Wilson Bickford: Dragonflies are symbolic and special to many people.

They're often said to be the spirit of a loved one coming back for a visit.

Join me next on Painting With Wilson Bickford, and I'll show you how to create your own version.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hi, welcome to Painting With Wilson Bickford.

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

Dragonflies are just fantastic insects.

They're very interesting.

I read that they can fly up to 30 miles an hour, and they've been on this planet for something like 300 million years, I think I read, if that sounds right.

It sounds like a lot, but they've been around a long time.

They're very symbolic.

People like them.

This is a project that I do in my classes, so I'm really happy that I can bring you this one today.

I'm going to show you how I got started with this.

If you go to the WPBS-TV website, you'll be able to download a supply list explaining all the tools and paints that we're using today.

There's also a sketch that you can transfer onto your canvas, as well as a guide that shows you all the details.

Now, this has got some underpainting in it with black acrylic Gesso, so you're going to want to take your time with the underpainting.

That is the persnickety part of this one.

If the underpainting looks good, your painting will look great in the end.

You want to download the sketch.

From there, what I did is I take some graphite transfer paper from a craft store, and I like to use a red pen, because the red pen shows up on the sketch.

I lay the graphite paper on the canvas with the sketch on top, and I trace the design.

Once you get the image on there, I take a small liner brush and some black acrylic, and I have a little cup of water here.

Now, this is acrylic, so it's water-based.

Do not use paint thinner with this.

I take black acrylic, I thin it down, I roll my liner brush to the finest possible point so I can make nice, little, thin, thin lines with it.

Make sure your paint is thin enough so it's going to flow easily off the brush.

Roll this to a point.

I've already underpainted this to this point.

I did around the outside perimeter.

Also, there'll be a bigger one that you can download on the website that looks like this.

I'm going to stick this right here momentarily for your reference.

I went around the outside edge.

I filled in the body with black.

They have these little, distinct marks here on their wings.

Here's the tough part.

I don't want to say tough part, but the time-consuming part.

You'll want to take some of this black acrylic, thin it down.

It's always to your best interest to take some of the paint out of the brush by rolling it on your palette like this.

I just use this as a guide.

I had a photo that I was working from for the original.

You're going to paint all these thin, little lines on here.

If this looks good at this stage when you're done, it's going to look spectacular when you're finished, so take your time with this.

See, I'm working quickly here, but I'm used to doing these.

I've done several of these paintings.

You don't have to work as quickly as what I'm doing, but just look at this reference sketch.

Put all your lines in.

Make sure they're not spaced too far apart from each other.

Don't have your brush too loaded heavily, because you don't want to have your brush loaded for bear when you're only hunting for squirrel.

[laughs] That makes sense?

If you have a lot of paint on your brush, it's hard to get thin lines.

You have to have your brush, the consistency right and not too much on your brush.

This is what you don't want to do.

It's easy to get lazy and on that wing, where the wing comes out like this, have lines going across.

It's easy to get into a rut and just say, "Well, I'll just do this."

If you just checkerboard it like that, it looks like a window screen.

Notice that those aren't like that.

They're all staggered.

Take the extra time.

Do a good job on it.

You'll notice that when I connect those lines, I stagger them.

I'm not just drawing through.

This is going to take a few minutes.

Like I said, I'm used to working quickly.

I usually can do one of these in a half an hour pretty easily.

It might take you an hour.

It might take you longer.

That's not the point.

Take your time.

You want this to look good in the end.

By doing that, now, this is acrylic.

Make sure that you take care of your brush, rinse it out with water.

Wash it out thoroughly when you're done.

You can throw your acrylic away.

I just put it on a small foam plate like this so I can dispose of it, no cleanup.

Once you've done that to completion, you'll have something that looks like this.

That's where we can start to actually paint.

Now, first what I want to do is tape this out.

I'm not going to tape out the wings.

Notice that the wings look transparent.

I'm going to paint right over those, but the actual body, I'm going to tape out.

I don't have to worry about the legs, either.

I put a piece of tape on.

I use a craft knife with a number 11 blade.

Make sure the tape is stuck down quite firmly.

I'm just going to cut around the body.

The body will be nice and dry with just black acrylic, so when I want to put the colors on, the brighter colors, it won't pick up.

Where wet oil paint, if I painted in there with black wet oil paint, it would.

It would muddy those greens and bright, vibrant colors I want on there.

I'm going to finish taping him out, and I'll be right back.

[MUSIC] Once you get used to doing these dragonflies, you can mix it up and do your own thing with them.

