Wilson Bickford: You know that song that says: "by the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea?"

That's where we're going next, join me on painting with Wilson Bickford as we paint "Seaside Solitude."

[MUSIC] [MUSIC] Hi thanks, for joining me on Painting With Wilson Bickford.

I've got a wonderful little seascape that I'm just dying to show you today.

We're going to use a tone canvas.

I've already prepped the canvas up to this point, and I'm going to describe that for you.

This has been done with acrylics.

On the website, you'll be able to download a supply list, as well as this reference for your own use.

It just shows the blue, the rocks.

This is a little bit different color in the print out.

But for this step, I used some acrylic colors here.

After I painted the canvas with the blue gesso with a disposable foam brush.

I covered the whole canvas, then I let it dry.

Then I came and put the rocks on, I'm going to show you how I've done that.

I'm using some brown acrylic, black acrylic, and white acrylic.

Even though this is an oil painting, we are going to start out with a foundation of acrylics underneath.

I'm going to take my little clipboard here, just to give you a quick demo on how I did the rocks.

I used my number six round brush.

I have a little cup of water sitting over here to my right that I'm going to loosen the acrylic paints up with.

They are water based.

So to do the rocks, I simply took varying mixtures of grays and browns, and a little bit of white, on this number six round.

I take some black, a little white, a little brown.

Rocks can pretty much be any shape, so just whatever you feel just go for it.

Base them in on the dark side first, and then put a little highlight on the top.

They're pretty simple, just don't make all your shapes the same.

Make them repetitive, vary the sizes, and the shapes of them.

But in a basic generic rock shape.

I wiped the brush off, take a little bit of white into that color, maybe even a speck more of brown just to warm it up just a little bit.

Dab a little bit of highlight on top, then just wipe the brush, and just tap it.

Blend it away and get a softer edge so it looks rounded.

So it's pretty simple.

I've just done the throughout.

Now, this is acrylics, you want to make sure that you wet your brush.

I have a bucket of water setting right here beside me.

I'm going to put it in the water so it doesn't ruin it.

But while you're letting your canvas dry up to this point, you can actually wash that brush out.

So that's brought me to this point, notice I've gone a little bit lighter on the rocks towards the center of the painting.

Just to kind of build up all the impact of the light in the middle of the canvas like it should be.

I'm going come back and embellish these rocks with oil paint later.

So I'll set all this acrylic stuff to the side, and we'll move onto the oil base.

You won't need the water from here on out, I'll be using paint thinner if I have to switch my brushes out.

I use odorless mineral spirits.

So from here, I'm going to lubricate the canvas with a clear medium.

It just makes it kind of slick and blendable.

I want be able to blend over this dry blue.

The blue will not lift, it's dry acrylic, so I'm going to put oil over the top.

The whole key of this is to let some of the blue show through.

You'll see that it shows through the sky in certain areas, and the water.

So it gives it color harmony, ties the whole painting together with a common color.

That's why I like using a tone background like this from time to time.

On our palette today for oil paints, I've got an oil medium here, clear medium.

I'm going to be using cadmium yellow pale, cadmium red light, cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, and titanium white.

For tools, I'm going to be using a two-inch scenery brush, a number 10 flat brush which is going to be really good for cutting in those waves.

A number three fan brush, which is going to be our workhorse for all the foam and splash.

I've got another number six brush, like I used for the acrylic stage that I put in the pail just a second ago, if I need it.

Might not even need that, but I have it there just in case.

I've got a liner for signing my name, and maybe if we have time we'll stick a bird or two in the sky for the fine details.

I have my small painting knife that I'm going to use for highlighting the rocks with the oil paints, adding a little more texture to them.

And as an option I do have a mop brush here, I might be using this to soften the cloud shapes in the sky.

It's an option, it's not on the supply list.

But by all means if you want to blend with that, have one handy.

Okay, I'm going to take this two-inch scenery brush.

I'm going to take some of this clear medium.

I want to cover the whole canvas with a thin even coat of this glazing medium.

This makes the canvas slick and slippery.

I can blend the oil colors right over the top.

Like I said before, this blue and the brown colors on here on the rocks will not lift.

But this makes it a little slick and slippery, so I can get smooth transitions of the oil over the top of it.

Put it on sparingly.

You'll notice that I'm rubbing in a small amount.

You don't want it real thick and heavy, it just makes your work hard from this point if you get too much on here.

Do you notice that I'm not painting?

Too many people try to paint this on.

I'm actually scrubbing on a base coat, a medium.

Don't put it on too heavy.

By painting it on you have a tendency of putting it on too heavily, too thickly.

So I'm really just going to scrub this in quite thinly.

Okay, from there I'm going to take my number three fan brush.

I want to find my horizon line, and I'm going to put the sky in.

