Wilson: Silhouettes scenes like this are very striking due to their light and dark contrast.

I love taking strong darker elements and putting them against the vibrant rich sky colors of a sunset.

Join me next on Painting with Wilson Bickford and I'll show you how to paint your own version of Farmland Sunset.

[Music] [Music] Hi.

Welcome to Painting with Wilson Bickford.

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

It's mostly a silhouette scene with some nice sunset colors behind it, nice contrast, bright, vibrant sky versus some really nice dark contrasted elements in it.

So this is a great painting I want to show you today.

We're going to take a sketch, actually you will be able to download the sketch from the WPBS site to transfer onto your canvas if you use transfer paper, graphite paper and a pen or pencil you can transfer the image.

From there as far as the prep work I have taken my #10 flat brush and some black acrylic gesso and I covered the whole thing, blocked it out.

This is all dry, this is acrylic.

Everything from this point on will be oils.

Speaking of oils, on my palette I have ultramarine blue, ivory black, cadmium yellow pale, red rose deep, titanium white, some white base coat medium which is just a fluid white oil-based paint that allows us to get subtle blending where we want it and I have a clear glazing medium.

So as far as more prep work we don't have too much left to do on this.

I am going to mask this out with tape.

This is just everyday ordinary masking tape.

I'm going to block this area out so that I can freely paint the background around it.

Now I am going to take a sharp knife here in a moment and trim this away.

The idea is to block out all of the black.

Now if we were water colorists, water colors have what is known masking fluid which they sometimes call frisket.

We oil painters don't have such a luxury as that so I typically use masking tape quite often.

I am just simply going to cover all of the black.

I'm going to take a sharp craft knife that has a #11 blade in it and I'm gonna trim away everything that is not the barn.

Now see I'm out of panel, but I cut on canvas, stretch canvas, all the time too.

Use a sharp knife and a light touch.

It doesn't take much just to score through the tape.

My high school shop teacher used to tell us boys, he'd say, "Boys a dull tool is much more dangerous than a sharp one.

Keep your tools sharp.

There is less risk for slippage; you can put too much pressure on it."

Same with this.

Use a really sharp brand new blade.

You don't have to press down very firmly and you just trim away everything that is not the black image.

Like I said this makes our life tremendously easier.

So see I'm just trimming away everything that is not needed.

So I'm going to finish this up and I will be right back in just two shakes.

There, I've taped out the barn and the silo and the land.

This gives me free rein to come in with my large brush, put my background in without getting it all over my black where I don't want it.

Tape is your best friend for something like this.

As far as brushes today I am using a 2 inch scenery brush, a #10 large flat brush which is good for cutting into these square shapes, a #3 fan brush, a couple of texture brushes 1-1/2 inch and 1 inch texture brush which are really good for putting in the grass texture and the little bushes here in the background, and I have a couple of liner brushes; a detail script liner and just a #2 liner.

So, I'm gonna take some of this white base coat with my 2 inch scenery brush.

I'm gonna put a thin coat over the whole sky area here.

Now because we've got that taped out notice I don't have to dance around, try to paint around, that barn which would be really tough.

I've got a little blue up here that is coming off my easel from wet paint I had on there from my last painting.

Not to worry, not enough to bother.

You just want a nice thin coat of this.

You don't need much paint at all.

I'm going to wipe this brush off to remove some of the excess.

It looks like I got a bit much more than I need and if worse comes to worse you can literally just do this, take some of the excess off.

If it looks really too heavy like you've got a lot of brush marks in it, remove some of the excess just by wiping it with a towel.

You'll still have plenty left on there to do what you need to do.

Okay, I'm gonna start out by putting some lighter yellow on the low horizon.

Notice there's a nice glow between the buildings.

That's kind of become the focal area of this painting.

So I'm gonna take some cadmium yellow pale into the brush.

Make it as light or dark as you want it.

I'm gonna go with a fairly intense yellow; my own personal call.

Might be a little richer than that, but I'm doing that on purpose.

I want it a little more vivid.

I'm in a good mood today, so I'm painting more vibrantly maybe than I would sometimes.

Painting is different for everybody and it depends on what you're doing and how you're doing it.

Every day you pick up a brush you're gonna paint differently.

Okay, from there I'm gonna add a little bit of red.

I am gonna use my fan brush.

I'll start with white and a little bit of the red rose deep.

Now depending on how red you want this that's gonna dictate how much white you want in it.

This is pinker.

I'm going a little bit lighter.

I've got a little more white in this mixture right now and I want the sky to look a little streaked.

Like I said that's just my own personal call.

I'm not trying to match that painting exactly.

I'm showing you how I achieved it and how I got to that point.

I'm not trying to make a carbon copy of it.

That would be kind of boring.

I've already done that one once.

Let's do something different here today.

