- They say big things can come in small packages.

I'm gonna paint this beautiful butterfly today on this little canvas, and I'm gonna show you how you can do your own version of it.

Join me next on "Painting With Wilson Bickford" for tiger swallowtail.

(soothing music) Hi, thanks for joining me today.

I have a nice little painting today that I wanna share with you.

I've been working on slightly larger canvases for this whole series.

This one's on a nice little eight by ten.

I like to work on different sizes, especially if you're selling your work.

Sometimes customers don't have room for a bigger piece, they want something smaller, so I thought just for something different I'd use a smaller canvas today.

This is a tiger swallowtail butterfly.

I've done butterflies in the past.

If you remember, if you were able to follow me back on series three, this was a yellow sulfur butterfly.

This project was butterflies and daisies.

Not the same butterfly, this is a sulfur butterfly, this one has a lot more markings, this is a swallowtail.

But same idea.

I like to do a lot of butterflies and birds, that sort of thing.

If you go to the WPBS TV website you will be able to download a supply list that goes through all of the colors and brushes that we're using today.

This is an oil painting, but we are gonna start with some acrylic underpainting which I'm gonna describe here in just a second.

You will also be able to download this sketch so you can put this on with some graphite transfer paper underneath.

Kinda like carbon paper, you get it at an art store.

I use the red pen.

This is gonna be the time consuming part of this painting, is the prep work.

You have to put your image on with this and then use this as a reference, and I basically took a number two detail scriptliner with black acrylic gesso, and I carefully painted all this.

This is gonna be the time consuming part, guys.

The rest of the painting goes fairly easily.

It'll fall right off your brush.

But you wanna take care with your underpainting.

You want that to look good.

When that's completely dry, you can dry it with a hairdryer, I covered it with tape, couple layers, overlap them just enough so you won't get bleed through in between your layers.

And I took a sharp, sharp craft knife, utility craft knife with a number 11 blade, and I carefully trimmed away everything that was not the butterfly.

Like I said, this is gonna be the time consuming part.

This is probably gonna take you maybe 60 or 90 minutes, no fooling.

But like I said, after that the rest of the painting goes fairly quickly.

As far as paints today, I'm using cadmium yellow pale, cerulean blue, cadmium red light, ivory black, sap green, dioxazine purple, and titanium white.

I also have some white oil base coat here that I'm gonna use to soften the background with, and some clear glazing medium that I will apply to that dry butterfly before I put the glazes of yellow and the markings on him.

For brushes, I'm using a two-inch scenery brush, a number three fan brush, a number six round brush, a number two detail scriptliner, and a number two liner.

So now that this prep is all in place, make sure that your tape is pressed down firmly around the edges.

If you have no bleed or minimal bleed that's all the better.

You don't want a lot of paint bleeding underneath your tape.

I'm gonna use this two-inch scenery brush with some of the white base coat.

I'm going to put a very, very, very thin coat, scrubbing it right into this canvas.

I chose the gold frame for this one.

I thought that kind of set that yellow butterfly off very nicely.

Presentation in a painting is everything, and it all depends on how you frame it and how you present it.

It can make all the difference in the world.

A lot of times if I do an old barn, I use a actual rustic frame made out of barn wood.

Works really well.

So you always wanna consider that with your artwork.

Okay, there's a nice, thin coat of that.

I'm gonna take some of the cerulean blue.

This will be my just background sky color.

Work it in evenly so there's no chunks or streaks on your brush.

Notice I left it somewhat blotchy and I left some variations of lights and darks.

Some of the lighter areas are kinda construed as clouds.

I'm not painting big, fluffy, billow clouds necessarily but I'm leaving it open to imply clouds.

So I just rub, scrub, twist, turn the brush.

It's gonna look very coarse for the time being.

You're gonna see every brush mark in there.

But I'm going to soften those and eliminate them.

I'm gonna come down maybe about there.

You'll notice I've got some background greenery in there just out of focus far away, leaves or whatnot.

So I don't have to go all the way down to the bottom corner.

From there to soften that, I'm going to wipe the brush off, and if I just use a lazy circle or oval like this, just enough pressure to move the paint a little bit.

I look for anything that looks like an obvious brush mark and if I just do a little circle over it like this, you'll see it just easily melts those brush marks away.

That's because of that white base coat.

That's why we put that on there.

If you keep blending, blending, blending, blending, you're gonna drag all the blue around and lose all of your light areas, so try not to do that.

If that were to happen, you could actually take a rag and just wipe some of the blue spots off and reclaim some of that, but if you don't get too carried away, you won't need to mess with that.

I should be done with this brush for the most part, so I'm just gonna lay that off to the side.

I wanna put some of this greenery in the background that just represents leaves in the background behind some of these flowers.

I got a surprise for you on those flowers, too.

