If I only paint from rote notes you may learn, but I won't!

Let's both learn today.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Boy, am I excited about this new series, because it's going to be something you can identify with, you can appreciate.

In fact, there was a couple series ago where we did a couple paintings from pochades to completion without any finished painting in the studio-- that's painting with risk.

I had such good response from these shows.

I received an email from a fellow in Ghana!

And he ordered one of these, and that was so great.

He said, "I Love those pochades."

So a pochade essentially the way we're going to do these series is, I have the little pochade, I have a halfway stage, and then the final painting is done, ooff.

It's new to you, new to me, but what a joy to paint with risk and trust and confidence and so on.

Let me explain just a cute joke I saw kind of painting from memory and this painting was painted from memory.

I went out, I was driving along, and saw it in the car and I remembered it the next day.

Now, here's the cartoon I saw.

It showed a fellow, I'll just use this to mark on, it had a just a simple line across, it would represent the ocean and then up above it had a square like that and this was where a fellow came up and the artist explained to him, he says this was painted basically from memory.

I call it "Sunset Over the Ocean," and he has this square painted from memory.

Right?

Well, we won't have any square suns today.

Let me say a few words about the composition.

You know, just about any painting you ever paint is painted from memory.

And what do I mean?

You go outside and you paint on location, well in 5 minutes you have different lighting, it's moved, it's moved.

So you kind of remembered the first part of it, but anyway, this is what I remembered was that dramatic sun showing against that tree and then you have what you call the lyre shape.

L-Y-R-E, very famous composition that the old masters used.

You have that, and you usually have the bulk on one side, the distance on the other and your center of interest in the middle of that lyre shape.

This also has just a very nice background that you can see, and we'll make use of this as we put on the paint, and we'll do this in the acrylic stage.

As you look below the pochade, this is the middle stage, this is what we're going to complete to this week, then next week we'll take this up and finish it from inspiration and memory!

You know, I have an article and I'm giving a little introduction on the acrylic stage I want to talk just a little bit more about what we're doing and why.

I have an article on the artist Monet.

M-O-N-E-T. French artist, and it was saying that he returned again and again to sites that were familiar to him.

So if I have another golden sunset, you can see that, and then the other point in the article says he would go as far as he could on location, then he'd come back and finish it in the studio.

And that's great too.

Now, like I was saying, if you are painting from memory, you really are painting from memory while you're on location.

You're looking at it, you're painting from memory.

Remembering principles-- one of the principles is the darkest dark and the lightest light have a meeting and that's usually your center of interest.

Then you watch other things, you watch the flowing branches.

These are all things that you need to know and that it sure makes it possible to get a good painting with your painting right from the subject or from memory or so on.

Okay, let's go ahead, and we'll start putting some color on and the color that I'll start with will be raw sienna as we do the sky, so I'm taking, these are all acrylics, by the way, on stage one.

I have a fan brush and water, we'll juice that up pretty good, and come flowing up here.

You're going to find as I put this on that it'll be what you would say kind of uneven.

I don't need to have brushstrokes back and forth where you use a roller brush and make it just right.

Some of the vitality will come through the variety of directions and strokes, then when we come with the oil on top of this, then that will give more refinement.

Right now what is a help is if I go slightly over the drawing, I can still see it-- that's why it's helpful to put that on, and I've put that on with a blue acrylic which was done beforehand to save time.

I'll push over in the corner a little bit here even though I can see that I have less there, so you have no worry about coming down in the midst of the trees at this moment.

I'll put just a little bit more on there.

Okay, let's let this come down right to the horizon... [soft scraping] and we'll also let some of this come down in the water.

You might say well, I don't really see it down in the water down below.

But oh, Why not?

It gives unity, compatibility with the sky.

Okay I'll brush this just a little bit more, checking to see how much water I have in the paint.

I like it where there's a control on it, because when it dries, it might dry a little dull.

So if you wanna make use of the underneath green.

I primed, this is called priming a canvas or having a primed canvas and I do this 99.9% of the time, one color or the another, rather than just straight white.

Okay, let's go down next to taking our yellow color I think what I'll do, I'll start with just pure yellow first, and then we'll eventually work in the white into it, so I've cleaned the brush and wiped the brush.

I'm going a little more dry brush on this simply because it's a smaller area I'm going to be working on, and it's also, it needs a little bit more of an impact.

You can see where the Raw Sienna's dried out a little bit there, which is good.

Okay, here's my impact.

Love that fan brush, it does good work quickly, then as you reach this area, this is an outline for that sky, as I point over to the original, and I'm calling this the original right now.

See how that little-- you don't see that line through there, so make sure that you cover it.

