Wilson Bickford: On the last episode we started this dragonfly project.

Join me next on Painting with Wilson Bickford, and we'll finish this up by adding some dazzling colors to this little guy, and I'll show you how to make your own version unique.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hi, welcome to painting with Wilson Bickford.

As you recall, on the last episode we started our dragonfly project.

We brought it up to the background, we under-painted the dragonfly itself, got all the detail on the wings, we mashed out his body, we dropped it in the background.

Now we are ready to move forward.

When we left off, I was putting in the closer grasses, the darker tone.

We got some lighter valued ones in the background to make him appear more distant, with darker ones upfront.

What you want to do is make sure that you show the transparency of the wings of the dragonfly.

You'll notice on the finished sample here that you can see the green through the wing, but the wing looks like it's on top.

It's very delicate, and it looks transparent.

Oh, no, you have to be careful, because you can't go in and just wipe it sideways like this because you're going to smear the green all over.

Basically, what I do is I take a rag, and I blot, and I try not to stretch it out beyond the shape of the grass, and you'll notice I turn the rag to a clean spot as I move from one location to another.

Anywhere where you have a green leaf behind transparent wing, even on this one, you have to wipe that off a little bit.

Just enough to get that transparent quality, it doesn't take much.

If you inadvertently hit the grass itself, you're going to come back with your flat brush and just go into the wet paint that's there and work that back in around.

It's a pretty easy fix.

No muss, no fuss.

It's actually pretty easy.

Just take your time with it.

From here I'm going to add some highlights to the grasses, you'll see some, especially the closer ones in particular I've added more of a yellow highlight.

I've got more close grasses in this particular one, so I've got more to do.

That's fine, you can put as many or as few as you want.

I want to use my number 10 flat brush.

I've washed this out since I put the dark greens in, and I'm going to take titanium white with a little bit of the sap green, and a fair amount of the cadmium yellow pale.

I want a nice, light, sunlit warm green.

I'm going to chisel the brush up like this, nice and sharp.

This brush is a synthetic bristle that comes through a really nice razor edge.

The key is in loading it like this and pulling backwards through the paint which brings it to a perfect chisel edge when doing the grasses.

I'm going to come up in the same stroke as I did when I did the grass, but I'm going to come halfway through a little bit, and I'm going to lighten up the pressure and just pull away.

You're only highlighting one segment of that.

Don't highlight the whole blade.

You want it to look curved in getting different angles of lights on it.

I'll do the same thing on this one a little bit.

See, as I come down I release pressure and just slowly pull the brush away.

Make sure it's light enough to make a difference.

I'm running out of some yellow here on my palate, so I'll have to put some more out here eventually.

These closer grasses, I'm just singling those out.

Notice how by highlighting it brings those forward.

I'm just taking yellow and white, making it a light enough value to make a difference, I'm chiseling that up, and you'll notice that by making a lighter tone in front of the one in back it pulls that blade forward.

You want to hit and miss with these, don't necessarily have to do every single one.

You want the light to bounce around a little bit, a little here a little there.

Maybe this one I'll put some near the bottom, then come up this way.

If it doesn't blend smoothly, you can go back and work it with your brush like this.

You could also take a clean fan brush and just pull the colors together like this.

Pretty easy process.

I'm just going to bounce it around, put it at random, wherever I feel like it.

It makes the grass look much more three-dimensional, it gives it shape and form, and depth.

Now, I know you're sitting at home wondering, "I wish I could paint like that, I really wish I could."

You can, this is not hard.

I'm showing you all the tricks of the trade right here to do this painting.

You can do it.

I have to work a little faster here on screen, but you can take your time with it and enjoy the ride.

It's not nearly as hard as you think.

Okay, that's it for that part.

From here, I'm going to take the tape off the body of the dragonfly.

As you recall, I taped that out, and the body is covered up so it's black.

We painted that with black acrylic.

I got to start on one end or the other here.

I'm just going to slide my painting knife underneath that tape, and he should still be sitting there waiting for us.

There he is.

Now, he looks pretty bland right there, but the dark black is going to be a nice backdrop for these lighter colors that we're going to put on.

