When people ask me Buck, how do you know when you are finished with a painting?

I say 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Now we're ready to do stage 2 of "Golden Retreat."

And we have on the canvas, the finished product, and we have the halfway stage that was finished last week.

I'm going to put Walnut Oil on this.

Oh gee, I was going to say I might have a touch of green in it.

That's excellent!

You can do it, or you don't have to do it, because when I wipe, it'll kind of remove that.

But it gives me an even, soft, wet area, and it really isn't real wet.

It's just enough so that the paint goes on quite well.

I'm going to take a fan brush.

Let's see, what I have is such a nice green.

This is Viridian Green and Yellow.

It looks like-- let me make sure on that.

I was going to say 2, I'm going to try equal parts and see what we get.

Wouldn't you know it?

It's equal parts.

Actually it's just a little stronger-- 1-1/2 Viridian Green.

1 Cad Yellow.

I'm using a fan brush, and I'm going to push this around.

When I push this around, I want to have less paint on than it first jumped out there with.

So what you're doing with this, is pushing it around.

But you can see on the original, you can almost get little individual clumps.

So on this, you come to each area, I'm using the corner of the fan brush and just sort of touching it around, like that.

You're making use of the previous applications so much, the first stage.

Some of the pink I'm hitting just a little extra because I don't want quite as much to show through.

Coming down a bit, and I want to be very careful on that.

What I mean by being careful on that is that I don't put too much on, I want to be able to control it.

I'd rather add than have too much.

But you can wipe a little bit away.

See how that works?

So it does work, there's different ways of doing it.

[soft scraping] I'll brush that just a little more too.

So this is brushed quite heavily.

Is that the word I wanted to use-- brushed quite heavily?

Geesch!

Come down here, and then I'm going to go across.

But I'm feeling when I do this that I can always wipe a little bit to get the quality that I want of the interplay of what was there and what's going on top.

On this side I'm scrubbing just a little bit harder without having quite the detail that's showing on the right side.

[soft scraping] Okay, so then I'll come over here just to push some of that around.

Okay now, this also goes down in the water as a first color scheme.

[soft scraping] The old Buck 2-step!

♪ Do do do Get out of the way, get out of the way, get out of the way.

He didn't say anything, I just did it on my own.

I didn't step on anybody's feet that time on my dance.

Okay, so I'm going to take a paper towel, and let's call you a clean paper towel.

And we'll just wipe a little bit, in doing it, I'm thinking of character.

So I'm not just wiping to remove some.

In each area I treat it as an individual.

That's so important in life-- treat each individual as an individual, not as just another student, not as another patron, but as a person.

Oh, I like that!

Okay, I think what I'd like to do would be to jump right to the middle part, and that's the sun area.

Oh, I already have White down there, so let's take dip in the Walnut Oil.

And what shall be my amount of Yellow?

I'll first start with 2 White, 1 Yellow.

I'll hold it up to the original.

Wow!

The reason I held it up to the original was, I thought I was on target and to impress you that I was on target.

Okay, dry brush.

This is going to move around a little bit.

It'll sort of touch the green slightly I like that so much, I think I'm going to leave it, and then I may draw a little branch into it.

But I like the way it looks.

It would be so nice if somebody would say ♪ Uh-huh, We do too.

♪ Un-huh.

But the poor camera people, they're so tied into what they're doing, and we have no audience.

Okay, so I'm going to take some more of that, corner of the brush.

And I'm going to sneak it around in little places.

Now, I'm putting this on, and I'll come back and touch that where I've placed it so it blends in a little bit.

So I'm ready to do that.

I've picked up another dry brush, and I'll go right across.

So you can see I'm not competing with my diva, the center of interest.

These are supernumeraries next to the diva.

Those are are opera terms.

My wife taught opera for 28 years, the adult ed.

Oh, she did such a great job!

Such a workhorse, oh.

[soft scraping] A little bit more in there.

All right, now, let's go ahead with that same thing.

We have the yellow and white there, we've been placing it around.

