- Hi welcome back certainly
glad you could join us today. I thought today we'd show
ya how we do the little painting that you see at
the beginning of the show, the little one with all
the birch trees in it that the little painter guy's in. it's a very-very simple painting and even if you've never done a painting before in your life, this one you can do. So let's start out and have 'em run all the colors across the screen, that you need to paint it at home. While their doing that, come
on up here, let's get started. Today I have my regular old pre-stretched, double-prime canvas, and
I've covered the entire canvas with a very thin
coat of black gesso and allowed that to dry completely. Black gesso is dry, now then... Today we have three
different colors of gesso. We have white gesso,
black gesso and gray gesso and I just put 'em on a
little plastic tray here. And we use the old foam brush, it's easy to do, we
just go right into the, right into a little
bit of this gray gesso, and with this we're gonna
paint the little trees that you see in the background. The little ones that are far-far back. Okay let's go head up here now. We just take this and I'm
just gonna do a few of 'em on this canvas to show you how
they were done and then, then I'll put up a canvas
that's already finished, because it takes a while for this to dry. Well maybe 20, 30 minutes
but see, that's all ya do. Just pull down some basic
ideas for tree trunks. And you have to make the decision, how many trees live in your forest. See and sometimes the
trees are close together, sometimes far apart, some
of 'em will be thick, some will be thin, completely
and totally up to you. And sometimes, sometimes in the woods you'll find trees that
maybe one fell over, maybe when he was just a little guy, maybe a big ol' bear came through here and stepped on him, put a
little hurt in his back. Now then, let's reflect
those right down in here. They don't have to be
exact, just basic idea. That's all we're looking for. Just put 'em in, something like that. There see, now then, now I'll take, and I got a little liner brush here. With that I'll just dip
it in a little water because gesso as you know
is a water-based paint. There we go, it's actually
not a paint, it's a primer. You know in the art
world now there's a lot of controversy about
using acrylic under oils because they say it's not permanent. There just turn it, but the
gesso is a permanent medium. So if you're worried about
acrylics under your oils disappearing after 40 or 50 years, this is considered a permanent medium. All right now, we just
thin this down very thin, and with that we're just gonna make the indication of a lot
of little tree limbs, that just hang around out
here and play all day. But we're not worried
about 'em being perfect. Because these are just
little background limbs. Shoot probably half of
'em won't even show. You just puttin' it in for
filler material, that easy. See there... You know I get letters from people 'say, "Bob I've got a little
nervous twitch in my hand "and it, I just can't
paint because of that." This is your painting, because if you have a little nervous twitch
you can make the most gorgeous tree limbs, you're
ahead of the rest of us. I have to intentionally,
sorta shake my hand and pretend that I do. There, see something like that. And you just figure
out where you want 'em, and you put as many or as few
as you want in your world. Very simple, anybody can do this as I say, I like to design
paintings in every series, that everybody can do even
if they've never painted. And in this series, this is the one. It is the easiest painting
in the whole series. And it's also maybe one
of the most effective. When we were doing the little opening, the people here in the
studio just went crazy over this painting, it was
absolutely their favorite. All right... And you know it only takes a few seconds to see that little opening but it takes a lot of fantastic people
to put it together. This one was a brain child of
my good friend Jerry Morton, one of the engineers here at the station. There, ol' Jerry he's, he's like me, he's got sort of a crazy imagination. You put the two of us together, we come up with wild ideas (chuckles). But that's what makes it fun, now then. See we've got a few
little tree limbs there now we can just go down
here with the same way, and just put in the indication
of a few things down here and they don't have to
match exactly what's above. Just so we have some indications. Really don't worry about
this one, just let it happen. This is one that you should enjoy and have a good time with. When Annette and I were traveling all over the country teaching, I wish we'd a had this
painting for people to do. Because it works so well and you can take this idea and you can
do all kinds of things with the colored gessos, shoot you could, for example if you wanted to paint a barn, you could paint the entire barn, the basic outline of it, with just gessos. And then you'd come back and cover it with liquid clear and then go over it with transparent or
semi-transparent colors. And it shows through, it's
a fantastic way to paint. Just makes it very easy and a lot of fun and painting as you know,
should be a lot of fun. All right there we go, 'kay
that gives us a general idea of how you make the
little background trees. Let me wipe off the little
brush, then we'll come back. And I'm gonna put the trees
