Wilson Bickford: A sure sign of spring is when the butterflies start to appear.

Join me next as we paint this yellow Sulphur beauty, on Painting with Wilson Bickford.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hi.

Welcome to Painting with Wilson Bickford.

I've got a fantastic little painting I want to share with you today.

It's a yellow Sulphur butterfly amongst some white daisies.

We're going to shoot for a maximum depth of field in this painting.

We want a nice sense of depth going back into the distance, receding away.

It makes the butterfly really stand out very three-dimensionally.

It's a pretty easy painting to do.

I'm going to show you all the steps you're going to need to know to do your own version of this.

f you go to the WPBS-TV website, you'll find the supply list and the sketch to help you through this painting.

Now, if you have your own butterfly design, your own drawing, your own photograph reference to use, feel free to use it.

This is just showing you how to do it, and you can do it your own way with your own materials if you prefer.

What I've done to get to the starting point, we're going to use some acrylic underneath this first before we apply oil over the top.

So what I've done is, I took my sketch and I used some graphite transfer paper, which I laid underneath.

This is just graphite transfer paper from an art store, hobby store.

Lay your transfer paper down, lay the sketch on top.

You trace the design with the red pen on top.

All of the black lines are very easily visible so you know where you've been and where you haven't, so you're not retracing the same lines.

It shows up very well.

rom there, I took a small liner brush, or you could use a detail liner, either/or of these smaller brushes.

The liner is a little finer brush; the detail liner is a little bit bigger, a little wider.

Actually, the detail liner is a good choice for that, it works very well.

Use whatever you want.

I took some black acrylic.

It's nice to use a little bit of water.

This is a cup of water.

I very carefully painted the black markings on the butterfly as per the sketch.

Now, this has tape over it.

You'll see in just a second, I'm going to remove that.

There will also be some larger sketches like this on the site to help you through it.

Just outline all the edges.

There's going to be vein lines in here, which you want very thin and slender so we roll the brush to a point without much paint on the brush.

It will help you achieve those nice, slender lines.

You want to bring it up to that level, which is what I have done on this canvas.

That's acrylic, so it's going to dry very quickly.Once that was dry, I took tape, just regular masking tape.

You'll be able to see your design right through it.

Don't use a role of tape you've had in your drawer for five years.

It tends to get sticky and brittle, and it leaves a residue when you peel it off.

You want to use good, fresh tape and a very, very sharp knife.

This is a craft knife with a #11 blade, it's known as.

Very sharp.

It's very nice for doing precise cuts.

I covered that with tape to block that out, and I carefully trimmed around it so the butterfly is all covered up and protected.

That way I can just paint over that area freely without getting paint in that area.

I want that to be very pristine for the oil colors.

Once that's on there, press your tape down quite firmly.

And the next step is, I know this seems like a lot of steps, but it's worth it in the end.

It just makes it real easy, getting the prep work done.

From there, I took some green acrylic.

This is a color known as summer forest, and I took that ...

I'll put this one back up here ... With a foam brush, and I put a couple coats.

I can go right over the butterfly, since he's protected and masked out.

It's going to take a couple coats.

Try to use two thin coats rather than one thick, heavy one.

I covered the whole canvas, which brought it up to this level.

ow, if you're frugally minded, this can be washed out with water.

Sometimes I rinse them out and I save them.

This was a brand new brush, it's got a lot of life left in it.

You rinse it out with some water, it'll be fine.

You can reuse it again later, or you can throw it away.

From this point, this is dry.

Believe it or not, it might be hard to see, but that butterfly is under there.

He's taped in right there.

I can still see him.

When the time comes, I'm going to take my little knife, maybe even my painting knife, either the sharp knife I did the trimming or the painting knife, and I'm going to pull that tape away and he'll still be under there all black and white, ready to go for the oil glazes of yellow on top.At this point, this is dry.

