Wilson: If you've ever wanted to soar with eagles, join me next on Painting with Wilson Bickford, and I'll show you how to paint this majestic symbol of our country.

Stay tuned.

[Music] [Music] Thanks for joining me today.

I've got a fantastic bald eagle project that I'd like to share with you.

I love painting birds of all sorts and bald eagles are some of my favorite subjects.

This is what we're shooting for today.

We're going to be painting in oils but we're going to under-paint some of it in acrylic.

I've got a couple of other paintings here I'd like to share with you just for food for thought, something to maybe inspire you to do your own projects.

This is very similar, same pose and whatnot of this painting that we're doing today.

This just has a different background.

You can take the same eagle and put a multitude of different backgrounds around him, make a different painting every time.

Here's one of my personal favorites from a few years ago that I did on a bigger canvas, something a little more local to me here in the northern part of New York State, more Adirondack Mountain type atmosphere with birch trees and rolling hills and whatnot.

Well, hopefully, these will inspire you to dream up your own designs and your own projects.

You can use the same eagle template that we're using today.

Like I said, this is going to start out with an acrylic underpainting.

You'll be able to go on the WPBS website and download a supply list with all the supplies you're going to need.

There are a couple of reference sketches there.

One is a template that you trace on with transfer paper, or you can freehand your own design just looking at it, using it as a guide.

That'll get the sketch on and then there is another sketch with the wing detailing and the feather layers, so that's going to be important later on, that you're going to need to follow that to embellish him and put all the details and get the feather markings in the right locations.

There will also be a colored version of this underpainting so you can print this off, so as a reminder to yourself, you can just look at this and paint what I've got here.

That's where we're going to start today.

I have a disposable foam plate here with some acrylic.

I have a brown acrylic, black, white and blue.

These are all acrylic gessoes.

I'm going under-paint the bird with these.

These are water-based so I will be thinning the paint down and washing my brushes out with water.

When we get to the oil stage, we'll be using Cerulean Blue, Ultramarine Blue, Sap Green, Dioxazine Purple, which is a very strong color.

That's why I don't have much of it on my palette, Van Dyke Brown, Cadmium Red Light, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Ivory Black and Titanium White.

We've got a lot of colors here today.

You wouldn't think that many colors are in this painting but they are.

They're all mixed in, hidden in there and you'll see where they go.

For tools, I'm going to be using a two-inch scenery brush for the background and applying the basecoat.

I'm going to be using a fan brush for fluffing in the clouds and those fir trees on the lower portion of the canvas.

I'll be using a mop brush to soften the clouds and blend them very softly and subtly.

I'll be using a number 6 round brush for putting in the glaze on the eagle and detailing him and for the finest details, I have a couple of liner brushes here, a detail script liner and a number two liner, so let me show you how we got up to this point.

I'm going to paint this on just a piece of cardstock.

This is just heavier cardboard here.

It'll give you the idea of how I got to this point and again, I have the acrylics on this plate so I can just toss it when I'm done.

For the eagle itself, I use some of the blue acrylic.

For the white feathers, where the white feathers are going to be, you'll see that that blue shows through.

I use that for the shading of the white portions.

We'll put white oil over the top but I let the blue do the job of the shading for me later.

Those areas will be blue.

The wing and the body are going to be a mixture of the brown and black.

Now eagles aren't quite this brown.

They're a little darker than that so I put just a touch of the black with that.

The black is very strong as compared to that brown so you don't need much, but I do like to put a little bit of black with that and I'm adding water.

This is a cup of water I have over here that I'm thinning this down.

This is acrylic and I very carefully came in and just filled in the wing, get those nice little serrations on those feather edges.

Now you'll want to take your time with this.

I'm moving faster here than I normally would if I was painting this for myself.

This will more than be enough to give you the idea.

Notice that there's a differentiation on his body, just so you can tell where the wings end and the body begins, so I did go a little bit lighter there on the body which means I just added a little bit of white to the brown and on his back in particular right here, it's a little bit lighter like that, so where the darker brown of the wings set against it, there's a contrast and you can discern that edge, pretty simple.

Again, pay attention to your printed copy that you have.

Down here, the rest of this is all just filled in with a darker brown and black mixture on the wing, and this will all be painted in darkly.

Again, you want that separation from the wing to the body so you can tell that the body is separated in there, and it will be to your best interest to really thin your paint down with water enough so that it flows off your brush easily like this, and so you can come in and get those nice little serrated feather edges.

Once that's all filled in with the browns, I swish the brush out and wipe it off and I'm going to come in with some blue, some of this blue acrylic.

