The first step in getting somewhere is determining that you will not stay where you are.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Silver Falls!

What a great place!

Super location!

So we have "Noon at Silver Falls!"

I was teaching there 20 years, and one of the better-looking camera guys said he'd been there too so it's kind of fun.

I didn't just make it up-- Silver Falls.

What I have today, and this is stage one, will be acrylics.

I have a canvas that I often use this priming-- of 6 white, 1 Payne's Gray and 1 Permanent Green Light.

It makes it such a nice even color and it's good for under portraits, still life, landscapes, seascapes, but it's not the only thing I use, but I use it quite often.

What I intend to do today is, well, I put a tracing on and I outlined it with the Ultramarine Blue.

My thought was, I put color on but then I thought, no let's do this.

Let's do almost a monochrome, which means I'll use Ultramarine Blue and white to cover most of it, then with the time that we'll still hope to have at the end, we'll start putting a little umber on top of the trees which will have had blue on them.

So the two working together will be a help.

It'll give us a little start before the oil stage.

So I have Ultramarine Blue, and I'm taking and adding white.

On this I'm looking more at the trees on the sides rather than the big ones.

So I'll have that.

And then, let's see about the darker trees.

Not quite straight Ultramarine Blue, but very, very close.

I think I'll start with them, and I have a large brush.

This is water, dipping down, and see, I can have almost one stroke will give me the tree because it's wide enough.

That's great.

Are you able to see this?

Sometimes I like to get into my work.

Okay, so we'll use that same color because we have 1, 2, 3 that will also be dark.

Darker.

Like that.

Where's the other one?

Oh over here.

And I have one of these going up to the side, the diagonal, that has a good darkness on those.

Now, let's see if I've done the trees correctly, and what I mean by that is, do they taper?

It's more narrow at the top than it is on the bottom; here as well.

Here-- I think it's pretty close.

Over here maybe just a little wider down there.

I'm going to put a little bit on this guy too, your neighbor.

Okay now, for the other trees, which are the distant ones, I'll go just a little bit lighter, and these should be able to be put on with just one long stroke.

One long stroke, another long stroke.

I'm aware that when I do this some of them-- yeah you're one of them-- some of them are just a little bit wider than the others.

See, it's wider than that one, so we do take in consideration the varying sizes of them.

Okay, now we'll come into the middle.

When I do the middle, these sort of fade just a little bit, you don't quite see them all the way through.

We might do it all the way through and then just cover it with some of that nice pink foliage.

And this one slants in there.

Okay, we have some more to do.

Do we want to put blue?

Yes we do.

We want to put the blue on them too.

These are just a little bit darker than the ones over to the far right; not much.

It's not that important to be just-- oh, you're just a little lighter, you have a little more suntan.

When we put the umber on, it'll kind of bring out their true colors... and one back there.

Okay now I'll take the fan brush, and I'll take the straight-- I think you have a little jet lag, so we'll take a different fan brush.

You.

I'll take the pure Ultramarine Blue, and I'm putting water with it.

Let's we'll come down into the water area first with the water.

[soft scraping] Just a little bit more over to the right side.

What is so neat, I'm doing this for the first time.

This is the first time I've painted this, and when I say that, of course, obviously I did the original here, but first time to analyze it.

Often when I paint at home, I'll just paint a painting.

I don't sit there and say, okay, I did this with blue I did this with this.

I don't do that.

I just enjoy doing it, then I come back and say, how'd I do that?

Some people are a little more clever and organized.

They'll make the patterns as they go.

Whichever works best for you-- do it.

Because there is a certain comfort in feeling that if you're going to teach it that you have a little idea how you're going to do it.

[soft scraping] A little higher, a little higher.

[in high voice] How high do we go?

[normal voice] Let's look on the right side.

I'll put this just as a sort of an underneath where all of the green is going to be.

[soft scraping] Okay now what is pretty important, well, let's go just a little more down in the lower right.

That almost acts like it's got a little oil in it.

Why are you doing that?

You want to be an oil person?

Oil personality?

Okay.

Generally, and, of course, in this case I have the picture in front of me to look at but if you didn't then as you're starting the painting you say well, where is my center of interest?