that are more distinct right over the top of it and for that, I'm gonna use just pure white gesso. Same little foam brush see,
just load it up like that. Just pure white gesso, 'kay
let's go up in here now. And you decide where the trees live that are in the foreground,
touch and pull down. As I'm pulling down,
I'm adding a little bit more pressure to the brush so it automatically gets bigger toward the base. Normally, and I say normally because sure as heck there's a
tree that's different. Normally trees are bigger at the bottom than they are at the top. So I'm just gonna put a few in here so you can see how they look. Maybe this one here, sometimes birch trees grow in clumps, in fact most of the time they grow in clumps. But that'll give you an
idea of how those were done. Now then, we'll go right below it. And pull straight down, I start with a little more pressure and release or less pressure when we're going down. If you have trouble painting upside down, just take the canvas off and turn it over. There that gives us a basic idea, that's all we're looking for in this. Just wanna show you how it's done. Back to my water and
we'll go right back into that white gesso and
once again I'm just gonna make the little tree limbs
but this is pure white gesso. If you're only using one
foam brush, wash your brush in between the gray and the white. So that this color is
pure, you want this white gesso here is a very strong, there we go. Isn't that fantastic though? I just love little paintings like this. They really make painting so easy, and they're great, they're great if you're doing a little demonstration for like, your family or your friends because they just won't believe what's happening right there in front of their eyes. And all the preparatory
work you do by yourself. There we are isn't that neat? But now if you have
trouble making this paint flow across here, it just means you don't have enough water in it. just like when we're using
oils if they don't flow it means you don't have
enough paint thinner. So don't be afraid to
put some water in it. And this takes usually, oh depending on the heat and humidity and all that, usually it'll dry in
about 15 to 30 minutes. And also depending how thick you put it you can build gesso up. 'Kay let's go down into the, let's go down into the bottom here and
put some reflections. See there, and they do,
once again they do not have to be exact, very
few people are gonna sit and check your reflection to make sure it's identical to the thing above it. There, I love these colored gessos. I don't know why it
took so long to get 'em, since we've introduced
them into the art world, they've just about become a standard. There, everybody's using them now. All right... 'Kay, few over here
somethin' about like that. And that's really about
all there is to it. And when you're at home and you have unlimited time and don't have a mean old director to come out and yell at ya, you can just take your time and do all these things that you wanna do. I just wanna show you how
this painting was done because it's so different than anything we've done before and it's so wonderful it's worth taking the time to show you. And I hope you send me some photographs of things that you do
with this because it's, this is just to stir your imagination, because I know you can come up with much better things to do, there we are. Look at that though... All right now then, let me
wash this little brush out. One more thing I'll show you. I'm gonna take a fan brush and I recommend you get one of your old fan brushes that's about wore out. We'll just take a little
black, put a little bit of water with it just to thin it. This is just pure black though. Just enough water to make
it a little bit thinner. And I'm gonna take a knife, and I just wanna take
and sort of flick at, see it, just flick little
globules of gesso on there. Just flick 'em on there,
this really works better if you have the canvas laying flat, so you can get up above it and flick it. But this will show you how
it's done, there we are. Just flick 'em on there. And it doesn't matter if
these little globules go onto the black because when it
dries, they won't even show. Won't even show... Now then, we'll go back
here and I'll get the brush that we were using that
just had black on it. And very gently touch it, and
this is still a little wet. I would suggest you allow it
to dry when you're at home. But just give it a little
pull see how it makes it look like birch
trees, isn't that sneaky? There and it's gorgeous,
you really can do this so easy it's almost unbelievable. Once again, allow it to dry. But that easy all those little flicks that you made up there, they cause the little dark indications
in the bark of a birch tree. Now I'll tell you what,
I have a canvas here that I've already prepared and have it completely finished so you can see, it's just basically the same
thing that we've done there. I'm gonna put this canvas on my easel and then we'll go 'head
and paint the picture. In the meantime, the other
day I had a fantastic experience with a
gorgeous-gorgeous little owl that I wanna share with you
and we'll put him up here. Have a look at him while
we're changing these canvases. This is a great-horned
owl, one of my good friends in Florida Cindy, loaned me this owl to play with a little
bit and he's very young, probably hmm, five, six-months old. But he is one of the most gorgeous birds that you've ever seen. And when they get big, oh look out there! (laughs) He's just playing. But the rascal almost got my nose there. But aren't those the
