- Come take a stroll with me down on the bank, we'll paint this old rowboat.

Join me next, on Painting with Wilson Bickford.

(light music) Hi, thanks for joining me today on Painting with Wilson Bickford.

We're gonna take a walk down on the bank today and look at an old rowboat.

This is a nice project to learn about a grisaille technique which involves doing a black and white gray tonal underpainting upon which we're gonna apply glazes.

So I'll show you how I got started up to this point.

This is gonna be an oil painting although we're gonna start with some black and white acrylic for the underpainting stage.

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

There's also a sketch that you'll be able to use to transfer.

You'll wanna lay this on your canvas with some graphite transfer paper underneath.

I use the red pen on top, just because the red ink shows up on the dark line, so you know where it is.

So you'd actually trace your boat onto the canvas like this then we'll under-paint it with the black and white grays which I'm gonna get to momentarily here.

On the website you will also have this printout that you can get.

So I would use this as a guide.

You won't have this one to look at, this will be long gone by then, I'm gonna paint over it.

This will show you your black and white tonal underpainting all your values, your lights and darks, it's your roadmap to follow to get to this point.

So you'll have this at your disposal, the sketch, the supply list, everything you need to go.

So I'm gonna start just by showing you the rough outline of how I got to this point.

I'm using this little eight by 10 panel here just as a demonstration.

This is acrylic so I'm using water to thin my colors.

And if you look at this, you'll see where the lights and darks are, you just have to mimic those.

Sometimes I will use the larger number six round-brush, sometimes you're gonna want to use a detailed script liner.

Pick a brush that works for you in the spot that you're doing it.

I would dip into the water and take a little white for the lighter value back here.

A little white, a little speck of black.

The black is way, way stronger than the white.

So if you're going for a very light gray you're literally going to be using 98% white and 2% black.

See way back here where it's a little lighter.

That's probably too dark already.

If it is you just simply add more white to it.

Notice I am thinning the paint down with water so it flows off my brush easily.

The time consuming part of this painting is in this underpainting.

Now this is gonna be a two-part lesson because there's quite a bit in it, but I wanted to show you, I didn't want to have to breeze through it so quickly that you didn't grasp what I'm doing.

The reason you're watching right now is because you want to learn.

So I want to teach you.

So notice it's a little bit lighter gray here and grades a little darker over on the side so I'm gonna add just a speck more of black and I'll make it a little darker in this corner.

Now I had a reference photo of a boat that I used for this and I just kinda looked at the boat and I put the color values accordingly where they needed to go.

So there's the back end of the boat.

Notice it's a little darker on the back side so I'm gonna add a little more black and darken the gray down a little bit.

As it gets darker up here, you just use a little more black.

Keep adding water to your paint, keep it workable.

If it starts getting a little sticky, it's not gonna flow off your brush, it makes it very hard to blend values together.

So see up in here it's gonna be darker.

I'm hurrying, so I went above my line there, that's okay, I just want to show you how this was done.

This is not gonna be the finished painting.

Right here where the two meet, you want to try to put your colors on quickly so you can blend 'em together while they're still damp.

This is acrylic so it dries very quickly.

You want a graded value from really dark here up in the front to getting increasingly lighter as it goes back into the rear of the boat.

So you do the interior like that.

Swish your brush out.

Likewise, notice it's a little bit lighter here on the front, grades a little darker backwards.

You'd have to do all your seats and stuff inside.

You could do all this dark area in here first and let it dry and then come back your seats and then you're not at risk of picking up the wet paint around it.

If you're in a rush you could hit it with a hairdryer even.

Dry it even faster.

Around the front bow of the boat here, I'm gonna take more white into my mixture, you see this would be lighter.

And if it's just thin enough, your application is just thin enough on this canvas you can actually still see your lines through, the cracks between the boards, the seams there.

See if you put this on a little darker, like this, it's actually easier for me to turn it this way.

And then add a little more black to darken the gray a little bit.

It's just a matter of getting your values in place, light to dark.

Because the boat is rounded it grades from light to dark so it has a gradual swell.

So that's what it's gonna take for your underpainting and I would allow yourself a good half hour to 45 minutes at least, probably to get this done.

It might take you an hour, it might take you an hour and a half.

That's not the point.

What I'm saying is don't rush it, take your time.

It won't take too long.

It seems like a daunting task, it's really not.

All the work is in the underpainting.

If your boat looks good, everything else in the painting will look good too.

