- It gets blistering hot in the desert in the daytime, but very chilly in the evenings.

You better bring your jacket.

Join me next on, "Painting with Wilson Bickford", as we paint "Monument Valley Moonlight."

(relaxing music) Hi thanks for tuning in today.

I'm Wilson Bickford and I'm gonna show you a nice little desert scene that we can do today.

You know, I live in northern New York state, but the west has a beauty all of its own and I wanted to share something kind of a southwestern scene with some of you folks and the viewers on the other coast.

So this is what it's all about today.

This is called, "Monument Valley Moonlight."

If you go to the WPBSTV website, you will be able to download a supply list.

That tells all the tools and brushes and colors that we're using today.

This is oil painting, by the way.

And I'm gonna go through those here in just a moment.

Run down of the supplies.

There's also a sketch on here, if you desire it, you could free hand your own design if you wanted to obviously.

But I simply took my sketch.

I used some graphite transfer paper.

Black, almost like carbon paper.

It's artist graphite paper.

I put that underneath the sketch, with a red pen, I like to use a red pen, because it shows up on my dark lines.

I traced all this out and now I originally just free handed this design, using a photo as a reference.

But for those of you who feel that you can't draw, this'll be a crutch for you kind of, to get you started.

You can still have fun and paint it, or like I said, you can draw your own design.

Either or.

From there, now this has already been prepped.

I'm gonna talk about this for just a second.

From there, I took black acrylic gesso.

Now this has been taped down, but on that outline, I painted all of those buttes.

These are called buttes, these mountain formations.

I painted all of that with black acrylic, down to a certain point, to where it was safe to use a foam brush.

I could've used my number 10 flat brush.

This is on your supply list.

This one would work just as fine.

It just takes a little longer, because it's a smaller brush.

I used this disposable foam brush and I just filled this in, so the whole thing is black, from the tops of the buttes, down.

From there, once it was dry, that's acrylic.

I did re-state this line, this horizon line here, a little bit.

Just kind of the dotted fashion, I didn't want it too heavy, because I wanna be able to cover it up later.

But I did hint that in there, just enough, so I know where it is.

Once that was all dry, because that's acrylic, I took just regular, ordinary masking tape.

Everybody always asks about my tape.

This is just normal tape that I just pick up at the hardware stores.

Nothing fancy.

It's not a special art tape, anything like that.

I tape that out.

And I took a sharp craft utility knife, and I carefully trim the way everything that wasn't the rock formations, and peel it away.

So those are completely protected, they're black underneath.

I can pull that off and they're gonna be very dark for me to apply my highlights to.

So that's what it takes for prep with this.

It really only takes, maybe a half an hour, by the time you get that drawn on, painted, dried, taped out.

It's not really too laborious, but it's worth it in the end.

It makes your life easy.

So for colors today on my palette.

I'm using Yellow Ochre.

Cerulean Blue.

Ultramarine Blue.

Ivory Black.

Van Dyke Brown.

This looks like black.

But you'll see, I'll pull some out here, it's a very dark brown, as opposed to the black.

And Titanium White.

I also have some white oil basecoat here that I'm using in the background.

And some clear glazing medium that I'm gonna use here to lubricate this black portion later on, to let my colors flow on more easily.

So just before we started rolling, I had taken my two inch scenery brush.

And a little bit of this white basecoat, and I've pretty much got this done already.

I wanted to save myself a couple minutes on screen here.

So I got a lot to show you here.

But I scrubbed in a very, very, very thin coat of this white baseboat, all over this whole upper half and so I don't have to paint around the buttes.

They're protected.

So, I'm gonna save this brush for later.

I don't need to wash it.

I'm just gonna set it to the side.

I'll come back and use it for blending, probably.

I'm using a two inch scenery brush.

A #10 flat brush.

A #3 fan brush.

And a #2 detailed scriptliner.

Okay, now with the #10 flat brush, I'm gonna take a little bit of this Titanium White and a little bit of Yellow Ochre.

I want to establish this nice glow on the lower horizon here.

You can make that as dark or as pastel as you want, it's all good.

