- Hi, welcome back. Certainly glad you could join me because today is a very special day. This is the last show of the 17th series. And I thought today, we would devote this entire show to a
question and answer period. And for that, I've aked
a very special friend to come in and help me today. I'd like to introduce you to Dana Jester. And Dana is one of our
national certified instructors. He travels all over the
country and he teaches literally thousands of
people the joy of painting. Dana, welcome to us. - Thanks a lot Bob. - What I've done here Dana is I've taken just some of the basic
questions that we get in. We get a lot of letters from
people all over the country and I've just sort of taken the basic problems that people are having and if you'll give me a little hand here, I'm gonna just sort of
ask you these things and see if between the two of us, we can answer these questions. - Sure. - Dana teaches people every day and maybe since I don't teach as
much as I used to anymore, maybe I've forgotten to
explain some of these things and Dana can help us a little. Dana, the first question,
and I know this is a problem because I do it off-camera
in order to save time, and that's applying the liquid white. This question goes, "How
do I apply the liquid white "and how much liquid white do I use? "How do I know when I
have enough on the canvas "or too much?" And, tell you what, if
you would just show us basically how you put the liquid white on. - All righty. We can handle that. What I uually do is just
dip your brush in there, get a small amount. You're going to work it into the canvas. And after you cover the entire canvas, I cheated a little bit
today, I had all this area covered except for just
a small portion here. And I'll tell you what, you can give it the old fingerprint test. After you coat the canvas, what I would do is just go up here, touch the canvas, and if you can still see your
fingerprint, you're in good shape. - OK. so what you're looking for is just a nice, even distribution all over the end of the finger. All right, let me ask you this then because I'm asked this over and over. What would you do if you have too much liquid white on the canvas? And that happens frequently. - Well, in that case what
I do is clean my brush, dry it real good, go back and forth on the entire canvas, lifting. It will help remove a
lot of this liquid white that you have on there. You can kind of rub that in and give it the fingerprint test. And if that does not work, then you can go back and-- - You can do this as
many times as necessary. - Yeah, repeat it, yeah. - Very good. All right, let me go to the next one here. This is a question from
a lady in Virginia. She says she's having
trouble with her clouds. Her clouds are not coming out and looking very fluffy. She wants to know basically
what her problem is. So I'll tell you what, would you just throw us in a little blue background up there maybe real quick. - Aw sure. - And let's do a couple
of little clouds here. What are you using? Just a little Prussian Blue today? - [Dana] A little Prussian Blue. Tell you what, if you don't have dark, it's kind of tough to show light. So I always start out a little darker up here at the top of your sky. You can always work this on down, and let it gradually lighten
up into the liquid white there. - [Bob] OK, why don't you just put a little sky in there and we'll show everyone exactly how to do
a happy little cloud today. And it's fantastic that people
take the time to write us. We get literally hundreds
of letters every week and we have a staff of
people that try to answer each and every letter. So, if you do have questions, please feel free to drop us a line. We'd be glad to answer them if we can. OK, how we coming there? - I think we're just about
ready to drop in a cloud. You know what? I might sneak in just a
little bit of water down here. - All right. Why don't you. - Since I have blue on the brush already. You never can tell, we may not even have water in. It's just something nice to throw in. - [Bob] It's also a good way to clean the blue paint out of your brush. - That's for sure. - [Bob] All right. - All right. - Tell you what, Dana,
would you make clouds maybe today with a... Let's do one little cloud
with a fan brush, say, and then show us one
with a one-inch brush. How's that? - All righty. Let me get this large brush cleaned out. I've been waiting for
years to do this, Bob. (Bob laughs) Really wanted to do this yet.
