks like it's going a little that way.

This one you can't see much of because it's pointing up.

This one is turned towards the right, then this one is kind of face on.

What I will do is enlarge those petals, because of it being the important flower, so I have Raw Sienna on the brush just tapping over it like that.

Okay, let's come down to the-- I don't want that middle to be too large.

Let's come down to the pot, and I have Yellow Ochre.

Did I say yellow pot?

That's gold!

Actually it should be more Raw Sienna, I guess.

Then we'll put just a little bit of red on the sides.

This is the violet.

This will look so good when we put the umber over the lower color.

You'll feel the warmth, and the umber will make it more the actual color of brass.

You're a brassy little lady.

A little bit under the edge of that flower, then it's easier to establish where it is.

You can blend just a little bit.

The nice thing about the brass, it has just a little kind of I don't know if you call it pounded look or what.

Distressed a little, it's not perfectly smooth like silver would be or something like that.

Okay, let's put just a little bit in there, then I'll take a knife, and we'll use white and yellow.

Are you clean enough?

No I think I'll put out more white, oh I have white up here.

Okay I'm reaching for the white and I'll have just a small speck of yellow.

Speck and respeck.

This establishes where my light direction is coming from.

Now see, you have an outdoor opening and light, but this is being lit by something in the room, therefore that's legal; we can do that.

I had vase once, it was a big, transparent glass.

I mean, it was large.

And I thought oh, I'll take that outside and the sun will just burst into a spot, but it didn't, it didn't!

It just looked kind of like a glow over the whole thing and I thought my goodness, what's the deal?

So when you see a highlight on something, it is pretty much by what's the light source-- is it through a window?

Is it through a fluorescent light?

Or so on, and this kind of repeats the shape of that.

Okay, I think what I'll do is take just a little bit, I have Permanent Green Light, and I have some Yellow Ochre.

I'll take the knife and just spot in a few.

As I point out, see some of those lighter leaves?

Those are quite nice, so this is what I'll use.

You could use a brush if you want.

I kind of like the broken color that happened with the knife.

Then you could put a little more character in with the brush in the oil stage.

Now, I need to make sure that I have time to put on a little bit of a shadow down here, so let's do that right now.

I have-- what do you have?

Payne's Gray and the green, Sap Green.

Payne's Gray and Sap Green.

This is true to what's happening with the highlight.

Light there, then the shadow's down here.

And as you know to make the shadows set down, we would want it softened on the far side.

Sharp near it, soft on the far side.

So I'm picking-- what am I picking up?

This is white, just a little bit of green in it, maybe a little purple as well.

Just anything that would sort of soften that, and you do it while it's wet, it's so much easier to do.

What else do we want to do?

I see some, just spots of red and gold.

This is the Cadmium Red Light that we have up there, maybe just spot around a little bit.

This all is such a nice balance of color.

Use a little Raw Sienna over in here.

I notice I have a little dark.

This is blue and rose.

So you get a little bit stronger outline, and brass, metal really picks up its neighbors, you know, it reflects them; it's a copycat.

We have a pink spot here and a pink spot there.

The upper pink spot we see some green and the lower one-- what do you want to have?

Maybe just a little light, so let's take some pink.

This is violet and white.

In there.

I'm touching just a little bit of this around on a couple of the flowers too.

Okay, now one last thing I need to make sure I do-- gee, you almost forgetted!-- ...is yellow and white, let's take a big brush and do this.

When I say a big brush, this is a large sable brush, I want to just not brush, but just kind of dob so you got...

Almost forgot your highlights!

It's like forgetting to give an allowance to a child.

"Dad aren't you forgetting something?"

Love doing the final lights because it has such vitality in it.

I so appreciate your being here today.

You come back next time when we make some real advancements on this.

Looking at the little pochade, I see things that need to be done.

So we'll see you next time.

You deserve a bouquet and I give it to you, but you come back; you come back!

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