Wilson Bickford: Not all Canada geese fly south for the winter, but these guys sure are.

Join me next on Painting with Wilson Bickford, and I'll teach you how to paint your own version of "Canada Honkers."

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hi.

Thanks for joining me today.

I have a fantastic little painting I want to share with you.

I love to paint geese and ducks and birds and all kinds of animals in general.

I've got a nice one today that features some Canadian geese, so I call this one Canadian Honkers.

Where I live in Northern New York there a lot of these birds that fly around, especially in the autumn when they move south and migrate to the south in the winter months.

This is a nice painting I want to share with you.

It's a little bit different perspective than normal, a lot of my landscapes you're just looking out straight across, this gives you the perspective of looking up so it's a nice lesson in that respect too.

It's also going to be a nice lesson on doing the clouds.

Let me show you how we're going to start this, I'm going to run down the materials here first.

You will be able to go to the WPBS-TV website and pull up the supply list as well as a sketch.

You can print these right off directly from the website.

What I did is I take the sketch and it'll tell you here how to orient on your canvas.

I put the sketch down like this, I slide graphite transfer paper underneath, I trace the design with a red pen to get the image on there.

From there, I used black acrylic gesso and a color called blue moon gesso.

These are acrylic.

I painted these in with a detailed script liner, all the black areas, and then rinse the brush out with water.

It's acrylic based.

Although we're painting oils I'm starting with an acrylic base.

Then I use some blue moon to get throat patch and his belly right there on both of these.

Let me run down the oil supplies and I'll talk more about this prep work.

For the oil supplies for brushes, I'm going to use a two-inch scenery brush, a one inch small texture brush, a number three fan brush, a number two detail script liner and a number two long script liner.

I'm also going to show you a mop brush that's optional.

It's not on the list but you may choose to use it if you want to.

It's a great tool for softening your clouds.

Okay, as I said before in the prep work, I painted these areas with black and the blue acrylic, so these are dry.

From there, for the next phase, I took just regular masking tape, everybody always asks, what tape do you use?

It doesn't need to be a special tape.

It really doesn't.

This is just everyday tape from my hardware store.

I take tape and I cover the geese.

Cover each one of them.

I then take a small utility craft knife, very sharp, be very careful, and I cut away everything that's not the geese.

Cut away all the background.

Trim it.

It's going to take you a few minutes.

That's why I did it offscreen.

It's going to you take a good 10 minutes to carefully trim these out.

Trim way everything that's not the geese, so they're just completely covered.

After that, I took the same wide tape and I put a border all the way around the edge.

I put this piece on last so I can remove it first and you'll see why when we get into this.

That's the prep work, I took a pencil and I marked off where the grass line is going to be because I want to leave that nice and dark so I'm not going to use a white basecoat in this area like I'm going to in the sky.

I put a little line there just to keep me out of there with the white basecoat and we're just about ready to roll here.

I'm going to give you a rundown on the oil paints.

For the oil paints today I'm using cerulean blue, which is going to be used in the lower sky with a lot of white, ultramarine blue for the upper sky, Van Dyke brown for the grasses and on the geese themselves, yellow ocher for the grass, burnt sienna I'm going to incorporate some of that into the grass to warm that up, I've got black that I can actually darken the shadowed grass if I need to or I can use it to touchup the geese, titanium white and I've got a little bit of a white basecoat medium here that I'm going to use for blendability on that background.

So here we go, I'm going to use the two-inch scenery brush, I'm going to pick up some of this white basecoat, I want a very, very, very thin coat, so you'll see I'm going to scrub this right in.

Now, notice I can paint right around that border or over it, overlap it, and over the geese.

I don't have to worry about those.

That's why I masked them out.

It'd be pretty impossible to paint around those so we get this background dropped in.

If we were painting watercolors, we'd use masking fluid.

That's the common thing with watercolors.

We don't have that sort of a product for oil so I use tape.

It achieves the same end.

It gives me the same way of doing it as a watercolorist.

Why should watercolorists have all the fun, right?

So I'm going to take this, put it on very thinly, scrub it in nice and thin.

Now that'll give me blendability so I get soft edges throughout that sky.

I'm going to start with a little bit of the cerulean blue, not too much.

If you get too much on your brush put a little more of the white basecoat with that.

I want a lighter value.

This adheres to the principle of aerial perspective.

I want the sky really pale and light down here.

The other bonus of that is it'll make the grass show up.

It'll make the grass a little darker against this so you'll have a nice contrast.

But prospectively speaking, to make this look more realistic, aerial perspective says that anything in the distance will be a lighter value so the sky that you see, the tire above your head, will always be darker and it'll be lighter as it goes off into the distance.