Let's just establish it in our path of light here.

We may have to, and we will have to bring the green over a little closer on the shoulders of that yellow going through.

You know what I hate about these shows?

They end, they end.

I love doing them, I just absolutely love the staff that I work with at Prairie Public.

Okay, this, strong down there.

That gives you a nice impact.

So in this, there's no question.

The center of interest is right there.

But this is another supportive interest, supportive interest, not center of interest.

We'll have that dark against the light, dark rock against the light.

Okay now, what will help as we put on-- This is Alizarin Crimson and Van Dyke Brown.

I have about equal parts; I'll put some over here.

Now, this is a little more selectively placed on so that when you allow some of the clumps to show through, you have to skip here and there, like that.

I hope you'll stay tuned for all the shows.

They just, a variety of subjects.

And I love to get e-mails from people saying that they love the show.

And a lot of them, they'll say, I don't paint, but I sure like watching you work.

And that's great!

I'm going to go just a little more-- what are you-- what color are you?

Oh, you are blue.

How did you get there?

I don't want you.

I want the Van Dyke Brown and Alizarin.

But now I've made it so it's just a little more the Van Dyke Brown.

And once I put this on, then I'll take a small, little brush, not necessarily a small, little brush, I'll take a brush and blend across it so it kind of disappears into the clump.

And I've said this before, but I use my little fingernail to lean on so I can be a little more steady as I do this.

You could have as we do in the real art world, you have a little mahl stick and come down and do it.

But I've chosen not to do that.

Okay, the big one here, you don't see much up there, then it starts down here, and it's a pretty good dark there.

That would be a nice balance for this.

It too will have some softening done as we do it.

The softening allows some of the foliage to come across the branches.

That's one thing that I kind of, I don't want to say the word regret, but when I see some paintings, and they just have a stark skeleton, you don't have a feeling of any foliage coming over it.

One here.

You can use whatever brush you want.

Sometimes just a round brush will work well.

I'm using the edge of the flat brush.

Okay, I won't blend this yet.

Oh, I need to have this one.

This one is so important because it's right out there with the others.

But now I want to place some of this dark.

I'll let that just set for a while down in the water.

I think we need a larger brush.

What color are you going to do down there, Buck?

Well, I have the Van Dyke Brown and a little bit of Alizarin.

It's about 3 Brown and 1 Alizarin.

This is a much better brush.

It accomplishes so much so much faster.

Tickle up along there a little bit.

Just a little bit of mystery.

You know, that gives me the feeling of, I like that where it's a very little.

I have another application with the Alizarin and Van Dyke Brown, very little, I kind of wiped most of it off the brush so you get just a little bit of darks in there.

Touch across the trunks of the trees slightly.

Oh, this is beautiful!

And I know it's done quite quickly.

That's what I say, the countdown.

You're looking to do this in, I don't know what it is, 24, 27 minutes, something like that.

It's not the whole 30.

So that you're doing things that you want people to learn from, and at the same time when you do yours, do it just a little slower and a little more carefully.

But see, that works so well, that little extra dark just pushed across, and you undercut some of the little bushes or boughs, I guess you'd call it.

Then see, this one before and then after.

It helps, and I notice it wasn't very long, but it helps when you allow it to set just a little bit like these where we put the darks on.

Then when you come with this, you can still see it.

However, the big support is the acrylic outline of all the trees.

That really helps.

So be sure you get some supportive work from your acrylics.

You can do it with oils, it just needs to have the time to dry.

I was talking about the outlining of it.

We're just flying along here.

The other thing that I need to have you watch is-- see, this clump needs to be blended.

Try to do it so that the clumps aren't all the same size, sizes.

Aren't all the same sizes.

I don't know why that sounds wrong.

All the same size.

[soft scraping] Okay, this brush, the fan brush, and I'm placing it on.

I kind of lean a little bit on one corner, then feather it.

So the corner touching the canvas, and this one's up just a little bit.