Totally up to you.

I'm gonna start with something maybe about like this.

I'm not gonna try to match that one exactly.

I've already been there and done that painting.

But you can use your own discretion too, just like I'm doing here, I'm showing you how to do it.

So I'm taking some white, I can actually thin it down a little bit, if it feels a little sticky, I can use a little bit of this basecoat that I have left on my palette too.

If I hit this line, it's okay.

I'll overlap that with my line, with my landline later.

With my horizon.

I'm just gonna get down close to it.

Now I'm gonna bleed this color upward.

If I run out of that color, I just mix a little more right on the fly.

It's pretty easy to hit, because it's just, white and yellow.

Where color mixing gets complicated, is where you have five colors in something.

A touch of red, a touch of blue, a touch of white, a touch of black and it gets a little more complicated.

When you're just doing a simple mixture like this, if it's too dark, I add more white.

If it's too light, I add more yellow.

Very simple.

Okay, now see I wanna bring this up enough to where I can bring the other color down over it.

And I know, I didn't take notes on this when I designed it.

I just laid out my colors and remembered which tools and colors I used.

So this is unscripted, I'm just flying by the seat of my pants here.

That's how I always paint.

But, I know that I did put a little buffer of Cerulean Blue in here.

It doesn't show too much.

Because I kind of nosed it out with the other color.

But that's fine.

I'm gonna put some in there.

I'm gonna use the fan brush, just because this one's clean.

I'm gonna take a little bit of white.

A little bit of this Cerulean Blue.

And I'm gonna go right above, that yellow on here and now if I get the yellow and the blue mixed together, a little too much, and stirred together, they're gonna start going greenish.

So I'm gonna be very careful.

The key is not having a lot of paint in between the two.

Notice how I feathered the yellow kind of to infinite back to white.

And I'm gonna kind do the same thing with this one.

See I'm putting it on above the yellow.

And then I can wipe this brush off.

And come in and just kind of lightly feather them together.

There's not a lot of paint there.

So, it keeps me out of trouble, from getting anything that's too greenish.

And you're gonna have to determine how much of this light you want left on your horizon.

See here, I've got very little.

I could leave it lighter like this.

It just looks like it's earlier in the evening.

Sun has gone down and you can see the moon, but this one looks like the sun just went down.

If I leave more yellow showing.

It makes a different time of day.

Just common sense.

See I'm gonna feather these together, using an X stroke like this.

Yeah, we got viewers all over the country now.

We've spread out on a lot of stations, so.

I'm trying to get out of my mindset of painting stuff from northern New York that I know.

I paint a lot of old barns and a lot of rustic scenes that I see in my neck of the woods.

But I'm slowly coming to the realization that a lot of you viewers out there, that are in other locations and probably don't wanna just see barns and what not, so.

This is a southwestern scene, kind of sort of.

I'm gonna take a little bit of Ultramarine Blue, a speck of black, the black is really strong.

Tread lightly with that.

Mix it in evenly, so there's no chunks or streaks on your brush and I want this kind of on the darker side.

So see I keep mixing a little blue, a little black.

I'm trying to visualize in my mind, how dark I want it and whether I want it leaning grayish or bluish.

If I add more black, it's gonna be more gray.

If I use more blue, it's gonna be a blue gray.

And if you know me at all, I love my blue.

You know that.

If you've painted with me before.

Blue is my favorite color.

I'd walk from here all the way out to those boots out west.

Boots, buttes.

Out west, to see some good blue.

Okay, I'm gonna go with that color, that looks pretty good.

And I'm not trying to match that one exactly.

I'm going with what I feel.

Oh, I like that though, that's good.

I hit it.

I hit the nail on the head there.

That works for me.

You just wanna get a color that you like.

I'm going to bring this down.

Like I said, the further I bring it and nose some of that yellow out, it makes it later.

So having said that, and now that I've explained that, I'm gonna leave this one a little higher.

It's gonna be a little bit lighter.

It's gonna change the feel of this a little bit.

I'm doing that just so, it shows you that you can do it your own way.

I'm going to wipe this brush off.