The boat is the prima donna, it's your subject, you want that to look really good.

So that would bring you to this point.

Make sure you swish your brushes out in the water, clean them out with soap and water.

We're gonna come back and use these with oil, momentarily.

This would be dry.

You can get rid of all your acrylic and your water we'll be moving into the oil phase from here on out.

From there I'm gonna take masking tape.

I'm gonna cover the boat.

This way, we don't have to paint around the boat we can simply paint over the top.

You'll need two strips.

This is an inch and a half.

If you have wider tape you can probably cover it in one shot, if you have a narrower tape you might need three strips.

Overlap it just enough to where you don't get bleed in between.

And then you'd want to take a sharp, craft utility knife, this is number 11 blade, nice and sharp.

Very precise.

And you would carefully trim away everything that's not the boat.

Now I'm doing this on a panel so I don't really have to worry about cutting through my canvas, however if you're working on a stretch canvas, that is a concern.

But I've done 'em on stretch canvases forever and you just need a sharp blade and a light touch.

See if I just carefully trim away everything that's not the boat, I can leave the boat all covered in and then we can then just freely paint the background right over the top.

I'm gonna finish trimming this out and I'll be right back.

(light music) If you want to add a little more detail and definition in your background, I would do it sparingly.

But you can use your number two liner with Van Dyke brown and a speck of ultramarine blue, carefully add the suggestion of a few trunks here way across the water, right at the water's edge.

Don't overdo it, we want this to look far away.

I've masked out the boat so that's completely protected now we can freely drop our background in there, which makes life easy.

We got the hard part done.

Doesn't that feel good?

Okay, today for oil paints what I'm using on my palette are cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, sap green, Van Dyke brown, cadmium yellow pale hue, titanium white.

I also have some white basecoat, which is oil and some clear glazing medium, which we're gonna use to glaze color onto the boat.

For brushes I'm using a two inch scenery brush, a number three fan brush, an number six round brush, a number 10 flat brush, a one inch small texture brush, a number two detailed scriptliner and a number two liner.

So having said all that, I'm gonna take a pencil, I'm gonna give myself a little bit of an indication of where this bank is gonna lie in relation to the boat.

I'm gonna put basecoat in the sky to get that nice softness in the trees and the clouds in the distance in there, but I want it nice, firm, hard edges up here and some dark color, so it doesn't make any sense to put basecoat down here where I don't need it.

So if I draw myself a little bit of a guideline I can steer around that.

I'm gonna maybe put a line like this with just a pencil.

It'll keep me from putting basecoat down here where I don't really want it.

I want to get it far enough behind so it looks like the boat is pulled up onto the bank.

So I'm gonna take the two inch scenery brush here.

And I'm gonna take a little bit of this white basecoat and I'm gonna scrub this in.

Apply a very, very thin coat, don't need much of this.

We'll stop at the pencil line.

That's doing it's job, it's keep me out of there.

Scrub it in very, very thinly.

Don't need much.

This will give us blendability so we get nice soft edges everywhere we want it in that background.

Now because it's white on white, sometimes it's hard to tell where you're putting it.

I can see here with the shine of my light above I can see there's a soft shine.

You want to tilt your canvas back in the light just to see where it is.

Okay from there I'm gonna go back to my pencil.

I want to kinda have an idea of where my horizon line is going back here where the trees and water meet.

I'd say right about there.

I'm just gonna put a little bit of a line.

This will cover over.

I'm not gonna put it really dark, just enough so I can see it.

I could sketch that in with paint too.

I just want to have a sense of where that's gonna be.

It will cover up with paint later, so I'm not worried about the line necessarily.

I wanna get some distance in the sky so I'm gonna go with a lighter pale blue at the lower sky, lower horizon, and darker blue at the top.

That's known as aerial perspective.

I'm gonna use just a little bit of that cerulean blue.

I'm just using the dirty brush that's still got the white in it.

I'll try that, see what I think.

I want it fairly pale.

That looks pretty good.

Just need more of it, so I'll take a little more basecoat with a little more cerulean blue.

Mix them thoroughly on your brush so there's no chunks or streaks on your brush.

I'll bring that up maybe half way through the available sky area, give or take.

Bear in mind your trees are going to take out a certain portion of this so you might not have a lot left by the time everything's in there, depends on how tall you make your trees.

I'm gonna take this same color and put it in the water just below that pencil line, this color would reflect in the water down here as well.