You see I want the sky a little streaked, like we've got a sunset coming on.

Now a lot of people I see them do this and they just blatantly put lines.

You want to kind of give them a little character, give them a little upsweep like you've got some cloud movements in it.

Just don't put them in a straight line.

This looks pretty harsh right now, but I'm gonna soften it.

Once I soften everything out it makes a huge difference and all of these little white spots in here I'm gonna rub those together, close them up a little bit, but I don't mind if a little bit of that shows through there.

It looks like we've got some cloud movements through there.

Now that I've exhausted most of the red off the brush I'm gonna come down into the yellow and put a few little tinges of darker, what will be orange tones, in there because it will mix with the red, the red and the yellow.

Alright, that was pretty easy.

It's looking like a sky.

On the upper half I'm gonna wipe my brush just to make sure I don't have any residual yellow in it.

I don't think I have to wash it.

If I do rinse it out in my mineral spirits over here.

If I take that red that I had and put a little more red with it and maybe a speck of blue I get a darker purplish color.

I want something darker up in this corner of the sky.

Now we are making a secondary color out of two primaries which means it's red and blue to make purple.

If I lean it towards red you get a reddish purple.

If I put more blue with it I get more of a bluish purple and there is no right or wrong with that.

It's your preference.

That's the beauty of painting.

You can make it any color that you want and nobody can tell you that it's wrong.

It's your own personal interpretation.

So I'm gonna put a little bit of this in here.

This one is a little bluer and a little darker and I know that by looking at it because I remember what I did there.

If I was after that color I would add more blue and a speck of the black and I would darken that and dull it, but like I said I'm going for more vibrant color here today.

Every time you pick up a brush you're gonna paint what's in you right then and I'm feeling these brighter colors right now.

See I want it a little choppy like cloud movements in there.

So I don't want to lose all of the red, but I'm gonna go over that red to a certain extent.

Be careful about bringing the blue down into the yellow because it will start going greenish on you and I really don't want green in my sky necessarily.

Now I still have to come back and blend that.

The blending is going to make a huge difference.

I do want it even just a little bit darker up in that upper left hand corner, so I'm gonna take a little more blue and a speck more black.

Now this looks really dark on my palette.

It will lighten up a little bit because it will pick up the paint that is on my canvas, so I'm not worried about that.

It will just get a darker value, something that really sets it off, like we've got some darker silhouetted clouds floating through here.

You're going to be surprised when I come back and blend this.

Blending is always your friend when it comes to painting.

I don't have to overdo it.

This will give you the idea of how I achieved it and got to this point on this one.

I'm leaving a little more movement in this one, a little more clouds than this sample.

I'm using the same exact color palette.

Okay, if I set that brush down and I come back to maybe this texture brush.

This one's clean.

It's designed for texture, but I can use it for blending too.

It's kind of a stiff bristle so it will get in there and actually move that oil paint around.

See if I just kind of lightly waltz over that, if you listen closely you can hear the waltz beat; boom, bum, bum, boom, bum, bum, hear it?

See I'm just going to soften that and blend it.

Get it a little blurry and out of focus it makes it look far away like a sky and that easily we've got a sky put in here.

You can do that can't you?

Yeah, of course you can.

It's pretty simple.

Painting isn't really all that hard.

You have to know some of the techniques and some of the basics and practice them a little bit, but you'll be surprised what you can do with a little practice.

Okay, I'm gonna come in with my 1 inch texture brush.

Now this is the one I just blended with.

I'm gonna come back and use this for the grass later on because it takes in a bigger footprint.

It's little brother is the 1 inch and this one works really good for doing these types of shrubs and what not here in the back quadrant.

So what I'm gonna do is take ...

I want it kind of dark, I want it silhouetted ... so I'm gonna take some of the black, a very small amount of white, I will have a little blue in that too so it's not blatant black, but I want a really dark value.

Notice how I pull this brush and I separate the bristles and I really tap it and open it up.

By doing that it makes it easy to get this effect where I get the little shrubs and trees.

Because the tape is there I'm bringing them right down to the tape.

I don't have to dance around that and try to be extra careful.

That's why I masked it off.

Now this one I left it fairly solid in through here.

There are a lot of trees, not a lot of gaps in between.

I did leave some gaps up here because I wanted some nice light in between here, but you have to pace this out in your mind and figure out what you want and how you want it.

See this brush works great for this type of a texture.

You can make them as tall as you want, maybe what the heck I'll go a little taller here with this one.

See if you get the brush loaded right and you handle it correctly that texture falls right off your brush; it really does.

It's a great brush for what its designed for.

Over here I'm gonna have something coming in on this side a little bit and I still like the openness in through here so I think I'm gonna leave that opened up.

See we want them nice and dark so it looks like the sun is behind and they're silhouetted.