I'm gonna use my number three fan brush, I'll take sap green, little bit of this white base coat maybe, and I'm gonna put some cerulean blue with that, and maybe a speck of black.

I'm just trying to gray the green down so it's a more natural green and not too garish.

Everybody's gonna have a different flavor in mind that you're gonna wanna use for that, so just get a color that you like.

I'm adding just a touch more black there.

You don't want a lot of paint on the brush.

You don't need a lot of paint on the brush.

And if it ends up getting too dark by graying it, just put a little more white with it.

I won't know it until I come up here and try it.

I can actually try it right on my butterfly on the tape and just compare the two.

This one's a little more vivid, a little lighter, but I'm kinda liking this gray-green so I'm gonna go with it.

And I'm not painting leaves, I'm not doing anything specific, I'm just taking the corner of the brush and just lightly scrubbing around.

I do want an uneven shape of some sort, not just a straight line across.

I'm just thinking foliage and stuff in behind some of these flowers, way off in the distance.

Down here, when I get down to the bottom, I can simply just fill the rest of it in.

And just like before when we did the sky and it looked so terrible, we need to come back and soften everything out and minimize the brush marks.

Notice I left part of the wing of the butterfly exposed against the sky.

It leaves it a little more open, actually gives you more depth than if we were to encapsulate the whole thing in black hemmed all in with the green.

So not a lot of paint, don't need a lot of paint.

From there I'm going to wipe the brush off, and I wanna feather these edges out.

And if I just use the end of the brush, little circles like this, see how this is very round and kind of hard edged?

I want to blur it, so I'm just doing little circles and I'm just pulling that green out against the blue sky and just letting it get soft.

It'll blend into the colors of the sky, the white and the blues there, and it'll soften it out a little bit.

I want it kinda blurry and out of focus which will make it look farther away, and it will really make the butterfly look three dimensional, he'll really stand out.

Don't you think you can do this?

Yeah, of course you can.

This is the easy part.

Painting doesn't have to be hard.

People make it hard on themselves.

It's that simple.

You have to believe in yourself and practice a little bit, but you'd be surprised what you can do.

Okay, that's looking pretty good, I think, for what I need.

A lot of this is gonna be covered up with our flowers anyway.

Speaking of the flowers, this is something you're probably not gonna see too often.

I do it not all the time, it's one of those tricks up my sleeve that I use once in a while.

Sometimes I put in a background, a loose background like that of the flowers with a painting knife, and I'll just kinda randomly, I'm not looking for anything specific.

Notice they're just kinda like little something-or-other flowers.

I don't have to be too specific with it.

I'm gonna start with a darker purple in here and then put a lighter purple over the top.

I'm gonna mix my color with my fan brush.

I'm gonna take dioxazine purple, a little bit of white.

Again, get a color that you like.

I wanna go kind of on the dark side of purple, and I'm not trying to match that one exactly, but, see, you want something dark enough that you can put a lighter accent over the top of it.

That's probably a little darker than what that one is, but that's fine, I'll run with it.

I'm gonna put just a little bit of that medium with it just to thin it down a trifle.

And see, I'm using the fan brush to mix my color.

I really don't need that from here on out.

Believe it or not.

This is the surprise I had for you.

I'm gonna take a paper towel, and I'm gonna kinda wad it up irregularly.

Don't fold it square, wad it up irregularly, get some little ends hanging out of it.

I'm gonna dab it into this paint, and I'm gonna put in my flowery things.

See, I'm not painting anything specific, I'm not thinking these are violets or forget-me-nots or lilacs or anything specific.

These are just kind of suggestions of flowers.

See what a nice texture you get with that?

It's very hard to get something that random with a brush.

No matter what brush you use, whether it's a flat brush or a fan brush or a round brush, tends to leave a footprint of the brush.

This way, you can do it very loosely and it's just a suggestion.

And like I said, I'm not doing anything specific, and I'm not thinking of them as something specific.

If somebody were to ask me.

"What kind of flowers are those, Willie?

", you know what I'm gonna tell them?

Purple ones.

(laughs) Those are purple ones.

You see in nature a lot of little wild flowery things that look like this.

Some of them are almost like weeds kinda more than flowers, but you see a lot of variety in stuff like this where it's not too specific.

I'm running out of that color so I'm just gonna actually mix some right on the rag, watch this.

Take a little purple, little bit of that white base coat, still wanna stay on the darker side.

I'm gonna come back and highlight.

I'm not to the highlighting stage yet.

Now see I turn the rag different ways.

Don't make it too solid.

You want some of that green permeating through it.

And I can't really get to the bottom of the canvas down here.

I'll do that offscreen.

But see, I can't quite get it 'cause my easel is in the way, but you'd wanna take that right off the bottom.

