(calm music) - Hi. Welcome back. I'm certainly glad you could join us today because today is a very special day. You know, for years, through
the miracle of television, I've been able to share my joy of painting with literally millions
of people, and today I have the opportunity to
share the joy of my life. I have my son Steve here today with me. And today Steve's gonna
be our guest artist and in just a few minutes,
he's gonna show you how to do a fantastic painting. Steve, certainly glad to
have you with us, my son. - Thanks Dad. - Tell you what, you do
a super little painting and I'll see you later. - Okay. We're gonna start off today by running the colors across your screen. And I'm gonna use a two inch
brush for my first color. which will be alizarin crimson,
just a tiny amount of it. And I'm tapping it out on a separate space on the palette, trying not
to get too much in there. I'm gonna put a little
bit of that in the center. Oh just about like that. And then into a little
bit of prussian blue, with the same dirty brush. And back through my alizarin. Should have kind of a lavender color. And we'll just x that right in there too. Keep that brush moving. Okay and maybe a little bit more of that alizarin and blue color. And we'll put a little
bit of water down here. Just straight horizontal strokes from the outside in. Okay, we could even have
a little hint of pink in the water too if we wanted. Not, wow, got the water on
fire that time, didn't we? Whew, we can take care of that though. When we come back with another
clean, dry two inch brush, and blend all this out. Little x's. If you push real hard on a color, it'll disappear. Kind of softens it down. So in the sky, you're doing little x's. And in the water, all the way across. Push real hard. Okay, that oughta do it
for the sky and water. Maybe I'll use my fan brush now and just a drop of liquid white. And run through some thick titanium white. Mostly thick stuff here. Okay and then up to the canvas. And we'll spin in a little cloud. Just using the corner of the brush, smash it right in there. Nothing to it. Then we'll just take a clean brush and blend out the bottom of that. Big brush. I usually use my big brushes for blending and my small ones for more
scratchy, choppy things like bushes and trees. Okay, just lift over that
whole cloud very lightly and go across it. Trying to keep the
brightest points on top. And if you want to make one
cloud in front of another, maybe you just take this piece right here and pull it down, still using
your spinning maneuver there. And maybe there's even
something small right here. Okay, just under the bottom of each shape, spin it out. Leave the top alone. Lift over the whole thing. And go across it. Okay. Now we'll do a couple of
foothills in the background. I'll use my fan brush again for that. That color will be alizarin crimson. Just mixing it on the brush, and a little bit of prussian blue. Prussian blue is real powerful. With that, you can put a
little titanium white too. Make it a light color for the background. So you get sort of a lavender. And we'll throw this in,
about right back here. Fill it in a little bit. Don't just leave a
straight stripe of color. Maybe there's a curve to it here too. Whatever you want to do. And then just take your big brush and knock off the bottom of that shape. Leave the top alone. Maybe there's a tiny bit more
pink under that foothill. The sun reflecting off the
bottom of it or something. Let's see. Something like that. And then who's to say
there's not another one in front of that that's a little darker? Let's add just a little bit
alizarin and blue to the color. Okay and maybe this one'll
come down like this. And right across. Once again, fill it in. Oh just like that. And then knock off the
bottom of that one too. It's pretty neat how you can get one shape in front of another to look
like planes of distance going from back to front. Maybe I'll just brush over the
top of that one a tiny bit. Okay, why don't we go with
our one inch brush now? A little bit of prussian
blue, midnight black, crimson, and white all together. So it's just the same
color as you used before, but with a little black in it. Okay. Maybe right down here, we've got a row of grassy type areas. Leave a little mist in between this shape and your foothills. That'll make them look further back. Don't really have to
pay a lot of attention to how you put the dark in on here. It's all gonna be covered up anyway. Okay and then I'll clean
that one inch brush out. (tapping) And maybe we'll put a bit
of snow highlight on that. Just with titanium white. Tap it into the paint a little bit. And then right up here, just touch it in. All kinds of neat things happen. Looks just like little
pieces of sparkly ice fog all over the grass and trees. And don't just stop there,
