- When it comes to plants and gardening, I really don't have much of a green thumb, I have much better luck with flowers when they're on my canvas.

Join me next on Painting with Wilson Bickford and we'll pot some geraniums.

(soft music) - [Narrator] Support for Painting with Wilson Bickford is provided by the J.M.

McDonald Foundation.

Continuing the example modeled by J.M.

McDonalad, by contributing to education, health, humanities, and human services.

Sharing since 1952.

Online at jmmcdonaldfoundation.org.

(soft music) In rural New York State bordered by the Saint Lawrence River and the Adirondack Mountains, is a sprawling landscape with communities that offer self-guided tours for the creatively inclined.

Learn the stories behind the barn quilt traditions, family agriculture, nature and beauty.

St. Lawrence County, Life Undiscovered.

- Hi, thanks for joining me today.

We're gonna paint some potted geraniums today.

I'll be honest with ya, I'm not the world's best floral painter and I have to be in the right frame of mind to paint florals, but I do so on occasion, so I wanted to share this lesson with you today and show you how to do this nice potted geranium plant right here.

For prep work on my canvas, I used some black and white acrylic gesso and I used an acrylic brush, this is made for acrylic, you can actually use a foam disposable wedge type brush if you wanted to.

This is a nice brush for doing this type of work, but I started with black acrylic down here, I quickly rinsed the brush out with water, I came in with white and I mingled them together so I had a nice smoother transition between the two tones.

This is dry and it's ready to roll.

If you go to the WPBSTV website, you'll be able to download a supply list of what we're using today, with the list of the oil colors and the brushes.

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

So you'll be able to get the supply list there.

There's no sketch, there's no tracing with this particular project, I'm just gonna freehand it, so I'm going out on a limb for you guys, wish me luck.

So as far as the oil colors we're using today, I'm using cadmium yellow pale, cerulean blue, burnt sienna, cadmium red light, ivory black, sap green, red rose deep, and titanium white.

And I also have some clear gazing medium that I'm gonna lubricate the canvas with to make everything flow on nice and smooth for me.

As far as the brushes go, I have a 2-inch scenery brush, a #3 fan brush, a #10 large flat brush, a #4 filbert brush, my small painting knife, a #2 detailed script liner, and that wash brush that I just mentioned previously.

So I'm gonna paint some geraniums, geraniums are a type of flower that's comprised of floret.

Some flowers like a rose is just a single blossom with petals.

Certain flowers like geraniums and lilacs, hydrangeas, are composed of a bunch of small little individual flowers that are called florets, and they're just in clusters, and those comprise the whole blossom.

So these are actually pretty easy to paint because the petals just hang every which way, you don't have to get too technical with them.

I wanted to share with you too some other paintings here that I've done in the past.

This is one I just did recently actually, it's been sold to a gal in Texas, thank you Dina, I'll be shipping this out.

She graciously allowed me to hang onto this to be able to share it with ya.

But I want to show you the difference.

This one is much more tightly rendered, it's not really photo realistic, but it's kinda leaning that way.

Same here, this is one that I teach in my class, this is calla lillies.

Some of you probably I'm sure will remember this from a past season, macro sunflower.

I did this one on the previous series, probably two or three maybe.

And I have a bunch of them here.

For somebody who said he didn't paint many florals, I have a lot of them don't I?

The reason I'm showing you all of these, is because you just have to decide what style you want to do when you do your florals.

Actually, the knife ones are a little easier 'cause they're not as meticulous, don't have to be as perfect.

This one's a knife one.

Here's some geraniums that are done with the knife as compared to this one.

So you'll this one's a little more textured, same idea, but it's a little rougher, little more textured than what I'm doing today.

So you'll have to decide which interpretation you want to do, it's all fun, so try them all, try everything out, see what you like best.

Okay, I'm gonna put this background in, I'm gonna freehand the clay pot on, and hopefully we can get through that for this first episode.

This will be a two-parter so don't miss episode number two.

Part two will be coming up later.

Okay, I'm gonna take some clear glazing medium on my 2-inch scenery brush, I'm gonna put a thin coat over this whole canvas.

Scrub it in nice and thin, this is just gonna wet this down so the colors flow on a little easier.

Put it on thinly, notice you hear my brush scratching and scrubbing it and I'm not laying it on thick like I'm painting a wall.

Scrub it on thinly.

Don't need much of it.

And I'm gonna add glazes in this background, that's basically gonna be yellow on one side, cerulean blue on the other, and I'll mingle them together in the middle.