(Bob chuckles) - All right, here we go. The camera people are overjoyed. - [Dana] OK. - Because at long last, Bob
has got all the splatters. - Well, what we're gonna
do here is just pick up-- I'm just using Titanium White here. - [Bob] All right. - Loading the brush up
pretty heavy, both sides. Work in your dark sides and kind of press up and push. Keep the brush moving, spin it. - [Bob] OK, but the big
thing here is notice the circular patterns. That's what gives you
the little fluffy edges. Dana, do one for me right up here where you just stay in one spot and keep grinding. - [Dana] Oh, you're wanting me
to make some mud, aren't you? - [Bob] Right, that's exactly
what I want you to see. - [Dana] OK. - [Bob] Because this is one of the biggest problems that
we see over and over. People will stay in one spot and keep making these little
circles and what happens is you end up, it looks like big cotton balls hanging in the sky. Now if this should happen to you, all you need to do is take your knife and do a cloud-ectomy. Just zip it right off. And put a little blue
back on and go right back. As you know, we don't make mistakes, we only have happy accidents. So let's see how Dana's doing here. - OK, that's the old fan brush treatment. Now, we'll try for a one-inch brush here. - OK, now this i just the basic shape. You're going to come back and fluff. - Yeah, we'll work on those. Now, when you're loading
the one-inch brush, you can almost basically load it like you do when you're
loading for a bush. Takes quite a bit of paint. - [Bob] And I notice you're pulling it in just one direction. - [Dana] And then you have about that much paint on the brush. It's quite a bit of paint. - [Bob] OK. - And you can work this
brush in circles again just like when you're using a fan brush. - [Bob] You're doing
basically the same thing. - [Dana] Same thing. - [Bob] Only with a larger brush. - [Dana] Only the big brush. - [Bob] This is good probably if you want to make big clouds. And make them very fast. - [Dana] Go back and reload. Oh yeah.
- [Bob] OK. There. It's also worth mentioning that Dana, along with my son Steve,
travel all over the country and they teach literally
hundreds and hundreds of people how to instruct in this fantastic method of painting. So as they say, Dana is
in the field every day. So if anyone can help us with corrections, I'm sure that he's the man that can do it. So let's check him out. All right Dana, what
are you going to do now? - OK, I'm going to use this-- The top portion of this brush and work just with the corner of it and blend and soften this
down into the canvas. - [Bob] OK, notice that he's not touching the top of the clouds. He's only blending the base of the clouds. You want the top of those clouds to remain nice and firm. And he does the same thing with the ones that he did with the fan brush. - [Dana] Then I'll beat
the excess paint out and lightly, you can fluff them up or lightly go across it here. - [Bob] Either way. - {Dana] Yeah, just set them down in the canvas a little bit. But it is three hairs and some error just like you say. - [Bob] It's a very gentle touch. OK, very good. And that's one of the nicest, easiest, simplest ways of making
very effective clouds. So, I'll tell you what,
there's the next question. Basically here, "Why do
you scrape the base coat "of the mountains off
after you carefully..." We're gonna send this
person a penmanship book. "Carefully place it on the
canvas," I believe it is. - Sounds like we better
do some mountains then. - Well, I think what
they're asking here is, you know, we put the base
shape of the mountain and then we scrape off that excess paint. Maybe we could show that. - All righty. I'm gonna take Van Dyke
Brown, Prussian Blue, Midnight Black and if you want to to just to see what value you had, you could put in a little Titanium White. But if it's your very first round, I would stay with the
real, real dark color. - [Bob] Keep it very dark. - [Dana] Yeah. Now, I'll wipe off my knife and when you load the knife... - [Bob] Loading the knife
is very important, yes. - [Dana] You can go
into the paint like this and pick up a roll on the knife like that. I don't know if you can
see that little roll there. Yeah. - [Bob] OK why don't you just lay us in a very basic little mountain shape and let's just play with it because I know there's another question coming up here about mountains. I notice that you're
pushing very, very hard. - [Dana] Yeah, you need to really remove the excess paint so
you'll work that pigment of the paint into the
grain of the canvas really. - [Bob] OK, so then what you're saying is you scrape this to remove excess paint. - [Dana] Mmm-hmmm. - [Bob] That's basically