most beautiful things? Now, I like animals so
much, I'm tellin' ya, I could just about make a career out of taking care of these little rascals 'cause they're so beautiful,
isn't that something? We'll put him on at the end of the show and let you see him again because I think these owls are some of the most gorgeous creatures
that God has ever made. They are just, they are
just absolutely wonderful. Shoot, I'd like to have one for a pet, but you don't keep these
kinda creatures as pets. These kinda creatures, God
meant for 'em to be free. So we raise 'em up, we get 'em grown or we take care of 'em, whatever they need and then we turn 'em loose and they go back to nature where they belong. So I don't suggest you
keep wild animals as pets. Okay we back now... As I say, now we have one
up here that's nice and dry. And we can take off. So, let's take, we'll start
out, cover the entire canvas, with just a very thin
coat of liquid clear. The one word that I need to
repeat several times here, is the word thin, you
want the thinnest coat possible of liquid clear here. It's easy to put too much
because you can't see it. So, you want a very-very thin coat. Something like that, with
an old two-inch brush it doesn't take but a second to do it. That's all, just cover
the entire canvas with it. Something like that. I really like this little
opening using this painting up, the little painter guy (laughs) he looks like he literally just steps
right in to the painting. That makes it so neat, all right. It's a lot of fun to make those there. As I say it takes a lot of
fantastic people here to do that, there's a lot of video
magic going on in there. It's neat to be in a TV station and see how all this is done. All right, little bit
down here in the corner, shoot we'll be ready to go. Something about like
that, that's all we need. There we are, just make
sure we got a nice coat, very thin, very-very
thin all the way across. Like that... All right... Now then... The most fun part of the
whole technique, (laughs) is washing the brush,
that's my favorite part. We'll wash the brush, shake it off, (laughs) and just beat
the devil out of it. All right, now then. It takes very few colors to do this but all the colors other
than the Titanium white, are very transparent,
that's most important so that your gesso work shows through. So let's start out today
with a little touch of the Indian yellow, just a very
small amount, tiny little bit. There, just load a little
into the bristles and tap it. There, it's easy to go
back and add a little more. It's a son of a gun to
take it off, so start out with just a small amount
and you can always add more. Right across the base of these beautiful little trees that we painted. See, we'll just do this,
something like that. Here we'll do the same
thing in the reflections. Why that's pretty already isn't it? But this acts like a glaze,
the liquid clear there and the transparent color,
literally acts as a glaze. If you used, let's say you put these on with yellow gesso and you
went over it with blue, then you would end up
with a translucent green, and it's gorgeous, it is gorgeous. Try it, there we go. All right... I have several brushes here
so let me just grab another two-inch brush, don't
wanna spend all of our time washing brushes and
upsetting the camera people. We'll go right into Phthalo blue, I love Phthalo blue, it's
one of the prettiest colors. It's a gorgeous color just tap
a little into the bristles. And let's go right up to the
top of the canvas and just making little X's, just
paint right down like that. See there, isn't that fantastic? This works so wonderful
and it's so-so easy. So easy, that's what I say if you've never painted a painting
before, but you've always known there's an artist
hiding inside of you, this is the one to get started on, because it'll work, it'll work
the first time guaranteed. There, we'll do the same thing down here in the reflection, like that. There, I like paintings that work easy because if you have a
little success with this then you got enough confidence to go and you try something a little harder and a little harder, and
that's the way we learn. We just do things over and over and each time it gets easier and better and you can do more and
more difficult things. Now then, I like to sorta
darken the edges a little bit. So with the same old
brush, I'm gonna go right into a little bit of, little
touch of the Prussian blue. Prussian blue is a gorgeous color, but it's much darker, let me just work these out a little bit
like that, soften 'em. See there... There's no such things
as mistakes on these, shoot the worst thing can happen here, if you do happen to make a big boo-boo, can let those happen once
in while in our world, you take a paper towel
or a rag with a little paint thinner and you just wipe it off. The gesso is still there
and you can do it again. This is the way I practice these things. I just wipe 'em off and do 'em again. Prussian blue, darken
the top and the corners. Prussian blue, strong dark... Good nice color, there we are. See there, now we have
a graduation of color. And we'll do the same thing down here in the reflections,
something about like that. See there, mm-kay... As I say when Annette and I
were traveling and teaching I wish we'd a had some paintings