That rag is pretty well done, that has served its purpose, so I want to go with a clean rag for my highlight color.

I'm gonna do the same thing and actually when I said I was done with my fan brush, I was for right then, but I'm gonna swish this out.

I'm just using the fan brush to mix, it's easier.

Now I'm gonna add more white base coat into some of that purple, and I can compare the value.

Just make sure it's light enough to make a difference.

I'm gonna go a little bit lighter yet, and I'm gonna mix that color like that.

Again, I'm gonna dab with the rag, and very loosely and randomly I'm just gonna touch shapes on here.

I'm running out already, I shoulda mixed more up, and I'm just gonna dab right into some of this white and mix it right on the fly, there we go.

See what a nice effect that is?

Probably never thought of painting with a rag, did you?

Sometimes the nicest effect are the easiest ones to achieve, and the last thing you would expect to do to get them.

In the big scheme of things, everybody's gonna be looking at the butterfly anyway, not this background so much.

They'll tend to forgive you and let the background go a little bit if you do a good job on the butterfly.

Okay.

Put a little bit more dark right in here, this spot.

It got a little too solid for my taste.

I'll take a little more of that dark and I'll dab that in there.

All right.

And that's the background, isn't that pretty cool?

I'm gonna take my sharp knife, and I'm gonna remove that tape.

We are at the point where we can take the tape off the butterfly.

Be careful with the knife.

You'll see if I get this started, that butterfly should be right under there where I left him.

So I'm going to remove all this tape, I'm gonna put a thin coat of clear glazing medium on the whole butterfly with my number six round brush, I'll lubricate that with a thin coat of glaze, and I'm gonna take this off and kinda finish my bottom down there where I said my easel was in the way and I couldn't quite get to that point.

And I'll be right back and I'll recap all that for you.

See you in a minute.

(upbeat music) I showed you my paper towel technique today, but if that's for you, and it's not for everybody, but if it's not for you, you could actually use a brush.

I could take my number six round brush with my dark purple, and you could actually design more specific flowers on this.

It's gonna take a few more minutes but that's not the point.

So you could actually just fill this in and do more of an actual flower approach in behind that butterfly.

But same as before, you'd wanna wipe your brush off, go back with a lighter value, and highlight some of them.

But whatever the case might be, do it your way and have fun with it.

Okay, I've done just what I said I was going to do.

I took off the tape, I applied a thin coat of clear glazing medium with my number six round brush, very carefully, and I did take it off the easel so I could tap some of those flowers in down below the level of the easel to clean that edge up.

We're gonna start applying a glaze.

I'm gonna use yellow.

And notice it's a little fainter, lighter in some spots, a little heavier and darker in others.

It all depends on how strong your glaze is.

I'm gonna glaze this first and get my yellow on, and then you may notice if you look closely, I've got a couple little edges here where the edges aren't quite as crisp as I would want them to be with the black.

Either I didn't trim it exactly on the edge of the black outline when I did it, or maybe I might have a little bit of paint that seeped underneath it.

I'm gonna put the yellow on first and then I will touch up those edges.

If I try to put the black on first and then put my yellow on, nine times out of ten you're always getting into that black, mixing it into your yellow.

It makes a mess.

It's safer to put the yellow on first.

So I'm gonna take my same number six flat brush with a little bit of this clear glazing medium and a little bit of yellow.

See, if I don't use too much, it's gonna be a little fainter like this, more yellowy, lighter.

And see, I can go right over the black for the most part.

If you have a heavier ratio of yellow in there, it's a little more translucent and not quite as transparent, we can take some of that glaze off the black if it looks cloudy.

But I'm not worried about that yet.

We'll address that in a moment.

But see how easy that is to add color to this?

Like I said, all of the work in this painting is in that underpainting of the butterfly.

Once you get that black on there, everything else comes together really easily.

And then I'm going to take a little more yellow and just for the sake of the example, I'm gonna add just a tiny speck of this cadmium red light, which leans it slightly towards orange.

I don't wanna go too orange with it, but see, it gives me a darker, deeper yellow, kinda like this.

It's very boring just to paint them all one color, so I like to mix it up and put a couple different tones in here.

Makes it a little more pretty, little more interesting.

I see a lot of these butterflies around my neck of the woods in the summertime.

These are tiger swallowtails.

The other common one up here is the monarch, the orange ones, everybody's seen those.

They're the orange ones with a lot of dark markings on them, too.

Those are really pretty.

Those monarchs have quite an amazing story where they travel, I forget now if it's Brazil or somewhere in South America, they make a journey every year, it's ridiculous how far they fly.

Thousands and thousands of miles.

And they all meet up down there like a big reunion, it's crazy.

Mother nature's crazy but it's amazing.

Okay, I'm gonna wipe the brush off, I'm gonna smooth that out a little bit and blend it in.