This blue-gray is a nice shading color for the white which will come later with the oil stage and see, I can overlap these, get these little serrated, blue-ish edges over the brown, too because they're very rough, those feathers.

They're pointed where they overlap the brown.

I can leave the beak alone.

That'll be painted in with the oil later and I do the same thing with the tail.

This is all painted in with the blue which brings us to this point on your canvas.

Once that is completely dry, we're going to mask that out and tape it out and trim it.

Now in the meantime, as you're letting this dry, make sure that you swish your brush out with water, clean that out very thoroughly.

I'm going to use that brush again in the oil stage in a little while, but make sure you clean your brush out of the acrylic before you go to the oil.

Now you can hit that with a hairdryer if you want to speed up the process, or you can just let it dry naturally, either/or but the point being, make sure you let it dry.

I'm going to take some masking tape and I'm going to cover the eagle completely.

This will block him out which means I can freely come in with my brushes and just put the background right in.

I don't have to paint around him, which would be nearly impossible so this just makes it easy.

I use tape a lot for this purpose.

I'm going to be cutting on a board.

On this one I was cutting on a stretch canvas, which there's a little more risk of cutting through your canvas on this.

Just be careful.

You want to use a brand new blade, a light touch so you're just cutting through the tape.

It doesn't take much with one of those new blades to cut through the tape, and I'll discuss that knife here in just a moment once I get this other piece of tape on.

I overlap the strips of tape just enough so I don't get bleed through them.

You want to make sure you burnish it down quite firmly and tightly around the edges and then I take a craft utility knife.

This is what's called a number 11 blade, and it's a very nice shape for what we're doing.

These blades come in a lot of different shapes and sizes.

This number 11 is ideal for what I use it for, and I come in and I just carefully trim away everything that's not the eagle.

Neatness counts so take your time but you'll see that if I just trim around the edges and take away the excess, the eagle is going to be completely blocked out.

That way I can go right in and paint around him or over him I should say, rather than paint around him.

What's going to be the time-consuming part are all these little serrated edges that I'm going to trim around carefully, and if we don't get those quite exactly right, we can always touch them up with a brush later on with the oil paint and put those serrations back on there so I'm going to hop off here for just a second, and I'll be right back with you as soon as I trim this out.

[Music] If you'd like to achieve a little extra brightness and whiteness in your clouds, let your painting dry completely, come back with a little bit of Titanium White on the corner of your fan brush and look at the extra sunshine that we can pour into these clouds.

I just kind of developed the edge again.

You can come in with your clean mop brush and just drybrush blend it in to the existing paint, but that's how you get some extra brightness and snap in your paintings.

I've trimmed out the eagle carefully with my utility knife, and I'm going to make sure the edges are stuck down very firmly all the way around.

Minimal bleed is best so you want to make sure it's stuck down, especially around the parameter, around the edge.

The less seepage we get under there the better.

If we do get some and you probably will, we can correct it later with the oil paint.

I've also laid out a couple of mediums.

I put them on a disposal foam plate here as well because I'm using just a disposal palette paper here, but I've got so many colors I'm using today that I just simply don't have room for everything on my palette.

Looks like a lot of color is there like I said before but there are and just to save some space on my palette, I'm going to put my mediums on here.

I have got a white basecoat, oil paint basecoat and some clear medium, and then I can just set this to the side.

I'm going to take some of this white basecoat and I'm going to put a thin coat over the whole background.

Now see, by taping the eagle out, I don't have to paint around him which definitely is going to make life easier, and by under-painting him with the black and brown and blue that we did earlier, he is about probably 90 percent done so we've got a lot of the detail work done in this painting.

You want to scrub this in, nice thin coat.

Don't put it on real thick and heavy.

You'll notice that you don't see any brush strokes in the paint film.

I'm not painting at this stage like this.

I'm not painting.

I'm scrubbing on a basecoat.

There's a difference.

Work it right in and you want it worked right in to the weave of the canvas, nice thin coat.

The less you have on there and still have coverage the better.

I call this one Eagle in the Mist.

Pretty convincing, isn't it?

I think so.

I want to have a lighter blue here at the horizon.

Aerial perspective says anything at a distance is a lighter value.

That's the sky that's farther away.

You'll notice also that the clouds are smaller.

They're bigger up here.

That has to do with aerial perspective is the color.

It's lighter in the distance.

Linear perspective says anything in the distance will be smaller.

That's linear and so we're applying both perspective principles.

That's what makes this look like it's a long ways away.

This painting today is every bit as much about the clouds almost as it is the eagle.

We're going to have some time tied up in those clouds but they're worth it in the end.

You want to do a nice job on your clouds.