And I wanna bring these two areas together.

So I'm gonna use a criss-cross stroke like this, and little Xs.

Keep wiping the brush off.

If there's paint on your brush, you're painting.

And if there's not paint on your brush, you're blending.

And at this point, I wanna be blending.

We just wanna blend that to your satisfaction.

See right in here, it's a little streaked.

That's kind of cool.

It kind of looks like clouds to me.

I think I'll leave that.

I could fuss with it and really blend that out, but, sometimes that's a bonus.

Just depends on how you feel about it and how you want yours to look.

But basically, I'm just trying to get rid of any sense of a hard line there.

All right.

I'm gonna stop and wash out my fan brush.

I have odorless mineral spirits here that I clean my brushes with.

I'm just gonna swish that out and dry it off.

Put the cover back on that.

Not that the thinner bothers me.

I don't have any issues with the thinner, but, it's a good idea to just leave the lid on it, if you're sensitive to that sort of thing.

I'm gonna take a little bit of white and a little bit of this color that I had from my sky, my upper sky.

I'm gonna put the aura, and the glow in, where the moon is gonna go.

I want it lighter than that, but not so light that my pure white moon won't show.

In the interest of composition, I wanna come in roughly about a third of the way from the right.

I'm gonna say maybe right here.

That looks a little dark.

So having figured that out already, I'm gonna put a little more white with it.

And I'm just gonna lay the brush like this.

Watch my fingers.

I'm just gonna turn the brush, between my fingers, in a circle.

Pick up just a little more of that color.

If I keep wiping the brush off, and doing that, you'll see that it gets softer and softer and softer.

I'm gonna wipe this off and just very lightly do this, just to kind of haze it out of focus a little bit.

Very light pressure, guys.

Don't get too heavy handed.

And there's my glow.

I'm gonna take a rag and right in the middle of that, there's nothing on this, just a clean rag.

I'm gonna rock my finger back and forth, see if it'll take away some of that paint and then I can paint my moon in and it won't pick up that background color.

I'll use the detailed scriptliner.

And some white.

I'll probably split these two.

A little bit of the white basecoat a little but of the thick white, the Titanium White.

I'm gonna lean in here and hope my shoulder isn't in the way.

I'm gonna carefully just paint, a round moon.

All right.

When I quiet down there, that means I'm holding my breath and trying to steady my hand.

It gives you a break from having to listen to me though, doesn't it?

Yeah.

That's okay.

Understood.

Okay and then I'm gonna take a little bit of this dark color that I had from my sky.

I wanna put some craters in here, so it doesn't look just like a flat white marble.

Just randomly.

To soften that, I like to wipe the brush off and then fluff it out with my fingers, like this.

Spread it out like a little rake.

And then if I come in and just tap lightly with the backside of the brush, you'll see it kind of takes some of the harshness out of those little, I call them dots, but don't just make dots.

They're like a little irregular shapes.

And usually what happens, is you get a little bit too much dark on there.

If that happens, swish your brush out.

Come back with your white and you can edit some of that out, put some of the white back in and soften everything out.

Those craters are a long ways away.

So you don't want them to be too harsh and look like holes in a bowling ball.

I wiped them out too much.

I'm gonna make a couple of little darker here.

That'll give you the idea of how to accomplish it.

It's really not too hard.

I'm gonna spatter in some stars.

It's a clear night here in the desert.

So if I take my fan brush.

Now this has got some blue on it, from my glow around the moon.

I'm gonna wash this out.

I will take some of the white basecoat.

And I will have to thin this down with maybe three or four drops of paint thinner.

You'll have to check the consistency and see what you're getting for a spray.

Good place to check it, is right here on this dark spot.

If you watch my palette here.

The idea is to take the brush and let the bristles snap forward like this and you get that spray of dots.

Those are my stars.

Here we go.

And again.

Painting is individual and personal to everybody.

You're gonna have to decide how many stars you want.

My dots are pretty small, which tells me if I add another drop of thinner, I'll get some bigger ones.

So I'm gonna put some bigger ones in here too.

