Are you in a good mood?

So am I, and today I'm gonna put a great mood into a painting I call "Mood."

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ At home on my studio, I have a little saying that says "There's no growth in the comfort zone and there's no..." what is it?

"There's no comfort in the growth zone."

Right.

So if you're going to learn something, you better darn well realize you're going to face little obstacles here and there.

I'll try to remove some of them from you if I get my words all right.

Okay, we have a canvas, you can see the original, and it's called "Mood."

It's a vertical seascape on an 18-by-24 canvas and if you look to the right, you can see the line drawing of it and you can see the priming of the canvas.

This is 6 white, 1 black or Payne's Gray and 1 Permanent Green Light.

The thing I like about this is, it looks good coming through.

You can feel its influence if you look through there, then the other thing is, today we're doing the acrylic stage so all this will be done with acrylics, then next week, thank goodness for a 2-parter, we can put on the oil.

So let's go down to the palette, and I've mixed up one color.

Actually I guess I've mixed up a couple, but a lot of it we'll do in front of you.

This is ultra-- this is Thalo Blue, and let's see, I've got 3 Payne's Gray, 1 Thalo Blue and just a little touch of Yellow Ochre and white.

This will go on our sky, and we'll see where else we go with it.

I'll start down low in the lower part of the sky, and I'll come right into the tree area.

This has all been outlined with Ultramarine Blue.

The outline is always helpful to have on so that if you need to wipe a little bit that you can still see.

Can you see how I can still see the drawing there, of course, we're under a time frame so we have to kind of rush a little bit-- so you can be more careful so you don't have to do so much wiping.

I do come down across the horizon a little bit so that I can blend into that and the horizon won't be quite as hard.

Let's just soften this a little bit, and then I'm going to take and clean the brush with water and then let's see what we'll have up above.

I have some white.

I have a little Raw Sienna and a little bit of the first mixture of the sky.

It's so helpful to have that painting right close by, and then we can see what happens.

See, that doesn't change the green much does it?

But it does allow us to blend into the color that's already on the sky.

Oh I want to tell you something.

You've heard the term "Walk your talk," and that means somebody says I'm going to do this.

I'm going to do this.

I'm great, I'm great!

Okay, so let's see you walk it.

I have art students that rephrase that a little bit, and I'm going to use that this whole series.

I've probably used it in the past, and that is, "Talk your walk."

In other words, I'm going to tell you what I'm doing, and what I'm going to do and why.

Now, I think I've been doing that in the past, but I want to make very sure that I do it for you.

Okay, continue with this little mixture which was the Raw Sienna and white and some of the blue mixed into it, then I'll come with a little bit-- Let's see do I have...?

Yes, here's a small knife.

I'll take the same Raw Sienna and white but I won't mix the blue into it.

The minute you say that, I hear it and I think, oh I think I better mix a little bit of the blue into it.

Okay, this will always give me a chance to go just a little lighter, but not being pure white.

And we'll put up where the top of the skyline will be, the cloud line.

Then I'm going to take a fan brush and just soften a little bit the paint that's there.

I'm doing two things: I'm blending it so it won't be quite as bright, and then the other thing, I'm knocking down the textures just a little bit.

Sometimes in putting on the textures, I would just as soon do it when it's dry or when you go to the oil part.

Okay, I have the same color in a smaller fashion, and I'm going to put this in like that.

And you can still that edge, then down at the sun area, I put that on with a knife.

I'm going to first take and flatten it a little bit and the reason I'm flattening it is because if I blend it, it would lighten the area around it a little too much.

Flatten it, and then blend.

You know, it's so neat to come back here to Prairie Public and do the filming of these shows.

What I like is, yesterday we went out to eat and there were 2 different couples that said "Oh we sure enjoy your shows!

Thank you for your shows!"

It's really neat to get that type of response, and I receive tons of emails.

And let me tell you this, you can send me emails-- buckpaulson@cox.net And many will send a photograph of their paintings, either paintings they have done or paintings that they've done of the show's works.

And I've made comments on them.

I love to do that.

All right, now we have that on, so we'll leave that.

And then we'll go next-- I kind of want to put the rocks in early, and in the acrylic stage whereas in the oil it would be just the opposite, we'd put the rocks in last.

We put these in so we can kind of work against them.

They'll be a little dry by the time we put the foam near them.

And in oil, since they will stay wet, then you make sure that you put them in last so you're not banging into them with the water color.

I have just a little bit of Payne's Gray that I'm placing on with that.

It's going to make it just a little bit darker.

You always help yourself as you put this on if you watch the edges just a little bit, make them a little peaked and like that, and then I'll jump out to this one and do the same.