For oil brushes, I'm going to be using a two-inch scenery brush, a #10 flat brush, a #4 filbert brush, a #6 round brush, a #2 liner, a #2 detail script liner, a #2 long script liner, and a large mop brush.

The mop brush will be really handy for fading out this background and blurring that out of focus, getting that soft, hazy, atmospheric look.

For paints, now these are oil paints.

We've switched away from the acrylic zone.

This is oil paint.

I'm going to be using cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, ivory black, sap green, cadmium yellow pale, burnt sienna, and titanium white.

I'm also going to be using some clear glazing medium.

This is an alkyd base which dries very quickly.

I'll be dry by tomorrow.

It won't dry immediately like an acrylic would, but it dries much faster than an oil medium would.

It's compatible with oils.

It's one of my favorite mediums.

It's really nice, because it speeds up the drying time of all your oil paints.

rom here, this is dry, like I said, with the acrylic.

I'm going to take my two-inch scenery brush, and I'm going to take some of this clear glazing medium.

I'm going to lubricate the whole canvas.

I want to scrub this on quite thinly.

Don't need a lot of it.

All this does is make the canvas a little bit slick and oily, so where we want to blend all those edges it's very soft.

We can get soft edges.

It's going to be slick and smooth.

See, I scrub this in.

Don't lay it on real thick and heavy like you're painting.

I literally scrub it in.

I think you can distinguish there where you can see it.

It makes the canvas look a little darker, so you can actually track your progress and see where you're going with it, which is nice.

You think being clear you're never going to be able to see it, but you actually can.

This one has a lot of prep work underneath.

I'm going to devote two episodes to this so I can slow down and do a nice job for you, so I don't have to skip over anything.

As daunting as this may seem to you, it's really not a hard project at all.

I'm showing you all the nuts and bolts right here to put this together.

Like I said, you can do your own version.

Take some butterfly photos of your own, maybe a monarch butterfly or a tiger swallowtail.

Anything.

Now, see, that's put on very thinly.

I'm going to lay this brush to the side now.

The clear medium will dry very quickly, so you might look at this at the end of your painting session and think, "Boy, that looks clean.

I don't remember using that.

Maybe I already washed it."

Make sure you wash it.

I have odorless paint thinner here.

You're going to want to make sure you wash that out, because this will be hardened up and unusable by morning.

That clear medium will set up very quickly.

I'm going to set it here, but I'm going to remember to wash it at the end of this session.I'm going to switch over to my #10 flat brush, and I'm going to put some background in here.

I want just some atmospheric look, but maybe some hazy sky peeking through the atmosphere.

I'm going to use the #10 flat with titanium white and cerulean blue.

Get a flavor that you like.

I didn't mention, but I'm going stop and mention it right now.

Notice that you still see some of this green permeating through everywhere.

That was the purpose of painting it with the green.

I'm going to let that green do its job, and I'm going to leave little pockets of that showing through a little bit everywhere.

I'm going to use a darker green oil down here in the corner over that.

You'll see how I do it.

I do with a choppy maneuver that leaves some of that showing through.

That gives us color harmony, because that same color radiates through the whole painting.

I'm going to take some of this titanium white and cerulean blue, and I'm going to chisel this brush up.

I'm just going to do a little flip-floppy crisscross.

It's not meant to suggest anything in particular.

It's just going to be atmospheric, blurry, out-of-focus background.

If you get it light enough and leave enough blue in there, it might look like the sky coming through.

We want it to look like it just goes on forever.

If you're a photographer, you've probably heard of depth of field.

My wife does a lot of photo work, and she's always talking about depth of field and blurring out your background to show distance and depth.

We can do it on canvas, it's just a matter of controlling your values and your hard and soft edges.

See, that looks like a total train wreck, right?

I promise it'll get better.

And by the time i blend it, I'm going to come back and blend it with my mop brush, and when I do that, it's going to soften the paint layer out and you're going to see more green through it.

It won't look as vivid as it does right now.

It'll mute it downmore like this.