If you research these guys, some of them have orange tones, some are more bluish, some have a lot of green like this, that fluorescent looking green, but sometimes you can just do a fantasy one and make it anything you want.

You can make it up, just put some vibrant colors on it.

It looks pretty good.

One thing I do want to do is reinforce the legs a little bit.

I can see the legs through there just barely, but I want to be able to see them a little better than that.

I'm going to take my number two liner with some paint thinner and some black.

I'm going to thin this down, and this is touchy stuff, it's a tight little area.

What I'm going to do is take my little dowel here.

I like to use a dowel.

This is a little $0.69 wooden dowel from my hardware store.

It works great.

If I put this like this it gives me a place to lay my hand to steady it for the tighter details.

I'm going to take some of this black.

I just stuck my brush in the white by accident.

I'm going to take some of this black and thin it down, roll that brush to a point, and I'm going to redefine these legs.

Keep them nice and slender, skinny.

That's why it's important that I anchor my hand so I'm not pressing too hard.

That shows the legs through the wings as well, which tends to make them look more transparent.

It's a matter of just painting them over the top.

See how much better that looks?

Now he's hanging on.

I've got one more leg right here.

Now, there's two ways to do the body, I could leave it as is, dry like that, it's dry, it was black gesso underneath that's acrylic.

It's just dry paint.

If I wet it with some wet, black oil, it does make it a little easier to blend those colors on top.

I don't want it to get muddy.

Basically, what I do is I just outline the edge so I can soften away the edges.

You'll notice on this that it's mostly the edges that are black, and not in the center.

It's more or less on the outside edges of everything.

I don't want to put wet, black paint everywhere, but if I just carefully come in and outline down the length of the tail on the edge, this is the left edge, and I need to tighten this up a little bit where the trimming wasn't quite precise.

It was close.

Your trimming's never going to be perfect, so you'll always probably have to touch these edges up a little bit.

I know some people say, "Well, that taping out, I don't understand that.

That's not painting, that's taping, I don't know what he's doing there."

It's just a means to an end.

It's a easy way to get detail, rather than do this and have to let it dry in between stages.

If you mask areas out you can just keep right on going.

It's like watercolors, watercolors choose masking fluid to block out areas on their paper where they don't want the paint to be, same idea.

Why should watercolorists have all the fun, right?

Yeah.

We oil painters can live it up once in a while.

See, I'm just carefully outlining the edge which is giving me a crisper edge.

It's also given me something to blend these other colors off into.

Now, this was my detail, or excuse me, this was my liner.

I want to switch over to my detail liner.

I'll show you the difference between these brushes.

I'll probably come back to my little hand steadier here in just a second.

Now, the one on my left is the liner.

Notice how that comes to a really, really fine needle point that's much more slender.

The one on my right is the detail liner.

Now see, this one will actually fuzz out more like this, which actually makes it good for blending too, but it will also roll to a point where I can do fine line work with it as well.

They look similar, but they are very different.

This one is a natural hair, and this one is a synthetic bristle.

They behave differently.

A lot of people get confused between those brushes.

Okay, from here I'm going to take some of the emerald green, we haven't used this color yet, this is a really bright, vibrant green.

I'm going to take emerald green, a little bit of yellow, maybe a touch of white, and I'm not necessarily going to try to match those colors exactly.

These are the same colors I use to achieve that, but as I've said before, every day you paint it's a different day, and you're going to paint what you feel right then.

I am going to get my little steady stick back out here.

On his head, he's got these two half orbs that look like that.

Notice there's a little bit of a division down through the middle of them, split in half.

See, the outer edges I can actually blend away into the black so there's a softer edge which makes it look round.

These are absolutely fascinating little critters.

Little insects.

I think I read, that they, I pretty sure, if I've got it right, I think they said they can fly up to 30 miles an hour.

Can you imagine that?

That's pretty fast for a bug, isn't it?

Okay, now I'm just going to keep swishing this brush out.

I like to put a rag right here sometimes and just have it so I can just blot my brush in between to clean it when I'm cleaning and switching between colors.

Now, I'm going to come back and re-highlight all of these.

That's not as bright as I'm going to go on that, I'm going to lay in the base tones first.