Now, the lower ones are so dramatic and good, but I want them to be just a little darker.

So let's see, we have Payne's gray and Ultramarine Blue.

This is a stiff brush, a bristle brush.

What is very intriguing down below here is a little foam pattern that's going to be riding on that flat surface right above where I'm working here.

So as I put this on, I'll just kind of almost suggest a little foam pattern by cutting into it and then we have the final rock down below, and let's do that quickly.

This is also the blue and Payne's Gray.

We will as I suggested next week we will come with our oil stage on top of this, so that gives us real refinement.

This kind of blocks it in.

It does establish the colors quite well so when you put on the oil you can go a little softer, a little thinner so the underneath will show through.

Otherwise you ask why are you putting on the acrylics first?

You wouldn't have to; there were days years ago when I first started doing the paintings.

We do one show a day and for each half hour a complete painting, and we'd do all oils-- we really had to rush on that.

Oh.

I don't think that was as helpful as this might be.

But I constantly get emails where people say gee, when you first started doing that I thought what's going to happen?

Then it started forming up!

And that's what's great.

I don't do that to surprise you, but it's very much fun to do it.

Okay, now I want to just check my notes out here.

For the trees, I got 3 Permanent Green Light, 1 Thalo Blue, and 1 Payne's Gray.

This will do several things.

One, and I've wiped a bit so I don't have a lot on the brush.

This will give me a start on the trees.

I want to softly go on this.

We will when we get to the oils, we'll put something over this that will soften a little bit before we finish them anyway, so if we're a little darker right now, that's to be expected.

Okay, let's put this over here, and you can see as I do this how that the underpriming is showing through.

Is it not?

Often on a painting when you do it this way and you let the underneath show through, you think well that's all right.

That gleams okay.

That's okay.

But the more you cover it, then sometimes you realize there's too much of that showing through and you have to cover it a little bit more.

Okay, now I'm going to take that same water color.

Oh excuse me, it's going to become water color!

It's tree color.

So I'm going to take this with the fan brush and I'm softly going in behind here.

As I had suggested earlier as I put this on, I mix just a little bit into the color that has come over the horizon so that it's not too sharp.

Okay can you see that all right?

I don't ride the canvas like a saddle!

You could get off the horse-- let me see it!

Here's one thing that I find very helpful too.

If you have that splash-up wave, it's a tendency to put it in, and you're going to enjoy it.

Often in acrylics, and I'm doing it today, I'll knock it down just a little bit so that when I eventually put the oils in, I can get that misty feeling going up like that.

Okay, let's continue with this color, the tree color, and we're going to put this in the areas where we have the dark water.

I have a little water on this brush, so it makes it flow quite easily.

You can see how much-- you're coming over the rocks a little early!

You can see how much use I make of that fan brush.

I'm a fan of the fan of the fan!

It's like somebody once yelled across the street "Hey I know somebody that knows somebody that knows somebody that knows Buck Paulson!"

I thought oh, that's good.

He was just kidding, of course.

All right; do we have any other dark there?

Might have this one come down just a little bit more.

Okay, let's go with the same dark.

We have quite a bit of it to fill on.

"Fill on," that's a new word.

Fill in!

Fill on, put on.

I like putting this on just a little bit of movement in the brush rather than you know, you're not painting a wall.

In fact I don't know if any of you would let me paint your wall.

Might get a little wild, but speaking of painting walls, my wife said that I could paint the inside of our door.

The inside of our door!

Going outside in the front door, and oh my gosh, I did it.

I put kind of an ethereal landscape on it, long tall trees and then I had my 3 granddaughters, 3 of the 10 granddaughters, come and they put leaves around the side of it on the wall.

I don't know, in the olden days we would have gotten into trouble if we'd done that, but it looks good.

It gets comments!

Okay there we are, there we are.

So now let's take, let's take some foam.

This is the sky color, we used this in the sky.

So I'm going to add just a little more white with it.

I want to hold this up to the original and see.

Oh!

That needs to have a little purple in it.

Well, of course, the oil would, we could get that more so in the oil stage, but let's try this.

All right, clean the brush, and let me just hold that.

Yeah, that's going to work a little bit better.

So when I place this on, remember what I said.

We don't want to splash up to high right now.

I think I better put just a little more blue in that.

When we get to the oil stage, we'll get more-- the little violet.

Yeah, this is better.

I'll come close and in doing so, I sort of want to have so that this is not too sharp, not too hard so when we put the oil on, we can get that misty feeling.

All right the next level, right in here.

It's so fortunate we don't have a middle stage on this, some paintings I do, but on this one, so wherever I stop, I say that's where I wanted to be!

