A pochade is a sketch done under inspiration.

No time for rules.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ It's so great to be with you today!

Gosh, we're gonna do a pochade.

This is something that I saw out in the field, came home, and painted from memory.

Now, I want to read something to you about landscapes.

"A landscape is always something other than reality."

It portrays, or "the reality it portrays."

"It is essentially a product of the mind."

"It is essentially an accumulation of memories."

Now the memories can be something you've seen, or maybe a picture you've seen or have been told about.

It's so great to put things together rather than saying, oh, that's such a nice scene.

I don't think I'll paint it because that one tree is in the way.

Baloney!

Do it!

Take the tree out!

Is that fair?

Absolutely fair.

Now, what we're going to do today, I'm going to show-- you see the little pochade, right?

Okay.

I'm gonna hand this off, and what you see on the easel now is the halfway point.

We're doing this project in acrylics, acrylics.

And then when we come to the second week, next week, we will put oil on top of it.

The acrylic will have dried.

So let's do this.

I'm going to just give you the little sequence.

This is a priming of Quinacridone Rose and White.

Then I've put the drawing on and made it dark, so you can see it.

And then we'll put the paint on, allowing here and there some of the pink even to show through.

Now, I don't know how much of that pink will show through in the final picture, but if it doesn't, we might even add some more because that's the charm of the landscape, is the vibrations, you call it-- the vibrations of color.

So we'll start by getting right in the middle of the canvas.

And we're going to take a brush, and some water, and I'm looking at the lightest, which would be Yellow and White.

And the minute I say that, and then I want to check it.

Yeah, that'll work.

It has a little tinge of green, but that comes as we do more work.

This, you don't worry about brushstrokes.

In other words, it's not real blended because you want that, again, repeating the same word, you want the vibration of nature.

I just love landscapes.

Now, my good friend Bob Dambach with Prairie Public Television, came out to Santa Barbara, and he came down to Oak Park.

And he said I was so surprised.

I thought it was gonna be a forest, but it's kind of a narrow path through the park and through the town.

So you can see what you want to see while you're looking at what you're looking at.

You'll be tested on that saying later.

Okay, now I'll add the next color.

And before we leave today, we'll probably emphasize that a little bit more with some White and so on, but for now, let's take Permanent Green Light.

That's a nice color.

Then you work a little bit of the Yellow into it.

Isn't that pretty?

Same brush.

Just a flat bristle brush.

Go right up to the top.

You blend in a little bit, touch slightly into the yellow.

Here's the thing-- when you use a primed canvas, you'll say, well, there's a little pink showing through.

That's all right-- it can use a little bit.

You make that final judgment after you cover it all because all this pink is allowing that to be a little more pink.

So when I cover that, then we'll say does that have too much pink showing?

So we'll work with that.

I love having a prime canvas though.

And the drawing on this canvas makes it so that if you do come across the drawing a little bit, I haven't lost it-- I still know where that branch will come out.

Okay.

Let's go down, well, we'll go down lower with that same green.

What about around the sides?

There's a little green between those two trees.

And I do like this, what I just stated.

And that is, I don't have to worry too much about saying I'm losing my drawing, because I can see it.

I can still see it, and that is very helpful.

Okay, on this side, a little bit of the green, yellow-ish green.

And before we get to the final project, we'll be using brush, but when we get to the final next week, then we'll be using some palette knife, which I absolutely think is necessary in getting those colors to relate to each other and to jingle-jangle.

Now, let's see, over to the right, still yellow and green.

We have it up here.

Let's go a little bit past this branch.

And then I see over further next to this one.

Sometimes I automatically back up so you can see, other times, I have to be told.

We have these three big guys in the studio that go get back!

And you know, okay.

So this goes in here.

All right, what I think I'll do now is, I'll take my dark green and push around, and then there'll be some other secondary greens, like down in the corner.

But let's take a big brush, I have a fan brush.

And as far as the color, let's get it, just a little feeling.

That's Viridian Green.

Do we want to use it straight?

It looks like it's got just a touch of yellow in it.

Okay, you asked for it.

Not much, not much.

See, can you see the difference there?

Straight green, little yellow in the green.

I like the yellow in the green much better than straight green.

