In the woods we are all in our own world.

See what you want to see.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ This is our painting.

This is the finished product.

Today we'll do a halfway stage, then next week we'll finish "Golden Retreat."

So the halfway stage is on my easel to my left.

This is the one we're going to work on today.

Notice that it's a Cadmium Red Light with some White.

And it's just beautiful.

It's all dry, that was done acrylic, and then a rather legible marker for seeing the trees.

That was also done with acrylics.

Now we'll go ahead and see what we can do.

I'm going to take some Walnut Oil with this large brush, and we'll push this around so that the paint will go on a little more freely.

[soft scraping] Wipe it for removing and evening out the Walnut Oil.

See with the Walnut Oil, all you're saying is oil it out.

If you say Saturday night bath, you'd usually have a little color in it.

And if you say mudpack, then it's something that has a little white in the color.

So it's just a little opaque-ish.

We get to those terms through the whole series; you'll see them.

So now what I'm going to start with is coming to the middle of the canvas.

I have a mixture which is 1 Yellow Ochre, 1 Cadmium Yellow, and 1 White.

That's up in the corner here.

I'm going to use my large 1-inch brush again.

I didn't redip it, there was maybe just a little Walnut Oil left on it.

But we'll start right in here.

Doesn't that look mustardy?

But it's all formidable, formation.

Now, as I go out further, I'm going to use less paint, as you can see, so that it allows a lot of the pink to come through.

I feel even on this one, I complete the stage 1, you can see some of the pink uncovered.

Oh, this is so much fun to do these shows.

I love doing landscapes.

I have to tell you a little experience.

When I was starting with Claude Buck, and that's how I got the name Buck, plus Paulson, I'd paint on Thursday afternoons, 2:00 to 4:00.

One day he said to me, "Would you like to go out landscape painting?"

So I wasn't receiving any instruction.

Because the class on Thursday, there were two ladies and myself.

So I was the driver, and we drove down to several places, we were painting, and I was, oh, I was frustrated.

I wanted to throw my painting away because I didn't know what to do.

And then one day it rained.

And he says, let's stay in the studio today.

And while I'm painting, and he's over there 10 feet away, he says, you can come any day you want.

I went over Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday for the class, Friday.

Boy, that was a great thing, I just loved that.

Okay, what I have now, this is pretty evenly placed on.

And what I mean by that is, more in the middle, then some of the pink showing through the other places.

And I did come down in front, down in front.

Okay, so now let's go ahead with some, we'll call it neighbors.

And what I mean by that is neighbors to this guy.

So we'll kind of push some of that in.

It is, we got, let's see, 4 number 2, or this color, 4 of this and 1 Burnt Umber.

I call it number 2 because I was calling the prime number 1.

Okay now, I dipped in, not in the oil, just in the paint And I'm going to come around, and when I do this, it'll give me the start to some of these clumps.

That's what it will initially do.

Then we'll come a little darker in it.

So it's a building process.

So on this, it's sure helpful if you've got a pattern to look at.

Because I don't have any lines that show you fill this in here or there, I don't think anyway.

I have to tell you something about Claude too.

He was so inspiring, he would always motivate me, he'd say oh, gee, that looks like an Innes.

Are you familiar with George Innes?

Let me tell you a couple things.

He was from the Hudson River School.

Just a great guy, but what a personality.

His son wrote a book called "The Art, life, and letters of George Innes."

So it's by George Innes, Junior.

And it tells one time-- oh I love talking about him.

You've got to watch me a little bit too.

He went into a home, well, I'll paint.

He went into a home where a fellow had bought one of his paintings.

In other words, he was a patron.

And Innes says, oh, that's great, you got one of my best paintings.

Then he'd study it a little bit and say, oh, just a minute.

There's something that needs to be corrected up here on it.

He'd go up, he's going to take the canvas with him, the guy says, "No, I like the way it is."

"I'm taking it!"

"I like it the way it is!"

"Just because you bought it, you think it's yours?"

So he was a great guy, so enthusiastic.

Sometimes you make things better, and sometimes you make them worse.

There's one time where he painted on his son's, or his son had a painting.

He said, "Let me have a brush, I'll show you what you need to do."

So he did it, then when he finished, he said, "There, don't you like it?"

And the son said "No, I liked it better the way it was."

So the father, George Innes, said "Wipe it off!"