the reason we scrape it. - [Dana] Right. And that nice dark color
will help us in the long run. Make your lights really pop out. - [Bob] It's also makes
application of the highlight color much easier if you don't have a lot of paint up here on this mountain. The more of that that you take off, the easier the next step will become. Dana, won't you blend that out. There you go, and that's... Let's see here because I
think the next question, if I remember correctly-- "How do I get snow to
break on my mountain? "I have difficulty making this work. "Mine looks like icing on a cake." (Bob chuckles)
Well. OK, I think this is probably
one of the most common problems that people have. We hear this just about more than any other question that I can think of. Just from reading the
question, I can tell you normally the problem is one of two things: First off, the biggest problem is people try using a paint that's too thin. If you use a very thin paint,
it's very, very dificult to make this paint break. And by break we mean it has
all the little holes in it. So, you need a very firm, dry paint. I can't tell you how important that is. The second thing is that people put too much pressure on the knife. Let me hold the knife just a second if I might, Dana. We can hold it right up here. If we can get a close up right in here of this knife. I'll hold it right up. One of the big problems is that people put their finger on this blade
when they're working with it. They take and stick that finger on there and that finger applies a
tremendous amount of pressure. I would suggest holding the knife with just thumb and forefinger. Just very loose. And just sort of let it, just let it flop around in your finger. These fingers lay on the handle and all they do is drive. They just sort of guide the knife. They move it from one
direction to the other. But avoid putting your
finger up here on this blade. It will cause you a lot of agony and you'll be upset with me. So, I'll give you your knife back there. - All righty. - OK, why don't you show us how to put some now on the mountain here. - OK. Little roll-on knife. And if you're having trouble, you're maybe leaving a blob of
paint up there at the top, raise the handle up a little bit more and then take off with it. Working with the edge of
the knife a little bit more, I think that might help
you to getting started. - [Bob] Absolutely no pressure. - [Dana] No pressure whatsoever. - [Bob] This is just
the weight of the knife. It's sort of, in a way, think about maybe that the knife is really not
even touching the canvas. The only thing it's
touching is that little roll of paint that you've loaded on there. And it's turning, it's
rotating underneath the blade. And that's what creates this breaking. And this breaking right in here, that's what gives it that
beautiful, beautiful appearance. To do this with a little
brush would take you weeks. And Dana can do it here in just a matter of a minute or two. Very nice. The other thing that we
run into continually is people would have problems with their shadows when they put them on. You'll find if you're
righthanded, for example, you will find that it's much easier to highlight things on the right and then when you go to work on the left, you'll run into some difficulties. But give it a little practice. Some people find that it's easier at times to put the shadow on first
and then put the highlight. And there are basically no rules here. If it works for you,
it's right and it's good. And that's really all we're trying to do is to get you to try it. The big thing though is no pressure, no matter which way you start, with the shadow first and then highlights or highlights and then shadows. Makes no difference. The big thing is it's no pressure. Let it float. Pretend it's a feather just
floating right across there. The most gentle thing
that you can think of. Very, very light. Very light. OK, Dana's gonna put some
shadows in here for us. - [Dana] It's really important
to follow your angles. If you put this knife down up here at the top and
just pull straight down, you're gonna lose the contour or the shape of your mountains. You need to remember to follow the angles. I'm using Prussian Blue
and a little bit of white for a shadow color. - [Bob] OK, another thing
that I would suggest, if you're just starting with this, when you make your mountain shape, don't make a mountain shape that has 25 to 30 little, tiny peaks on it. Have just a couple of major peaks and learn how to do those. And then, with practice, and that is the secret to this technique
or any other technique, is practice. With practice and you will
