Wilson Bickford: In the last episode, we started this butterfly and daisy project.

Now we're going to move forward and add more depth by bringing in the foreground flowers, and bringing this butterfly to life.

Join me next on Painting With Wilson Bickford.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hi.

Welcome to Painting With Wilson Bickford.

As you recall in the last episode, we started this Sulfur butterfly project.

There was a sketch and supply list available at the WPBS-TV site, and we transferred that sketch and under-painted the butterfly with some black, acrylic gesso.We masked him out with tape.

He's underneath here, and we covered that canvas with green gesso after that, which is acrylic.

Then we started building up the oil background with our atmospheric background and our flowers.

Now, we're going to keep moving ahead, progressing into the foreground of this.

We're going to come down and start doing some of these closer flowers.

'm going to backtrack and start putting some of these buttons in these flowers and a few of the leaves so we can blur those out with our mop brush too, as well.

Then we'll move forward into this, and then we'll finally get to that butterfly.

I'm glad you could join me to finish this up today.

I'm going to start with my detail script liner, number two, detail script liner.

I'm going to take burnt sienna and a little bit of white.

I want a button color for the middle of these flowers.

Flower species vary greatly.

Sometimes they're kind of a yellow ochre color, which is more yellowish.

Sometimes they're this brownish.

I'm going to use this brown today, just by preference.

I'm going to take that color ...

I don't want this too dark.

I want it a little bit lighter for the background.

Way back on these distant flowers, I'm going to put the buttons in.

If you notice where one's turned sideways, you're only seeing half of the button.

It's kind of an ellipse, not a perfectly round circle, but this will dictate the direction.

See if I put that button that way, you can tell that flower's oriented and facing that way.

Some of these might be turned around where you're not really seeing much of the button.

They're cupped in just enough to where you're just seeing a little bit over the top of the foreshortened petals in front.

You don't have to get too crazy with them.

This one looks like it's almost full frontal so I'm going to have to actually put a circle in that one.

I'm trying to use very little paint.

I did not thin the paint down.

It's kind of thick, but that makes it perfect because I'm going to want to whisk over this with my mop brush.

If you get it thinned down too much, and it's too thin and squishy, it's going to spread all over the place.

I want to be able to have control.

This one here also looks like it's facing me straight on, so I need more of a circle in there.

See, it doesn't take much.

These are just suggestions.

I'm going to worry more about the closer flowers when we get there.

In the first episode I mentioned that these will look much more like flowers once you put the buttons in.

Notice what a difference that makes.

I'm going to switch and go back to my number 10 flat brush, and I want to put some leaves in here.

I could go a lighter green like this, or I could go a much darker green.

It's basically my preference.

Right now I'm just going to paint what I feel.

I think I'm going to go with something a little bit darker in this one, just to show you the difference.

These are much lighter.

I'm going to go a little bit darker today, just to something different, and that'll give you some options of how to do your own.

I'm going to take sap green, a little bit of ultramarine blue.

There's still a touch of that black in there and I'm going to have to check this, see how it reads.

It looks plenty dark enough so I think it's going to work.

Let me try a little spot here.

Okay, that's pretty good.

That's almost a little too dark for back there so I'm going to add just little bit of white on the edge of this puddle, and I'll save that darker color for down here later.

I want everything a little bit darker as it moves forward and lower on this canvas.

'm going to chisel this up.

To do the leaves, I basically just touch down with the brush, exert a little pressure, and as I pull down, I release the pressure on the brush so it comes back skinny.

Just gives you kind of a characteristic leaf shape.

These are in the distance.

I'm going to blur them out of focus.

I don't have to get too fanatical with them.

I'm going to have some silhouetted up against that background.

I need to put some right in amongst the flowers here.

Because my background got progressively darker, this color will not show down here very well.

See it's not dark enough.

That's why I had so save some of this paint for later.

I'll get darker, and I'll probably put a little bit of highlight on these as well.

You just want to just have no rhyme or reason to these.

Just kind of have them in there.

Just filler.

See right in here?

Already it's not showing so I'm going to bleed back into that darker color that was already on my palette.

It's all about contrast.

Everything needs to show up.

If it's not showing up, there's no sense putting it in there.

It's not doing you any good.

You always have to be mindful of your contrasts.

Maybe I'll put another couple of things in there.

I'm basically just looking to make it look full.

It doesn't take much.

Doesn't take much at all.

Okay, from there I'm going to take the mop brush again that I used last time.