That's why this looks like it has much depth in the sky.

Okay, there's some cerulean blue.

Now I'm going to take ultramarine blue.

This is a much darker, stronger blue.

I'm going to take some of that, work well into the brush nice and evenly.

I'm going to come right across the top and I'm going to bring this down and bleed into that cerulean blue and let them just melt together and hold hands.

I might come back and darken that very top a little more so.

That's an adjustment so it's an easy fix.

You see, I do it crisscross.

They'll blend together very easily because of that white basecoat I applied first.

The idea is to have it darker here and just getting lighter, lighter, lighter gradually as it goes down.

I know some of you who haven't painted as much might look at this painting and think it's pretty daunting and think, "Wow, those geese are going to be hard," it's really not.

I'm showing you all the tricks of the trade right here, all you need to do is download the sketch.

If you can't draw use the sketch to transfer it.

If you can draw, a lot of people can draw, just draw your own geese or get a photo to work from, something to look at for reference and you can draw your own geese on.

I'm just showing you the technique of how to do it.

I'm going to go a little dark, I'm going to take a little more of the ultramarine.

Blue is my favorite color so I'm going to squeeze a little more in up here.

The other thing is it'll give me more contrast against the white clouds.

For the clouds I'm going to take titanium white, a little bit of the ultramarine blue, a speck of the burnt sienna, I want a gray to start out.

I want to put the shadows in the clouds.

Got a brush bristle right there, I'll flick that off there.

I want to put a little shading within the clouds.

See, I'm going to to thread one through the goose.

Don't paint around them.

Paint through them so it looks like the clouds will be behind them.

Also, perspectively, this is linear perspective, as the clouds go lower they're going to be smaller.

See, I make them a little stringier, not as tall.

My brush is shedding.

This is a brand-new brush so by scrubbing it on the canvas like that, you're bound to lose some hairs.

They break off.

That's normal.

So you base in your darker shadows.

I've got some mineral spirits here in a pail , I'm jut going to switch this out, rinse the brush off.

I use odorless mineral spirits for my cleanup.

I'm going to take some titanium white, maybe a little bit of that basecoat with it just to thin it down a tad to make it stick a little easier.

You see, I blob it on there, I put it on a little heavier so it holds up.

I need to blend it down into that shadow underneath.

You'll see once I blend those and unify those two together, it becomes very dimensional, three-dimensional.

I put a little bit on the tops of these ... Now, you'll be able work on it at a lot slower pace at home, I'm just showing you the technique here.

I'm having to breeze through it a little quicker than I normally would.

I don't paint this quickly at home either when I paint by myself.

So take your time when you're doing it.

You see, already that's starting to show a lot of nice form.

Maybe I'll squeeze a couple little sections down in here too so there's a little more continuity down the bottom where they're just fading off into the distance.

Okay, I'm going to wipe that brush off.

I'm going to start the blending with a fan brush and just roll the white and the gray together so there's not a real hard edge between.

Where you see those little brush bristles, you just flick them off there.

No big deal.

Remember, earlier, at the beginning of this episode, I mentioned that I had a mop brush, now I can blend this with a fan brush but you're only going to get a certain degree of softness with it.

It works but it'll still leave it a little coarse.

If you take the mop brush, which is very soft, almost like a makeup brush, use a light touch, and I can just really fine-tune those clouds and give them a nice, puffy, soft texture and feel.

Most people get heavy-handed with the mop brush and just really overuse it, just use a light touch just to dust it out.

It's a pretty good-looking sky, don't you think?

Yeah, I think you can do that.

Pretty sure you can.

Okay, I'm going to start basing in the grass.

I'm going to use my one-inch small texture brush.

From here, it's a matter of personal choice.

I'm going to use some Van Dyke brown, a little bit of the yellow ocher ...

This area of the canvas is dry.

Remember, we didn't put basecoat there so it's going to stab on there a little hard.

Once I get it wet I can put the longer blades over the top and it'll flow on much easier, but because I didn't put the basecoat there, this value will stay dark, just like I wanted.

You see, I'm just roughing that in.

I'm not thinking grass yet necessarily, I do want a little bit ragged top on the upper profile of that.

From there, I'm going to switch over to my long script liner brush and I'll start basing in some long grasses with the dark color first, I'll slowly build up to more yellow ocher and white, maybe a little bit burnt sienna, and really embellish that.

The key to using this brush is to get your paint quite thin.

Notice the bristles are so long on this brush, they're long so they hold a lot of paint.

Now, see, I get that really generously wet, almost to a milk consistency, quite thin.

The brush is really loaded from the tip of the bristle right to the metal ferrule See, I just pull up long flowing grasses.