I don't want any brush strokes in the glaze, I want it kind of smoothed out.

Anywhere on the black, see right here, if it looks a little cloudy I can just wipe the brush and see, I can take some of that film off.

Totally depends on how heavy you put your glaze and whether you had it transparent enough or not, but see, it's an easy adjustment.

Don't sweat the small details.

Now I can go back with my detail scriptliner and some black, and I'm gonna thin this down with my paint thinner.

I have odorless mineral spirits right here in my pail.

I'm gonna thin this down, roll the brush to a point.

Any of these little edges that look a little iffy, like right here, see where that edge looks a little ragged?

I'm just going to tidy that up just like that.

I want a nice, crisp edge on it.

So anywhere you have those little discrepancies, I don't have too many more than that, maybe a little bit down here, a little bit there, they're easy to fix.

Don't paint the whole black area black again with oil paint just for the sake of doing it 'cause we have to put all these markings on here.

Okay, you'll notice on his body he's got some little lines, yellow lines down either side of his body.

I'm trying to remember.

When I took science in school, the insects, I don't know if they are, are they classified as an insect?

I think so, they have a thorax and a abdomen, and they have all the body parts.

I don't know if that's his thorax or his abdomen.

We'll just call it his body, how's that?

I never said I was a bug person.

Okay, so I'm gonna take some of the white base coat, a little bit of yellow, and they're just little lines right down, they're not even quite to the edge.

Notice there's black on the outermost edge.

They're just a couple little lines down through his body.

And I had a photo for a reference that I was using for this to see all these markings on here.

Always take your camera with you.

Our local zoo actually has a butterfly house.

You can walk right in and they'll land right on you, it's amazing.

I'm gonna swish that out and dry it off, fuzz it out.

And I'm gonna come in and just kinda drag across those the opposite way now so they kind of look like they go across his body.

His body's really fuzzy looking up close.

Got a little touch on his head.

From here, he's got a lot of markings.

Now, you'll be able to download a reference photo of this from the WPBS TV website, too, which will be your best friend because you'll need to know where all these yellow dots, and the red dots, and the blue lines go.

They have all these specifics markings on them.

I'm gonna start with blue, or excuse me, I'm gonna start with the white and yellow on my detail scriptliner brush.

And they have these ones going down the outside edge, so I'm just gonna look at that and kinda duplicate it.

And my clock is ticking down here.

You're gonna have more time at home to do this, so take your time, do a good job on it.

I expect you to leave a space there for a red one, there's one there, one there, one there.

See, it doesn't take much to say butterfly, and if something happens that there's, I don't know how many are on there, it's not the point, say there's 12 of these on here.

If you only have 10, nobody's gonna know the difference.

Don't agonize over it too much.

It's a painting, not a photograph.

But you'll have time to tinker with it at home and do it justice.

Notice there are some blue ones in here.

These are more elongated shapes, they're not dots.

For that I'm gonna use white and blue.

This is the cerulean blue.

I'll put just a touch of medium with that just to thin it down, I just want it to skate off the brush a little easier.

And I tend to flatten the brush out like this on two sides for that.

And then I can just do a nice little (smacks lips) square shape just like that.

Okay, I'm just comparing that one.

That ones looks a little darker.

I'll put a little more blue with that.

Like I said, I was using a reference photo when I did that one, so it's always a good idea to have a good reference photo that you can work from.

And they get shorter and smaller as they go up this way and just kinda become non-existent.

He's coming to life now, isn't he?

If we're not careful, he might fly right off this canvas, I don't know.

He's looking pretty good.

Hoo, that makes him pop, I love that blue.

He's got a few red ones in here and they're strategic areas right on the tips of these little wing points here.

They're in specific spots.

Now I've done butterflies before, too.

Sometimes I just do a fantasy butterfly where I make it up and I'll just do an outline like this and I'll just put colors wherever I feel like it.

That's kind of fun, too.

Somebody asks me, "What kind of butterfly is that, Willie?"

I say, "A pretty one."

I don't have to be specific with it, just like my purple flowers.

Those are a suggestion.

A couple little touches right here, and that's pretty much how I accomplished it.

One more thing I have to do, I'm gonna take my number two liner, he needs his antennae back.

This one I can still see through the underpainting, the other one's lost under the flower, but I'll just find it again, it's no big deal.

Make it nice and skinny.

I'll draw this one right back over the top of that flower, which overlaps it and pushes the flower back.

And there he is.

I hope you try this lesson out.

I'd love to see your version of it.

It's a fun one to do, try that paper towel technique, let me know how it works for you.

Until next time, stay creative and keep painting.

(soothing music) - [Announcer] All 13 episodes of "Painting With Wilson Bickford" series six are now available on DVD or Blu-Ray in one box set for $35 plus 4.95 shipping and handling.

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