If you haven't seen it before, it's an original!

Today we're going to do an original!

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ "Morning whispers!"

I will show you 3 stages.

The completed stage, the middle stage and today, the beginning stage.

So this is the scene.

It was up in Silver Falls, Oregon, and I took a video of it, then I stopped the video at this point, but I saw it, and I loved it!

So I'll take this down, and then we'll show you how it looks at the halfway point.

This is the halfway point.

That's where we're going to come today.

The canvas is, I use this quite often.

6 White, 1 Payne's Gray, and 1 Permanent Green Light.

Sometimes I'll vary that.

I think the earlier show on the seascape, we did a little darker.

This is a little lighter; you can even go a little lighter.

But I do like the influence of that color coming through the painting.

So I'm going to start with doing some of the background.

We'll use Viridian Green, which will kind of simplify things as we put it on, and then we'll work towards the glow, and then there's a lot of detail on the leaves.

So let's take a big brush.

What are you?

You're kind of big.

Okay, Viridian Green.

I've already placed-- did I say that?

I already placed the Walnut Oil on the canvas.

If I didn't, I'm saying it now.

If I did, I'm saying it again!

Now as I do this, I'm going to come across the tree a little bit, the edges, so I make sure that I'm right up against them.

I need quite a bit of this on.

Yeah, so it's just a little darker and will show up a little bit more.

Oh, it's so exciting.

I love doing landscapes... or portraits or still life, what have you.

I love to paint, I guess that's what I'm saying!

And I'm so pleased to have an audience.

Oh, gee!

And this would be another place just with the time factor, I'll go through the tree branches a little bit and define them?

Discover them?

[soft scraping] Nice thing if you wear a shirt that matches the color then you don't have to worry about getting a little paint on the shirt!

Now I'm picking this up rather dry from the palette, and it has just a little moisture on, but I would prefer not having much moisture on the canvas so you can control this a little bit more, it doesn't thin out too much.

Now these, I'll spot them without going very complete to start with, because when I put the light in, then it'll be easier if I work this out rather than trying to work the little light in-between the branches.

This comes down onto the foreground.

I remember, you all remember Bill Alexander, "Got that big powerful brush!

You got to make it work!"

I love that guy!

When I first met him, he says, "Buck, what can we do?

How can we make the world love each other more?"

And he came, he had been a prisoner of war.

I need more of you.

What are you?

Viridian Green.

That's what you said you were.

Let's do this.

I want Viridian Green, but I'm just going to pick up a little Sap Green.

Oh, yes, just a little variety of greens.

So Bill, a prisoner of war, yet he could come out saying "How can we love each other more?"

Oh, love that guy!

Okay that, you know, the more I do that, the more I like it.

So let's come up in here.

What it appears to me is that it kind of softens the green just a little bit more than rather having it just solid Viridian Green.

Okay now, how did you come across the tree?

It doesn't matter, because the next step I want to wipe anyway.

So let's first wipe this just a little bit, and then I'll wipe a little bit of the branches.

See, that works well.

No reason why you can't go across the green a little bit, and then when you put these on, you actually can control your values a little bit.

See, I'll wipe a little harder down there, and you can have it less there.

So you discover things that work while you paint.

I guess that's why I love to paint so much.

It's a time of discovery more than just saying complete another painting.

I tell you, I've been painting many years, and I just get so excited about going up and painting on a new day.

Sure there's times you get tired, and sure there's times you get a little discouraged, but gosh, you persist anyway.

Everybody in the world would be painting if it was just automatic and no problems ever with it.

Oh, you got a little green on your body.

You know, I kind of almost like that little filmy green there.

Okay, so I think what I'll do now is go ahead and put some lights in.

That's going to be an important part of the painting, and then we'll see about the foliage.

When I'm over here looking at that painting, I see that I need to have a little blue in there more than the green too.

So that'll be nice, But let's come over, and I have a palette knife.

I have White, and let's see, let's try a little bit of Permanent Green Light... and some Yellow.

Where are you, Yellow?

Right there.

I'm here, Buck!

Okay, that's Permanent Green Light and the Yellow.

Let's see.

I think I need just a little more Yellow as I look up there at it, but often when I do it, if I were to make a copy, I think oh, I like it better this way.

So this has just a little more Yellow in it and so on, which is really nice.

Let's take a fan brush.

Oh, of course.

You always use a fan brush, Buck.

Not always!

Here we go, and this is dry brush, and I'm pushing this on, and what else are you going to say about it?