Notice that the sweet spot here, the glow of the sun, is not dead center.

That's coming a little bit later.

I'm going to start out with a foundation color first.

Be aware of your composition always.

Don't ever put something that strongly dead center in the middle of your canvas, it's like a bullseye.

So depends on how I mix my colors.

This one is very pinkish, which means I took a little bit of titanium white with some of the cadmium red light, and you'll see it comes out a peachy pink color which is close to what this one was.

If you want it that color that's fine.

You can add yellow to it to make it more of an orange, it's totally up to you.

So I'm going to matte this brush together, and I want to find my horizon line.

Notice it's a little bit higher than dead center.

Dead center on this canvas is about here.

I want to come a little bit higher, maybe up to here.

There will be more water in this painting than sky.

I'm just going to lightly make a line across here, just to designate where that is.

Everything above that line will be sky.

Everything below will be water.

That line isn't perfectly straight yet, but it will be.

I can straighten it out later when I actually start developing the water.

Right now it's just a reference and a guide.

So here's some options for you.

If you use a little more red, you'll get something a little more reddish like that.

If you put a little bit of yellow with that, maybe a touch of white, it become more orangey.

There's no right or wrong with that.

It all depends on what color you like, what flavor you like.

I'm going to go a little bit more orangey today, because it gets the blue.

The blue and the orange are complementary colors.

Which the idea behind that, is that they work well together.

So I'm going to use a little more of an orange tone, where this is a little more reddish.

Use your own discretion on that.

I'm going to develop this line first, just to get a solid connection against the water.

I don't want to leave a hard edge here.

Then I'm going to start fluffing this up like cloud shapes.

I'm not trying to match this canvas exactly.

I'm just going on what I feel like right now.

Every time you pick up your brush as you're going to paint differently as you feel.

I can kind of see this sky in my mind's eye.

I just scrub it on there.

See, already it's starting to look like a sky, that's the nice part of this.

It falls together pretty quickly.

I just do some random shapes.

Don't do the same shape.

You don't want it looking like hills going across here.

I'm not using as much paint as you probably think I am either.

It doesn't take a lot of paint.

You see where you scrub it thinner, you get the shading because the blue shows through there a little bit.

Even though I'm using one color right now, you get a multitude of values just by how thick or thin the paint happens to be on the canvas.

I just want to feather these edges out a little bit against the sky.

You see, all I'm doing is scrubby circles with the corner of the brush basically.

You'll notice my brush is all over the place.

I'm not just staying in one spot, just grinding the same turf.

I'm all over the place.

Maybe I will put a section of a free floating piece of cloud up here, it's not even connected to that bigger mass of clouds.

All right.

You can do this right?

Yeah, I know you can, pretty easy.

Okay, I'm going to wipe the brush off.

I want to build this up a little lighter in this area where my sun is going to be.

So I'm going to take white and yellow.

Now this is not the sun, it's just going to be a brighter glare where I'm going to put that sun spot.

I'm going to take white and yellow, and this vicinity where I want the brightest glare of the sun to be.

I'm going to warm up the clouds in that particular area a little.

Be careful about putting the yellow right directly on top of the blue.

Because even though the blue is not lifting and mixing into it, if you get the yellow transparent enough to where the blue show through it, it will still look greenish.

I'm actually putting this on the orange that I've already applied.

Then I'm blending it in, so it all connects but it looks like you have a nice warm glow of light on those clouds.

It's looking pretty good.

I'm happy with that so far.

Okay, from there I need to develop the actual sun spot.

Now this looks very grainy as you can see.

You have a couple of options here.

I can wipe the fan brush off, and come back and just lightly do this.

This will take most of it out.

Or as I mentioned before, the mop brush, it wasn't on the supply list but it's a good one to have, if you have one this is a good place to use it.

You can just very lightly dust all of that together.

See how much that softens that.

Takes all the brush marks and coarseness out of it.

From there, I want to build up that lighter area.

I'm just going to take the fan brush with more white and more yellow.

I've wiped it off, I just want a brighter spot here that designates where the sun is.

I'm not going to put an honest to goodness sun, but we know the sun is kind of peeking through the atmosphere.

It's about a third of the way into the canvas.

I usually work on the rule of thirds.

It keeps me from getting a bulls-eye in the middle of my canvas.

I just pat it in there, and I make an uneven shape like it's light bursting through the clouds and through the atmosphere.

Again, I could wipe the fan brush off, come back and blend that, or I could just tickle it very lightly with this mop brush.

Like this, especially around the edges, just to kind of set it in there.

It looks like you've got that burst of light coming through, glaring through at us.

Okay.

If it's not bright enough, you can always enhance it by going a little brighter.

Take a little more white and really jazz that up.