And you notice as you do this and the way I scrub it, you see through it a lot-- that's fine at this stage.

When we get to the oil, then we'll have some places that are a little more thick, and some places that are thinner.

What about down in the corner?

Well, we'll not come there yet; let's continue across.

What did I mix together with that?

Just a little yellow.

This comes right across here.

What's quite nice on this painting.

You have the strong light, you have the contrast, and then the water being lit is a little relief.

Oh, excuse me, I want to go the other way, I want to go up.

And what about the one I went down too low?

Just wipe it.

And I'll be putting more color there shortly.

[Buck hums] ♪ I'm warm, so easy, so dance me loose, dance me loose.

♪ Oh, I love the the painting!

And I've told this joke so many times.

That I said how I was teaching this one class, and the gal says, when I was growing up, I wish I could sing.

Now, I wish you could!

You've heard that before, but please be polite and laugh.

Even if you're the floor director or the technicians.

Nothing.

Okay, I'm looking here.

I want to make sure.

And you notice what I've done.

See how that line goes out there?

The tracing line?

This.

I've cut into it a little bit, so the tree isn't too wide at the bottom.

Okay.

Let's go then here.

We'll go down here.

And then we'll-- what are we going to do over there?

Well, I need to have a little bit of this kind of sparsely done.

That's okay.

That's sparsely done.

[soft scraping] Isn't quite as thick.

And there's nothing wrong with saying okay, let's just wipe it a little bit, it'll thin it out a bit.

Okay.

In that area now, I want to come, this is Yellow.

Which green should I take?

Oh, you're kind of nice.

So I have Permanent Green Light, and then I'm kind of changing my mind.

Yeah, I like this one a little better.

So it's back to the Viridian Green and Yellow.

But you can see right in the palette the difference between the pure Viridian Green, the Viridian Green with the Yellow in it.

And when I do this one, my stroke is other than brushing on.

This will be so nice when we add the other colors in on top of it.

Oh, I love doing these shows, and I love the response from you people!

And you're well aware.

You have favorite artists, and you have your own personal teachers, and you do give them credit.

It doesn't hurt to like another artist as well.

Gee!

Okay.

Now, let's see what we do right in the middle.

When I say middle, I'm not saying middle.

Right down there.

Let's go a little lighter.

We have Permanent Green Light, and I have a little Yellow and a little White.

Is that the first time we're using White?

I don't know, but it sure works well.

I've used a lot of the corner of the fan brush.

So you might say half the fan brush.

And because you're going to have that strong light there, the impact, then in its path, which this is, it lightens a little bit compared over to the sides.

Okay, I'll take that same color and push a little horizontal strokes where the water is going to be lit, where the water is going to be, period, and also it will be lit.

Yellow and White.

Oo, is that the first time I've cleaned the brush?

Gee.

Good.

Okay, Yellow and White-- Cad Yellow Light and White.

And we've done this before where you measure, you say well, the lightest light is right there, You come straight down, and that's going to be right in there.

I'll push it over a little bit to the left because I like it kind of leaning against that dark.

If necessary, I could bring the dark over a little bit to meet that, but that's good.

Okay.

I want to do one other thing before I go to the trees, and that's to take Yellow and White, Yellow and White.

I have to go back to the bus, picked up a little more Yellow.

Boy, that Yellow is powerful; more White.

Now, this is going to be put on with the knife.

[soft tapping] You can hear it, can't you?

That's on a hardboard rather than a canvas.

I love the hardboard!

I spent my first 8 years with the hardboard.

Not the same picture, I spread it out a little bit.

Okay, still the light.

And I think because of that, let's go down to the lightest light in the water and give it just a little touch of knife.

Yeah, and I like that.

Okay, we better get to the trees.

I'll take Burnt Umber, and I have a flat, this is flat sable.

These are the brushes that Bill used when he fired in!

Oh, what a great guy!

I love that guy.

And it's okay for you to love, we said that, more than your own teacher.

I love Claude Buck.

I love Bill Alexander, and then the artists that I hadn't met like Turner, and one of my all-time favorites, George Inness.

Oh, he was so exuberant and enthusiastic.

He'd go into a patron's house where he had sold a painting, and he'd say oh, I see you bought "Forest Meadows."