From there I'm going to use ultramarine blue and I can mix it right into this single puddle on my palette just to save space on my palette.

You may have heard that blue is my favorite color.

Well it is.

So I'm not afraid to put some blue in here.

I'm going to go kinda darker blue because I want my white clouds to show up in contrast.

If I didn't want it quite this blue, I could put just a speck of my Van Dyke brown with it and gray it just ever so slightly.

I'm gonna weave these together so it's kind of a seamless transition.

That sounds like one of those lounge bands out of the 70s, music by Seamless Transitions.

(chuckles) I lived through that, I lived through the 70s.

I know of what I speak.

I'm gonna go a little darker than that.

Just my preference.

It's just my choice.

I'm gonna go a little darker and see where it leaves a line, you want to blend that out.

So I'm gonna use a lighter touch and just feather those together.

I need to do the same thing in the water.

We got a lot of clouds in here, so if your blend is less than perfect, it's never probably gonna show.

But you want to get it blended fairly well.

Down here, see why I taped out the boat.

What boat?

You can imagine trying to paint around that.

That would not be fun.

I'm gonna feather this away.

So I'm mingling the colors.

Notice it's a reverse mirror image.

It's lighter in the sky here, but it's lighter in the water higher on the water, lower in the sky 'cause it's flip-flopped.

Alright looks pretty good, that makes your sky look deep.

I'm just gonna set this brush to the side.

I'm gonna start fluffing in some clouds.

For that I'm gonna use titanium white and I'll sneak a little bit of this white basecoat in here too, just to thin the consistency of the paint down a little bit.

When I paint white clouds I use a lot of paint, you'll notice I've got a lot of paint on this fan brush.

When I do more silhouetted clouds, darker clouds, like in a sunset, I don't use as much paint.

They aren't as heavy.

And to keep these nice and white and fluffy like cumulus clouds, you really need to use a lot of paint.

So what I do, now this is something you can do too, if it helps you, you can actually scratch out a little bit of a design right through the paint.

I don't know if you can see that, I hope it's showing up for ya, little white scratch there.

I see that in my mind's eye and then I just use the brush and I duplicate it.

I want to get the nice little puffs and tufts.

Don't make just round little cotton balls.

Notice I used the corner of this fan brush.

Here's what everybody does with a fan brush, I see it all the time, they just stamp with the end of the brush and they get these straight lines or these eyebrows that look like a fan brush.

That's what you don't wanna do.

Notice I use the corner and I just pull inward and I turn the brush different angles.

Bring it down to an even level so you got thickness and height on your cloud.

So I just bring it down and what will really help is if you blend the bottom edge away.

Notice I blend the bottom away to infinity.

And I'll come back and work on that texture a little bit too.

Now that I got this mess over here I got to get rid of it.

See if you do end up with that you can get rid of it.

Just paint over it.

See I'm using quite a bit of paint.

The important part of these, is to blend the bottom away.

You'll see if you blend the bottoms away, see how they look like they just set there and they belong there, anchors them to the sky.

I'm picking up quite a bit of blue on the brush.

You can wipe that off.

Notice there's a lot of texture in here.

If you don't like the brush marks and the texture you can actually just take the back side of the brush like this and just pat them down a little bit.

Some people like the texture.

Van Gogh would have left that and Da Vinci would have smoothed it out, it's that simple.

All depends on what you like.

You see I can just lightly tap that and take all that texture out, doesn't look so coarse.

You can actually take the brush, with it wiped off now and just here and there, lose an edge every once in a while.

These are what are known as lost and found edges.

The found ones are your harder edges.

The lost one are the ones that truly get lost and just look like they disappear.

It's nice to have hard edges and soft edges in your paintings.

See it looks like the wind blew that one and it went pheeeew.

I'm gonna go a little bit lower with some more clouds then we'll start working on those trees.

This is gonna be a two part lesson.

There's a lot to show you in this particular project so I didn't want to have to rush through it, so there will be a part two to this.

So I'll put some lower clouds down here.

Just picking up more white.

Try to put light against dark.

See where that got a little bit darker behind now we'll show this light in front of it.

So you have to look at your contrast, always be conscious of that.

Same thing, I'm gonna fade this out a little bit.

A little over here maybe.

That'll pretty much do it for the sky.

Pretty simple huh?

It really is.

I know a lot of people watch me do this, say, "Oh you make it look so simple, but it's not."

It just takes practice.