Now, you'll have to reload quite often, not as often as you would with a shorter liner.

This one's nice and long so it holds a lot of paint so you can cover a lot of territory in one loading.

See, it's not really as hard as you think.

Be careful, I'm going to do this on the tape over here, a lot of people make this mistake, they press down too hard and you're going to get a great big wide line like that.

Notice I'm using just the tip of the brush so I get the nice, long narrow lines.

Now, I'm going to base this in with dark throughout, all the way across here, and I'm going to come back and add some lighter values.

So I'm going to work on this grass for a minute and I'll be right back.

[MUSIC] When you're doing the wings on your geese sometimes it's just a question of the hand angle.

Sometimes if you reorient your canvas in a different direction, it makes it easier, so you might find it easier to tilt it upside down and come in this way to embellish those wing edges.

Give it a try.

You'll probably find that's a little easier.

Okay, now I'm adding some of the yellow highlights on here.

This is yellow ocher and white.

I filled it in with a lot of the dark grasses, like I said before, and I'm just putting in some lighter values over the top.

As an option, I can take some of this burnt sienna, some warmer color leaning towards an orangey tone but it's a nice accent color in that.

I can throw a little bit of that in with it.

Notice how wet my paint is when I'm using this long script liner.

You can embellish that grass as much as you see fit.

You want to do it your way.

Fill it up so it's nice and full and busy, grassy.

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

Okay, you should be able to get a handle on that.

That's pretty simple, pretty straightforward.

It's more time-consuming than it is difficult so don't let it scare you.

I'm going to remove this piece of tape from my border, I'm going to take my little knife, my sharp knife that I used earlier, I'm going to remove this tape from the goose.

Now, I'm going to do one of these geese.

They're both done the same way but it's redundant and a little bit time-consuming to make you sit through both of them so I'm going to do one to show you how it's done and I'll stop and do the second one.

You got to get the tape off here first.

Sometimes that's a job in itself.

There we go.

You might get a little bleed underneath.

I've got a little bit under there, very minor, I'll touch that up.

I'm not worried about it.

There we go.

Now, bear in mind, I'm going to show you one of these so you'll do them both the same.

I'm going to use my detail script liner, I'm going to start out with a little bit of the Van Dyke brown, I'm going to have to thin this down.

Sometimes your best friend is a $.69 dowel from the hardware store.

You can buy a fancy thing called a mahl stick, you can get it at an art store, they're usually like $20 or more.

They're just a fancy straight edge like this to steady your hand.

I just use a dowel.

I can lay it across, bridge it across my easel here, it doesn't touch my canvas at all.

I'm going to touch up these edges a little bit with some of the brown.

I know we underpainted that with black, but they actually have more of a brownish tone to them, geese, so I'm going to just paint it in.

I'm just touching up the edges.

It also makes it a little wet so when I put the highlights on, it gives me something to blend into.

But it's a good idea to check your sketch, the one that's provided at the website or your reference photo if you're painting your own.

Just make sure your true to the form of the actual bird.

I'm going to put a little wet brown on there, I'm going to rinse that off and blot the brush.

I'm going to take black and I'm going to touch up his neck and tail if it needs it.

I got a little couple spots here that can use a tweak.

Painting is nothing but a series of adjustments.

If something needs a little tweak and an adjustment, you do it.

Okay, I'm swishing that out and drying that off.

I'm going to come in with some white.

I can actually use this white basecoat because it's thin.

You can use the thick white paint, that'll work fine too, you just have to thin it down.

The white basecoat works particularly well because it's already thin, I'm going to put a little white on that cheek patch.

Now, the idea is to leave some of that blue acrylic for the shading on him so I don't want to cover all of that blue so you got to bring it around like that.

We got the light coming from the right-hand side on this painting.

So I washed the brush out and dried it and I'm just going to dry brush that against the dry blue so rounds it off.

He looks like his body is rounded.

For the wings, I'm going to take Van Dyke brown and a little bit of white.

Again, I'll use this basecoat just because it's thin, it'll stick a little easier.

I'm going to roll that brush to point.

It's a good idea to use your reference photo that you downloaded to get the markings on the wings.

There are specific layers on this so I'm starting at the outer edge, pulling inward, blended away.

That's just wet enough with some of that brown that I can get a softer edge there.

If it's not enough contrast, add a little more white to your brown to make sure it shows up.

See, it don't take much to give him the shape that he needs, the form.

He's far away, he's moving.

It doesn't have to be too precise, but precise enough.

This one is going to come in the opposite way.

Hopefully my hand isn't casting too much of a shadow from my light.

This should ideally pull in this way.

See, he comes together pretty quickly and pretty easily.