So he wiped it off, then George Innes said to the son, Now leave it-- when you get something good, leave it alone.

As if the son had done it!

Oh, I love George Innes.

So anytime Claude would say that looks like an Innes I'd think oh, that's great, what a compliment.

Okay, let's, I've come down here, and you can see my drawing-- I can see through and see it.

And that's very helpful.

So let's take some Burnt Umber I've got some Burnt Umber.

Should I put the Umber on first?

Yeah, let's put the Umber on.

This is going to be taking a flat brush-- what are you; you have a name.

You are a sable brush.

That's great!

Thanks for coming.

So I'll take this, and I'll take some of the Umber, pure Umber.

And I use my little fingernail, fingernail on the little finger to kind of touch this.

And when I come there, what I notice is, you can't see the trunk all the way through.

So I'll just sort of skip a little bit.

That's where I'm doing the skipping-- right there.

Your trees should taper so there is more width, more wide at the bottom.

I remember one time I was painting, or I guess I was looking at, there was a tree, and it was narrower on the bottom, wider on the top I said Claude, I saw a tree, it wasn't the way you say it-- wide up to narrow-- it was just the opposite.

He said "Well, you probably shouldn't paint it."

That was his answer.

Okay, we have a lot of little teeny ones coming off here.

You certainly can use liberty on them.

But the same thing holds true is that you taper, so it's more narrow as it goes further away from the tree Oh, I love doing this.

It's so exciting to paint again.

My teacher, Claude, at the end, he had Parkinson's.

But what he would do, he would kind of shake, pick up the paint, he'd come up, and he could make a very careful line.

Then he would shake again.

What a great man.

Okay, over here, I'll start up at the top again.

And you can do whatever you want.

I really like starting out and coming in rather than in going out, but either way, there's no right or wrong way on it.

As long as you hold to the principle that it's going to taper as it goes up higher.

And there's times where you may have to adjust that.

You think oh gee, I didn't do it quite right there.

We'll do it.

I want to feel as it connects in that it feels like it's part of that tree.

Okay, let's come down to this one.

And what I did across there, I used my little finger to kind of lean against, to work there.

Here I'm just putting my little finger against the edge of the canvas.

Push a little harder, get a little wider.

Please don't rush on these, I did a little bit on that.

But the more care you give it, the better the result.

Okay, on this one, I'm going to go ahead and place on the big tree here first.

We'll be putting other branches and so on over it.

You will see that some of the branches will be covered, they won't all be stark.

The nice thing I like about Claude Buck too is, we were sitting very early down what you call the bird refuge.

That's where I was ready to throw my painting into the water, I was so frustrated.

Anyway, I watched Claude, and here came a little homeless person, and he came over and he said, if you put a little more rhythm in, like this.

Claude did not say, oh, I know it all.

I was voted one of the top 100 in the state.

He said oh, what do you mean?

So the guy kind of showed him.

Come here, and just a little bit like that.

I was so impressed when that happened.

Okay, still doing with the Umber.

This one is just a little wider as it comes down.

When I say wider, I'm comparing it with that one.

Then we have a nice one that leans out into the opening here.

That's why it's so helpful to put on the acrylic And to put on the-- so you have the drawing to go by.

And some of these, we'll be working further on them when we go to stage 2.

So right now, I'm not too worried about the ending places.

This one comes down, it connects there.

Thank goodness for the drawing.

You notice on the DVDs, they will all have the tracing, the tracings of these paintings.

Sometimes it's helpful to have that for you.

But you certainly, as many people do, they'll send me photographs, e-mail on what they've done.

If I left that, that would be wrong.

Why would it be wrong?

Because this is a little wider than down below.

So we'll just widen that a little bit so it goes along with that correctly.

You can assess that and direct it as you work on because a lot of these will sort of be back in mystery as we put darks, foliage over them.

All right let's see what we do next.

Let's take, I got the fan brush, let's take a smaller fan brush, And I'm taking some of the Burnt Umber, and with this, I'm going to push along in here.

I haven't done it yet, I'm sort of showing you where it goes.

Now I'll go ahead and do it.

I'll sneak up a little bit there.

Of course, when you have the dark lines to draw by, you must be sure you cover them.

This acrylic covers very well.

There was one class where I taught, and we wanted to have the drawing a little more evident.

So we used markers, the Sharpie pens.