It's still got a little bit of green on it, but it's fine.

It's clean enough if I just wipe it off a little bit.

ow I want to just fuzz this out a little more, so just like we did in the first episode last time.

We started with the flowers, but now I want to kind of hit those buttons a little bit, and hit these leaves somewhat.

The whole background is kind of hazy.

Then we're going to start showing more details down here in the bottom.I'm going to go back to that Filbert brush, and you'll notice that some of these have a little touch of white on them.

They're not as white as the ones up front.

They're kind of in the mid-ground.

These are distant, and then we're getting into the middle ground, then we're getting into the foreground.

So that color that I had for the highlighting before, or the shadow, shadow I should say, that I based the ones in with, I'm going to take a little bit of white into that and lighten it just a little bit.

Don't do every single petal.

Just kind of bounce around and hit here and there.

It's just enough to kind of set those off.

Make them look a little more three-dimensional.

It makes them look like they're twisted different angles to the light so that part of the flower is getting some light and part of it isn't.

Part of it's in shadow so it turns in different angles.

akes it look much more natural than if they're all just one flat, solid color.

See, I'm being very cautious not to get too carried away with it.

I don't want anything screaming at me.

By that, I mean I don't want anything too vibrant, too bright that's going to just make you just look there like a magnet immediately.

These are still kind of subtle and in the background.

If I felt that they needed it, I could always give them a little treatment of the mop brush but I think those look pretty fine right there the way they are.

I'm going to let those go.

Okay, now I'm going to start moving forward into these larger, closer daisies.

I need more of that background color that we had for that.

The base color which was white and cerulean blue.

You might have added a little touch of ultramarine to that to change the flavor like I mentioned.

Just go back to that color, and make sure you've got enough of it.

I'm going to consciously start making these a little bigger now.

This one is actually just a full frontal one.

I'm going to put more petals on this one just to make it different.

There are a lot of different species of daisies.

Some of them are more sparsely constructed.

They don't have as many petals.

Some of them have a lot of layers of petals in them.

I'm just going to give this one a few more petals.

What I'm doing is just envisioning where the center is, and I'm pulling towards this.

You always have to reference in your mind where that center dot of that flower is going to be.

ll the petals will radiate from that point.

That one looks pretty good already.

Wait until I highlight it.

It's going to look spectacular, if I may say so myself.

It's going to really set it off.

I'm going to have this one be turned a little bit.

I'm consciously just trying to make these a little more dominant and a little bigger.

These will not get hit with the mop brush.

These are going to be more close, and more detailed, and not fuzzed out.

'm kind of carefully just planning.

I don't want them all the same height, I want to make sure the depths are different, and I want to make sure they're not all the same distance apart.

I like that one but probably if it was a little bigger it wouldn't hurt a thing so I'll make it a little bigger.

That wasn't a mistake, it was an adjustment guys.

Always have to adjust.

If you get something on there that's not right, fix it.

Painting is just a series of adjustments from one thing to the next.

I've still got a lot of space in here but I can fill that in with more just random petals here and there, and some leaves, and some stems.

It's just a matter of filling it out until everything looks full enough and balanced enough that you're happy with it.

Every one of you will have a different threshold for that.

Some of you will do a little less and be happy, and some of you will do a little more.

Down in here I'll just put a few little touches.

I might smudge these particular ones in a little more.

I said I wasn't going to, but I can push these into the background.

I'm just trying to compare the background into the foreground, and make it look full enough.

I'm just eking this out as I'm going.

I'm not copying that one at all really.

I'm just kind of going with what I'm seeing here on my canvas.

I've already painted that one once so I don't want to paint that one again.

This is a different day and a different painting.

You'll find that every day that you pick up a brush, you're in a different mindset, and you're going to paint what's in you right then.

It will come out on your canvas.

I'm going to let that sit for a minute, and I'm going to think about it.

Maybe I'll put some of the more distant ones back in there, not the distant ones, but the deeper ones, more blue.

I'm going to move ahead.

I'm going to swish this brush out.

I've got some odorless mineral spirits here that I clean my brushes with.

I'm going to wash that out, and I'm going to take straight titanium white.

I'll develop these flowers and then see how it sits and how it reads to me.

hen I'll just add more stuff.

I'm going to chisel up this Filbert brush with titanium white.

You'll notice on this one, some of the petals are really dominant and white, which really makes them stand out, so I'm just going to do the same thing on this canvas.