Well, I need to make sure I'm not too thick on that.

Thin it out a little bit.

Blend slightly as you come to the foliage.

The foliage on the left and the foliage down below and without adding any extra paint, I'll just pick up what was there, and put this in.

I'll borrow some of you over here.

Great.

Okay now, let's take a blender, and we'll just soften a little bit where they meet.

See, that's not going to change much.

It just softens the edge slightly.

Okay, now because we have that, let's go ahead with the continuation out to these edges of that.

And I feel that we take a little Phthalo Blue.

That's pretty powerful stuff, but I'll melt it into this green just a little bit.

What does that look like?

Looks like it needs more Blue.

Perfect!

You have to say perfect after the second try, because whether it is or not, you don't have time to do anything else.

Okay, I'm going to add just a little touch of the Van Dyke Brown.

Van Dyke Brown and Blue into that greenish mixture.

Now this, see, I want to just touch this out, because that's a very soft edge with the light being so powerful behind it.

Now, I saw this area, and I sat there several mornings in a row, and just loved to have the day start right in front of me.

And a little bit on this one.

That looks like it should.

I want to have just a little bit of this bluish tone that I put there just slightly on the edge so you feel like there's some foliage over there on the right side.

And let's see, what about on the inside here?

Actually what I'm needing to do there is take some more of the light, which is here, and push this in just a little bit.

Oh, I love doing these shows.

You be sure and come back next week when we finish this one, and of course, what I'll do, I'll work on that one, the one that's on the easel, and make it look like the one we showed you earlier.

Okay, I think we can jump over to the foliage.

I better-- let's do this.

Before I do it, this isn't very dark.

So I'm taking a little bit of the Sap Green and Viridian that we had up higher, and we're coming down with that.

Let's put a little Van Dyke Brown in it.

I love the mystery when you look into the woods.

Generally, and we're going to get to the trees, generally your trees are going to taper.

So they're wider at the bottom and narrow as they go up.

I remember one time I told you maybe about having my teacher Claude Buck.

He named himself after me.

No!

I guess it was the other way around, but he said, you know, your trees need to always taper, and I found a tree once that didn't.

It was narrow and it got wider at the top.

It was a small tree.

So I went, "Claude!

Claude!

I saw a tree that's" let's see... "Narrow at the bottom and wide at the top!"

He says, "Well, if you have to send a photograph along with it to explain it, you probably shouldn't paint it."

So I didn't.

Now, let's go ahead with putting the bark on, and I believe we have Burnt Umber.

I better get a little larger brush.

Burnt Umber and Quinacridone Rose.

Now you're going to be tested on the spelling of that!

Qui-na-cri-done Violet.

Did I say rose?

Violet!

So violet is different than spelling r-o-s-e.

It's the Quinacridone, you have to know.

Okay, I want to say one thing about putting this on.

Normally I would come, and I'd just draw the branches in, but I have found that if I kind of go just a little gently, you do it, you kind of skip.

You're not skipping, but you lift the brush, stop a little bit, and keep coming down.

It gives a little better feeling to the branch.

I mean, it gives it more character rather than just curves out there hard.

Some of them do, but a lot of them don't.

And again, even though it's a small tree in the back, I'm holding to that principle that it's more narrow at the bottom than at the top.

I can peek a little bit through there and come here.

And the neighbor.

Oops, more paint.

This one, it's kind of broken up, because you have light coming over it.

Okay, the big one.

Let's take again, what did we take?

Did you take Van Dyke Brown?

No, we got Umber, Umber and the Violet.

Boy, it used to be in the olden days when I'd do this, I'd have the things all just marked there.

Here, it's just a little more spontaneous, and I love it, because if I make a mistake, you see it.

You kind of think with me.

Okay here, this is a nice little branch coming down there.

Now here, I'll pull it right straight down, because that's a large area to fill in.

And then before we put the lights on, we'll wipe a little bit on this tree so where the lights will go, but if I put this on first, and when I say first, I'm talking about the whole tree.

Gee, are you wider here than up there?

Boy, you're pretty close!

So let's take a little green and maybe bring that in a little ways.

That was easy, wasn't it?

Thank you.

You did a good job.

Okay, let's keep with this.

Umber and Quinacridone Violet!

Quinacridone Violet is just a little cooler than Quinacridone Rose.

Rose a little more pinkish when you mix white with them.

Oh boy, that came just a little straight out of the gun.

I like that.