learn and you can put all those individual little peaks. But when you first start, do very basic, little simple mountains and learn how it works. Learn the feel of the paint. And very quickly you'll
know if it's breaking of if you're, like this lady says here, if you're icing a cake. And then you need to create
the illusion of mist out here. - Yeah now, you can take
and lightly tap this and pull down at the same time. The main thing is, not to
start in the same place when you're going across here, you need to kind of have a little variation. You don't want it to look like
you planned out everything. And it's important to
follow the direction again. And after you get through with that, you can always mist it
right on into the canvas, work it in to the liquid white. That liquid white really
will help you out. - [Bob] And it looks
like it's just sort of floating up there in the mist now. All right, let's go on to
the next question here. You've built us a pretty
nice mountain, Dana. "Why do you always place so much emphasis "on having mist between
each layer of foothills?" If you've watched the
show, you know that I'm continually saying that mist
is these little misty areas between any layer of things
that you have in here can absolutely be your best friend. That you should treat it like a friend and be careful with it. And that mist is your separator. it shows a space in between foothills or just different layers
or different planes in your painting. And that will really pay great
dividends in your painting. It gives it depth. It gives it distance. It's not just a flat old painting. And it will make you
happier with your work. Let's see if we can get
Dana maybe to demonstrate some here for us. - OK, I just took the base coat that I was using on the mountain and then I added a little Sap Green to it and what you want to load your brush is pretty important with this. You can tap your brush
into the paint like that and pick up a roll on the tip of the brush and then go up there
and make your foothill. - [Bob] Now, do you always have to use a two-inch brush? - Oh no, not always, but
this works out pretty handy. It covers a lot of area quick. - [Bob] But you could do
it with a one-inch brush. - [Dana] Oh yeah. - [Bob] Or a fan brush. - [Dana] Fan brush or whatever. - [Bob] Or your old shoe, it don't matter. (chuckling) - Now, the mist in between the foothills that you were asking
about, I'll just put that on there like that and come back up here with a clean one-inch brush,
you could use a two-inch, and just tap just like
this and let this blend into your liquid white. That will really help this one when we lay another foothill in here. - [Bob] Now what would happen if you were working on a dry canvas and tried that? Without the liquid white on it? - Oh, that would be agony
city, as you would say. - Exactly. - Now, we'll load a
little more paint in here. Now, you could put one in
coming from the other side, or you could just add another
one right here below this. - [Bob] This is the same identical color. - [Dana] Same color. It just looks like we've
darkened it, but we haven't. - [Bob] It's only that
little bit of mist in between that creates that beautiful separation. - This on, today, it might even sneak all the way over off to the side here. You never know.
- [Bob] OK. - Ah, something like that. take your one-inch again or like I said, a two-inch, and mist this on in. OK, we'll let that set
back in the painting just by creating a lot more mist there at the base of that foothill. - [Bob] But this is continually mixing with the liquid white
and creates these effects almost automatically. What are you doing now? - [Dana] Maybe I put a few
distant trees back there. A little evergreens or
whatever on top of that hill. - [Bob] And all you're doing
its just lifting upward? - [Dana] Mmm-hmm. Just vertical brush stroke. - [Bob] Now, it looks like
he's making very long strokes, but he's only allowing the brush to touch the canvas very short. You don't want these to get too tall because very rapidly they can get so tall that they don't look right. Maybe quarter-inch strokes is really all that he's touching and just, just giving it a little lift
and that's all you need to do. And work in layers. Don't try to start at
the bottom of a foothill and do it all. Work in little tiny layers
and it will create that depth even in each individual foothill. OK, let me read the next one here, Dana. Gentleman here in Colorado. He says, "I'm still having
trouble with water lines. "Which side of the knife are you loading?" That does create problems
for a lot of people. - Well... - Why don't you put us a