You'll have to reload fairly often because you're dabbing on top of that wet blue, and you'll see that it muddies your color down a little bit, so you'll see that I quite often go back down to the palate here to reload.

Don't do all of the petals, just do a few around.

See how that just sets that right off?

Like I said before, what really makes them come to life is the button in the middle.

Once we put those buttons in there it makes a lot of difference.

See how that flower's overlapped against that one?

That one's a blurry, this one's a crisp focus?

It really pushes that back.

It's that depth of field that we were talking about earlier in the last episode.

All right.

It's coming to life.

I just want to bounce the light around a little bit.

A little here, a little there.

Too much of anything is a bad thing.

Don't do too much highlighting.

You want to be able to tell the story in as few words as you can.

Painting is like music.

There's a lot of musicians out there in the world that everybody thinks they have to play a million notes a minute.

ou take some of those old blues guys, and they can knock somebody off the stage with just one stinging note with vibrato on it.

They can tell that whole story in just one soulful note.

You don't want to play all your notes at once.

Just take your time, play the right ones.

It will come together in the end.

I'm going to smooth that a little bit.

Got a little bit of a dry brush effect there.

Just smoothing that out.

I'm going to take the detail script liner again.

I'm going to put buttons in these.

I want these to be darker, more dominant, so this is the color I used for the buttons in the background.

I'm just going to add to that, and make sure it's darker and richer.

I can take some of this clear glazing medium, or I could use my paint thinner over here, my mineral spirits, but I want to think it down a little bit.

I'm not going to whisk these remember, so I can thin this down now, it won't squish all over the place.

I'm not going to touch them with the mop.

These are going to be a little bit more dominant.

I have to be a little more careful with the shape of them.

This one's looking straight on, so I do want more of a circular, round button in the middle of that.

You're looking right into it.

The ones that are turned are still going to get like the half moon.

See how that one looks just like it's facing that way?

It's very easy.

You do half the flower, you put a half moon in it, and depending which direction you want it aimed.

See that?

It's just as simple as that.

All right.

See how that's coming to life?

You can do this.

I know you can.

Nothing to it.

Okay, now I have to make a decision.

I have to fill this in a little more with something.

These closer ones I like to put stems on them.

This is my number two long script liner.

I going to think the paint down with my paint thinner, and I need something darker or lighter.

On this I went with lighter stems.

On this one I'm going to go darker.

Again just to show you the difference, and it all depends on what colorings you like.

There is no right or wrong with it, as long as you have your values and your contrasts.I'm going to go over it with a really dark green.

This is sap green, ultramarine blue, and a little bit of black.

See how I really thin that paint down and roll it to a point.

It comes to a nice, nice point where it's just nice, fine line work.

You want to use a light touch, and I'm going to check this value.

If it's not dark enough, I'll have to darken it a little more.

I think that's going to show.

If it doesn't, just change your value.

Darken it or lighten it, just make it show against your background.

See these closer ones where you'd actually see stems on them, I'm going to add some.

Be conscious of where you're putting them.

If that flower's facing that way, the stem is going to be at this angle, not at this angle.

You have to use a little bit of common sense with that.

I'll let that one just kind of overlap right in behind there.

I'm going to take some of the paint out of the brush, and just kind of do this a little bit on a couple spots, just to suggest some stems and stuff back in the mix.

We're going to put some leaves down here too.

Just to kind of fill it out.

We've got to fill this up and make it look full enough.

Nothing too series there with those stems, just enough.

I'm going to go back to my number 10 flat brush with sap green, ultramarine blue, and black.

Remember earlier in this episode I said that we were going to have to darken this value down here, because the background is darker.

It's a matter of the contrast.

I'm going to try this and see how it reads.

I think that's going to be plenty dark enough.

Yep.

I'm going to put some leaves down in here.

Some of these I can connect right to the stems, sometimes I just do a little dot and a dash just to make it full.

To do those ...

I'm going to do one right here on my palette for you.

If you take that brush, and you lay it down, and just touch with the end of it.

Exert more pressure.

Turn it a little bit sideways as you drag it, and then release just to the tip again.

You get that nice leaf shape.

I'm doing it kind of quickly here because I'm used to it, but it's just ... basically it is just a flick of the wrist.

You can practice those first before you're committed to too many of them.

Okay, that's starting to come together pretty well.

them.

Okay, that's starting to come together pretty well.

Now at this point, I stop and I look at it.