That's one of my best works.

And then he'd say, but oh, just a minute, there's a little something wrong there.

I'll take it to the studio and fix it.

And the guy would say oh, no, I like it the way it is!

"Nonsense," and they'd go back and forth.

And George used to say, just because you bought it, you think it's yours?

He was so great!

Oh, it, it reminds me, and there were many other stories like that.

He told his son, and his son was an artist, he told him that he needed to correct something, and George Inness says let me take the brush, and I'll fix it.

Well, this was one time when it didn't go as good as he'd wished.

And he asked his son do you like it?

And his son says no, I liked it the way it was, and the father takes and he says wipe it off.

And after he wipes it off, he says, there, when you get a good painting, leave it alone, as if the son had done it.

Oh, I want to to tell you, that was very inspiring knowing about George Inness.

There was a book written about George-- life of George, "Life and Letters of George Inness" by his son, George Inness Jr.

So one day I'm over-- I'm just filling these in.

So I don't need to say anything extra.

This is just straight Burnt Umber.

So I went over to Claude Buck's studio, and he wasn't there this time, and he had a painting on the easel of a seascape.

And I thought if I were George Inness, I'd go over and paint on that!

And I thought, I am George Inness!

So I went over, took that knife, and made some splashes on that wave up and so on.

I said there, don't you like it better?

There was no one there, but I said that, and then I went home.

Still Burnt Umber.

And I came back on the Monday, and Claude never said anything.

And I finally got feeling a little guilty, and I said, Claude, didn't you notice the splashes up on the wave and that?

He says, no, I just saw what needed to be corrected, and I corrected it.

So that was my last time of being George Inness myself, but I love his work.

Okay, here's another little one here.

This is so much fun.

Can you see what happens when you start putting the darks in over the lights?

That one, I look at the original there, and I want it to be a little larger.

What color are you?

Kind of a blue.

So what I want to do is come down and make this wider, especially down lower because it is a balance to everything happening on the left side.

There is a small branch, I just noticed it, with the Burnt Umber-- this branch.

Oh, there's two of them!

There's one here.

Then the little one that-- I'm going to go down just a little bit.

It kind of crosses under, so it isn't quite as strong.

But that really becomes a nice almost cathedral-like scene.

I see one here.

And I don't know if you can tell, but I'm using my little fingernail on the canvas just to kind of control the width of the little line that I'm drawing.

And one down here.

I'm not controlling it anymore.

That got a little wide.

That's all right, it's a big tree.

Then, of course, this one will have just a little bit of branches coming out too.

So it has a nice feeling.

Now the other thing that I want to do just a little bit is to put some highlights on the tree trunks.

So I have Raw Sienna, and I'm picking up Yellow and White, but it could be just Raw Sienna and White.

And I'll point out here-- this is where I'm looking at.

The first one right close to the sun area so it really burns through.

I'll have to check the original of my little pochade, but I think this needs to have just a little bit of a dark line there.

Boy, that's nice.

And when I put that on, you can see that it's done with some quantity-- quantity!

On this side as well, and maybe just a little bit peeking on that.

What I like is the rhythm on this.

You've got that big impact, but you've got-- this tree's leaning towards it, these kind of bending towards it.

It's a harmony in these trees looking at the sky.

Okay.

What about down below?

Oh, you know what I noticed when I was looking below?

There's some light that's very helpful as you put it down next to the tree, right there.

Boy, it's nice to have that model that close.

And just a little broken out into there, but I want to come further with that same light that comes down; it just makes that little branch an arch as you come below it.

These are all little incidental things.

It makes it very nice for starting the painting, and then if I have any time left, not much, we'll take just a little bit of the Yellow and White, touch of greens.

Let's see what we can do with that.

I want a little more Yellow in it.

That's better.

Always the fact of vibration in a landscape.

And, of course, you could do that also in other things-- still life portraits, animals.

The vitality, the vitality in you the artist-- you decide, you learn rules, but you certainly use your inspiration as well.

Gosh, it's been so great doing stage one of "The Pochade" for you.

So I think, I know, you'll be here next week, and I sure will be.

Thank you for watching!

Bye-bye!

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