little something in there so we can have us a little water line. Just drop in a few little things. - OK. let's go ahead and
get some land right in here. Little closer, maybe middle ground. I'm just using the same color
I had there in the background, but applying a little more paint. Now, that will help us out there with the land. - [Bob] And even here, he
still has that misty area in there to create that separation. That's so very, very important. OK, I think I'm in trouble again. Here he goes. - Real easy, real easy in here. - I'll get even with
you one of these days. - Now, we can pull down a little bit for reflections here and
then come back in here and get that fellow's water line in. I'm jut gonna use the
color I put on the canvas with the clean brush
and pull straight down. And then, go across it
real lightly horizontal. And, like I say, put in a water line. You can take the liquid white and maybe just add a touch of
Van Dyke Brown, Dark Sienna. - [Bob] But this paint is very thin. - [Dana] Very, very thin. - Compared to the pain
that we have on the canvas. - And then I'm just gonna
go through the paint just like this, pick up
a fine roll on the knife. - OK, why don't you hold that knife up in front of the camera,
let them see real close what you're doing there. Can we do that? Because a lot of people
have this same problem. - [Dana] Fine roll. It's on top of the blade, though. That way when you go across here, just cut this in nice and
horizontal with the canvas, or the bottom of the canvas. Keep your knife straight even if you're land's dropping down just a little bit. I'm just actually scraping into the paint that's on the canvas there
to create this line here. That look like we need
some trees or bushes up the, Bob. What do you think about that? - OK, we'll probably get
to something like that in a minute here. Let's see what we got going here. Next letter comes from, uh oh, Martha, you oughta be
ashamed for sending that. We'll put that aside. That was a little too personal. "I watched you make evergreens..." See you wanted to make
some trees, here it is. "With a fan brush, can they
be made with other brushes?" - Why sure. We can use the one-inch brush. As a matter of fact, I may even like it just as well as anything. I'm gonna take Sap Green and Midnight Black. I'm just gonna brush mix this here. And a little bit of Prussian Blue. make life a lot easier when
you go to highlight this. Get a nice sharp chiseled edge by going through the pain like this. - [Bob] OK, can we show that brush? There you go. Show that up close so people can see exactly how sharp that is. It will come to a-- - [Dana] There you go. - Very, very sharp edge. But one of the secrets to getting this to come to a sharp edge is
loading a lot of paint into the bristles. You have to have enough
paint in these bristles to literally stick them together. If you don't stick them together, then you really have problems because the brush will spread apart. And then all you do is just sort of tap like you're making little Zs. - [Dana] Just exactly like you're using the fan brush, really. - [Bob] The technique
is basically the same. - [Dana] Just reload quite often That's the tricky part. If you don't keep enough
paint on this brush, no paint, no painting. That's what I tell my class. - [Bob] No paint, no painting. - [Dana] Right. Maybe you've heard this before, he has maybe a little friend there. - Yeah, you know me, I think
everybody should have a friend. - Of course, that one
may have got stepped on. There. - [Bob] Now, could you do
these with a two-inch brush? - [Dana] Sure you could. I like it also. - [Bob] So, basically you're
saying any old brush we have? - [Dana] Any old brush. - [Bob] It's more important
when you're making trees of any kind that you worry about shape more than what you're making them with. - [Dana] Some good old dark color in here. - [Bob] OK. Good, I'm glad you're making some bushes because that's my next question
here that I'm looking at. Says, "If I make a bush
that I'm not happy with, "how can I correct it?" It also goes on to say,
"I'm having trouble also "making the brilliant highlights
that you make on the show. "What am I doing wrong?" So that's a two-part question. - Highlights on the bushes? - Let's first how how to correct one. Let's make one... - Let's make a mess, that's
what you're trying to say. - Yeah, that's what I'm
trying to get you to do. - I can handle that pretty easy. OK, what I'll do is
maybe load this brush up and like a general student may do... - [Bob] What happens in class sometimes-- - [Dana] Not enough paint
usually on the brush. And I'll come up here. - [Bob] OK, maybe we can get
a real tight close-up of that and just how you exactly