You want all different sizes in your stars.

Some of those might be planets out there.

All right.

Now see this one overall is lighter, it looks earlier in the evening.

This one's darker.

This one's probably, oh I don't know, what time of year it is here.

I know in the fall it gets darker earlier.

But this is earlier in the evening overall.

So you can adjust the mood the way you want, just by how dark or light you make your colors.

I'm going to go back to my #10 flat brush, with a little bit of this dark blue.

I'm gonna put a little bit of the Van Dyke Brown with it and some white.

This is gonna be my distant land, way out here in the back.

It's night time and it's more or less just a silhouette, with the moonlight.

So we don't need a lot of detail in it.

And see where I had that line to establish it?

I wanna cover that up, this dark line of the gesso.

I can cover that up.

This has got enough white in it, to make it opaque.

So that will cover that up pretty easily and I won't see it.

I heard an interesting fact the other day.

Do you know why Van Gogh became a painter and an artist?

He didn't have the ear for music.

(laughs) Think about it.

Yeah, that's what I heard.

I don't know if it's true or not.

Could be.

Oh, I just heard somebody laugh.

Somebody in Detroit, Michigan, just got it, just got that.

Yeah, he didn't have the ear for music.

At least on the one side.

Okay and I'm gonna paint that in like that.

I'm gonna change it up a little bit.

I'll put a couple little darker accents of brown, just so it's not all the same mundane color.

Give it a little bit of life back there.

It's not the important part of this painting, but you want it to be interesting.

Okay, from there, I'm gonna remove my tape.

Drum roll, please.

(rolling drum) I'm not sure this will all come off in one piece.

But I can hope for the best.

Oh, so close.

And see now, if you can imagine trying to paint around that, that's why I taped it out.

Look how slick that is.

I got some little white dots down here.

It's really not going to matter.

I can take a damp rag, just slightly damp with thinner.

Wipe some of that away.

I'm gonna take my detailed scriptliner.

And, my #10 flat brush.

I have to switch this one out, obviously.

I'm gonna take some of this clear glazing medium.

I'm gonna cover the whole butte area, all of this black, with a thin coat of that clear glazing medium, which is gonna take me a few minutes, and I'll be right back.

(relaxing music) If you wanna give your painting a little more interest and more of a story, you can always easily add a shooting star.

I thinned down some white, on my liner brush.

This is the dry version.

If you do it on the dry one, if you make a mess, you can take it off.

It's the much safer way to do it.

You can do it on the wet canvas, but I recommend letting it dry.

Then I can lay my hand here.

And so you just want a nice sweeping arc of the tail, of the shooting star and then, just a little dot here, right at the beginning.

And you have a shooting star back there.

If you make a mess, like this, It's easy to fix.

That's why I recommend doing the dry canvas.

If you take just a slightly damp rag with thinner, and just lightly take it off.

No harm done, you can try it again.

Give it a shot.

Welcome back.

In that little break, I took some clear glazing medium and I added a thin coat over all of this dark black acrylic area.

Obviously, I used my little liner brush up around here.

If you have any little discrepancies and I'm sure you're gonna have some, where you didn't quite tape exact down the line, you might have little flecks of white canvas, take some thin black oil paint, off your palette.

Thin it down with thinner.

And you can touch up all those edges, to get a really nice, perfect edge back.

Don't put too much wet black down, because, we don't want it to muddy our highlight color, that we're gonna apply next.

Okay, now these rock formations.

I don't know how or why I'm not a geologist, but, these tend to go vertical.

Have a vertical grain on the top.

They come down to a certain level here, like a little plateau level.

And then they start, the grain goes horizontal.

I don't know why that is.

But that's how they are, if you look at them in the photos.

These are called "The Mittens", for the obvious reason.

They look like mittens.

And I'm gonna take my #2 detailed scriptliner.

I'll take a little bit of the white basecoat, because it's thin and it'll flow onto my canvas a little easier.

And some of that Van Dyke Brown.

I don't wanna go too light.

It's dark, it's moonlight, it's nighttime.

But I wanna go light enough.

