If you ask for an opinion on your art be sure you ask a happy person.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I want to take you on a little trip.

I want to take you into the woods.

And I want you to feel the ambience of what's there.

Let me show you how I arrived at the finished painting.

now, today, we're doing the halfway stage.

This is the halfway stage.

Let's bring up the complete stage, the finished stage.

And that's absolutely beautiful.

But I want to show you further the influence I had in making the painting.

This is called a pochade.

And this is what-- I don't remember if I saw it and painted it on location or if I came home and painted from memory, or a combination of both.

Because I've often said, when you're painting, even out in a landscape, you're painting from memory.

You're painting from imagination.

Regardless what you see, you might bend a tree a certain way and so on-- that's all part of it.

Let me set this down right there.

Okay, so what we have is a canvas, this time it's a little bit lighter than we usually have it.

So I have 1 Payne's Gray and 1 Permanent Green Light.

But instead of 6 White, we stepped it up to 8 White.

I quite like that; I almost feel like there's a little blue in there too.

But when we cover it you'll say what did he have it underpainted with?

Something other than white.

So you can kind of relate the values as you go.

So we have down on the canvas... paint!

And we need to put some up there, so let's take, this is my Emerald Green.

And you notice how I've marked this in half.

So this week we'll work on this side, then next week we'll have saved some of those paints and bring it over to this side.

Notice on my division, I got down, I thought, I wonder where I should go-- straight ahead.

So there we are.

Okay, so I have 1 Emerald Green.

And let's try, this is, oh, I love this.

this is Nickel Azo Yellow.

And I have about 1 part of that.

So they're equal parts right now.

And I see where I want to go even more.

So it ends up being 2 Azo Yellow and 1 Green.

That Green is powerful!

I'll add a little White to that.

What it looks like now is 1 White, 1 Azo Green, oh, make up your mind Buck.

1 White, 1 Emerald Green, and 4 or 5 of the Azo Yellow.

I didn't mean to mumble Okay, I'm doing this, I'm dipping in, oh, let me do this.

Let me take and put the Walnut Oil on.

I have a little paint on the brush because of that, and that's fine.

When you put this on, it wasn't intended to have any green on it, but why not?

Do it.

It'll be great.

Make sure your drawing is secure so you can spray it, pencil, charcoal, what have you.

I often will take and outline everything with an acrylic so that it can be seen.

There was one class where I taught, and it was a seascape painting, and we used, we must've used ballpoint or something.

The next time I came back, they said, oh, all the ink is showing through.

So that was a good lesson.

Or a bad lesson!

Okay, this is Walnut Oil over the whole thing.

I really like this little green touch in it.

That was just right.

Okay, now I'm going to take some of this mixture I have and make a little background in there so it'll be darker.

When you do it, the question would be, should I put on the trees first or the background?

I'm going to do the background so that when I put the trees on, they will kind of be a little more definite.

If you put the trees in first, and you put this in, it'll be just a little harder to move around, I think.

I'm looking at the possibility of, yes, by going over that I can still see the drawing through there.

I hope you can too.

I don't overly put the paint on where the tree is.

It's so much easier to do it quickly this way to show you.

I remember my art teacher, Claude Buck, who I've mentioned before many times.

I'm Buck Paulson because of him.

After my first painting, I said could I sign it Buck Paulson?

And he was very pleased.

It kind of gave a little responsibility of doing good work if I'm representing him.

But I remember, oh, what a great man.

He once said, I had a-- he was, let's see, I was 28, and he was 72 when I met him.

And after about 8, 9 years I thought, oh, gee, he's 80, he's going to pass on, and I had this horrible feeling.

So one day when I went to the studio, I said Claude, I know you know it, but I want to tell you how much I appreciate you.

And you know what he said?

"Every time you paint a great painting, you show your appreciation."

And then I add to this now, every time I show someone else how to paint a great painting, I'm showing appreciation.

So you thank Claude Buck, don't thank Buck Paulson.

There is just a little bit of this over on the far side, this being the far side.

And I like this aspect of blending like that, and in blending like that you find that you put just a little teeny bit on the trees.

And I don't have any problem with that.

There is a tree over to the left edge here, so that is why I'm stopping short.

But just softly, softly, softly.

This goes into the middle about there.

Now we'll take, and we'll mix another color for the other side.

The nice thing about this is what?

Okay, that's more of a grayish green, so I'm going to come down and take Permanent Green Light with some Burnt Umber.

So that looks like about equal parts.

And I think that may be a little much Umber, we'll find out as we add the White.

So 1 Umber, 1 Green, to 1 White-- What does that give us?

Oh, I was thinking it was too much Umber, but it's not.

Let me hold this up.

Oo, more White.

Whatever amount of White I said to use-- double it.

That looks good, but it's not great.

So I'm going to add a little Van Dyke Brown to that.

This mixing on location is great; I love it.

Okay, so I have 1 Umber, 1 Green, Permanent Green Light, 1 Van Dyke Brown, and 1 White.

And you're going to work!

Okay, brush, I know you've been sitting on the sideline a long time, your turn to get into the game.

Oo, that's great, now let's see what happens on this as far as seeing through it.

So it's a little thicker, so I'm going to come close to the trees without destroying them.

And you might, as you do it, you can do it carefully, like that.

you might touch the tree a little here and there.

I can still sort of see through there.

If necessary just wipe it slightly, and it'll work.

And on the other side.

Oh, this is fun, because it brings back memories of having been there with Claude.

It was so great; he invited me to go out landscape painting which was not to be a class.

I would just paint with him, and I, oh, gee, I was so amateurish, I was so frustrated at the time.

But he was such a good guy.

He introduced me to, when I say introduce, a book about George Inness.