If I take my #2 liner brush ... and I will use some of my odorless paint thinner here.

I have odorless paint thinner here that I clean my brushes with and that I thin my paints with.

If I take that same tree color I can come in and I can put a few trunks in these trees so it looks like you're just seeing the skeleton of the framework through there and I can also add some of these leafless trees that are standing up here.

I like to incorporate a few dead trees in my landscapes.

They are very natural; you see them all the time.

I have had people say, "Well I don't like painting dead trees."

Either they have trouble painting them or they don't get their paint thin enough or whatever the reason might be or they just don't like the look of them or whatever, but to me they're very natural and they're a must do if you're going to paint landscapes.

You can't go anywhere without seeing some dead trees off in the distance in the woods somewhere.

So same idea as what I just did here.

I've got the paint really thin and I just pull up a trunk line, a few limbs and branches.

I don't have to get too carried away.

They're in the distance so I don't have to show every single branch or the bird on the branch or the little boy's kite stuck in the top of it.

I'm not getting that technical with it.

You could if you wanted to, but I want it to look farther away behind the barn.

Right now you can't compare it because the barn is masked out, but when I actually take that tape off and expose that barn you're going to see that it all looks like its farther away because I'm not laying all my cards on the table.

I'm kind of downplaying everything, just making a suggestion of these trees.

I'm not painting every leaf and every branch.

That's how you get depth and distance on your canvas.

I'll put something over here just to balance it out a little bit; a few little branches and limbs sticking out.

Okay, so you can embellish that as much as you choose to.

It is totally up to you.

You have more time to devote to it than I do.

So from here on out I'm gonna remove the tape.

It's almost like unwrapping a Christmas gift, isn't it?

Well almost, maybe not quite.

Sometimes you might have to dig under your tape with your little knife to get it off here.

If you get a little bleed underneath there don't worry about it; that's pretty common.

I'm gonna remove this tape and I'm gonna come back and put a thin coat of that clear glazing medium on all of this black; the barn, the silo, the ground, every bit of it.

So if I take my #10 flat brush, I'm gonna take some of this and just cut around everything and just put a nice thin coat of this clear glazing medium on.

I'm gonna finish this up and I'll be right back with you.

[MUSIC] For a little added visual interest, you can always add a fence into your scene.

If I take black, thin down on my detail script liner, I can start small back here and I can bring a fence down over into the metal.

Perspective wise, adhering to the rules of linear perspective, make sure that each subsequent post is taller than that previous one and the spacing in between them gets greater.

Notice how the fence looks like it's coming right down the hill at you and it makes you want to walk the fence line right up to that barn.

Okay, I've covered the whole bottom and the barn and the silo and the building with my thin coat and my clear glazing medium and I've taken some black thinned down, this is ivory black, and around the edges where I needed a little tightening up ... maybe you had a little touch of bleed where you didn't get your tape pressed on very firmly or didn't cut right on your line exactly, everybody is going to have those little discrepancies.

I had them too, so don't feel bad if that happens to you.

I have touched up the perimeter of that, all of those edges, so everything is nice and stark dark and I've got nice crisp contours.

From here on out I've got to start embellishing the building.

You'll notice the light that's coming through from behind is hitting this angle of this building, this particular building, because of the way it's turned.

Everything else is in shadow.

So on the shadowed back sides of those buildings and on the silo itself I'm gonna use more of a cooler tone, a bluish tone.

I have my detail script liner.

I'll take some of this white base coat.

It's a little thinner consistency and it will flow on a little easier than the thicker white, the titanium white.

If I take white, blue, a little touch of black ...

I'm looking for a darker blue-gray.

I want it cooler because it's in shadow.

Too many people paint, but they don't think about color temperature.

Color temperature is very important.

In the shadows I use cooler tones and in the lighter areas, warmer areas, highlighted areas I should say I use a, uh, i'm just comparing my color here - I use warmer tones.

That looks a little bright still.

So I'm just gonna keep mixing this until I get a color.

Now see you can just hold it up here and compare it and see what you think.

That's getting pretty close.

I'm gonna try it.

It looks like it might be a tad bright, but if it is that's okay because I can come back and adjust it.

You'll notice there is a dark line of the shadow, the eave up there.

So I'm gonna leave that.

It's already in place.

If I don't' go up there and paint through it, it will stay.

So I'm going up to that line and you'll notice I'm trying to get a barn board effect.

I'm just kind of pulling down.

You'll see if you flatten this brush out on two sides like this, flatten it out like a little chisel, it makes it easy to do this type of work.

This is a detailed script liner which is much different than the #2 liner.

Each brush has its own purpose and works great for something, but not maybe everything.

This one works good for doing these little board textures.

I'm gonna bring them down low enough so that I can just crop that off at the grass, so don't stop short of your line.

I'm gonna put a little blue tone on the silo.