I might make an adjustment and come back and lighten it up again later.

I'm going to see how it plays out.

Painting is nothing more than a series of adjustments.

You have to adjust one value against another, and a soft edge against a hard edge, and it takes a lot of those elements to finally pull everything together.

I know you're thinking I've lost my mind and that's never going to be anything, but I promise you it's going to get better.

OK, I'm going to take a little bit of that leftover cerulean blue right here with some sap green, and I'm going to start getting into a lighter green.

Now, sap green by itself is not one of my favorite colors.

If you look at that on my palette, it's very yellowy.

It's artificial-looking.

It's not a green that I particularly like.

That's just my opinion and my preference, it's not an art principle or anything right or wrong.

Totally up to you.

Myself, I prefer to put a little bit of ultramarine blue with that.

It changes it more to a blue-green rather than a yellow-green, and I like that a lot better.

It's just my preference.

I want to keep this kind of light, so I'm going to add enough white to that to make sure that it's not too much of a jarring change.

I want it to show up against the green, but I also want it to show up against the blue.

I'm kind of straddling a mid-tone between the dark green and the lighter blue.

I'm just working on the outer fringes.

I'm not doing these leaves that you're seeing in here, I'm just doing that fuzzy green area in there.

Again, I'm still doing those little chops.

Notice how I'm leaving gaps of that green gesso showing through underneath, the green acrylic.

I'm not going to put it in a straight line.

It's meant to be little leaves and stuff sticking up way in the distance in the background, so you want the edge to be varied and irregular.

I know what you're thinking, this guy is never going to pull this together.

Well, we'll see.

You'll see that most paintings start out kind of abstract and loose like this, and then they tighten up towards the end.

This one's a little more so in the beginning stage, but a lot of paintings start out that way.

Even some of the stuff that I do that looks quite photographic, it didn't start that way when I started putting paint on the canvas.

OK, now I want to start getting darker.

I mentioned earlier, I want to get pretty dark down here in this bottom corner.

The dark value behind makes the lighter flowers show up.

We have to think about the contrast.

I'm going to take more sap green, and notice I'm working right in the same little puddle of color, just tweaking it.

I'm going to take more green, ultramarine blue, maybe a speck of the ivory black.

The black is very, very strong.

You're not going to need much of that.

I'm going to mix that, and I'm going to check my color right there.

I think that's fine.Same thing, I'm going to start down in the bottom corner and work my way up here.

I want to have the brush kind of depleted of paint by the time I get up there so there's less paint, then it's a smoother transition.

See, there is a method to the madness.

If I start down here, and notice I'm still doing the blotchy little choppy strokes.

I'm leaving some of that original green of the canvas underneath showing through.

All the magic is going to come when I get that mop brush going.

like doing butterflies and birds and pretty things.

I like doing old barns, lighthouses, I like to paint everything.

Every day I have a new favorite.

Some days it's birds, some days it's lighthouses and barns.

I've done a couple barns in the previous series, 100 and 200, so I wanted to bring you something a little different here with some flowers in it.

Just when you think there's no hope for that, I'm going to pull my ace out of the deck.

I'm going to go just a little bit darker.

I'm just judging it right here.

I like that dark tone, but that's the only spot I've got it.

As I worked it around, I kind of lost that darkness.

Darkness is going to be your friend right now, till we get started with those daisies.

You want some nice, dark backdrop behind those daisies.

That's going to make those pop out.

Light on light is not going to show.

Light on dark will show very well, so I want dark behind and the light flowers on top.

OK.

If you get around to doing your version of this painting, I'd love to see it.

You can send me a photo on my Facebook message, or contact me via my email through my website, WilsonBickford.com.

I'd love to see what you do with this.

All right, I think that's looking pretty good.

[MUSIC] Don't be afraid to mix it up with this painting.

There are different species of these Sulphur butterflies.

Today we're painting a yellow one, but there's also a very common blue variety.

Notice that these flowers have less petals, these flowers have more.