I'm going to take some Cerulean Blue into my dirty brush.

It's still got the white from the basecoat.

Work it in evenly so you don't have any chunks or streaks on your brush, and somewhere down here I don't have to quite go all the way to the bottom of the canvas because my trees are going to come up there a little ways but go low enough that you know you're going to be safe, and I'm just going to cover from the bottom up maybe through this high of the eagle.

From there I'm going to come back from the top down with a darker blue, which will be my Ultramarine.

I want to grade these two values from dark at the top to lighter at the bottom.

That's why I put the white basecoat on.

It makes it very slick and blendable and we can weave these together quite seamlessly.

I'm going to go just a tad lower here on the bottom just to make sure my trees are going to cover that so I don't have white chunks here between my trees.

From there I'm going to pick up some Ultramarine Blue.

This is a much darker blue, almost leaning towards a violet-ish tone.

It's just the nature of Ultramarine.

I'm going to go a little bit darker because I want the nice edges of the clouds to show up.

If I go too pale here, you're going to have light blue with white, and light and light together don't show a contrast so I want to go dark enough and if this were too blue for my taste which it's not.

It's my favorite color but if this were too blue for me, I could gray it down with just a speck of the Ivory Black so mix your colors accordingly.

Get colors that you like.

You don't necessarily have to mix it exactly what I'm showing you here.

Everybody's different.

Some of you probably like vanilla ice cream and probably some of you like rocky road with cherries and whip cream on top, right?

It's the same with color.

We all like something different.

I just got some loose bristles here that I'm flicking off.

These are new brushes so they shed for a while when they're brand new.

Any brush does.

Here's the important part.

A lot of people get right to this point and they want to stop.

I need to melt this together so I'm going to use a crisscross a little bit.

I'm kind of weaving the dark blue and the light blue together, and then I come back horizontally again and if it's still there, I do a little bit more of a crisscross.

I'm using a much lighter touch there because I want to blend and not deposit paint necessarily.

You'll see how I can pull those right together so it's a seamless transition, and I think I want to go just a little bit darker near the top.

This is working.

I can tell the difference from the dark blue to the lighter blue, but I think I want to go a little bit deeper blue up here.

That's just my own personal call, just a preference on my part.

There's no artistic or perspective principle for that necessarily right now.

I just want it darker and let me show you as long as I'm doing that.

Remember a moment ago, I mentioned if you wanted it not so blue watch this.

I can take blue and just a speck of the black.

That will darken the blue.

If you go too far with it, it's going to get gray.

It won't take much but you can definitely tell that it makes a difference.

See, it's not quite as blue so that was good to show you that I think.

If you don't like it so blue, gray it down a tad.

Basically, I'm shooting for something darker up here.

There.

Now we're getting more a sense of some depth in here.

This area down here will look farther away because it's a lighter value.

That's just the way things occur in nature.

If you look at a sky, you go out and look at far as you can above the most distant horizon line you can see, you'll see generally that the sky is lighter there than it is above your head.

Above your head it's going to be darker.

That's what we're trying to get here.

That is aerial perspective.

We're going to start in on the clouds.

Basically, I'm going to be using my fan brush and my mop brush to soften them and like I mentioned before, in the interest of linear perspective, I want to make the clouds bigger, taller, higher on the canvas.

As they go lower on the canvas, I'm going to make them smaller, skinnier so to start out, I'm going to take some white and a little black to get a gray.

These have shading within them.

They're not just white clouds.

I got some subtle flavors in there, too.

Notice that little pinkish tone that you see in there.

That's where I'm going to use the Cadmium Red Light.

I mix up a gray to get started.

Then I put a little touch of the Dioxazine Purple with it.

That purple is viciously strong.

Tread lightly with that, guys and I'm going to check my value.

That's kind of showing but I think it needs to be just a tad darker, so I'm going to put a little more black, a little more purple.

Now see how much easier that's showing up?

It's darker than this one but my background's a little darker, too and it won't be that dark by the time I scrub it in.

If you didn't want it that purple-y, you could put a touch of the Ultramarine Blue with it and it takes it more to a different flavor of a bluish purple.

It's more gray but we're shooting for gray, but it's not just a black and white gray.

Gray doesn't have to be black and white gray.

There's so many various shades.

You can have red grays and green grays and everything else so basically, I'm going to take the corner of the brush, and if you can see the shape of the profile in your mind's eye, I just go with it.

I'm not trying to match that one.

It's probably going to come out close but I'm not even looking at that one, believe it or not.

I'm just going to put in the basic shape of the cloud.

Now this parameter on the top is not what you're going to see because I'm going to add white there, so I'm not too critical of getting the perfect edge there yet.