From there I'm going to add a little more yellow and white, because you'll see it's lighter through here.

There'll be much more yellow in there before I'm done.

Down through the body in the middle.

Look at that color pop, isn't that nice?

I'm going to come down through.

It's segmented there, so I'm going to leave a little bit of a gap, like there's two separate sections.

It comes down about that far, give or take.

I'm going to bleed it over into that wet black along the edge, see how it softens it off, and it makes it look like his back is rounded?

It's pretty easy.

Now, I'm going to come back and re-highlight this with much brighter, more yellowy greens.

See, he's already coming to life.

Look how good that looks already.

A lot of these have burnt sienna tones on them, and if you look at them, look up some photos of them, there's a billion of them different ones out there.

They all have different colors, you can make them anything you want basically.

I'm going to take some burnt sienna, I've swished that brush out, I'm going to take burnt sienna and roll this brush to a point.

Right on the end, I don't know if I'd call that his nose, I don't know if an insect has a nose.

I'm going to put just a touch of white with that to get that to show up.

I can either use this white base coat that's still wet laying here on my pallette, or I can use titanium white, but you might have to thin it a little bit.

I'm going to put that little burnt sienna tone here on the end.

I'll call it his nose.

I don't know if a dragonfly has a nose or not, but where his nose would be if he had one, let's put it that way.

There's a little bit here on what I would call his shoulders.

Again, I'm not a bug expert, so I don't know.

Noses and shoulders on bugs, I don't know.

You put that on there like that.

I still am going to come back with a much greener, vivid yellowy green to highlight.

I've got to put that burnt sienna on the tail.

See, every little color I add to that he's coming to life more and more, and that looks pretty good.

It doesn't matter which order I do them in.

Let's switch over to the blue.

Blue is my favorite color, I've got to use some blue right now.

Now, here's the important part how I'm going to load this brush.

I'm going to take titanium white, and I'm going to dab into a little bit of that white basecoat, just because it's thinner, to thin it down.

I could put a drop of paint thinner in it, same deal.

I'm going to take cerulean blue and white, and instead of rolling this brush to a point, notice how I'm flattening it out on two sides.

It gets flat like a little chisel, just like my flat brush, much smaller scale, but it gets flat.

It makes it perfect for doing these wide bands on the tail.

I'm carefully going to steady my hand, and I'm going to come in and I'm going to go across.

See, that gives me a much wider line than rolling it to a point would, I'd get a fine line.

It's got these little rings on it like a raccoon's tail.

They pretty much run right down to the end of it.

That's starting to look pretty good.

It still needs a couple brightenings here and there.

By brightenings I just mean some lighter highlights.

Notice how this is looking very fluorescent and almost neon.

I just need to use lighter, brighter colors.

I'm going to start fresh again with white, yellow, and a little bit of that emerald green.

Before you ever apply it, you can actually hold it up to your canvas and see how it reads.

That looks pretty good.

This one's more yellow I think, not that I'm trying to match that one exactly.

You just want it to show up brighter.

I'm loading this the same way as I just did a moment ago, I'm flattening it out on two sides like a little chisel.

On his head, right on top of that previous green.

Now, don't cover up all of the previous green, I'm adding to it so you can actually see both colors in there.

That's starting to do it, but I still want it just a little tad lighter.

I'm going to add more white and yellow.

I really want that to show up.

That's not a mistake, it's an adjustment.

Painting is nothing but a series of adjustments.

You're always tweaking one color against another.

There we go, see how that pops now?

A light against the dark, and you just have to make those adjustments.

It's not a race, so you can just take whatever time you need to accomplish it.

See how that extra light down the middle really makes him look much more fluorescent?

That's looking pretty cool.

I'm going to do the same thing on the blue.

Notice on this one that there's a couple, up near his torso more, not on the end of the tail, but in here you'll notice that blue is a little brighter.

I re-highlighted that, so this previous blue I had before, I'm just going to add a little more white to it which will lighten the overall value.

I'm going to chisel the brush out just like I did before.

On some of these ones up here, I'm just going to go right over the same line, just make them a little brighter.

Gives them a little more visual interest, and everything's not illuminated the same.