George Inness was one of the most eccentric, great landscape artists.

His son, George Inness Jr. is the one who wrote the book.

"The Art, Life, and Letters of George Inness" by George Inness Jr.

So it was very authentic.

Okay, I'm going to, let's see, I think what we'll do is put a little bit, this is Umber, and this is Azo Orange.

equal parts.

Oh, I like that.

That's good, I like you.

Go back into the mystery.

Oh, what a joy it is to paint!

Oh, to have beautiful people surrounding you.

that you paint.

Great.

I used to when I first started painting with Claude-- I'm going to put some more just straight Azo Orange on that-- we'd be out on a location, and people would come down, they'd look at my art, "Oh what you did," then they'd go down and look at his, and they'd kind of look back at me, like [chuckles] who do you think you are out with this genius?

But you learn, you learn by doing.

Now I'm going to take the fan brush.

I've been using the fan brush pretty much exclusively.

This is Burnt Umber,and I'm going to place on some rocks.

The green come down a little bit more there throw some seeds in, oh no, it does angle up, okay.

Sorry.

This comes right down to the road.

And then there's a little bit of this along the road.

That's not a road, it's a path.

Path.

Like that, and then you have some more rocks on the left side.

But you're the right side.

That's true.

What happens right above here?

We need to have just a little bit of the green that we put up above.

We'll come down with that too.

So here we are.

It's going to be fun to watch this develop because it develops rather quickly... from this stage through the next stage.

I'm taking a little bit of that dark that I had from this side, and it goes right over next to the bottom of the trees.

What trees?

I just see a bunch of drawings.

Well, we've got to do the trees real soon.

Don't we?

Yes.

Yeah, that darker green both there and just a little bit down there into, through the middle.

Now let's take a big brush, this is a big, flat sable.

Oo, large leaf, love it.

Okay, so I'm going to take the Umber, and I've put a little Walnut Oil on it.

I remember on the farm, having a favorite tree, one where I could go and sit in and talk to the tree, and tell him my concerns, my joy, and so on.

That was so great.

We had a reunion 45 years later, and the poor tree was gone.

I didn't take it with me to Santa Barbara.

I wonder if it felt neglected.

Or maybe it heard enough!

[chuckles] I use my little fingernail, the nail on the little finger, and hold and touch so I can draw these the way that I want to.

Just flatten that out.

At the bottom, you kind of mush it a little bit, just so it sets in place.

Okay, we have one more on this side, then we go over to the other side.

Can you see the pochade at the same time?

Just have the camera go up and down.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

You can see the image, the influence that is.

Boy to paint from memory or from location is so great.

but like Claude used to say, he said he painted some of his finest paintings sitting by a warm fireplace in Chicago.

So don't feel like you have to be out there in the elements all the time; it's up to you.

Just don't let anything stop you!

I need to come over here and put just a little bit of a secondary branch, I think you have one too.

Great!

Okay, a couple, 3 more.

And... 3 more.

Strike 1, strike 2, strike 3.

You're out!

I have a friend that I visit when I come to Fargo to do these shows.

Every time he reminds me of the baseball game we played, it was a championship, and we were behind one to nothing I was pitching, we were up to bat, and he was on third base, and the signal was to bunt, and he missed the signal, and he was thrown out.

Oh, he won't let it go, but then I told him about one of my experiences, which I don't need to tell at this time.

I'm going to wipe now a little bit for the highlight.

Isn't it funny how we remember certain things that have bothered us over the years.

Oo, this needs to have a little dark, I'm taking the finger, and because these two need to come together.

Okay, we have a kind of a distant tree just peeking a little bit there, so we're wiping.

It doesn't have any Umber on it.

What you need to do when you do a landscape or a seascape or still life, what have you-- what direction is the light coming from?

So on this one, you think, gee, you know, like this-- there's a lot of strong light there.

But the trees show an indication that the light coming from this side, and it's peeking through a little bit there.

So when we put this on now, you're only going to see some of the starting light.

This is Azo Orange.

And this is Warm White Bleached Titanium.

I could've used just the regular White, that wasn't fair.

Okay, do it, Buck, okay.

Here's the Orange, and here's White.

Okay, that's more fair, I think.

Let's put this on; I did wipe where I wanted to put the light.

This has a good strong one down there.

And it has one that's just a little bit in there.

Not much, slightly up there.

And then we'll go over to the other side.

And this is going to be an important one.

It's not as important now because it's just the same value as these, but it will eventually have even a stronger light on it.

And...

Which one are you?

Well, the one you wiped out.

That looks pretty good.

I think I'll take a fan brush and just kind of touch-- oh, I need to put a little bit of this, when I say this, it's that same old orange, but I'm wiping so much off the brush, you can hardly see it.

See, by wiping off the brush, it has the same family, but it's not as intense as down front.

But that's a nice feature where you go back, back, back, back.

To have just a little bit of mystery on this.

I'm picking up some of this darker green that we used over on here.

And I'm going to come to the top and kind of-- you see the difference between that and that?

It just makes it just a little more focusing on this area.

And I don't mind if I bump into a tree a little bit because we're going to putting some foliage on them anyway.

I'll blend this up a little higher.

Okay, let's take and, let's see, down here at the edge of the road, edge of the path.

You're not a road, you're a path.

No one drives down there.

The blending really is important.

bringing things together.

This has been a fast lesson.

Thank you for watching.

We will be seeing you next time when we'll go further with "Solitude," we'll go into the woods, and we'll enjoy what we see.

Thanks for watching.

[piano plays in bright rhythm & tone] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (woman) Funding for "Painting With Paulson" is made possible by... To order the complete 13-episode series 20 of "Painting with Paulson" on DVD including Bonus Features and Line Drawings, please visit or call...