Wilson Bickford: Bluebirds are among the most popular songbirds in the whole world.

I love to paint them, and I put this one on an old, weathered picket fence.

Join me next on Painting with Wilson Bickford.

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hi.

Welcome to Painting with Wilson Bickford.

I've got a wonderful little picket fence bluebird project for you lined up today.

As you know, one of my favorite subjects are birds.

I love painting birds in all kinds of themes and different scenarios.

I've got this one perched on a picket fence.

It's actually pretty easy.

You're probably looking at the fence saying, "Boy, that looks pretty tough."

It's not.

Trust me, I've got an easy way to do it.

If you go to the WPBS-TV website, you'll have a supply list and a sketch that you can download.

There will be a list of supplies, and there's a sketch right on here that you can transfer and trace onto your canvas.

There's a lot of prep work in this one, but it's no painting.

Sometimes my projects require an acrylic underpainting.

This is all just oil.

There's no acrylic, but there is some masking and some taping that we have to do prior to this.

I'm going to show you how we get to that, so you can download those.

What I do is I take the sketch for the bird ...

I don't transfer the fence, but eventually you'll see, you'll want to take the transfer paper ...

This is just graphite transfer paper, and you'll want to use the bird.

I typically use a red pen on the sketch because it shows up easier on the black lines, and I just trace with the transfer paper underneath and transfer the bird onto the post.

We'll talk about all of that.

Everything is laid out for you, so you'll be able to do this quite easily, I'm confident.

I'll show you how we get started with this.

This is what we want to end up with.

This is how I want to start painting.

I'm going to show you how we get to this point.

I'm just going to set this one up here for the time being.

You'll notice this one has blue tape all the way around the edge.

I just used blue, one-inch painter's tape.

That's the width that I wanted.

You'll notice when you pull the tape off, you'll see here in the frame there's that crisp white border around it.

That's how I get the border on my paintings.

I don't do it with every painting, but on some I do.

I like this because the white ties in with the white of the picket fence and the white on the bird, and I thought it made a nice touch.

If you do that, just use painter's tape and you press it down really firmly around the edge, all the way around.

I line it up edge to edge so it's perfectly even and straight, and the same exact width all the way around.

Press that down very firmly.

I've only done this one corner, because that's all we need to worry about as far as the prep work.

Obviously, you'd want to do the whole canvas around the edge.

Then I take 1 1/2-inch wide masking tape.

I just rip off a strip, whatever I think is going to be the approximate height of my posts, my pickets.

Notice my fence leans a little bit.

I don't want it perfectly straight and plumb.

I want it to look like an older fence that's been there a while.

Typically the best way to do this, I think, I don't measure anything out with a ruler or anything like that.

I just want them evenly spaced, so I find the outer two and then I make sure that the middle one is right dead-center between them so they're evenly spaced.

If you wanted, you could cram five or six in here and just put a really tight picket fence if you wanted to.

Totally up to you.

I do use two different widths of tape, and I'll show you why.

Now the main thing is you want to make sure wherever you position this one over here, you're not getting it too close to the edge where the bird is going to hang off the edge of the canvas.

See, what I'm going to do is take this sketch and I'm going to position the bird.

You don't want him way over here.

Make sure you don't get your picket too far over.

If you use this one as a guide, it comes out pretty close.

I'm going to pull this strip off and I'm going to put the outermost one on here like this, maybe somewhere about like that.

I try to make sure that they're kind of parallel to each other and not spread out one way or the other.

That one looks like it's coming that way a little bit.

I know they're way longer, I'm not worried about that.

There's an easy way around that.

Then I find dead center in the middle, like that.

They're evenly spaced.

It makes it easy.

Rather than trying to go across one way or the other, find the two outermost ones and put the middle in.

It makes it so much easier.

You don't have to do a lot of measuring and a lot of muss and fuss with it.

Make sure that's pressed down very well.

From there, I have to determine how high I want the pickets to be.

I like to take a ruler and make sure that this is parallel so they're not cut on a slant.

I make sure it's a 90-degree angle between my tape and my ruler, nice and straight across.

I'm going to say maybe about there.

I simply draw a line on the tape only, don't draw on your white canvas, just to mark that off.

On these, I cut them at an angle like this.

I guess they would call that a chamfer, I believe.

Notice how I cut those off on an angle.

Basically, I just take a sharp utility craft knife with a #11 blade and I just cut off the excess to get the shape that I want.