Really makes them stand out.

I'm going to blend that into that little bit more.

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

Now, if it happened that you didn't like the transparency of the wings, you wanted them a little darker, you do have an option.

I'm not going to do it, I think that looks fine, I want them to look vague and there, you don't want to get them too stark.

But you could take your liner just like we used before in the under-painting, you could thin down some of the black with paint thinner, and very carefully redo all those lines.

It's a touchy stuff.

I recommend, if you don't have to do that, don't do it.

You could, at the very least, take that same liner brush with a little bit of black, and thin it down.

I'm not sure what these little marks are on their wings, I'm sure there's a reason for them, and I'm sure there's some fancy name for them.

I don't know what they are.

You could restate those a little darker if you chose to.

I wouldn't get them as dark as the body, so I'm using very little paint.

I'm going to take most of the paint off the brush.

If you made those just a little bit darker, it's just enough to make the whole thing come together where you can sense more the transparency of the rest of the wing.

It's an illusion, but all of painting is an illusion.

We are trying to make somebody see something on this canvas that's not really there.

It's a magic trick really, painting.

See, just that little bit.

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

We still have a few minutes to go, and I think I'm pretty much wrapped up with that.

We're going to add lib.

I always love it when I have time to add lib.

I'm going to use this liner brush, and this is the number two liner, I'm going to take some of this white basecoat.

This is thin, the reason I'm using this is because it's a little thinner than the titanium white.

I'm going to roll this to a point, a really fine point.

I want to make the smallest, most slender line that I possibly can.

I'm going to put just a touch of that titanium white with it I think.

It's a little bit too thin.

The reason I say that is just from experience, I've painted so long I can just tell by the drag of the paint on my pallette, what it feels like, how it's going to react.

I'm going to send that down.

Now, notice I've got that rolled to a really, razor razor thin point.

Still going to use my little steady stick.

Let's say that this dragonfly was out, and it just had a light rain just a little while ago.

I'm going to put a little bit of a running U-shaped drop.

I'm going to swish the brush out, I just want the effect of the dew drop, or raindrop, whatever, running down the length of that blade.

I washed the brush off and dried it.

The inside edge of that against the green, I'm going to soften it.

This is touchy stuff, I don't want to lose the outside edge.

See how that just makes it look more transparent?

Then I take the same color, and I roll a little gob right on the point of the brush.

This time I am rolling the brush, picking up a little gob.

If I touch on the drop, that gives me a highlight.

It looks like a wet drop.

The only thing that's missing right now is a shadow.

That drop will cast a shadow on its own stem, so this color that's on my pallet previously is a good place to start, but it's that same level of darkness, so I need to make it a little darker.

I'm going to take a little sap green, a little cerulean blue, and a touch more of black, and I'm going to thin that down just a little bit.

You'll see that when I put a shadow underneath it, it raises the drop up and makes it look really three-dimensional.

Be mindful of the curvature of the drop, you don't want to square it off on the bottom by wrapping your shadow around it.

You got to keep it round and bulbous like a drop.

See how that shadow makes that drop set up and it makes it look three-dimensional?

I'm going to add a few of these in.

Same idea.

Right here I can have one sitting on the top.

I'm going to set it against that darker blade of grass behind it so there is a contrast.

I'm going to swish that brush out.

I'm going to blend the inside edge away into the green so the green shows through it.

That's the key, you want to leave as much of the background color showing through it as you can.

I'm going to roll the brush one more time, put a little bit of a highlight.

Now, right there it looks like it's sitting on the very edge of that leaf, that blade of grass.

I could leave it like that.

If I wanted to, I can also take a little bit of a shadow, and I can bring it around the front which pulls it forward so it looks like it's sitting more forward on that blade of grass.

Just blend it away a little bit, soften it in.

All right, so you can put as many or as few of those as you want.

That looks really good.

I'm going to put a signature on this.

I'm so happy to be able to bring this to you.

A lot of people like these dragonflies, like I said, they're very symbolic.

Try your own version.

Please send me a photo of it, I'd love to see what you do with it.

You can contact me at my Facebook page, or through my website, WilsonBickford.com.

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.

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