tap under it a little bit too. That way it looks like it's
going from light to dark. And then reload and you
can make another one. Now maybe we want to take the big brush and pull a reflection out of that. Just grab the bottom
of it, pull right down. You might have to add just
a touch of your color. Same foothill color. Try to pull that straight down. And then go across it with
a clean dry brush, two inch. If you get a hair in there, you can just flick it out sometimes. Not a good idea to stick your
fingers in your painting. Now I suppose, since our
reflections are down so low, we should have some pine
trees up above them. A little bit of crimson
and blue together again with the midnight black. And that does have a touch of white in it. Okay, come up here, maybe just touch in with the corner of the fan brush. Hop back and forth from
the left to the right, kind of like a z pattern. You can make as many of these as you want, but I'm probably only going
to put maybe five or seven. This little guy over here
is gonna get covered up because we're gonna have a bigger tree, right over him probably. Let's see. Maybe one more right here. And you can always clean your brush out and put a little highlight
on those if you want. That would just be back
into the titanium white. Whatever fashion you put the trees in, you want to highlight them the same way, so press in like that
and then come up there. That way, when it comes off your brush, it doesn't come off in one big lump. Sometimes it's more important what happens on those brushes on the palette than what happens with
the brushes on the canvas. And that highlight, I'm just putting it on the right hand side of the left hand trees and right around the center
of the right hand trees. Let's see. Maybe there's a little
bit of that white grass underneath those too. Snow-covered grass. You could even pull down a tiny
white reflection into that. And go across that real light. Now that kind of looks like
it's floating up in the sky, so what we need to do is
put a little land into that. And you can do that with your knife. A little bit of black
and alizarin together for some dark And I'll just run a little strip
of land right across there. Nothing to that part as long
as you don't get too wide. And then maybe back into a
little bit of titanium white. Splat it out flat. Pull through it, get a nice roll on there. And kind of pull across, and
that'll give you some snow. There we go. Well it looks kind of
rough when you first do it, so you might want to put a
little grass on top of that. Maybe a little liquid
white and titanium together to get it to stick on top of there. Remember thin paint sticks on thick. Okay. Just follow the angle of the land. There we go. Now it seems like
everything above the water has to have that small reflection, so let's go ahead and pull
a land reflection too. Try to get it straight down. That also helps straighten
up the edge of the land so that your waterline can
go under it more evenly. It saves you a lot of time. A little bit of liquid
white on the palette knife, and we'll spin that around on the palette. Wipe some of it off and get
a little tiny roll on there. Then we'll go up here and just push in. Now try to keep this as
straight as possible. Because this is an icy
lake and still water or still ice always lies flat. Maybe there's a couple out here too. Something like that. Now who's to say we don't want to come in with a couple of trees on the outside with just our plain old prussian blue and alizarin crimson together. And then we'll come in from over here and just tap in some big branches. Doesn't have to be anything particular. We're gonna cover it all
up with highlights anyway. Okay, maybe over on this
side, there's something similar to that, but not quite as big. Now when you're going through snow, it might be a little more difficult, but just keep reloading that brush. It'll go in there eventually. Maybe this one comes out onto an island with some bushes just by smashing in. Something like that. Okay. And we probably need a reflection
under this piece of land, just like the one in the background. Oh no, we hit our ice line over there. Look at that. We'll have to make that go away. Kind of an eraser made
brush if you want it to be. Maybe there's a few
sticks in those bushes. Just little v's. And in those trees, we
probably want to plant a few branches with our liner brush and a little bit of that purple color we made before with the
blue and the alizarin. Probably should be pretty dark. Lots of paint thinner. Takes probably about five or six drops. About Indian ink consistency. Okay, let's see. Maybe we've got some branches just coming right out of the tree. I'm not really worried too
much about what they look like. They're all gonna be covered up with snow in a minute. Over here, the same deal. I get kind of carried away