That's where we wanted to be today!

You're a little too much straight across, so that's better.

Now I'm going to come down through the middle.

Let's see, where else we're going to go with this?

Oh, over on this side and a little bit on the back.

I have just a little water in the brush, it makes it move just a little more freely.

And we have this, there's a little foam that comes in here, across there and then this.

This spot right here, I'm going back to the darker foam.

It's just it's not exactly spelled out like that way, but it does have some misty foam of a spray coming there.

[soft scraping] Then we can always have just a little bit of this foam near the rocks.

Let's take the darker one.

It's great being with you.

The time moves on... so do we!

Okay, that's a little foam on the rocks, then inside here, and then we have foam down here going against the rocks and some out front.

Okay now what I want to do is mix make a mixture here, then we'll let some of that come on down and see what we have.

What do we want for that you ask?

Well, I need to have some green and white.

So here's the white and let's take some of this Permanent Green Light.

We use a little bit of it and maybe a touch of blue.

We'll see.

More.

Okay, I'm more of the feeling that we probably should take just a little black with it too.

Let's push over there like that.

Let's see what that gives us.

Where are you Payne's Gray?

If I say black, I mean Payne's Gray!

Okay, so we're going to splash this down with the fan brush and we're coming first to the eye of the wave, which is here.

Now see, that doesn't change much from what was there, and I'll push it down so it kind of fans over.

If it mixes in would be best, but if it's dry and this seems to be in between, so that's mixing just the way we want it.

Thank you!

Next stage, next place.

Right along there, and then let's have some down here.

Now, when I say down here, I'm looking at this.

Be just kind of swishy-ish back and forth like that so it has some semblance of movement right now.

Okay,let's quickly take some more white and... this will be with a little Raw Sienna.

Where you going to put this?

Oh I know where I'm going to put this.

This goes right through the middle of this lower part.

Now watch what happens here.

We just kind of swish it in back and forth like that with the fan brush.

Have you ever painted a whole painting with just the fan brush?

I don't know, this one's getting pretty close.

Let's take another brush, and we'll put some-- this is a good one-- flat sable brush.

And we want to put this right on the rock so this is right in the path.

No notice how that is a strong foam pattern.

Then we want to have the light come right against the rock.

Like that.

Okay, to get a little bit of a start on the foam patterns, we take the Raw Sienna and white and we'll go up just a little bit.

Notice the direction-- they're slanting going up.

Slanting going up, and if I have just a little smaller line or narrow at the top that would be kind of a natural thing.

And we'll take some of this and come down to the next spot right in here, right next to the rock, and I want some of this as a starter on my big wave.

But notice that I'm not right on the edge.

See, there's a little gray foam above it.

We'll come over to the side... put some on there and then we'll come down to this wave, also has a little bit of a splash up.

Now we have just a couple minutes left, and what I want to do is, on these blank areas, this is some of the foam that we placed up here.

Let's have just a little bit of a swish on that.

I'm going to go just a little darker, a little blue on that.

Oh that's pretty!

And then on this side, same thing just a little bit, and down front.

Boy, it's hard to stop when you get started.

I'm doing it in acrylic.

It can be done all in oil.

There is no problem with that.

It's just that when I'm at home, a lot of the time I still like doing the acrylics.

Because I love the little play-through, the oil of the acrylics.

There's a little blue feeling on the wave, a little blue feeling on the wave.

I feel very good where we are.

We'll get you next week and we'll be going further with this.

I have just a little this softness, the foam, and I'm kind of pushing it down, maybe just to get a little misty, just slightly misty on it.

This one, you're watching the movement, so it comes down this way.

Did you see that, coming down that way.

Over here, we have a little light right above the rocks too, the foam against the rocks.

I haven't put any highlight on them yet.

We'll do the rocks at the proper time, which is coming a little bit later.

Let's go just a little more light with the time we have, just a little more light in the middle, because this is such a path!

This is the path to the sky.

Oh, it's been great showing you how to do this painting!

I think you'll enjoy doing it yourself and what I always like is when a student will and when I say "student," let's just say a viewer.

Because maybe you're the teacher.

When they will do the painting, and they'll make little variations of their own.

I had somebody once paint, we painted a horse, and there was a kind of a mesa behind it, and they took the mesa out and put a little stream, and that was beautiful!

It doesn't matter whose idea it is.

The idea is to paint great art.

Okay, so is there anything else we should be doing there?

I think not.

That's a pretty good stage for the acrylic stage.

So you come next week because we're going to put on oils and refinement.

Thank you for watching; it's been a good trip.

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