Oh, it made a nice job.

But then, the next time I went up to teach there, They said, oh, our paintings, the ink is all coming through.

So I had to correct about 9 paintings that did that.

So make sure you use something that's going to work for you.

Okay, that's pretty good.

We'll use that same Umber, it's pretty simplified filling in.

So we are going to use this down in the water.

On the land.

[soft scraping] The mystery will be achieved as we put on the next stage.

So this is very simplified.

Thank goodness!

Down here, just a little stronger.

I'm kind of saving the top there so I can see where it is.

This one, this is such a nice painting.

You saw the original, the finished one.

And you will have that same opportunity.

[soft scraping] Okay, let's take, on the time we have left now-- was that a time signal or was that a get back signal?

[Buck laughs] All right, over in here.

Oof.

By the way, how much time do we have left here?

This is so great!

I'm going to take some more of that middle that we put on, then this will-- gosh, are you the same color I put in the middle?

You are!

But you look different!

I think because, the reason it looks different is because I didn't really cover much of that, now I am.

[sighs] it helps when you know what you're doing!

And often when I'm teaching, there may be one of the students that does it just a little different than me, and I think, Wow!

That's what I want to do next time.

So learn from each other.

That's why Claude was so great.

He learned from a street person and I learn from my students.

There's always an opportunity to learn; be humble, and you can do it.

And be grateful after you're humble.

I'm going to do one more little line out here.

This one is quite important.

Oh gee, you're a little strong.

I'm going to put more of the middle tone on it just to reduce it a little bit.

Okay, now I want to take a color, let's see what you are.

This is 4 Burnt Umber, 1 Yellow Ochre, 1 White.

Let's see what this does.

This is, what the title it has, what I'm doing now is called the first clump.

So I'm kind of going in where I put these greenish clumps in, and I put this right on top without destroying all of that.

Now when I said that, I destroyed that one.

But you let some of the lighter greens show through.

And then as you notice on this, you're going to have some of it, it goes right across the trunks a little bit.

And we'll decide how much of the trunk we still want to show.

Oh you get the right color here, that would help.

Be sure when you do this, that you use it very lightly.

I'm finding that, ah, my first parts of this was a little generous, but it'll work.

And notice how I blend a little bit like that?

Kind of a diagonal blend.

It lets you soften over the trees slightly.

If you compare the two sides, you see what I'm talking about.

Put a little in here, a little in here.

I'll kind of place it on and then go ahead and blend it.

All right, it's placed on!

Let's blend it.

Just a little extra up here.

Oh, I love doing these shows!

It's so neat to have the opportunity-- 19 years with Prairie Public!

Wow!

Are some of the same people here that were there then?

My beautiful Barb is... oh, Gravel-- she's everything you'd ever want in a friend.

So let's take and put more of this on.

Notice again, what I said earlier-- as I come across the tree, or come to the tree, I go across a little bit, It will soften some of the branches so you feel the foliage is on this side as well.

I'm going to, I don't have much time left I know, but let's just take a big brush, this is a larger fan brush, And I'm just softening, blending them out a little bit.

That's great!

Aw, what a neat scene.

Did I really see this scene?

Yes, Oak Park.

Bob Dambach came out and photographed me at Oak Park and at the beach.

This is Oak Park, one of my favorite places.

That looks pretty good.

What I'm going to do, kind of make sure we get in, is some of the middle.

I have 5 Cad.

Yellow and 1 Cad.

Orange and 1 White, that's this mixture right here.

I'll pick it up with a fan brush.

It makes it just a little brighter.

Doesn't it?

The other thing that I use it for is, I can kind of spread it out.

If I spread it out, then it softens in a little bit with the neighborhood.

And that was put on just a little more generous than the other, other areas.

Now let's have some of this come down too.

I want to have this come down so we have a path of light.

You don't quite see that in my second stage, but I know there has to be a strong light in the final.

So this will give us a jump start.

And this, what I like is, you're not tied to something.

You say oh, that branch doesn't quite go there-- baloney, let it go, let the light come down.

So that's all right.

Be willing to learn.

Okay, well, this is just about what we want to have.

Um, I so like that.

I hope you do too, because we'll come back next week and this one, we'll take and go to the original.

This has been such a super lesson.

Thank you for watching, and we'll see you real soon like in a week.

Bye-bye.

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