Now it looks quite white, but by the time I blend it, it mixes in with the yellow and the orange underneath, and it will calm it down a little bit.

But I want it to be bright, it's the sun peeking through.

Okay, that pretty much wraps up the sky, now we can start on the water.

For the water, my workhorse is going to be my number 10 flat brush.

This brush works great for cutting in the waves, because it holds a really nice chiseled edge.

You'll notice on here, I've got some bluish tones, cerulean blue and white, and then I put some of the warmer colors from the sky in there, the pinks and the yellows.

In this case it will be the orange and yellow.

I've already got them on my palette.

They're all premixed, I just got to repeat them in the water.

I'm going to start out with some white and cerulean blue.

Chisel the brush out nice and sharp, I want a lighter value than what this background is.

So I can mix it here and check to see what I think.

Oh yeah, that's going to show.

You always want to think about your contrasts.

You'll notice how I'm chiseling this brush out nice and sharp on both sides.

It comes out to a nice very sharp razor edge, which is great for coming in and cutting these wave lines like this.

This is where I said earlier, we can level this off and make sure this is very flat and parallel to the bottom of canvas back here.

There's not much on this planet that's any straighter than the horizon at the ocean.

It's just flat, straight as a string.

I want it parallel with the bottom of the canvas, it's not running uphill or down.

Basically, I'm going to scuff in some random wave movements.

I'm not doing big crashing tsunami waves here, guys.

I'm just taking the brush and scuffing in some general shapes.

Notice already how much it's looking like water.

I bring this down right through.

If you happen to inadvertently touch your rocks, and you probably will.

That's fine, we'll just wipe it off a little bit.

But you got to tuck it in like that so it looks like it goes behind the rocks.

Can't just blatantly paint around them, it's going to be very, very obvious.

So I'm just going to fill this in.

I'm going to work my way down to the bottom on of the canvas doing this same maneuver.

I'll be right back with you.

[MUSIC] If you like a nice backlit effect on your clouds.

Take some of your sky colors from previously.

I'm going to use my liner brush, and I'm going to thin this down quite generously.

If you carefully just outline the tops of the clouds, it gives you that nice rim of light so the clouds look like they're backlit.

Don't do it everywhere, kind of build it up in the area around the sun.

See how that really gives you more dimension on your clouds.

Keep the lines very skinny and narrow.

Okay, I've brought that color all the way down.

You'll notice that I left some of the darker undertone of the dry blue background peeking through.

I'm going to actually come in and put a few darker accents as well.

Especially down here in the lower portion of the canvas where the water is closer to us, I want it more dark to adhere to the aerial perspective principle.

Everything that is closer will be darker.

I'm going to add ultramarine blue to this color.

I'm going to scuff in a few of the darks.

I'm going to come back and add some of those sun colors in there too, sky colors.

See, if you keep it very loose and random it just looks like waves dancing along.

You'll notice on this one, I had a little bit of a slope.

Like the waters coming in around the rocks at an angle.

You don't always have to paint everything so flat.

You'll see when I get back here, I'm going to give that water a sense of movement, kind of coming through here.

See I go here a little bit at an angle, like it's swirling in.

It doesn't always have to be flat.

It depends on where the water is swirling in and the action behind it, how much momentum it has.

See how it gives it more of a sense of movement?

I want this to diminish as I go further back with the dark color.

I'm just letting it fade away.

I'm going to go one degree more darker.

I'm going to take ultramarine blue and a little bit of that cadmium red light.

You'll see it makes it a darker tone, almost lean towards purple a little bit, but it darkens it down.

You'll notice by having it darker here, the background looks farther away as it should, I'm just scuffing this in.

I'm rinsing my brush out now in the odorless mineral spirits and then clean it out.

I'm going to come back with my sun colors.

I'm going to use the sun colors in the waters as well.

I've already got those on my palette from before, it was the orange and the yellow.

If I don't have quite enough, it looks like I'm a little skimpy on the orange here.

I'll mix up a little more, it was just white, cadmium red light and a little bit of yellow.

As long as I'm in the ball park, that's all that matters.

I'll chisel the brush up, especially in this vicinity of the sun glow.

I just want to repeat these colors in the water, so it looks like you're getting a reflection of that color.

Oh, that's looking pretty good already.

Don't you think?

Yeah.

I let it diminish as it comes lower.

So I just let the brush literally kind of run out of paint.

I don't put as much down in here closer to the rocks.

I put a few little touches, but I want more dominance back here.

That sun spot and just that water area back there, is actually more of our focal point.

So I want to keep everything concentrated back there more.

You'll see it really stands out more when I put the yellow on.

I'm going to wipe this brush off.

I'm going to come back with the yellow and white, that I used for my sun spot.