You had to say that-- if you said, "I don't like that," you'd have to fix it.

Okay, I'll take just a little bit of the brush and just blend it a little bit so it settles down.

We got one more to do over on the side, and this is kind of along the same line of putting this on, you know, you're not too rigid with it.

And that's why lifting and stroking and stroking rather than just going all the way through.

Over here, you have small branches, and of course, the branches need to taper too.

Like that.

All right, now what I want to do is, you look away from me just for a minute.

Would you look at this?

I need to pick up my knife.

Got it!

Okay, did you leave or did you stay?

Gee, that's not fair!

So I'll wipe a little bit where I'm going to put the lights on the tree, and just a nice paper towel, and when I say a nice paper towel, the soft paper towels are so good.

They don't leave themselves on the canvas.

As I go down, the more I do on this, the more I want to make sure I don't wipe away too much of the underneath so I have something to blend into when I put the next color on.

If it's a small branch, you could wipe a little bit or you could just kind of put it right on without any problems, although that's wiping very well.

The reflected light-- I'm not doing it yet-- the reflected light is over on the left.

So you have the highlight here, and then what you call the reflected light is just a little bit there.

It's not as intense, but it certainly helps the feeling of form, and that's what we're for.

Okay, we have a little bit in the middle trees... and what do we do over here?

Ah, rocks.

We have two things.

We have a rock, but we also have a kind of a puddle.

Are you a puddle or you a rock?

It's water!

Yeah, so let's take the Burnt Umber, let's take Van Dyke Brown.

Make up your mind.

Van Dyke Brown.

I'm scrubbing that around a little bit.

And then for the water, we're going to use that same Van Dyke Brown around it, but we won't do much more than that at this point.

Okay, let's put some light on the tree, and I have-- what do you have?

I have some Cadmium Red Light, and some Umber and White.

Let's see what that do.

♪ See what you do.

Let's see if I can give a formula on this.

One Umber, and one Red Light.

Okay, so, and I'm using a flat edge of the brush.

Boy, you're generous.

Well, we'll blend you over just a little bit.

You're going to be a little more generous than the one you're looking at, but that's all right.

I like it, and we'll see what happens in the finish.

The only thing I would have done differently would probably be-- did I use Raw Sienna?

No, I got Umber and Red.

I'm going to put a little Yellow Ochre in that on the edge there, and see what that does.

It warms it just a little bit.

Oh, this is recalling a great visit to Silver Falls.

Now, I'll put some on here, and then I want to get to some of those little leaves.

They'll take a lot of time.

So I'll only start to show you what needs to be done.

So I dip in, my brush is clean, and then I have-- what kind of green are you?

Let's see, let's take Viridian Green.

Viridian Green... and a little Phthalo Blue.

Just a little more Phthalo Blue, and these, I'm dipping a little more Phthalo Blue.

Sorry to be running back and forth, but that's the way it is!

So these, I'm sort of using the brush edge.

When I say brush edge, kind of the corner of the brush, and you're going to put a ton of these in.

I won't be able to do all of them, but you get the idea.

Be sure you hit that edge.

You know, you'll have a tracing that you can look at from the DVD, but you make it just so you can see it.

Okay, there's one other thing I need to do.

This greenish yellow that we put up in there.

There's a lot of that right in here.

So you're establishing a real path for that to come through.

So I'm kind of spotting this in.

It's so much the corner of the brush that you're touching down and doing that.

Here a little extra so you get a feeling of space between this tree and that tree.

So more of this goes up a little, but not too high, and then there's just a little bit peeking over in here too.

So I'm not going to get as much of this foliage on at this stage as you can do and you should do.

Blue, where are you, blue?

There you, blue.

Yes.

A lot of tapping, and you know, when you're doing this, you kind of have, maybe there's a little clump there, and then there's one over here rather than just coming up and daub, daub, daub!

You have a little semblance of unity on it.

So that makes it quite nice.

I think we have gotten a great start on this.

I'm really pleased with it, and know that when you come back next week, it will be absolutely a joy to go on with it, because we're going to work on the other one.

You realize this is all oil.

The beginning what I did here was oil.

The middle stage is oil, and then for the final it will be oil.

I'll take one kind of sweep with the bunny brush.

And once and a while I'll take too, even this brush and just kind of tap a little bit if I feel like it needs to be softened at all on the foliage.

So there we are!

You join me next time, because we're going back to the woods!

"Morning Whispers."

We need to go back at the same time.

See you then!

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