Now, don't cut beyond your line.

By that I mean if you're going across, don't cut all the way across like that because you're probably going to leave a little score right in your canvas.

That little slit will show.

Just stay on your pencil lines.

See, I just cut those off.

Very simple process.

Use a very sharp knife and a light touch.

It doesn't take much to cut just through the tape but not score into the canvas too deeply.

Now that's one style of fencing.

There are many different ones I've seen out there, so it depends on how elaborate you want to get with it.

You'll have plenty of time paining this at home on your own, so you'll have time to play around with this.

Some fences I've seen come up like this, and they come to more of a point like that.

I've seen some that come up and they kind of round off more like that, they're not as sharp on the edges.

Sometimes they get really fancy and they come up with something like this, and that's just a matter of drawing that on there, taping it out just like we've been doing.

You just alter your sketch, put the little curves in there and then trim it out accordingly.

Very simple.

That's a good way to make this painting unique and make it your own.

From there, I'm going to use some one-inch tape.

You'll notice that the little crossbar is a narrower width than the pickets themselves.

Yes, I could have used the wide tape and trimmed it down, it's just a lot of messing around.

I make it easy.

I like to paint easily.

I make everything easy, as much as I can.

See, if I take this and I put this across, now there's nothing on this end so I don't bring it all the way across the end.

I take a piece like that, I put that across, and that's the cross piece on the pickets holding them all together.

This would be trimmed off as well.

So from that point it's a matter of putting the bird on.

I'm going to separate this paper here.

From that point it's a matter of putting the bird on.

You'll notice on here he's set on the post.

You want to make sure you get him anchored on there securely.

Sometimes it's easier to do this.

I'm not going to push against my canvas here, I'm holding the paper out.

Be careful.

You could trim this with scissors, too.

You don't have to live as dangerously as what I'm doing here.

Sometimes it's best to just trim this back a little bit, then you can see exactly where you're positioning him.

I like to take it like that, find my spot.

Make sure he's seated on there adequately so it looks like his belly is behind and his little claws are coming over.

Can't have him teetered right on the edge.

His belly's got to sink a little bit down below, past that point on the top of the post, past that level.

I put a little piece of tape there to hold it, and then I take my transfer paper and my pen, like I described before.

I put it underneath with the red pen, I draw the bird shape right on there.

You can draw him right over the post, that'll be fine, which will bring you to this point.

Once he was drawn on there, I covered him with a couple of strips of tape and I cut out around him.

He's masked out and protected.

Now I can freely go in there and just plop the background in, not have to paint around everything.

That made it so simple.

Literally, in that probably about 12 minutes it took me to explain that to you, you could do it that quickly.

It's really pretty simple.

Safety first, always put your cap back on your knife.

I made little tabs here so it's easy to pull these off when the time comes.

Again, I like to work smart, not hard.

Anything I can do to make it simpler and make everything flow a little bit easier.

I paint that way at home, not just for TV.

That's the same approach I use at home.

Make sure all these edges are pressed down firmly, and we'll talk about some brushes and some oil paint.

For brushes today, I'm going to be using a two-inch scenery brush, a #4 fan brush, a #10 large flat brush, a #6 round brush, a #2 detail script liner, and a #2 liner.

On my palette today for oils, I have some white base coat which I'm going to use for the background to get nice, soft blending edges into the background.

For colors, I have cadmium red light hue, cerulean blue, sap green, ivory black, burnt sienna, cobalt blue, which will be used for the bluebird itself, and titanium white.

To get this started, I'm going to use my two-inch scenery brush with some of the white base coat.

I'm going to cover most of the canvas.

Notice in this darkest area down here in the bottom where you see the dark green permeating through, I'm not going to put a lot down there.

I don't need much down there.

I want to keep that area dark, so it doesn't make any sense to put a lot of white paint down there which is just going to lighten my value.

Because I've got the tape on here, I'm painting right over onto the tape just to make sure I get a very crisp edge there when I take the tape off.

I'll have that nice, white border.

I will reveal that at the end of this to show you what that looks like.

See, I'm not painting.

This is painting.

If I do this, I'm putting it on too heavily.

You want to get out of the mode of painting your bedroom wall.

This is how everybody paints their garage and paints their wall, but I'm scrubbing on a base coat.

There's a big difference.

You want to put it on thinly and work it into the weave of that canvas.

All those little pockmarks and dents in that canvas, the texture is called the tooth.

You want to work it into the tooth of the canvas.