If it looks a little harsh, and it very well might, you can always swish your brush out, dry it off, I like to fan it out like this manually, fuzz it out manually like a little rake, it makes it soft and easy to blend with.

I can come in and just, no pun intended, or maybe just a little, I'm going to feather these in.

So at the top of the feathers, let them feather into that dark value underneath.

They look like they're rooted in.

I'm going to pull the tape off this one and do the same exact thing with him and I'll be right back.

Welcome back.

I finished up the other goose.

I fluffed their feathers up nicely, I tweaked the black where it needed it, I got the shading on their tummies.

They look pretty good, don't you think?

You can do that.

It's pretty easy.

It's not rocket science, it's not any harder than what I just showed you previously so don't be afraid to give this a shot.

I'm going to analyze the painting as a whole, step back and look at it.

I think I need a little more life in the grass, so I'm going to come in with an even lighter value.

I'm going to go back to this grass color I had, I'm just going to make a lighter value.

I'm going to take more white, a little more of the yellow.

Again, you got to have your paint pretty thin for this long liner.

You'll see if I put some lighter values in there, see how they come forward?

It gives it much more depth.

So you always want to analyze your painting.

When you think you're done, you might not be, step back and look at it, see if there's something you can do to broaden the contrast or make it a little better, a little more interesting.

Look how much that lights that grass up.

It looks the sun is shining in there.

Since these are water birds and they usually hang around the water, I think I'm going to throw a few cattails in there.

Maybe there's a pond right behind all this tall grass that's sticking up.

You see how that lighter value really brings that together?

I think that's a nice touch right there.

I'm using the yellow ocher and white, but you can put a lighter sienna tone in there too with your burnt sienna.

It's all good.

You can get a color that you like.

See, I've got that whole border taped off like a matte so when I pull the tape off it'll look like it's matted, when you frame it, which is pretty nice.

The goose hanging out of the mat really gives it a lot of the three-dimensional form.

I'm going to swish this brush out and dry it off.

I'm going to come back with maybe ultramarine blue, a little bit of the yellow, something greenish.

I don't want a real bright, vibrant green, but something kind of dull.

I'm going to put a little bit of the cerulean there with too.

Something on the greenish side, like a stem of a cattail.

These are pretty simple.

I'm going to role the brush with thin paint just like I did for the grasses.

I'm going to pull a long stroke up for the stalk and then I'll put the top on it.

As far as I know, I believe they call that top on these cattails, a flower spike.

At least that's what somebody told me.

I never knew what to call them.

Every time I'd paint these in the class, I'd say, "Then we're going to put the orange thing on the top," because I didn't know what it was called.

One of my students told me one time, they said, "That's a flower spike."

I said, "Okay, that's good to know."

You can put in as many of these as you want, I'm just showing you the technique.

Once I put the stalks in, I'm going to go back to my detail script liner.

I can pretty much use this burnt sienna, it's kind of an orange in its own right, and it's just about the right color.

I'm going to thin this down just a little bit.

You'll see I flatten it out on two sides like this, like a little chisel almost, I'm going to get my little dowel here again just to steady my hand, and if i just pull down like this, it's a cattail.

Couldn't get much easier than that, could it?

This little detail liner brush works great.

You can flatten it out like a little chisel and it'll give you that nice rectangular shape like that very easily.

It's always nice to look at your painting, give it a little something extra.

See, this was nice on its own, in its own right.

This looks, I think, a little nicer.

You got a little more detail, tells a little more of a story.

It's all good.

I hope you try this out.

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

Send me a photo.

You can catch me on my email through my website wilsonbickford.com.

I have quite a huge following on Facebook, you can follow me on Facebook.

I'm always posting my artwork on there, my schedules and maybe someday I'll be able to make it to your area.

I travel around for my classes so maybe I'll be able to come to your town and do a workshop at some point.

I'm just going to add these cattails in here wherever.

Like I said, embellish it the way you see fit.

You can add more or less.

It's all good, I'm going to take just a second here in the last minute to pull this tape away and give you the reveal.

I hope you try this out.

It's a pretty easy painting to do, actually, as detailed as it might seem to you.

It looks pretty sweet, doesn't it?

Give it a try send me a copy of it.

Until next time, stay creative and keep painting.

ANNOUNCER: All 13 episodes of Painting with Wilson Bickford, Series #4 are now available on DVD or blu-ray in one boxed set for $35 plus $4.95 shipping and handling.

Or learn thetechniques used to paint "Evening Choir Practice" or "Majestic Mountain" with the in-depth Wilson Bickford"Paint Smart Not Hard" series of instructional DVDs.

Order online or watch or download directly to your computer or mobile device.

More information at wpbstv.org/painting.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] [MUSIC]