You can do the same sketch that I provided.

This is one that I've done on a blue background, just for something different, and I've also done one recently, a different pose from a different reference photo that I had found, but I put him on some sunflowers.

Mix it up and have some fun with it.

I've completed taping out the body of the dragonfly.

I don't have to worry about the wings.

I want the wings to look transparent, so we're going to paint right over those.

Notice how they look very transparent?

You can see the background color and the leaves through them, so I don't tape those out, but I did want to tape out the body.

I've taped that out.

As far as tools that we're going to be using for oil, we're moving into the oil zone now.

This was acrylic that's dry.

Now, we're moving into the oil zone.

For oil brushes, I'm going to be using a two-inch scenery brush, my number 10 flat brush, my number four fan brush, a number two detail script liner, and my number two liner.

For actual oil colors, I'm going to be using cadmium yellow pale, cadmium red light hue, cerulean blue, sap green, dioxazine purple, emerald green, burnt sienna, ivory black, and titanium white.

I also have some white oil base coat here that I'm going to put over the whole canvas to give us nice blendability.

Now, in this one, you'll notice it looks like we've got a glow of some sun and some atmosphere.

It radiates from yellow, out to kind of an orangish tone, out to a purplish tone.

I'm just going to approximate that.

I'm not going to try to match the colors exactly.

These are the colors I used for this one, but every painting's different, and I'm just showing you the technique how to.

You can adjust these colors accordingly, as you see fit.

From here, I'm going to take my two-inch scenery brush and some of this white base coat.

I'm going to cover the whole canvas.

Put on a nice, thin coat, scrub it in.

You shouldn't be able to see any brush marks in it by the time you get it scrubbed on, it should be applied that thinly.

A lot of my students do this and put it on.

This is painting.

This is like painting your bedroom wall.

There's a difference between painting and applying a base coat.

You want to scrub it on thinly.

We're going to be painting, but not at this stage.

This is applying a base coat.

Big difference.

Scrub it on very thin.

We don't need much of this to accomplish what we need to do.

Yes, I went right over that dragonfly.

We could stop right now and call this Dragonfly in the Mist.

What do you think?

Okay, you want to go on?

All right, we'll keep going.

We'll persevere.

Now, this one's on a bevel canvas with wraparound edges.

I'm doing this on a panel today, but it's equally adaptable to any canvas that you want to use.

Scrub that on nice and thin.

Now, this is kind of cloudy, but we're going to take paint off later.

Don't worry about it for right now.

I'm going to start a nice glow over in this part of the background.

I'm going to take my dirty brush with the white that was in it and some of the cadmium yellow pale.

I want this glare kind of off-center.

Don't put it right smack dab in the middle.

Notice it's about a third of the way ... Just split this into vertical thirds.

It's kind of on a third line.

Maybe somewhere right in here.

I'm going to make it a little bigger than what I ultimately want it, because I'm going to encroach into it with the cad red light and kind of blend it and soften it, so I'll lose some of the size of it by doing that.

This is pretty easy.

You guys can do this, I know you can.

From there, I'm going to take a little bit of the cad red light into that.

Now, that's a very strong color.

Just grab a little bit at a time until you get the color you want.

You can go more intense than this.

This looks like it's a little stronger already than what I had here.

That's fine.

I'll run with it.

If I didn't like it that dark, I could've put a little more yellow and white in it, toned it back a little bit.

See, basically, I'm just encapsulating that yellow sphere that I put on there.

I'm going to bring it out to the edges and feather it away, because I want to melt the purplish tone into that on the outside.

I'm just going to bring this out a little further.

Notice I'm kind of feathering the outside edge away against the white so it's not leaving a hard line.

I know we've got a hard line in here, but we're going to address that here momentarily.

See, I just blend that outer edge away.

This project is nowhere near as daunting as it probably appears to some of you.

I know probably you look at the detail in that dragonfly and it really scares you, but the sketch is all laid out, and as long as you can approximate that sketch and get your dragonfly on there, the rest of this falls together pretty easily, it really does.

From there, I'm going to take my fan brush, since this big brush is dirty.

I'm going to take my fan, which is basically a good blending brush, and I'm going to go around.

See how that is softening?

I just want to soften that edge between the two tones so it doesn't look like a dinner plate sitting in there.

You just go around it.

Notice I keep wiping my brush as I go, because you're going to pick up a lot of color.

You just want a nice, soft glow.