Very simple.

So I'm gonna take some cadmium yellow pale, don't need much paint on the brush, and I'm only coming down to about where the black and the white meet.

This is just a simple background, I didn't want anything too complicated to show on air, 'cause it would've taken too long so I'd of had to have half of it done or just do it more simply, so this is the more simply version.

But it'll give you the idea of how to do it, so I hope you give it a whirl.

That was easy.

Okay, now I'm gonna take the brush, I'll wipe some of the yellow out of it 'cause it'll immediately go green here, and you know me, I like blue, so I'm gonna go with a little bit more of a blue tone.

This is just straight cerulean blue, it'll probably go a little greenish because it'll pick some of the yellow out of the brush and that's fine.

I'll scrub this on really thin on this side and I'll wiggle them together in the middle.

This is more about the clay pot and the flowers so I didn't want to spend a lot of time on the background.

But yet I still wanted to show you how to do it, I didn't want to start with it already in place 'cause then you wouldn't know how I did it, so.

All right, I'm gonna go a little more blue up here, you know me and my blue.

It's a curse I'm telling ya.

Eh, not really.

I'm gonna go, see this is deeper than that one, that's fine, I'm feeling more blue today, I want to put some color on this.

It's all good.

Just wiggle these together in the middle.

That's it for the background.

We survived that far, all right.

I'm gonna take the #10 flatbrush and I'm gonna put on this clay pot, and like I said, I don't have a sketch, I'm just winging this.

So I just want to make sure I get that in the right area, I wan to have enough room here below and not make everything too tight.

So I'm gonna start with some burnt sienna, and a little bit of this cad red light, maybe just a speck of white and I'll put it on here and see what I think.

I'm just gonna lightly sketch everything out first before I'm committed.

I want it to end maybe somewhere about here, I'll find the center line maybe about there.

See, before I'm ever committed, I can kinda lay it out just to get the placement.

This looks a little skinnier than that one, that's okay, as long as it fits the canvas, I'm not trying to match that one 100% exactly.

I probably couldn't if I wanted to.

I'll make a little wider but I don't want to get too much clay pot on the canvas so it's overtaking it.

I'll go with that, that doesn't look too bad.

Okay, once I know where that is, I'm gonna round this bottom off a little bit, and I'll probably have to touch that bottom up.

Just be aware, as I always tell ya every show, painting is nothing but a series of adjustments, so you're gonna have to adjust this and that, work it together.

Okay, I'm gonna start right here, I'm trying to keep this outer edge straight obviously.

Believe it or not, the flowers are the easy part of this, the flowers are the tougher part.

Do you know why?

It's because the pot is a manmade object and somebody manufactured that and made it symmetrical, same amount of curve/slant on each side, it's perfectly round, it's flat across the top, the flowers just kind of, petals laying out, you don't have to be so perfect.

Anytime you paint anything in nature, it's much easier than painting something manmade.

Okay, that's kinda where I want it.

I'm just guaging it and see the canvas is not dry, it's got that clear on it, but it's a little sticky and I have to press down a little hard on the brush, harder I should say, to get it on there, and I want to work it right into that canvas like that.

All right, all right, it's coming, it's getting there.

Now as I get over towards this area a little bit to the left of center, or right of center, excuse me, my other right, I get a little bit to the right of center, I'm gonna want to start lightening that so I have a highlight.

I gotta show some form on this to make it look rounded.

So I'll leave these outer edges a little darker like they are, maybe I'll bring this over just a tad more.

A tad's more than an iota but not as much as a smidgen, did you know that?

I didn't know it either, I just made it up, I don't know.

Who knows.

Okay, now right in this area, I want to go lighter, so I'm gonna add white to this color and maybe just a little more of the cad red light.

I'm just warming it up, making it a little more orangey.

Is that a word, orangey, or is it orange-ish?

More orange.

Whatever.

Okay, so this is gonna go on here, it's gonna look awful like that til I blend it.

I have to mingle everything together and notice all my blending is vertical strokes up and down.

I'm just gonna walk this right edge of that light color over into that dark, and then I'm gonna walk the dark back over into the light.

And eventually they start holding hands and they get to like each other.

Same thing on this side.

(humming) I hope you get to try this out, I'd love to see your version of it if you paint it.

It's really not that tough, I'm showing you everything you need to know to be able to do it.

Okay, now see that little bit of light on there starts showing the form of it, I'm gonna go a little darker on the outside edges.