And I'm gonna highlight these on the side.

I'm gonna put a little line here, just to indicate where that comes down to that plateau.

And see I'm just dashing, dotting.

Don't just draw harsh lines in it, kind of varying the brush pressure.

I'm dabbing a little bit now and then.

Make them irregular.

They're just craggy old rocks and you wanna leave some of that black acrylic showing in between as the gaps in between.

As I work my way back, I'm gonna wipe some of the paint off the brush right on my palette.

Just get some of the excess out of it.

And I keep working my way back and I use a lighter touch and see I wanna let it just fade darker and darker as it goes to the left, so it looks like it's in shadow.

I will probably come back and re-highlight some of this, we'll see.

Obviously, the moon is here.

So it's gonna hit on the right hand side of this one.

But see, it doesn't take much, to give that the feeling of these craggy old buttes.

This one is kind of right below it, so there's gotta be more light here towards the top, maybe down this side a little bit.

Same idea.

Wipe some of the paint off the brush.

If you guys do a version of this, send me a copy.

I'd love to see it.

I love to see what everybody does with my projects.

And just projects of your own.

Send me some of your own work, that's fine.

I get letters and correspondence from all over the place.

I like seeing it.

Now notice there's a layer effect here.

This one is pushed back, because this one comes in front.

So I'm gonna kind of bring this down like this.

This one comes across the front this way, so this little guy here gets shoved into the background somewhat.

And I can soften that in with my fan brush.

So it kind of gets lost into the shadows a little bit.

Which really helps to anchor it down and make it look seeded in there.

I'm gonna go back with just a little more white in that mixture.

I'm gonna add a little more of that white basecoat.

And I'm just gonna add a little extra zing in a couple spots.

See how that really sets that off and gives that a nice lighting effect?

It's not as boring.

Makes it a little more exciting to look at.

And I wouldn't do it everywhere, just a couple of chosen spots, whatever looks good to you.

Especially on the side towards the moon.

Where the light source is.

Okay.

We're gonna start coming down into the dune part of the desert, I guess you would call it.

I'm gonna take Van Dyke Brown and white, on my fan brush.

I can put a little bit of the yellow in there too, what the heck?

And down in here, I just wanna put some random textures, so it doesn't look so flat.

It'll give the sense of the lay of the land down in here.

Scrub it on thinly.

It doesn't take much.

Notice I'm really scrubbing, I'm just not drawing lines and leaving lines.

I'm putting lines on, but then I'm scrubbing them to soften them.

And I wanna leave it fairly dark down here at the base.

I'm gonna take a little more white into that.

And right here, towards the middle, where the moon's coming through, I wanna give it a little extra pizazz.

Always give your paintings pizazz.

Now see this one overall is lighter than that.

And like I said, I wasn't trying to match that one exactly.

I used the same colors.

I did the same exact approach.

I didn't hold anything back.

You saw every possible thing that I did with that one, it's just how I mixed my colors.

And you'll have that same freedom.

Mix them the way you like them.

Lighter, darker, browner, grayer, bluer, it's all good.

That's what makes painting fun.

Everybody can do it their own way.

All right, that's looking pretty good.

I do have a little bit of texture in here.

So, with a little more basecoat, maybe a speck more of the yellow, just something a little lighter, brighter that's gonna show up.

Remember how I spattered the stars?

I'm gonna come in and put a little bit of the spatter right down here in the sand, just to give it a little interest, a little texture.

Makes it a little more visually stimulating to look at.

All right.

And there is "Monument Valley Moonlight."

I hope you give it a shot.

Try it out, send me a photo of it.

I'd love to see it.

Until next time, stay creative and keep painting.

(relaxing music) - [Woman] All 13 episodes of, "Painting with Wilson Bickford Series 6", are now available on DVD or Blu-Ray, in one box set for $35, plus 4.95 shipping and handling.

Or learn the techniques used to paint "Stand of Birches", with the in-depth, "Paint Smart, "Not Hard" series, of Wilson Bickford instructional DVDs.

Additional titles available.

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

More information at wpbstv.org/painting.

(relaxing music)