We're not looking for the actual sun, but it looks like the sun is coming through the atmosphere back there somewhere.

If we were painting the sun, that'd be pretty huge, wouldn't it?

So we don't want it to ... We're not painting the sun.

We're painting a warm glow that tells us where the sun is.

Out of focus and blurry in the background.

That's called depth of field.

Okay, I'm going to go back to my two-inch brush, and I'll wipe that off.

I want to come up with kind of a purplish color.

Now, this is kind of light.

You can make it as light or as dark as you want.

I'm going to take a little bit of that base coat, or I could use the titanium white at this point, it doesn't really matter.

The purple is very, very strong.

Dioxazine purple is a very strong tone, so you're not going to need much of that.

Tread lightly with it.

Notice I started with a fair amount of white to temper it back.

It's like cooking.

I can put it up there and check it and see.

I see that's a little bright.

This one's a little grayer.

I believe I put a speck of black in this one.

That's the difference.

I think today I'm just going to leave it the purple.

That's my mood today.

Every time you pick up a brush, you're going to be in a different frame of mind and in a different mood, and you're going to paint what you feel right then.

Right now, I'm feeling purple.

I'm just going to go around like this, and I'm going to encapsulate the orange, just like I encapsulated the yellow with the orange earlier.

See, since it's off-center, you're not going to have a lot of purple on this edge.

The majority of it's going to be over here, because you want to keep it concentric and symmetrical around that orange.

I'll do the same thing.

I'll come back and feather these edges together.

I'm trying to keep it round.

I'll bring this color right off the edge.

I don't need to feather away the edge now, because we're just going off the edge of the canvas with this color over here to the far right.

I know you're thinking, man, that dragonfly here just keeps getting further and further pushed in there.

You're never going to bring him back.

Oh yes I will.

I won't kick him to the curb and leave him in there.

We'll get him back.

Okay, from there, I'm going to wipe this brush off.

I could use the fan brush.

I could do the same thing.

This one takes in a little bit bigger footprint.

I'll just use this one, since it's already in my hand, but if I do the same thing and I just go around.

See how easily those mingle together?

It's because of that white base coat.

That white base coat makes a huge difference.

It's like if you're painting watercolor.

Watercolorists will flood their paper with clear water, and then put their colors on to achieve the same blendable quality.

We can't do water with oil paint, so the white paint takes the place of that, but it works equally as well.

Same idea, same principle.

I want to melt those together just enough so there's not a hard ring around anything.

You will pick up paint as you do that, so you want to keep wiping that off.

I think when I was researching these guys a little bit, I swear I read that they said dragonfly actually have teeth.

I didn't know that.

How many insects do you know that have teeth?

That's pretty wild, isn't it?

That's why these are such remarkable creatures.

They said that they can bite, but they would never break your skin.

They're not quite that strong, thank goodness.

Back in the dinosaur days, they said the early version of these had, like, a three-foot wingspan.

Can you imagine a dragonfly flying around that had a three-foot wingspan?

I'd be scared to death.

Okay, I've got that pretty much blended.

I'm going to take a paper towel.

I want to start bringing back some of this transparency of the wings, but don't spot wipe it.

By spot wiping I mean don't rub hard in one little spot, because you're going to get a little round golf ball.

You have to do it in a broader sense.

I'm going to use a flat part of the paper towel.

See how I can kind of take some of that off and it doesn't look like I just wiped out one area?

You're going to want to keep turning that to a clean spot.

You'll see I can pretty easily ... Now, don't go from the purple over into that red without flipping your rag, because then you're going to ... See, it still looks like it's wiped out a little bit.

I can heal that back together, no big deal.

See, that's how I get the transparency.

I'm going to go back to this brush.

Make sure it's really wiped off.

If I just use a light touch, I can heal that back together, for the most part, to where it still looks transparent but you've still got the color through it, and it doesn't look like we went in there and wiped anything away.

It's all in the touch.

Don't get too aggressive with the brush.

Don't get too aggressive with the rag.

We just want it to stand out a little bit.

See, the more I do it, the more it keeps coming back.

I don't want it to come back fully.

I want it to look soft.

It doesn't take much.

Because I've got the body taped out, that's going to be nice and black when I pull that tape off, like it should be, and I can put the nice, vibrant colors over the top of that.

From here, we're going to start with some of the background leaves.

Notice these are a little bit lighter value, because I want those to look farther into the background, and then the ones up close are darker.

I added a little bit of highlight to those.

I'm going to take my number 10 flat brush with some white.

You want to get a green that you like.