I'm gonna take burnt sienna and maybe just a speck of black, just enough to say so.

I want to make these outermost edges a little darker and shadowy so they look like they wrap around.

Maybe a little bit over here, it looks like it's not quite dark enough to make any difference, so I have to adjust that.

There we go, that's better.

Okay, we're getting there.

Now these pots typically a lot of times will have this build up on them, I don't know if it's calcium deposit or what, you'll see that on them a lot.

I'm gonna use my painting knife for that.

I'm gonna take some white with a little bit of cerulean blue, maybe just a speck of the cad red light to dull it down.

Notice it's a little bit blueish in the shadow on this side and it's more white out in the white area.

And I'm just gonna pat some of this on the back of the blade like this.

And if I just come up and lightly skim it on there, I let the texture in the weave of the canvas leave me that broken texture.

I'm gonna go a little bit darker blue than that.

There we go, that's better.

I want it to look kinda shadowy.

There's no rhyme or reason to it, it's just a deposit that builds up on those pots.

I'm gonna wipe the knife off and I'm gonna take some straight white, same loading of the knife, same idea, but over here in this highlighted spot, it's gonna be in the light more so.

So I'm gonna put a little bit on like that.

If you put it on and you don't like the shape, like I can see a couple little edges in there, it looked like square like the knife, I wipe the knife off and I just iron it.

I lay it flat just like I was ironing with a flat iron and I just push it around a little bit.

Okay, I'm gonna put a rim on this pot.

You're not gonna see all of it because the leaves are gonna overlap it.

I'm gonna give it a little bit of a slight curve, my paint is really dry, so I'm adding just a little bit of that medium to it.

And then underneath that, I'm gonna want a shadow, but before I do that and darken my color down, I can do something else before, and then I won't have to wash my brush.

I'm thinking ahead.

I need to put a shadow under here and I have to reflect this a little bit.

Now down here on the table, or it implies a table, a surface I guess I would say, you can't tell if it's a table or a shelf or what, but I have implied that it's kinda smooth and shiny just by having a reflection on there.

So if I go back to some of this same color that I've been using, I'll go back to that original burnt sienna and cad red light color.

I'm gonna start right underneath, notice there's a little rim of shadow and I can touch that up with black if I need to.

If I'm careful, I might not need to if I carve in around it like this.

That's what you call the sneaky Pete, I don't have to go back and mess with that.

I try to make everything as easy as I can and still get the result I want.

It's no big deal to go back in there and tidy that up, and I still might have to, I might make a booboo here before I get done, I shouldn't talk too loud too soon.

But I think ahead on what's gonna happen and I try to put my best put forward and do it the easiest way I can.

Okay, now that I've got the line established, that was the part I was worried about, from here I'm just gonna drag some of this color down and mimic the shape of the pot.

It will imply a smooth hard surface that the pot is sitting on, it anchors it.

We don't really know what it is, we don't have to know what it is.

That's the beauty of it, we just know that our brain tells us it's something shiny and smooth.

I'm trying to get down into that little groove where my panel sits in my easel.

It would be better if I took it right off and went off the edge of the canvas, but that's gonna obstruct your view and just make it harder, so as long as I explain that, you got that, right.

You bet.

What did the flower say after he told a joke?

I was only pollen your leg.

(chuckles) Yep.

Okay, I'm gonna soften these edges a little bit.

I need to come back with some of the lighter tones, so I'll put a little bit of white in there like I had with the light clay pot color originally.

I'm gonna throw that in there.

And again, I have to kind of feather it together, left to right, just like I did on the pot.

But see how that sets that down, very easy actually, very simple and very easy, effective, it doesn't take a lot of hoopla.

Maybe just a little extra brightness right in here somewhere just enough to say so.

You'll probably see me lean back like this, I lean back and I squint with my eyes half shut, because then I can tell, I can see the edges easier, more cleanly.

Hard to believe you can see more with your eyes closed, but you really can.

All right, well that'll give you the idea for that, that looks pretty good.

I need to put a darker shadow up underneath.

I probably really don't need to wash the brush, because it's all in the same family here, so I'll just wipe it off.

But I want to go darker, notice there's a darker shadow underneath the rim of that pot.

So if I take some of this same color I've been using, burn sienna, maybe a little bit of black this time, I just need something dark enough to do the job.

Let's see, I think this'll work, but I won't know til I try it.

It's kinda getting there.