There's also different species of daisies, so mix it up and have fun with it.

I'm going to lay that brush down.

I'm going to take my mop brush.

Now, I'm going to take a rag right in my hand, because I'm going to want to wipe the brush as I progress.

This is very soft, like a makeup brush.

You'll see that I'm not using a lot of pressure, I'm just flitting the brush around.

You'll see that everything starts to soften out, and you're going to say, "Hey, he was right.

He knew what he was talking about."

Look at that, it's softening out.

See, I'm not covering it completely.

I could come in here and just brush that to kingdom come and lose all those little accents, but I want some of that green showing through everywhere, so I don't blend it for wages, just blend itenough.

As you pick paint up, you're going to want to keep wiping that off.

See how I'm all over the place?

I'm just flitting all over, all over.

Don't stay in one spot and just spin your wheels.

This is all just meant to be blurry background, so that's all it is.

It's nothing specific.

You don't have to worry about it looking like leaves or stems or anything specific.

ll of the harder edges and the details will come over the top of this, and it'll make perfect sense.

That one little spot there, I don't like.

I got a little bit of green on here, but I want to blend that together just a little more.

It doesn't matter if there's a smudge of green there, I'll just take that green a little higher.

Blend it to your satisfaction, whatever looks good to you.

I think that's going to do it for me.

That looks fine for what I need for the background.

See, that wasn't so bad, was it?

I told you your saving grace would be the mop brush.

Once you get in there blending it, everything pulls together.

rom there, I'm going to switch over to my filbert brush.

This is like a flat, but it's rounded on the end.

It's great for doing flower petals.

Not just daisies, but all kinds of different flowers.

Notice how these are more blueish and in the shadows?

As I come forward and lower on the canvas, I'm going to use more white to bring them out.

Also, these flowers are smaller because they're farther away, which has to do with linear perspective.

They're going to get larger as I come forward into the painting.

I'm going to start with white and a little bit of the cerulean blue, kind of similar to my sky color, the background color that I had.

As a variation, you could take this color and use it like ... Let me see, where do I want to start?

I'm looking at my butterfly.

I'm not afraid to get some flowers around him or behind him, I just want to be conscious of where he is.

See, I could use that.

I like that color, but as a preference, if you had a change of heart, you could actually add a little bit of the ultramarine blue to that and it just changes the flavor somewhat.

That's a little dark.

Let me lighten that back a little bit.

Anything in that blueish vein is going to look like shadowed white in the distance.

That almost takes on a purple persona because of the ultramarine.

That's ultramarine's inherent nature.

It's kind of a purplish blue.

It leans towards purple.

I'm going to go back to that cerulean color, because that's the color I like personally, but don't be afraid to mix it up and try some different colors.

Make this painting your own.

I'm going to try that.

I'm not sure about the value now that I've remixed that, it might be too dark.

Let me break this down for the flowers.

What I do is I hold the brush this way, the vertically way.

I chisel it up on the brush like this, nice and sharp, and then I pull in.

You have to imagine where the center button of the flower is, and I pull towards that.

If you want one angled to the side, you only do half the flower.

When I put the button in the middle of that, it'll look like it's pointed that direction.

If I do one this way and I put the button in, see, he's looking like he's angled that way.

You want all different angles on these.

It should just be a lot of flowers, and just no rhyme or reason to them.

Some of them you can put full frontal.

This one looks like you're seeing the whole thing and it's facing right dead-on towards you.

You just mix it up.

These ones in the back you don't have to be quite so specific with, because we're going to come back with the mop brush and fade those out.

I kind of make sure I don't have them all on a line.

Notice how these are all different heights.

I don't space them evenly.

There's a bigger gap between these.

All that stuff is important.

You'll see, I just kind of bounce around and I suggest some here and there.

These aren't quite so critical, because they're way in the background.

I'm going to put a little piece of one way up there sticking up somewhere.

These are going to get blurred in as well, just like the background did.