what's happening here. As you can see it's sort of... Steve uses this word all the time, mushed. - [Dana] Yeah. - [Bob] It's just sorta-- - [Dana] Mushed. - [Bob] Mushed in there. Now, if you should have this happen and all of us who are
painting in this method at one time or another,
we've made a bush like this, I guarantee you. Take the knife and do a bush-ectomy. Watch Dana here. This is a bush-ectomy. Just take that rascal right off. - [Dana] Pretty simple, isn't it? - [Bob] Yep. - And back with some
more of your dark paint. - [Bob] Just go right back and... The one thing though that happens, each time that you do this, your bush is gonna grow a little bit. - [Dana] A little bit. - [Bob] And you have to be careful. I've seen people when they
first start doing this, they've had to nail another canvas on top because a bush or a
tree would get so high. Now, show us the correct way of doing it. - What I would suggest
when you're loading this, you can see a bush right
down there on my palette when I pick this brush up
right here in this area. And it takes more paint than probably what you were thinking. - [Bob] You have to load a
lot of paint into the brush and create that rounded corner. You pull it in one direction, that makes that rounded corner. Then you put that rounded
corner to the top. - [Dana] And it's a
super light, light touch when you're getting these
bushes on the canvas. - [Bob] Yeah, I know sometimes
when you watch the shows it looks like you take a running start across the room and sock 'em. - [Dana] And don't kill all your darks. To help separate some of them, you may want to add just a little bit of red to your color. - [Bob] OK, why don' you just drop in a couple little bushes there. We're about to run out
of time on this show. I hope we've answered
most of the questions that people have. The one remaining question that I have and if you have time, maybe
you'll do that for us, is, "I love your reflections,
they are so real. "Are they easy to do?" Could you maybe reflect
a little bit of that down in the water. - Oh yeah. Just simply reverse the brush. - [Bob] While you're doing that, I've got a couple other ones here that I want to answer. I'm sorry, go ahead. - [Dana] Put some of the
color, just reverse it right down in the water here. - [Bob] OK, here's a question that says, "What do I do with paint
that I have leftover? "Do I have to throw it away?" Absolutely not. Oil paint, now you got
me again, didn't you? Oil paint, you can take and cover it with something like Saran wrap or aluminum foil and keep it for several days on a palette or you can take and put it in your freezer and freeze it and it will last almost indefinitely. Now, if you have a freezer
that's self-defrosting, you have to cover it because it will dry out over time. And you know when I
first started doing that I got in a lot of trouble because my wife thought it was something in the icebox that we were gonna eat and she took it out and had a bug mess on her hands. So I wasn't too popular around the homefront for a few days. So you might want to label what it is. And here's another question, and this is very common, I wish I would
have asked this one earlier. "What if I don't have
time to finish my painting "in one setting, what can I do?" Think probably the easiest thing there, if for some reason you
don't get it finished, try to find a good stopping
point for your painting sometimes like the water line is excellent and just stop it right there. If he was to stop right
along in here someplace and then the next day or two you come back and if the liquid white has dried, and it will last for several
days on a good canvas, but if it has dried, then
you can come right in here and add a little bit
more of the liquid white and you can go right
on about your business. If, for example, you
wanted to come in here and you wanted it wet, liquid clear can be used to cover
areas and it won't show like the liquid white will. So you can go back and put
some of the base coat mediums onto the canvas and
continue your painting. And I think with that, we're
gonna shut it down for the day. And as I mentioned earlier,
this is the last show of the 17th series and I want to thank you for allowing me back into your home again. This has been a special series to me. I've been able to bring
you some of my friends, my son's been on the show, and a lot of the little creatures
that I'm so crazy about. And I hope you enjoy seeing my creatures, and my friends and I
thank you very, very much for allowing me into your living rooms. I feel like I'm part of your family. And from all of us here,
we'd like to wish you happy painting and God bless, my friend. (jazzy music)