Little darker probably wouldn't hurt, so I'll take a little more sienna and even a little more black.

And it's easy to just put in a swipe across here.

If your paint feels a little sticky and it probably will, you can put just a little bit of this medium with it, or a couple drops of paint thinner would do the same thing.

See, then that gives that a nice shadow.

All right, I think we're getting there, I think we're getting there.

Now, I probably should've done it first, now that I'm looking at it, but I'll be honest, now see where I dragged this through here and it took out this white highlight, I probably should put a little back up in there, but see if it's underneath that lip and it's in the shadow, it's gonna be the darker color.

So I would probably come back and use a little bit of this blue.

And right up in here, every so often a couple spots I would just put a little bit of that.

So it doesn't just look like the shadow took the texture out of it, it would still be in there.

See how it looks more like it's in shadow, it makes sense.

All right, it think that's coming right along.

We got the hard part done guys, the flowers are gonna be not too bad.

Okay, I'm going to swish this brush out and I'm gonna put in some of this background greenery, I'm not gonna do too much for individual leaves yet, we'll save that for part two.

But I'm gonna swish this brush out, I'm using odorless mineral spirits over here.

And I'll wipe this brush off.

And any little discrepancy you get on the rim, just drag a leaf over it later and cover it up.

You don't have to get too technical with it.

Okay, I want some of this background leafy stuff, not the ones that you see up front that are more dominant.

This is just background filler.

I'm going to take sap green, maybe a touch of the yellow, and that's gonna be quite green, I don't know if I'm gonna like that.

I'm gonna throw it on here and see.

It's not bad, I can live with that.

But get a color that you like, it's not so much the color, you can have it leaning more of a blue-green by putting some blue in it, you can have more yellowy-green.

You can make it more of an olive green by taking this sap green, putting burnt sienna with it.

It's not so much the color as the value.

I want this lighter so when I super impose the darker leaves over the front, they come forward.

So this is just gonna be random irregular shapes of stuff in the background cluster leaves back here.

And see I'm not painting leaves, I'm just taking the brush and I'm rubbing and scrubbing.

Doesn't get much easier than that.

On the outer edges here, I do kinda make it look like some leaves hanging over, and I'll show you that.

But those aren't too technical.

Okay, so I'm just gonna continue with this.

And see, some of those darker ones in the foreground will eventually cover the lip of this pot, but I can put a little bit of this green right down there too.

It's coming together, it's coming together.

I keep running out of paint, I'm just mixing up more.

The nice part is if you don't get the same exact color, it doesn't matter.

There's gonna be a variety of greens and stuff happening in here.

So see, I'm gonna actually kinda destroy that lip of that pot and then I don't have to worry about it and I'll overlap some of these over it.

Some of the light green still shows in certain spots too.

And right here on the edges, I'm gonna chisel the brush up, and I'm gonna kina pull out like this.

It's gonna look like a leaf that's laying sideways in profile.

I'm just about out of paint again, I gotta mix more up.

So I'm just gonna put a bigger shape of a leaf dangling over like that, maybe one sticking out there a little bit.

The leaf looks like this, but when it's turned sideways, it's a profile that's skinny, so I'm doing the skinny ones.

And maybe one coming down here.

See, I'm just laying the brush and wiggling it and just pulling it down and releasing pressure so it comes to a point.

It doesn't get much easier guys.

And the clock on the wall is telling me that I have to get out of dodge.

So don't miss part two, we're gonna come back and put these more dominant leaves in and start developing those flowers.

So I hope you get to give this a chance, I'd love to see your version of it.

And until next time, stay creative and keep painting.

- [Narrator] Support for Painting with Wilson Bickford is provided by the J.M.

McDonald Foundation.

Continuing the example modeled by J.M.

McDonald by contributing to education, health, humanities, and human services.

Sharing since 1952.

Online at jmmcdonaldfoundation.org.

(soft music) In rural New York State bordered by the Saint Lawrence River and the Adirondack Mountains is a sprawling landscape with communities that offer self-guided tours for the creatively inclined.

Learn the stories behind barn quilt the traditions, family agriculture, nature and beauty.

Saint Lawrence County, Life Undiscovered.

- [Woman] All 13 episodes of Painting with Wilson Bickford season seven 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 Sunset Lake with the in-depth Paint Smart, Not Hard series of Wilson Bickford instructional DVD's, includes the bonus episode, Don't Be So Coy.

Additional titles available.

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

More information at wpbstv.org/painting.

(soft music)