like this to show people. But we didn't have the colored gessos then and we couldn't do these kind of things. Now we have 'em... There just sort of blend that together. Wouldn't this be a
fantastic scene to maybe put some Indians on horses out here, that would be, if you're gonna
do that I'd recommend you paint this little background,
put your color in, allow that to dry, I'd
let it dry completely, then I'd go back and I'd
paint in all my little subjects that I wanted
in there if I wanted to have some, well some Indians on horses. I like Indians on horses
because they'd sort of match the birch trees
if they were on Pintos, they would just sort of
blend right in there. And we'll take a little
bit of Titanium white on the fan brush just
want a small-small amount. 'Bout like so, let's go up in here. Now I wanna begin putting the indication of a little snow that lives
back here in the background. Not much color, very little
in between back here. Just a little, just an
indication of a little, see just a little, so those background trees have something to sit on. There, if you put it
on very thin like that it's still fairly
transparent even though white is a very opaque color, if
you put it on thin we're okay. And then we're just putting
in background stuff. In fact back here we just
want it to sort of disappear. You can take your finger and smooth it in so it just disappears and we don't even know where anything's
at, look at that. That easy, that easy,
little bit back in here. Now this won't be an exact duplicate of what you see at the
beginning of the show but it will certainly show
you exactly how we made it. There, 'cause no, no
painting ever comes out exactly the same here,
we don't use any patterns or tracings or anything like that. So none of 'em ever come
out exactly the same. And that's even better,
that's what makes it fun. Alright now I'm gonna
load a lot of white paint. Lot of white paint
right into the bristles. 'Cause now we wanna get serious. Now we're gonna do the things that are in the foreground and in our world, maybe yep you're right,
comes right down like that. See you can just sorta
cut around the tree there. There, right up to him, we'll go around in some places,
some places we'll just let that blend right on
back, it's up to you. You make the big decisions. There, maybe it comes right on up here. I don't know, I don't know. Each of us will see it a different way. And that's what makes it fantastic. That's what makes it fantastic. If y'all make it look like
snow's goin' up a tree, just give it a little upward pull it'll look like there's a little bank
of snow, right up in there. That's very nice sometime,
makes a very nice effect. There, and there. See leave some of these
little dark areas in there. They turn out to be your best friends. Looks like little areas
in between layers of snow. Probably a little bunny rabbit hiding right in there lookin' out at ya. 'Kay, let's come maybe right
in here, you make the decision. Really I just wanna show
you how to do things. What you do is totally, totally
and completely up to you. There, 'cause painting is
a very individual thing. Everybody, everybody paints differently. That's what makes it wonderful. Let's see maybe over in here we make this side a little, a little
stronger, a little bigger. Wherever, now then I
wanna create the illusion of a few little reflections,
I don't wanna lose this purity down here, but
I just take a clean brush, grab the base of that a
little bit, just a little. You really don't even have
to hardly add any color. You can add a touch if you want to. I would suggest though, very little. I don't wanna ruin the
purity of this reflection. But I want it to look like water. And just by doing this,
this little simple step, and then very lightly
going across just enough to disturb it a little
bit, see it already, looks like the shimmer
of water across there. All right, isn't that fantastic? Now then, let me redefine
that edge a little. I sorta bumped it with a brush. But it's easy to fix, 'cause
we don't make mistakes, we just have happy accidents. Let's have a little, yep little
doer hangs right out there, he just lives there, there he is. See him, all kinds of little things that, and a we had a little peninsula
that the little painter guy at the beginning of the show jumped on. So we'll put it in, give
him something to stand on. Right about there, see there it comes. There, there we go. Something about like that. 'Kay, that's a little
place for him to stand. Now then, all we need to do, get our knife and get a little bit of the liquid white, put the least little touch
of Titanium white with it, I just wanna thin it down,
we'll come right back in here. And with that we just
cut in some water lines. And that's basically all
that was done in the little painting that you see at
the beginning of the show. As I say, it's unquestionably
is the simplest painting in this entire series and you can do it. You literally can do this one. There, it's a gorgeous little painting. And I think it'll open your mind to ideas like you can't believe it'll, it'll stir the imagination get ya excited. 'Cause there's a million
things you can do with this. It's really just up to
you, hope you've enjoyed this little painting, it's
been a lot of fun for us. And it's one of the most fantastic ideas. Let me see some of your work,
send me some photos okay? From all of us here, I'd like to wish you happy painting and God bless my friend. (smooth jazz music)