The difference between me and most of you out there is I've probably had more practice, that's all there is to it.

It's a matter of learning it and getting the touch of the brush.

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

Okay, we'll start with some of these background trees.

I want the color muted and grayed down.

I'm gonna start with white, a little bit of the ultramarine blue, little sap green.

To gray all that I could put just a speck of Van Dyke brown.

I prefer to have this leaning slightly bluish.

Blue is a good distance color.

I don't want it too dark, you'll see I keep adding white to it to get the value I want.

The lighter it is the farther away it's gonna look.

Let me check this out.

Ooh that works for me.

I think so, I think that's gonna do it.

So I can still see where my line was.

I'm just going to re-state that, firm it up a little bit so I know exactly where it is.

I do my trees, the same way I do my clouds pretty much.

These are leaf trees back here, not fir trees.

I just take the corner of the brush and I tap.

You'll see that I turn my wrist and my elbow different angles.

If you listen closely you can probably actually here my brush crunch.

Just tapping.

Vary the heights.

Notice I got some shorter dips in there and some taller ones.

We're gonna put a little bit of highlight on top of those too.

And just like I did the clouds, I can actually soften the tops of these a little bit if I choose too.

I'll wait to put the highlight on first.

See that look like trees?

It does, in the distance.

You bet.

You don't have to show every leaf and every branch.

Okay I'm gonna wipe that off.

I'm gonna mix up a new color which is going to be white, I'm gonna save some of this green, because I'm gonna need it.

'Cause I need that for the reflection.

So I'm gonna take white and I'll throw a little basecoat in there just to make it stick a little easier.

So I'm using white, yellow and just a little bit of the straight sap green over here.

It's a little more vibrant than the stuff that I grayed and dulled down.

Takes something a little lighter and brighter like this like sunlight hitting the trees.

And if I just dab this towards the top.

You'll see me flip the brush over when I run out of paint on one corner of the brush, I just flip it over on the other side where there's more paint.

I'm thinking the light's coming from above so I'm gonna do the tops of the trees more so than down below.

They're far away so we don't have to worry about a lot of detail.

Where the two colors meet though, you do wanna tap and melt those together.

You don't have to do every single one either.

Alright, we still have to put a little bit of light in there.

I'm gonna wipe this off and just further blend by tapping.

I'm gonna melt the yellow and the darker green together a little bit.

Soften it out.

I don't want a hard line between the two.

Okay, that's a pretty good suggestion of trees in the distance isn't it?

That's all it is, is a suggestion.

An illusion.

An impression.

I'm gonna wash this right out completely and just like I did in the clouds, I softened the top of these a little bit.

Now I could leave it like that, there's nothing wrong with that, it brings them a certain closeness.

But if I go in and I just, now this has nothing on the brush, it's clean and dry.

You'll see that if I just soften that uppermost edge and that contour against the sky, it pushes these trees way, way back.

It gives us more depth and distance which is what we're trying to get on this canvas.

We have height and width, we don't have any depth.

We're trying to show that third dimension that's missing.

Okay from there I'm gonna take my number 10 flat brush and I'm gonna mimic those colors into the reflection.

That's why I saved some of this green.

I'm gonna load this up to a nice chiseled edge like this.

Mat it right together.

And I'll have to scooch over here a little bit in the front so I'm not blocking your view.

And we'll put these little wave lines.

It's like this color is riding on the ripples.

I want movement on this water, not just a flat calm.

And I'm paying attention where this one's a little taller that will reflect the lowest.

If the water's really choppy, you don't have to worry about that so much, the reflection won't be as precise and exact.

Wipe this off and come back and put a little bit of that yellow that I had for the trees in here, the highlight.

And I'll incorporate a little bit of that in here.

Now it's gonna go lower, because it's higher here, so being in reverse, it'd be down here, lower.

And next week's episode, we're gonna develop this boat.

The hard work of the boat is already done, we're just gonna add color and refine it a little bit.

I'm gonna go back with a clean, dry fan brush and just lightly blend over this, smear it out of focus a little bit, which will make it look a little more watery.

And that's gonna bring us to a close for today guys.

The clock on the wall tell me it's time to go.

But I hope you're following along and I'd love to see what you do with this lesson when you get it all completed.

Join me next week and we'll finish this up.

Until then, stay creative and keep painting.

- [Announcer] All 13 episodes of Painting with Wilson Bickford, series five, 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 Winter Blues, 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.

(gentle music)