See, I'm coming down almost to the crossbar, somewhere in that vicinity.

It doesn't matter.

If you got it down here, it's not going to be anything too extreme.

You're just going to have to make your green color extra dark when the time comes.

This way it'll be a little bit dry, it'll stay dark for me.

Again, I'm painting smart, not hard.

I'm trying to think ahead, and make this flow as easily as I can.

Painting shouldn't be a chore, and I don't want it to be.

I try to make everything simple.

With the same dirty brush, I'm going to take a little bit of this cadmium red light.

It's a very pinkish color, because it is a red.

It looks orange on the palette.

You'll see when you put white with it, it behaves more like a true red.

It gets kind of pinkish.

It's a peachy pink.

Down in here, I'm just going to put some color on the lower horizon.

Lower horizon.

We know the horizon's back there somewhere.

I'll bring it down probably pretty close to that crossbar, or a little bit below.

Now, I could bring this red up higher and have less blue, or I could have less red down here lower and more blue.

It all depends on how you want to split that off.

It's an option, it's a preference, there's no right or wrong to it.

I thought the red and the blue worked well together.

It gives that sky a nice feeling.

See, as I come skyward, I'm going to feather that away.

I'm using a lighter touch, and I'm just letting it bleed away.

I don't want a real sharp, precise line there.

It makes it easier to put the blue over it.

I'm feathering that away to infinity so it just fades off.

You can't tell where the red stopped and the white began.

It just literally just disappears.

It makes it so much easier.

I see a lot of people, when they do their blending, they don't do that.

This just makes it so much easier.

I'm going to take a paper towel and wipe the red out of the brush.

I like to lay a paper towel down like this.

Sometimes I can get more pressure on it to really wipe it off.

I'm not a fanatical brush washer.

I don't wash a lot of brushes, as a general rule.

A lot of times you can just wipe it and keep going.

I'm going to take a little bit of that base coat and a little bit of the cerulean blue, which will be that upper sky color.

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

Obviously if you want it darker, you just use more blue and not as much white.

I'm going to try that right there and see what I think.

Ah, I want it a little darker.

Realize, because of the white base coat that you have on there, it's going to lighten up a little bit as you work it into this canvas.

You always have to make your color a little bit darker on your palette than you want it.

The asset of the white base coat is that it gives you tremendous blendability.

You'll see that as I work this down, I can fade these two colors right together very seamlessly.

Now, as you do that, you're going to want to keep wiping your brush off.

Right there I've got kind of a line, so I'm going to take a paper towel and have it right in my hand.

Once these colors start to mingle together I start using an X like this, and I'm using a much, much lighter touch now.

Literally I'm kind of pulling the blue down on the down stroke, and pulling the peach back up on the up stroke so it weaves them together.

You don't want them to join like this, you want them to join like this.

I've got a rag in my hand, I'm squinting at my canvas.

If I have my eyes half shut I can detect whether there's an edge in there.

Edges will show up a lot easier if you have your eyes half shut, believe it or not, so I squint at my canvas a lot.

I'm going to wipe the brush off now.

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

If there's not, you're blending.

I want to be blending at this point.

I'm going to wipe the brush off and fine-tune that blend a little bit.

Just as easy as that, we've got our background in there.

I need to put some filler in behind the pickets a little bit.

I'm going to set this brush to the side, and I'm going to take my #4 fan brush and I'm just going to loosely scrub in some dark values in behind.

I'm not worried about the blades of grass just yet.

Those are coming.

I'm going to take some sap green.

I can go right into that cerulean blue that I had on my palette, because I'm going to want some blue in it anyway.

I'm going to take sap green, a little bit of cerulean blue, a little speck of the black.

The black is pretty strong, so you don't need much of it.

I'm going to put just a little bit of white with that.

I want a darker grey-green.

I can check it right there and see what I think.

That looks pretty good.

See, the canvas is dry here.

I didn't put the base coat, so notice it scrubs on a little harder.

I have to really work it on there to get it started.

Once it's wet and in place, all the other colors on top will flow right over the top.

For right now, it's dry.

I'm working it right in tight around that tape, those taped edges where those pickets are.

See, you've got to work it in.

I'm almost out of paint.

I need just a little more so I'll mix that up on the fly.

As long as it's in the ballpark, it really doesn't matter.

That's a little bluer, it's fine.

That's all just background filler, nothing specific at this point.

I am going to bring it up just a little bit above the fence.