Well, this one is very obvious that the center of interest is that strong light coming through against the dark tree, so I'll take the white, and we'll add a little yellow into it.

Cadmium yellow.

It's almost best to go just a little darker.

and when I say that, I'm adding a little more yellow than straight white.

That's going to be very light.

I can see just on the canvas the relationship there, so this is outstanding.

And come down-- this goes right over there.

Oh this is good, then it has a nice kind of complimentary steps as we come down that it jumps across and that light does continue down there.

Then look at down in here.

I'll wipe just a little bit in case it can be wiped.

It is.

So then we have a good path of light as it hits the stream.

A little bit behind here.

And all of this, of course, is going to have color on it eventually.

Bring that down a little closer, a little higher.

Okay let's see what we have now.

I think what I'll do is take just a little bit of this yellow and white and some of that blue so it's a very soft gray, and I'll let this come down as being in between the distant trees.

That'll be such a nice help to have that.

Those trees are very close to not being too distinct.

[soft scraping] And over in here.

Okay I think that's enough on that side.

On the other side, we also have some lights, but it's a little more of the blue and white.

So I'm going to take the blue and white.

And we'll go ahead and put this in between there.

Just enough.

Okay now, what will be a help, if I take the umber and I have Burnt Umber, and even though this isn't, well, it's not really too wet which is an advantage, we'll take some umber and go right over that.

Now, when I go over that I would hope that some of the blue is still felt.

And you I don't know if you can see it or not, but I'm using my little finger kind of leaning against the canvas so I can control the amount of pressure on it.

That is a very dominant tree right against this.

We have some more of these to do.

This, let's see, not you, well maybe a little bit, but this is another one over here.

It works so well when the underneath is dry, and mine happens to be dry even though we just put it on just a few minutes ago.

And it's neighbor... like that.

Those come pretty close together there.

You can see just at the bottom it must have been a little wet because it made it a little bit lighter, so I'll just add a little extra umber down there.

Then as far as the tree between these two...

I'm going to put this on, and I'm going to turn the brush on the side because I don't want this quite as large as the ones that are near.

And the ones over to the left.

The back distant left ones, each have a little brown on them.

The more you can do on the acrylics, the easier it is to just use a small amount of oil paint.

You say why do you use the acrylic first?

You could do the whole thing in oils.

You could do the whole thing in acrylics.

I like the speed aspect of using acrylics first, then you certainly as if you were doing a painting with just oil on oil, you let some of the underneath come through.

That to me, the quality when they say quality of color-- not whether it's good or not-- but the relationship of the colors next to each other or through each other.

When you do this type painting, it's more the colors through each other.

However on the final, you're going to have some that will be colors next to colors.

Now I don't have any of this on the distant trees.

I do have it on these two slanting ones.

There's one.

Jeez, this is great!

Okay, a little down there.

And a little bit over here.

And this also, you put out those branches just a little bit.

I'm going to go back with branches on the big tree, this one.

What it does, it just helps it but it also kind of pushes back the ones that are behind so they're not as important.

I just see a couple others.

I see one on this guy and probably I can't quite go across him.

And maybe this one, just a change of direction a little bit like that.

Okay now let's go ahead then since we have time, we'll start putting some color on the foliage because anything we can do in stage one will be such a help as we come to the next one.

So what do we have?

Let's take some green, and this is Permanent Green Light.

I will add some Burnt Umber into it.

So the first time through I constantly have with my students where we talk about building to the light.

And what that means is you go up progressively to your lightest light, and that's what we're going to do now.

So this sort of dark, but you can see some of it around here.

But even in general I'll come through the middle a little bit, so let's first put some over here.

[soft scraping] Very scrubby.

So that when I say scrubby, it means that I'm using water, but it's almost a little dry brush approach so that this isn't just one big blend.

Gonna fall of the cliff!

There... there.

Come across that maybe a little bit.

Down in here.

Oh, that's one place I could have put the umber, whether I do it now or with the oil, we'll see.

Some down in here.

I'm going to grab the umber while I have it.

And I went quickly I'll come back, pick up some umber.

That'll sort of separate the darkness of the foliage and the stream edge.