Myself, personally, I'm not a big fan of a yellow-green.

I like a blue-green.

Blue is my favorite color.

You've probably heard me say that somewhere along the line.

I'm going to take white and green.

This is sap green.

I'm going to put a little bit of that cerulean blue with it, which makes it a little bit more of a blue-green, because the sap green by itself is inherently more yellow.

That gives it a little bit of a blue tone.

I'm going to put just a speck of black with it.

I'm thinking value.

I'm getting a color I like, but I'm thinking value.

I don't want it too dark, so I'm going to temperate back with white.

I'm thinking the distant leaves.

Notice how these are lighter than the closer ones.

I'm judging everything by that.

I can go darker on the next layer of these, which will bring them closer.

If you chisel this brush up, bring it to a nice sharp, sharp point, sharp edge, it makes it pretty easy to start doing your leaves.

Now, you want to think of your composition as you do this.

Just don't put them straight across.

I've got them kind of leaning, twisting, bending, coming kind of from more of the center of the canvas outward.

It's more pleasing to the eye than just having them all over the place.

You want to think about where you put them.

I'm not trying to match that one exactly.

If you press down a little harder through the middle of the stroke and then release pressure, it gets skinny again, so that tapers like a blade of grass.

Because my easel is in my way here, I can't bring these right off the end.

I will have to remove that from the easel to take them completely and cleanly off the bottom of the canvas.

A lot of people make the mistake with this brush ...

I'll show you on my palette.

When I go in, I'm touching flush and flat so I get a nice, thin line.

I'm using that razor edge.

A lot of people make the mistake of trying to tilt the brush back, and they touch the corner down.

It's going to be fat already.

It just widens out, because it squishes that corner and opens it up.

You want to use the end of the brush like this.

See, I press a little harder as I wrap around.

I'm turning it between my fingers into that turn, and it gets skinny again just like a blade of grass.

Once you do a few of these with this brush, it gets pretty simple.

I'm going to have a couple of these going through the wing, because we want to show that transparency.

I'll have one over here do this, and you're going to say, "Oh, he blew it now.

I don't see the wing through there."

You will.

I'll bring it back.

You can put as many of these as you want.

Just vary them.

Have them going every which way.

It's ultimately best to have some be a little wider.

A blade of grass, you know, looks wide this way, but if you turn it this way, it looks skinny, so you want to think of all those angles and have them all be a little different.

Save some room to put the closer ones.

We're going to superimpose some darker closer grasses right over the top of all this.

All right.

I think I'm going to bring one right through his body right here.

I didn't on this one, but that's fine.

I'm not trying to make an exact copy here.

I'm going to have one go across like that.

His body will cut in front of it, which will give me an overlap.

An overlap always gives you more depth.

Putting one thing in front of another shows more depth and distance.

You can fill this up with as many of these as you want.

I don't like to put a lot through the wings.

I want just enough to suggest the transparency.

It's easier to have less than more.

I'll bring this in like this.

Maybe a couple more over here somewhere.

This is your painting, so do it the way you see fit.

Maybe I'll put one big one in here.

Why not?

These are all just the background ones.

I'm going to put in some closer ones and the one that the dragonfly is actually going to be sitting on.

These are all in the distance.

For the closer ones, like I mentioned earlier, I'm going to want to go a darker value.

Darker will always read as being closer.

I'm going to go with green, blue, a little more black again, just like I did before, but in a stronger ratio so this is much darker.

He's going to be sitting on one, so I need to drag it somewhere through his body where some of his legs are actually touching it.

I'm going to say maybe right here.

Because it's closer, I can bear down with the brush a little more to make it wider.

Because it's closer, it would look bigger.

I'll put one like that.

I'm going to finish up these grasses, and next week's episode, we're going to start developing this dragonfly.

We'll put these foreground grasses wherever you want them, as many as you want.

I always like to have one overlapping in front.

Again, it's an overlap.

It gives you a lot of depth and distance.

Maybe right here, I'm going to have one just bent right over like that.

See how it pushes those ones into the background, which is really nice?

We'll put as many of these as you like.

My color's getting a little lighter, because it's picking up some of the background paint, which is bound to happen because we're working on a wet background.

Sometimes you have to go back and keep darkening your color.

I'm going to go back and darken that down a little bit.

Maybe I'll put a couple more in here, just for the sake of it.

All right, couple more in here, just for the sake of it.

All right, that's looking pretty good.

I'm going to wipe off the wings to reveal the transparency.

When we come back, 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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