I'll put a little bit of that in there.

Ultimately, I'll come back with something a little lighter, like the actual sun that I put in there, the glare, the brightest glare.

See, it doesn't take much, I just want to build this up slow so it starts coming to life.

As you can see right there, it's coming to life now.

I'm going to wipe that one more time.

I'm going to take more white into a very little bit of yellow just like I did when I did that brightest spot in my sky.

Chisel it up.

And right in this area I really want to add some punch.

So I really get a sense of that sky reflecting into that water.

See all the activity is making you look back here.

I'm building up that focal area.

Anybody who walks into the room sees this painting hanging on the wall is going to look right here first.

That's what's going to be catching their eye first and foremost.

That's your center or interest, or your focal point; every painting needs one of those.

Okay, I just want to level this off.

Now, you'll have time at home, don't rush.

Make sure this line is very straight and even.

Mine's off just a little bit there, but I'm going to live with it.

Okay, I need to come in with my fan brush.

I'm going to start putting some of the foam in.

You'll notice that especially here closer in this area, we got a lot of splash a lot of foam.

I have a clean fan brush.

I'm going to start with white, a little bit of ultramarine blue.

I'm going to start with a shadow tone, and build up to the white.

So I'm going to take white and blue, just blue enough so I can make pure white contrast against it later.

I'm going to have to check this on my canvas to see.

You'll see that I'm going to load the fan brush up to chisel the edge, and then tap and back blade into that.

Get it a little bit right on the edges, for these distant foam patterns way back out here.

I'm just touching right straight in, very lightly.

Notice how the fan brush just gives you that nice foamy look.

Doesn't take much, less is more.

Don't go crazy with it.

It's easy to over-do everything in a painting.

The hard part is knowing when to quit, and trying to resist the temptation of overdoing it.

So just tread lightly.

Try not to do the same repetitive shapes throughout.

Down in here, when it gets closer to the rocks, I'm going to start using a different touch.

You'll actually maybe hear my brush, where it's crunching on the canvas.

Again, notice in here I've got a little bit of an angle like the water's coming in and really got some momentum behind it.

I want to bury in the bottoms of these rocks, make it very turbulent down in here.

The water is really boiling.

See, that's coming right to life so nicely right now.

Wait until we put the white highlights on here.

Make sure every rock has a little bit of that around the base, just so it looks like it's connected, anchor it in there.

How much splash you put in here is totally your call, do it to the degree that looks good to you.

That's looking pretty good.

We've got to put some splash behind the rocks, where it's coming in on the back side as well.

For that I'm going to use this same kind of grade down color, before I switch over to white.

Make different shapes, different lengths with your fan brush.

Don't do cookie cutter.

Move the brush all around so it looks like a fan brush that's one-inch wide.

You want to vary the shapes, and the lengths, and the spacing's.

Keep everything very loose and random.

Okay, while I got this going I'm really going to open up the brush this time.

I want this splash on the back side of the rock.

If I touch the rock that's fine.

I'm going to put that in behind it, so it looks like it's coming in from behind it and splashing over it.

Which is a really nice effect.

Don't be afraid to break your horizonline.

I'm going to go a little bit higher, so it actually breaks the horizon.

It looks like you got a strong vertical element through a strong horizontal, which gives you an overlap.

Which always gives you more depth and distance.

I'll put a little more around this rock, maybe a little around this one.

I'm going to wipe the brush off, and come back with pure white.

I'm going to load it the same way and pounce the brush, so the bristles are really open.

If I come in and just kind of create this little bit of splash highlight.

Don't lose all the blue down by the rock.

You want that to look very shadowy.

I'm kind of highlighting the tops.

It's almost like doing clouds.

You put the basic cloud shadow in, and then you put highlight on the tops.

Oh, that's looking good.

Put a little bit down here, a little bit on this one.

See this isn't rocket science, this is actually pretty easy.

It's a good painting to try out if you never done a seascape.

I'm going to put a little bit on the tops of some of these foam patterns down here.

I want more emphasis back in this area, to really give this area a lot of spritz, splash, and spray.

I'm going to rinse my fan brush out.

I'm going to thin down some titanium white, and I'm going to spatter on top of that foam.

So it really gets that spray going like that.

See how much movement that gives that?

Lastly, I'm going to take my painting knife, and I'm going to enhance a couple of the rocks.

I'm going to take something warm, like what's in my sky.

Titanium white, maybe a little touch of the cad red light, and on the tops of the rocks I'm just going to warm up a couple of those to really make it look like the sun is baking on there.

That's going to complete Seaside Solitude today.

I hope you enjoyed it.

I had a great time bringing you this lesson.

Please send me some photos of your efforts of it.

I'd love to see what you've done with it.

Until next time, stay creative and keep painting.

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