Okay back to the green.

Let's see, I won't put any through there yet.

We'll come over on this side.

What will help is if I-- there's a certain slant that goes there.

So it all relates to movement.

You can see how this gracefully comes down there.

These come down in.

This has a little bit of a sway.

It's constant rhythm that you're getting in depicting the subject.

Like that.

And let's see, up above.

We'll take some green and sort of work in at the base of those distant trees.

And this comes up higher.

[soft scraping] How close does that green-- oh, it comes right up next to that tree, doesn't it?

There's just a little bit of peekaboo light on that side but this green comes very close to that.

A little higher.

A little higher over on the far right.

Okay, now let's look through the middle.

I do feel just a little bit of a cap on that area.

That will help feature the glorious entrance of the sun.

Maybe just a little less there.

Okay let's see what we have now.

Go through there a little bit.

Okay, I think what will help next is if we take, let's see, I'll put some more green out, and we'll mix a little yellow with it.

Boy, it's so helpful if you can do a lot of the work in acrylics-- that will lend towards the final thing.

So we started out kind of, Ultramarine Blue and white, but then we're quickly adding colors into it and we always have in mind where our center of interest is.

There's no question there.

Okay here's the yellow.

Yellow and white-- how did red get in there?

You just stay over to the sideline for a while.

We'll put some green in.

I'll hold this up with the knife to be sure that I have what I want.

I think that will work.

It's always impressive when you tell the audience that I think we'll try it-- oh, that worked!

Surprise, surprise, it works even if it didn't work.

Okay I'm going to use this brush.

You can see the paint on it.

I'm going to use it as sort of a patting.

And that too has just a little bit of slant to it, doesn't it?

What'd you say?

Oh yeah, okay.

That's what it has.

Now if in doing that, if they become too repetitious then I'll just push a couple, join a couple of them together.

Coming around, surrounding a little bit the yellow that was there.

In the olden days, when I say olden days, 25 years ago when I was painting for this one company on television we would finish one painting one show, so it was just straight get out there and [makes a grinding noise].

And it looked like about this way, which is not too bad.

It looked better on camera than it did in person.

I had an agreement with them that whenever we finished a show, I could destroy the painting.

But we don't do it with this one.

We do these-- a little silent auction!

So if you're in town, come on over!

Of course, we will already have it by the time you see this.

Get ready for the next one.

Okay, now what I'm going to do is, let's go up a little more with this light green and we'll sort of push it off in the distance here.

Notice on that I have less paint, and my brush stroke is a little more scrubby as compared to tapping.

This one is, a little foliage is hanging over on the tree so it has just a little bit of addressing through character.

What about over on the right side, do we have?

Well I did put some of this on, so I'll just push it around a little bit to soften it.

Okay, what I would like to do before too long is to take a little bit of the-- this is Quinacridone Rose and some white, I'll see what else I might add into that.

My first indication is that I might have to add a little blue into that too.

So that's the rose and white and this is, yes indeed, just a little rose, so you start low in value working towards the lights.

I need to put more rose in it so it's a little darker.

Like this, and see when you look at that, that's got some bright spots but we're building to the lights so we don't start with the bright spots.

We'll probably do that in oil because we're getting close to time to say see you next time.

I will come down lower with more of just the rose color down in the bottom here.

This is such a nice doorstep to that distant highlight.

And there is, eventually there will be a nice little branch that is holding those together.

I don't see any over there, but it sure looks good!

What if we put just a little bit of that rose color with a little white on the tree?

Again, I'm using my little fingernail to sort of guide me as I come down, that I don't put too much pressure on.

It's a super way to do it.

That distant tree, a little yellow and rose-- this one.

This guy, he needs to have a little extra highlight on.

He sits back, but is very important.

Ah!

I think we're doing it!

I think we're just about ready to say come on back next time.

Oh, it's been so great doing this, and I enjoy it because I'm doing it-- I don't remember how I did that.

It probably started with acrylic, but now, see, now I have a roadmap, and I know how to do it.

So I guess that's where we'll say so long to you.

Thank you for watching "Noon at Silver Falls!"

Great place, great painting!

See you next time.

Bye-bye!

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