You'll notice that soft, hazy edge like distant grass and stuff way off in the background.

Be conscious of where your crossbar is.

Bring it as high or as low as you want, but just be aware of where everything is.

I want some of that overlapped above the fence so it shows as being behind.

I'm going to wash this brush out and dry it off.

I rinse these out with 100% odorless mineral spirits.

Make sure it's really dry.

I want to lose this distinct edge along the perimeter, so I'm just going to tickle that and blend that off into the peach color just so it looks hazy, far away, distant.

It gives it a lot of depth, which is what we're after.

Painting is nothing more than trying to show depth on a flat surface where you don't have any.

This canvas is 14 inches tall right now and 11 inches wide, but there's no depth to it.

We are trying to show depth and distance where we don't have any.

I'm bringing this up a little higher, just to blend the edge away.

Now I'm going to switch over to the #10 flat brush and I'm going to start pulling some longer grasses up out of that.

With the #10 flat brush, I'm going to chisel this up with a lighter green.

Notice that this becomes the background, and I'm going to have a lighter green over the top.

I'm going to take sap green, a little bit of white.

You can suit it to taste, you can add a little bit of blue or some black to get a flavor that you like.

That one right there looks pretty good to me.

I'm going to compare that and see what I think.

I think that's going to show.

The important part is chisel the brush up nice and sharp like this.

I'm just going to randomly put some grass blades in here.

Use the chiseled edge, touch it flat and square, and just bring it down and use less pressure on the bottom of the stroke.

It'll taper away skinny like grass typically does.

You want to fill in this area here a little bit.

You just want random grasses back in here.

Have it lean to and fro every which way.

You want to put just enough to where it looks full.

I know the pickets are there, but be mindful of those.

Make sure you've got some coming out behind the pickets.

Just don't paint in the spaces in between, it's going to look odd.

You want some of those to truly overlap behind those pickets.

I'm looking at these negative spaces between the pickets as well.

Sometimes where you don't paint is as important as where you do paint.

You have to kind of know where all your edges are.

That one's going there, I'll have one cut across maybe like that just for filler.

That one cut across in through there.

Notice I'm bringing them right down off the bottom of that blue tape, so there's going to be a really crisp edge there when I take that edge off.

I think that's looking pretty good.

Maybe I'll have one more just coming above that picket right there.

Why not?

Why not.

I think that's going to look pretty full.

I'm going to set that brush to the side.

Now we can take off our tape.

We can unmask the bird as well as the fence, because the bird doesn't necessarily have to be covered up any more either.

See, there's our fence.

It was worth that effort of putting that tape on.

It just makes it so much simpler.

The bird is over the fence, so I can grab him and pull him off in one fell swoop just like that, hopefully.

There we go.

There we are.

I do want to take a pencil and just lightly kind of find my lines again for the fence.

Pretty simple process.

There we go.

Now we're ready to start painting that fence in.

I'm going to swish out the brush, my #10 flat brush, and I'm going to use some of the white base coat and I'll paint these pickets in.

Put on a nice, thin coat.

Don't put in on real thick and heavy.

See me scrub it right in.

This brush loads up to a pretty crisp edge, so it's nice to get square edges with.

Makes it pretty simple.

I'm just going to fill these in, and it pretty simple.

I'm just going to fill these in, and then we'll start adding color to them.

OK, so I filled this all in with base coat.

I need to mix up a blue-grey color for the weathered wood.

I'm going to take cobalt blue, white, and a little bit of black.

I'm going to keep the brush chiseled up, and in those little cross pieces where we have the wood grain, I'm going to put a little bit of a shadow on either side of the picket so it looks like the picket is casting a shadow on the cross piece, which will separate those.

I'm going to put this on first, and then I'm going to blend it from the post outward.

I'll wipe this brush off, and I'm carefully and lightly just going to kind of blend the edge away to the inside.

It doesn't have to be a perfect blend.

This is a gnarly old piece of wood with slivers and splinters and wood grain in it, so it doesn't have to be anything too precise.

I'm going to rough it up even more with some wood grain.

I just basically want to soften it.

Sometimes you can go right in with your finger like this and just soften it.

With the same color, I'm going to chisel the brush one more time.

I'm going to cut in some wood grains across there.

If you hit these pickets by mistake, don't worry.

We can touch those up.

It's no big deal.

I hope you're following along with this.

I'd love to see your version of it when you get it all painted.

Come back and join me in the next episode, and 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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