with these branches sometimes. They're so fun to make that you just don't know when to stop with them. So I better stop now. We can go in with some snow
highlight on top of that. Little bit of liquid white
and titanium white together. Push that brush into the paint. Get some little tidbits of paint on the tips of the bristles there. And that way, they'll
come off real sparkly. Look at that. Sometimes you can almost amaze yourself. But if you have a happy accident, that's no problem. You can always go back
and take something off and smash the dark color back in. Start over again. That's just like getting two canvases worth of practice for the
price of one, I guess. That's what I tell my
students in painting class when they have to scrape something off. No big deal, just more practice. Those trees really
change a lot when you get those highlights in, don't they? Sometimes my fast pace is
even better than my slow pace. Things seem to come out better
the less you piddle on them. If I stick around in one
area, I know I really end up with a mess. Maybe we'll change the load to
a pulling through the paint. Put the brush vertical, like this. See that heel on the brush? We'll flip that up to the top. And push in there, real lightly, and make some bushy shapes. Now it's a little bit harder to separate when you're just using blue and white, if you've got a lot of other
colors, it's a lot easier. So take your time and save
dark in between each bush. Then we can pull that down
with a clean two inch brush and go across it. All I did was make upside-down
bushes in the water there. Maybe down here under this island, we'll just have a little
bit of regular snow. Don't even need a shadow under it. We've got enough right here. Touch and pull. And that's all there is to it on that. Maybe a little piece
comes up like that too. I've still got some paint
on my lighter brush. I could flick a couple sticks in. And then back to the one inch brush for a little bit of grass on the land. Just trying to break up that top edge. Now as with the piece of
land in the background, under this one, you're
gonna need a shoreline. That was the liquid white again. Just like that. And then maybe I'll get a little crazier down on this right hand side. Possibly just go into
some pure midnight black if you can believe that one. And just pop it right in there. I get to a certain point in the painting and my bravery increases about 100%. This is that point. Because I know no matter what I do, it's gonna look at least halfway decent. After you've practiced this
style of painting for a while, you learn all kinds of neat things, like any brush can really
replace the job of another one. I could have done that
with a one inch brush or the fan brush. More little v's down here in my bushes. And some highlights again with the one inch brush. Need a little bit of liquid white in that. Thin sticks to thick. And in a second here, I'll
show you how to do a big tree. Who knows, maybe there's
a touch of pink in a bush. Little bit of crimson added
to that'll really help. Hey, why not? Maybe the sun hit just right that day right under those bushes. Well, heck, I think there's
an oval under here somewhere. Wow, that changed it a
little bit, didn't it? Now what if we take the
fan brush and come in with a big trunk? Van Dyke brown and midnight black. I'm loading it up to a chisel edge. And then I'm just gonna pull right down from about here. Right off the top of the canvas. Now that takes guts, which we have plenty of, right? I always tell my students
there is nothing we can't do. Maybe a little bit of titanium white. Just on the left hand side. Pull in just a little bit at a time and create a birch tree. Yeah, I always told Dad, this
is my favorite type of tree. He had a hard time
getting it through my head what to do on them though. I always seem to push too hard. It's kind of like the snow
breaking on the mountain. Lighter brush and a little
bit of midnight black. And we can throw in a
couple of dead branches. Not too many though. Just like that. Extend your tops. Looks like I got a little
bit of blue in there. That's okay though. Since it's my world, it can
look like anything I want it to. That's the way you should
think about yours too. This might be the only
chance a person gets to play God, right here because we know we can
never meet up to that job, but this might be as close as you can get. So why not? Well I think that just about does it. Maybe a bush under that
tree, just to close it off. And I should probably put
a John Henry on this one. Little bit of bright
red just like Dad uses. And there we go. Well I want to thank everybody
for joining the show today. And I hope you had as good a time painting this picture as I did. Thank you. (calm music)