I think, "What else does it need?"

I think right down here in the bottom I'd like a few more little flower accents.

It's a lot of leaves and not much else going on, so I'm going to go back into some of this bluish color that we had for the base color for the daisies, and I got wet green there now so I have to be a little careful.

If I just kind of go in, I can balance this out a little more, and I want to bury in some of those stems, and leaves, and stuff just to kind of balance everything out.

I'll have this one going right off the bottom of the canvas down here somewhere.

I just sit back and I squint.

I half close my eyes to look at it, and I just balance it out.

Any big areas that look just like openness with nothing going on, those are what I'm targeting.

That's kind of getting there though.

I'm getting pretty close.

I'm pretty happy with it.

All this time, that poor little butterfly has been sitting up there masked out, buried in that tape and he's saying, "Let me out."

We're going to let him out here in just a minute.

Any of those that I put in, I've got to go back and put the button in.

I'm going to grab my detail liner, and I'm going to use that burnt sienna, and I'll put a few more buttons in here.

Obviously when you're painting this at home, you've got all the time in the world that you want to elaborate on it.

I'm just showing you how to do this.

I don't typically paint this fast at home.

Take your time and just enjoy the ride.

I'm going to put a stem on some of these closer ones.

This one here especially that I just did, and maybe this one.

Just enough to fill it up a little bit.

hat's pretty much going to complete the background.

Now, we're going to move on to the butterfly.

I'm going to take my painting knife ...

This wasn't on the supply list.

It's an option.

You could use your sharp knife.

That would work equally well.

Just something to get under this tape.

You see this little guy is still underneath here.

I'm going to take just a moment to remove this tape, and I'll be right back.

[MUSIC] I've taken my button color and I've added white, and cadmium yellow pale to it on my detail script liner, and I've thinned that down a little bit with my paint thinner.

I can come up and put a little bit of a highlight on these rounded buttons which gives them a lot of shape and form.

I've taken the tape off the butterfly and like I said, he's still there just waiting for us.

He's been waiting to get into this game the whole episode, the whole two episodes.

I've removed the tape.

I did take a little bit of black of my oil paint here, and you want to thin it down.

If you have any little discrepancies of white where the trimming wasn't quite exact, you can take a little bit of black and just tighten up those edges.

This is my number two liner brush.

Don't just paint black everything just for the sake of doing it, because you're going to want ... you want that area free of oil paint when you go to put your glaze on.

This is white, I'm going to use my number six round brush, and I'm going to take some of this clear glazing medium and a little bit of the cadmium yellow.

Glaze can be made stronger or more weak and pale depending on how saturated it is.

If you use more medium and less paint, you're going to have more of a pale tone.

If I use a little more yellow, it's going to be a deeper yellow, a little stronger.

So I'm carefully going to come in like this.

I'm going to paint this one whole side.

Like I mentioned earlier, there are different species of these.

I've seen some that are ... blue is a very common one.

Unless I'm crazy, I'm almost thinking I've seen some that were kind of a pinkish tone.

You could make a fantasy butterfly.

You don't have to make it literal.

That's the nice part about painting.

If you get some of this on the black, and it shows up too much, you can just wipe it away.

The cadmium yellow pale is rather translucent, it's not completely transparent, so if you get it in a heavy layer on top of this black, it shows.

I'm going to do that one.

I'm going to do this side as well.

Notice there's a little bit of shading on there too.

They're not just straight yellow, which would make him look very flat.

The wings are separated at different angles so I want those to appear as such.

I'm hoping my shoulder isn't getting in the way here as I'm leaning in.

They do have these distinct little markings on them.

I'm not sure this was on the original sketch, but if it wasn't, put these on.

They have these little black marks.

I put that in with my acrylic because I knew they were there, but I think they might have been missing on the sketch, but they do have these little dots here on the wings.

It's a very distinct marking.

And I'm going to take some of that yellow with a little bit of the burnt sienna, which will kind of turn it more of a slightly orangish yellow.

I'm going to put a little differentiation on parts of the wings.

I'm going to make that a little darker just to show different angles to the light so it looks like they're spread out.

We've got to put some antennae on this little fellow.

I'm going to use my number two liner.

I've got some think black here.

I'm going to drag these old antennae out like that.

I hope you enjoyed the lesson.

I had a really good time bringing it to you.

I'm so glad you tuned in and joined me.

I'd love to see what you do for your version of this, so until next time, 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!

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [Swoosh Noise]