So I kind of call that where you kind of mush the corner of the fan brush a little bit to do this.

And some people might not want to use their fan brush that way.

You can use other brushes, this works for me.

[soft scraping] More, more, more!

[soft scraping] I'm going to put just a little extra green on.

This is the first green that we put around.

I want just a little bit of that, and what's happening, in doing it I let it blend in a little bit with the dark that I've just placed on.

So if you feel anyplace that the dark is a little too strong, like here, you just add a little of the extra green in.

So it's a combination of adding some of the darks and adding some of the greens.

Mmm, I like you, I like you.

I'm going to take some of my orange and yellow and just sneak up a little bit here and there.

Now, I'll place these on, then I'll come and blend them.

This is such an important part of landscape, seascape painting, skies, whatever you want.

You have the center of interest, then you have little, I just called them flicks, little flicks.

And you need to disguise them a little bit so they're not too, oh, I don't know, too noticeable, I guess is what you say.

They need to be discovered.

Okay, let's come down to the water, and I have Van Dyke Brown and a little Blue.

I have Ultramarine Blue and Van Dyke Brown.

Oo, gee, that's super.

"Supercagalistic sallioshis."

Down in here, remember this one, we said this we want to have a pretty good contrast, because that's really supportive of what is up above.

I'll put a little bit of this, just little, let's see, that's backwards letter C. Then we'll put a little light in there And on the other side of course, they are on the other side!

The little light will be-- here it's on the left side and here it's on the right side.

I hope that makes sense to you.

And just maybe a little teeny touch in there, not much, not much.

Okay, let's take then, let's see what we want.

I have some of this golden color, and I'm going to add just a little Umber in it and see what I get.

That's brush-mix equal parts.

We'll just spot this on a few places and then decide what else we want to do with it.

One down in there, that's kind of nice.

What are you?

Are you a rock?

I don't think so.

Well, you are going to be one now.

And one over here.

Okay, so on the other side, I want more of a grayish look.

I have the, what are you?

You are Payne's Gray and White and little Ochre I like what this does.

Now, I haven't blended those.

I've put the paint on the rocks without blending them.

And we want to have a pretty good chunk of that right on here.

And just a little bit, let's put just a little bit in here.

Now, what I also want on that rock is some good light.

So I'm taking Yellow and White, kind of brush-mix equal parts.

And this really helps bring the skylight down to the foreground.

Then I want to do this before I blend the rocks.

I want to take some Yellow and White, and that is truly equal parts, Yellow and White.

I'm going to put this on with the knife.

You see how I scrape?

And you can see it mostly on one side.

Then as we get lower we'll make it just a little not quite as wide as the first one.

Okay, we've got blending time coming up.

And on the blending, I want to do the rocks just slightly.

Just blend the edges, I'll change brushes.

So you're pulling the light a little bit into that dark outline that you've placed on there.

And some of that same gray that we placed on here can just go back in there so you feel very faint rocks, but they're so much in the light area that we don't see much of them.

Let's take some of this orangeish tone that we had in there first.

See, this is all a nice support for that.

And what I find quite interesting, having to work a little faster than normal, sometimes your strokes are just where they should be.

You don't overlabor them.

You don't think too much about them.

Okay, I'll blend a little there, then we'll see what we have.

Here's a good mop brush.

Oh, I think what I better do is take and flatten this out just a little bit.

Just bringing a fan brush across this way, and also just a little bit this way.

I'm going to let some of this drift over to the right and left.

Okay, what should I do?

I want to take some Van Dyke Brown.

Make sure I have some good depth in there.

Come up close to the rocks, maybe touch them just a little bit.

But you really don't put any dark in the middle part at all.

Just a final, kind of final before we say good-bye.

We are ready to say good-bye.

Are we ready to say good-bye?

Just put a little light, oops, I going to see some White.

Just a little bit.

♪ Only 5 minutes more.

Dreamer.

Okay, there we've done it.

I'm sure there's little things that you can do.

But it's going to work great.

Thanks for being with me.

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