This is one of those old wooden silos.

So again I can have the linear effect in it of the barn board.

I'm gonna come back and eventually put a little bit of light coming around the edge of that when I get to the warmer tone, the highlighted tone.

See how that looks nice and shadowy and the cool color really sets that off.

Over here I have to find the lines on the building so I am gonna kind of just lightly sketch those in to get my perspective back and get the roof.

The roof is a parallelogram so make sure the back and the front are parallel to each other and the top and bottom are parallel to each other.

So whatever angle this is the one underneath will be parallel to it; same for the front and the back.

Then that will give you your corner and you pull down and you've got your lines back in place.

The same idea I'm gonna kind of put this bluish tone.

See I'm kind of relying on the fact I'm gonna get somewhat of a dry brush effect.

I'm not filling it in completely.

I'm not trying to.

You will see that the black background kind of shows through there and I'm spacing these boards just enough so there is just a little bit of a break between them so that it looks like a crack and a space in between the boards.

So I'm letting that black undertone do the work for me, some of it at least.

Alright that's looking pretty good, don't you think?

Now down here on the highlighted side I'm gonna take white, yellow, a little touch of red.

I want something kind of warmer, orangey.

I will try this.

If it's too bright I can cut it back a notch, but I want it to show up and as I go towards the background I'm gonna just let the brush kind of run out of paint.

You'll see it stays more lighted on this front corner which is kind of my focal area.

I'm gonna take just a touch of that color and I'm gonna put that on the side of the silo here like there is a little bit of light spilling around.

As far as the roof goes I'm gonna mix up a green, some white, blue ... now you can make the roof any color.

I'm thinking green shingled roof.

I'm gonna mix up a greenish tone like this.

Same brush, detailed liner, script liner.

That's a little brighter than I want it, put a little more blue, subdue it a little bit.

Again the roof color is your judgment.

If I just kind of loosely put the effect of some shingles and roofing on that; it doesn't take much.

See how that sets that right off?

I'm gonna plop in a couple of windows which means I'll just use black.

I've swished this brush clean.

I'm gonna take straight black and on this one, because there is light there the dark opening will show, so that's a logical place to put it.

I'm gonna put a wider door here like you could drive some farm machinery into it.

It's an old barn so I'm not necessarily trying to make it perfect.

I'll put a window there up in the hay mow.

This one I've got a window here on the side.

I'll put it over on this side of this building today, what the heck.

It doesn't matter where it goes.

Alright and that pretty much does it for the barn.

All we need to do is put in some grass so I'm gonna find my large texture brush.

This is the one I did my blending with earlier.

I'm gonna base the whole bottom here with a darker green.

I'm gonna take blue, some yellow.

You'll notice some of the black shows through that, so don't cover every square inch of this.

I'm just gonna come in like this.

That's a little too blue.

I'll put in a little more yellow, get a little more greener.

Doesn't hurt to check your color.

That wasn't a mistake; it's an adjustment.

So basically I'm just gonna kind of weave my way back and forth and fill this all in and when I come back we're gonna highlight this.

Okay I filled in the grass area.

Notice I left some of the black peeking through which give it depth.

I wiped this brush off and I've taken titanium white, cadmium yellow pale and little bit of blue and I've achieved a lighter, brighter, more yellowy sunlit green.

I want to put a little highlight here on the top of the hill.

Notice that it tapers away gradually.

So I let the brush literally run out of pain and I use a lighter touch as I work my way away from that glow area and you'll see it just kind of tapers off and nestles in just the way I want it to.

Most of painting is learning how much paint on the brush and the touch that you use to apply it.

That's all it is.

It just takes practice.

Once you learn it it's like riding a bike, you don't forget it.

I want it a little brighter up there at the top of the hill.

I'm gonna sneak a little extra brightness right up in that opening like the sun is coming through that little hole between the silo and the barn.

Alright if I take my liner I can just take some of this really dark, almost black ... it was my bush color back here ...

I can put a little bird on the wing up here somewhere and maybe just to give it a little extra emphasis and color if I take my fan brush which has my purple sky color in it, I'm gonna wash this out and dry it a little bit.

If I take some white and a color of my choice, something that's in the sky, maybe I'll go with that yellowy color just to give it color harmony and continuity, I can bring this in like this and we will say there are some little yellow wild flowers in the grass.

Now I could have used the red just as well and the red is the complimentary color to the green.

So that would have been a good call too.

You'll see it gives it a little more texture than what this one has, brightens it up, gives it a little more visual interest.

Alright I think that's about a wrap.

Did you enjoy it?

I hope so.

I sure enjoyed bringing it to you.

Thanks for watching and until next time stay creative and keep painting.

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Wilson Bickford's Rose Painting Techniques DVD gives you in depth lessons on a variety of techniques used in painting roses, stems, and leaves.

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