- [Helton] What I like to do with these little five by sevens, they make nice greeting cards.

- So we're back here in the studio and I'm sitting with Jan, and she's got us set up with a cool project here.

I've got a very colorful piece of paper here, and it looks like you've got a tracing started for me.

So, what are we starting with here?

- [Helton] Okay, so today we're gonna paint a goldfinch.

- Okay.

- One thing that beginners always ask is, you know, they'll paint a bird or let's say they're painting a bird.

They paint the bird and then they have all this white paper.

And then they say, "Well, what should I do with my background?"

So what I like to do with classes where I'm working with beginners is we do this fun little underpainting, it's called an underpainting.

And what I do is I'll take a blank sheet.

We're doing five by sevens, and we'll just get it wet without water, and then we'll just pick a few colors, play with it, and then I actually take a piece of saran wrap, and that's what makes these cool textures.

And so, and we also think about when we do it, you don't want the whole thing to be red, blue, and green because we know we're gonna paint a bird.

So I always like to leave a lighter area.

Are you ready?

- Let's get going.

- I like to start with the dark.

So I'll mix up this little puddle.

- Okay.

- For us.

And get a little bit of water in there.

This is gonna be our black.

So we don't want it to be too watery.

I mix ultramarine blue, and I do use professional watercolors.

So these have nice strong pigment.

And I'm basically just kind of reconstituting this without too much water.

I'm trying to make a black, so I'm adding Quinacridone Burnt Orange to it, and you can see I've got kind of a brownish black, so I need a little more blue.

And these are nice brushes because we'll be able to do big strokes and then tiny, tiny detail.

You might want to work it around a little bit more, yeah.

Might even need more blue in there.

- Try not to smudge the line.

- That's okay, once you've got the shape established, you might pick up a little more color and drop it in there.

It's already wet, so it should just spread nicely.

Just drop it in, so it's nice and dark.

The next again we're gonna do is go to the black crown.

And I'm just going to, on this one, I'm just gonna take the side of my brush.

See, I can get bigger areas that way.

And so I'm basically just doing kind of irregular edges and I'm just gonna fill that in.

I just like to do all the darks at once, so I'm just gonna go right into his wing.

Be careful to reserve the light area.

- Because we can't paint a white.

If I fill it in, it's pretty well colored unless we take drastic measures after the fact.

- Yes.

I guess I'm a purist, and so I don't like to use masking.

Well, I'll use masking fluid if I need it, and masking fluid is something that we could have put on in advance and sort of protected those light areas.

- [Burchett] Is that something that just, it resists the paint where you can wipe it off?

Or is it something you peel off?

- Yes, it comes off, it's kinda like rubber cement almost.

It comes right up.

But yes, at the end of it, you can either use white paint, which, that's where I'm a purist.

I try not to use it if I don't need to.

I'd rather save the white of the paper, and in this case, you know, it's gonna have a pretty blue cast under it because of this underpainting.

I like that to show through.

I feel like it makes it more interesting, just a little.

You're doing a great job.

- I appreciate you saying so.

- And you're saving your lights and everything great.

So I'm making kind of a peachy color, and when I put this on the beak, can you see where it's darker?

So basically I'm gonna put those dark areas on there.

I'm not gonna fill in the whole beak.

I'm just going to get that color on there.

Okay.

You wanna go ahead and do that?

I'll let it set for a minute because I don't want it to all disappear when I put the yellow with it.

Okay, so before that dries, I'm going to take this yellow, and do you see how I'm brushing it off on the edge?

I don't want it to be too wet.

It'll just push all that orange away.

I'm not gonna worry about highlights and all that.

I'm just gonna paint around that orange and let it blend into this yellow.

And just to make it look, you know, really real, I'm gonna take a little bit of this blue and put it at the edges, just let it bleed in a little bit.

See how it just kind of mutes.

One of the hardest things with watercolor is learning how to control how much water versus paint.

So, if your brush is dry, you can literally touch that and it'll suck it up like a straw, the extra water.

- [Burchett] So there's a lot of green like undertones and things like that in the photo itself.

Now, we're not painting much green at all.

We've done oranges and blues and yellows and a little bit of red.

But what's influencing the color choices that we're putting on our paper?

- Right.

Well, in the photo, he's among a lot of greenery, and so he has that reflected color on him.

The reason I'm choosing to use the blues and the purples is because that's what we have in our background.

- Is this a photo that you took yourself?

- Yes, it is.

I actually grew the sunflowers outside my window on purpose so that I could stalk the goldfinches.

(both laugh) So normally the way I work is, I don't just sit.

I don't usually paint start to finish.

I mean, this is a small bird.

Even what we did today, I probably would've stopped, let it dry, come back before, you know, that's how these things happen.

and they're really impossible to prevent unless you let it dry completely.

- Well, 'cause you just got the two wet surfaces.

- Sure.

- Yeah.

- They want to talk to each other.

- Exactly.

But I think you did a great job for your first one.

- Well, I had a good teacher, so I appreciate you being patient with me.

and showing me the ropes a little bit.

Thank you so much for sitting down with us and sharing your wonderful studio with us, and this has been a good day.

- [Helton] Thank you very much.

- I appreciate it.