I do want some of this to come behind and through the eagle because that's going to create an overlap and it'll definitely pull the eagle in front.

Anytime you overlap one element with another, it gives you more distance and depth on your canvas, which is always a good thing.

I'm going to wipe the brush off and I want to soften the bottom of the cloud.

If clouds roll away from us, underneath they roll away like this, so there's usually a softer edge on the top, not always but when you're painting sometimes you have to exaggerate things a little more just to make it convincing because we're not really making something real here.

We're trying to make it look realistic and maybe I'll put a little section of a cloud up here somewhere floating by.

Now bear in mind, this is just the shadowed portion.

These are going to look a lot different when I put the rest of the lighting out.

Down here I want them smaller so you'll see I'm going a little narrower and more stringy with them but again, I'm going to soften the bottom of each one that I put on here.

The lower they go make them even skinnier.

Now see, we've only put the shadows in so we have to look at it -- I can see it in my mind's eye.

I can tell what this is going to look like because I know where I'm going to put my lights and whatnot, but I think that's coming together pretty nicely so far.

I'm going to rinse this brush out and I'm going to mix up a pale, kind of pinkish color.

I want some warmth in these clouds.

I'm going to take Titanium White and a touch of that Cadmium Red Light.

Don't get it too reddish and you'll notice I'm going to wipe my brush off a lot in between.

As I work this into the gray, it's going to pick up color.

I just start outlining the edge of the cloud, pull it down in to the cloud a little ways, nice light area going right through that dark wing as a nice contrast, and I still got to put white on here.

This isn't even the white yet.

Notice how I'm rolling the red in to the gray so there's not a hard edge there.

If you've ever really wanted to work on your clouds, this would be a great lesson for you.

They're not really that tough.

A lot of people really struggle with them but they just take a little bit of practice and you got to realize you don't need to make them perfect.

Just don't paint cotton balls.

See, I want a little bit of this red to show in the end.

Notice I'm wiping the gray off the brush every time I go back to reload because I picked up a lot of gray, and I'm not really overly concerned with that edge yet.

I'm going to finalize that when I put the white on, so if that looks like it's unfinished, it is and I'm leaving it that way.

I don't really care at this point.

Put a little bit of the warm color down here.

Here's where it's really going to start kicking into its own.

I'll put another little facet here.

I'm going to wash the brush out.

I'm going to come back with pure white and as long as I'm doing this, I'm going to soften that a little bit.

I'm going to rinse the brush out.

I'm going to come back with pure white now.

This is Titanium White.

I'm going to lay it on kind of heavy because I want it to stay lighter and brighter, so I'm kind of taking the corner and tapping it on.

Now the magic is going to be the fan brush, not the fan brush.

Excuse me.

I'm using the fan brush, the mop brush.

Remember I told you we were going to use the mop brush?

Wait until we start blending.

Then it's really going to start looking like it should.

See, I've got to put the color on here first so I'm laying it on.

Notice again, I'm wiping my brush constantly because you're going to pick up a lot of paint.

It's going to muddy your white down.

As I'm putting the white on, I'm thinking of the final shape that I'm going to end up with and I'm going with something that I like.

Make sure you shape your cloud at this stage.

The mop brush is going to be our best friend right now because I'm going to come in and just roll all this together and it really puffs it up and makes it fluffy, and so you don't want to hit every inch of that gray.

I'm kind of hitting and missing more than anything.

Put a little bit on this section here and then I'm going to get the mop brush out, and even after I blend it with the mop brush, I can always come back and add more color in to this.

We'll take the mop brush.

Make sure you got a towel handy.

Very lightly, this is like a makeup brush.

If I very lightly, I'm just doing little circles with my wrists and fluff this out against the sky, you'll see it gets very soft and wispy.

If you grind it too much and stir it, stir it it's going to pick up a lot of the blue.

It's going too murky, a little too dark.

You want to keep wiping it off.

Don't overdo it.

It doesn't take much, just enough to break that edge and fluff it out of focus a little bit.

See how fluffy that looks?

It's hard to beat a mop brush for soft blending like this, and you want to leave some edges a little harder than others.

That's what's known as lost and found edges.

The lost ones are the soft ones obviously and the found edges are the harder edges but again, I'm squinting at this.

I've got my eyes half shut because I can tell kind of where the hard edges still are, and you just need to soften it out to your own satisfaction.

That's a pretty good cloud lesson, wasn't it?

On the next episode, we're going to come back and I'm going to add my trees down here at the lower portion of the canvas.

We're going to develop that eagle so stay tuned for the next episode and we'll finish this up.

Until next time, stay creative and keep painting.

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