Acrylic will cover acrylic.

And that's what we have there, we have acrylics from the Ultramarine Blue.

I know one time I took, I was teaching a workshop and we had all these drawings, and I wanted to do a method where we'd have to see through and see the drawing and I used, I don't know what it was a sharpie pen or something like that, but anyway, there were probably about 18 in the class.

The next time I came back to teach was 5, 6 months, they brought in about 7 of those where you could still see the ink coming through.

So you really need to be cautious about what you use for outlining your picture.

Now, I'll spot some of this through the trees.

It may be that we'll lose a little bit of this when we put the tree color on, then we'll find it again.

Okay, we have over in here.

A little bit there, if you do put on a little larger shapes, we can always cut them down with the trees, this covering over them.

Oh, it's so great to do these shows, and I just love the comments you make in emails and so on in my blog.

You often will show me what you've done, and I think that that's marvelous!

And sometimes I even change them a little bit.

I had this pinto that was on a, I guess you call it a mesa because it was little kind of hills behind, then it was eating up on this cliff.

So somebody sent one, and they had removed the mountains behind and had put in a sky a more of a sky and some distant trees, and they had a little stream that the horse was looking into, drinking, and I thought, boy, that's beautiful!

Do it!

Okay, so now we have on this tree, this tree we'll have just a little bit.

Let me point to the pochade for a second.

You see that little outline of a branch, a trunk, you don't see much, but I find if you just put little dots on each side, you kind of pick it up, so that's what we'll do here.

We'll come right in here.

A little bit on this side and a little bit in here and then up above there's a little bit there.

We can decide if we want more or less on this, but that's where we're starting.

Let's see, we better come down a little bit lower here, then into the water itself.

You always have what?

Light traveling in a straight line.

Light travels in a straight line.

Light travels in a straight line.

Here's a good little thing to do.

"Good little thing to do!"

See, I'm holding my little finger against the edge of the canvas.

There's where it is, and I need to come down, and it's right there, so it's the same distance, which means it's a straight line.

Okay, so I haven't, I haven't placed on the sun yet, so when I come down with the glow and I'm going to say it's right next to the trees, so if I do like that and come down down down down down down-- oh, very good Buck!

That's why when you pitch, if you could see the plate, you don't guess, you throw it right on the corner.

See that?

You carry athletics right over into art, that's helpful, then watch the clouds as the ball goes over your head, huh Dave.

Okay so here we go with this.

Put it on like that.

Okay now, I'm coming back to the sky.

I want to look at this; I went along the line there, but that isn't quite what I want.

I want to have just a little bit of splash up too, because it was a sunburst.

That's a good title.

Maybe you're not "Golden Sunset," maybe you're sun "burst."

I do like that to be as we suggested, a little more full, more paint there and I'll wait a minute before I put on the white so that the white will go more on a dry surface.

Let's come down to the distant trees and I kind of feel that what I would like to do on that is have just a little different than the model on the easel, I want to get a little softer.

So I have yellow, and what are you?

Violet.

I want to just hold this up there.

See that's a little lighter, let's go just a little more violet, I'll go up above too.

When we put on oils, of course, we'll get those colors just right, but um!

Gee, I'm just amazed how much of the same brush we've used, this again is the fan brush.

When we get to the oils, we'll do some brushwork and some knifework.

That's why the pochades have been so exciting and interesting across the country, is the use of the knife.

[soft scraping] I know when I was teaching workshops, there was one place that a little dubious.

Oh I don't know if the people will want to use a knife.

This was a painting where it was 99% knife.

But after I did it, they said oh next year you have to do the knife again!

So it's fun to learn something new.

When I put oil on there, I'll have just a little more reddish color, right now I want the value correct, so I'm adding a little more yellow with it than I might see on the halfway stage.

[soft scraping] Oh, even when you're having fun, the time goes, doesn't it?

Well, I hope you're enjoying this and I hope it makes sense to you.

I hope that explaining just how to approach it, you might do it entirely different, but the thing that I want to emphasize even when doing a pochade and I said it earlier, and let me repeat, that you're basing your work on principles that you've learned, for instance with the trees.

The grace in the trees, the nice flow you have on them.

All those things you've been told to do by your teachers and whether you're painting fast or slowly, you use the same thing.

The rules of success.

But don't be afraid to experiment.

And I find-- don't be afraid of failure!

Don't be afraid of failure.

What is failure?

It's just a temporary backstep, but it's not the end of it, Now I'm going to come and put some dark in for the trees and I'm looking at having-- what are you?

Would you please identify yourself.

I think you're Payne's Gray.