I'm going to put a full front-facing one right here.

See that?

That one went around the dial.

All the way around, with the center.

These won't look nearly as good until we put the centers in them.

It's funny, any flower that you paint, whether it's a sunflower even, they never look right until you put the centers in.

Then they make perfect sense.As I come lower, I want to get a little bigger before I move on to these closest ones.

Like I said, I'm not being quite as finicky with these because I'm going to blur them out of focus.

I don't want an extreme amount of detail in them because they're sitting further away.

I just kind of go through the motions.

You'll notice I have to stop and re-chisel my brush quite often.

I can see the tape right there of my butterfly, and I'm going to put one right behind his wing a little bit.

That wing is going to have some dark on it, and that's going to really set off against that lighter flower right there.

Now, see?

This isn't really hard.

I know you can do this.

The reason most people don't paint is because they've never tried, and they're afraid.

Don't be afraid.

That goes for anything in life, not just painting.

Take life by the horns and ride it for all it's worth.

I was never afraid to try anything.

I'm a musician too.

I can play several instruments, and it's because I wasn't afraid.

I had it in my head if I try this, I know I can learn it if I practice it enough and work at it, and I've gotten to that point where I can.

Just don't be afraid, don't be intimidated.

Don't be willing to sit on the bench of life.

Get in the game once in a while.

Alright.

Now as I come lower, I'm going to start making these bigger and I'm going to go just a little bit lighter.

I'm going to add a little bit of white to that, and I'll actually mix these two blues together just for different flavor.

I'm going to start creating some of these large ones.

Maybe not these biggest white ones yet, but you'll notice these get a little bit bigger as they're coming down in here.

I want to save some room for some of these larger ones, so I'm going to be kind of conscious of where I'm putting these.

There's one.

That has to do with the linear perspective.

Anything closer is going to appear larger.

Can you tell how those are aimed?

If I put the button here, that one's on a stem this way.

This one's facing upward.

You just want all different angles on these.

OK. That's getting pretty full.

all different angles on these.

OK. That's getting pretty full.

I've got to save some room because I'm going to put some leaves in there.

I'm just judging how much I've got in here and how much I've got room for.

Sometimes I don't put a full flower, I just look for openings and gaps where it needs something and I just put a couple little dots and dashes just to represent a flower folded over into the background.

That's getting us pretty close to where I'm going to be for this stage.

I'm going to switch over to my mop brush.

Now, my mop brush had some green on it.

I'm just going to wipe it off.

Don't stick it in the thinner and wash it.

It's going to be too wet.

This type of hair tends to hold the moisture, and then you've got to let it literally sit overnight to evaporate dry.

I'm going to take the mop brush clean, and just like I did before, very light touch.

Use just enough pressure to get the paint to move.

You'll see it when it starts to blur.

If you smudge too hard, you're just going to turn that into a blob, so you'll notice I kind of do an x-stroke.

These ones especially, on these outer fringes back out here, I'm going to come back eventually and put a little bit of highlight on some of those, and we've got to put the buttons in.

hat'll take us to the end of today's lesson.

Make sure you catch next week, we're going to come back and finish all these flowers and leaves off and we're going to paint that butterfly.

That's going to really set this off.

You'll see how by blending those out, it throws them out of focus.

It makes them look farther away.

I'm going to blend this out a little bit.

Join me next time.

We'll finish this up.

Until then, stay creative and keep painting.

Announcer: All 13 episodes of Painting With Wilson Bickford, Series #300 are now available on DVD in one boxed set for $35 plus $4.95 shipping and handling.

Learn the techniques used to paint "Majestic Mountain" with this new exclusive in-depth Wilson Bickford instructional DVD.

Also available: Wilson Bickford's Rose Painting Techniques DVD with in-depth lessons on painting roses, stems, and leaves.

And Wilson Bickford's Landscapes Techniques DVD -- learn to paint skies, trees, water, and grasses.

Order online at wpbstv.org!

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