You are Payne's Gray I'm going to take some Payne's Gray and Raw Sienna.

Let's see if that will work.

That gives me kind of a muted greenish tone, and the minute I say that I think, okay, let's put a little blue with that too.

Oh I like that.

It just it just turns it a little away from the gray into kind of a gray-green.

What brush should we use?

We'll use the fan brush!

Okay here, now as I do this, I'm possibly going to lose those branches just a little bit.

Watch again the edges, the edges being a little bit past what you have put on for the drawing.

It's, oh-- wait a minute you gotta have a race-- come on, come on!

Oh, I guess this guy's going to win.

Okay let's come over here and let me repeat as I come near the edge of the tree, push up just a little bit.

I'd almost want to have a little less paint, so you're not losing that little leaf edge to it.

Okay, you're out of there.

Let's come over towards the sun area.

We'll do one other thing as we get closer there, and that would be-- it's so important-- You talk about the lightest light meeting the darkest dark.

Point it out on the pochade, that's right in this area.

But notice the edge of the tree is not sharp.

That sun just diffuses it.

That's what kind of a mistake when people want to put on the darkest dark against lightest light.

You have to account for refraction, the little softening of the edges.

To make that happen, I'm going to go back to that yellow and violet, and just put it right on the edge here.

[soft scraping] Same thing, come out just a little bit with character.

Come down, I'll need some more of that for right down in here.

Okay, that's good.

Then just the continuation of the tree foliage.

We'll put some over in here.

This again is just pushed around so there's no one direction going.

Look how, see, this dried and it looks fine.

So we come down in here.

The only thing I'd probably change is to make sure that when you put on the trunk of the trees, that you can see them, so you might have to go a little darker, maybe with a purple or something.

See, I can see them, and the one that we have ready to paint on next week will-- I can see them, so I'm not going to worry too much about them there.

[soft scraping] See I'm pushing in a little bit to the bottom of these, and at the same time, you're keeping the top softer.

Okay, we'll come over on the left side.

And when I'm coming on the left side, I'm coming into the the bank as well as up into the trees.

Oh it's such a privilege being here!

Prairie Public Television.

They're the leader in bringing the world to the people.

Okay, over on the right side.

I notice that when you have the path of the sun onto the land, see, we have that right down in here, that see, this needs to have a little of that happening too, that being the burning, the warmth.

Now down in the water, I want to have, let's see, you're violet, aren't you?

And what else, who do you want to go with you?

You can have purple, or blue or blue.

Let's take purple.

Oo, I love that color.

Oh, gee, just a little strong, I'll put a little Payne's Gray with it.

Um.

That is such a nice complimentary color to the yellow.

I'll narrow that sun just slightly there.

Okay now, let's put on the sun.

When we put on the sun, I guess I'll do it with the brush, of course, in the oil stage, we'll certainly use a knife.

Okay, this is yellow-- that's white, you are yellow.

A lot of white.

This is the grand march.

The fat lady has just began to sing, in opera terms.

Okay, we have this showing down below, which means it's a reflection, and just to make sure, you know because down here we want to make it just straight line, I can make a small dot like that and that shows me that's the middle of down below, so I'll put just this in there.

And I'll probably want just a little bit lower too, a little bit over to the sides.

Now I'll emphasize slightly more the yellow I had placed on earlier.

I see in looking at the model that the yellow comes down in a little bit, it kind of breaks through slightly, and then where we placed it before, but just to show it more.

There and here and here, and this will happen even in the oils, when we put color over the trees, you're going to find some of these you have to wipe a little bit and maybe add more.

I notice one that we didn't place on.

Let's just go across here first, right in here.

As we said earlier-- I think we kind of lost it-- was where you see a light against the tree, then it establishes the tree trunk a little bit more.

Oh, that is so much fun!

Now, we don't have much time left, so I'm going to take just a little bit of Raw Sienna and blue.

You're a Turquoise Blue.

That's a nice combination.

We'll put some of this on the bank just to start achieving a little bit of the heft of the land.

Oh, I'm so pleased to be back with you for another season!

And this is going to be exciting, because next time-- you come back next week-- you know what's going to happen?

Well, I'm glad you do, because I don't!

We're going to go ahead, we're going to have a great time showing how to finish the painting.

So we'll look forward to seeing you then.

Oh, in the meantime, use your imagination, paint from it.

Just don't worry about making a mistake, just have fun.

You'll just enjoy it, it'll give you such a peace and comfort.

And often, often the pochade outshines the completed painting, because you did it with your heart, and you did it with energy.

We'll see you next time!

Thank you so much for being in my studio today.

Bye.

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