- Hi, welcome back. You know what's so great about being the host of your own show? You get to bring guests
on every once in a while, and today it's my privilege
as well as my pleasure to present to you one of the
finest teachers in the country as well as one of my closest friends. I'd like to present to
you today Mr. Dana Jester. Dana travels all over the country and he teaches literally
thousands of people the joy of painting. I've asked him to come today
and do a little painting and show you how easy it is. Dana, how about doing just
a fine little painting there and I'll see you in a little while? - I think I can handle
that. Thanks a lot, Bob. I'll tell you what we'll do. We'll start off by I'll tell you how I have the canvas prepared, and while I'm doing that
they'll run the colors across the bottom of your screen for you. What I start out with
today is an 18 by 24 canvas coated with black jet,
so I allowed that to dry, and then I put a nice thin,
even coat of liquid clear, and then very, very thin liquid clear. You can take paper towel
after you put that on and wipe off the excess, because if you don't, your painting is liable
to drip down on the floor. You wouldn't believe what happens. Then next, I went ahead
and mixed up a color which was Van Dyke brown
and alizarin crimson, probably about 2/3 Van Dyke
brown and 1/3 alizarin crimson, and coated this portion
of the canvas here, leaving this area open,
just black jet over there. With that, we'll go ahead and get started. We'll mix up a color here. We'll take some titanium white, go ahead and mix up
plenty of this color here, and a little yellow ochre. If you don't like this color, you use the color you
want in your painting. Sometimes I'm doing a painting
and work on it real hard, and decide in the middle of the painting I don't like the color and just change it. See, I'm mixing up quite a bit of this. After you get something like
that, that's good enough. Wipe off the old paint off the knife and, we'll grab a 2" brush, and just tap it in the paint like that. No particular way to load. We'll go right up here to the canvas. You know what? When I do this, every time
I do something like this, this here reminds me of a flame. Ya know, a flame. Not yet, but you'll see
it here in a second. Look at that. That's a flame on a candle. We can pretend like it anyhow. I'm going to make this a little larger than maybe what I want it to
be on the finished painting because that dark will
overpower that real quick. We'll have the same color going here, and we'll just put us a little light right down through here. What I thought we'd paint today is a wooded scene or something
that might look nice. Since I'm from Indiana,
we need a wooded scene. Maybe this here will be a
path or something. Who knows? Just go nice horizontal brush stroke back and forth on it. A little wider at the bottom for perspective purposes to
help you out a little bit. That way it'll go back into the painting. While we have this same color going, we're gonna reload our brush, and we'll go back right
over here on this side here. No particular order, we're just gonna indicate some
light every now and then that shows through some of those trees. What trees? Well, I don't know. I'll show you here in a little bit. Just Xs, just get real loose with it. Boy, that looks crazy now, doesn't it? While we're working on the same color, we'll just come right up here and put a little bit on this side. Maybe just a little down in here. I know it's hard to see
on this black canvas, but trust me, there's a little there. What we're gonna do is go
ahead and clean our brush. This is the fun part. You know what? I tried to get Bob to stay on here, but he just wouldn't do it. He's afraid I would flip paint on him like I did the last time. Now, with the clean
brush, we'll come up here and we'll blend and soften this down. What you're really looking
for when you're doing this is just, well if you wear glasses, it looks like you need
to put your glasses on. Just something like that. Now we'll jump over
here to this other side. Blend and soften that down a little bit. With the same brush, all
I'm gonna is come down here and beat the excess paint off of it, (brush tinks) and then go in with the same brush and pick up titanium white, quite a bit on the brush. Just kind of pull it
through there like that, and that makes a nice
heavy load on the brush. Then we'll go up here, splat. That's gonna be our brightest
area in the painting. Continually go back and reload. There's a lot of paint on this, a lot of paint. Boy, I like this new easel. I tell you what, this is nice. Now we'll set that down and let
that brush rest for a minute and we'll use this new-looking
blender brush here. We'll just, real lightly, blend it on this area here. And soften all this down. You don't want any real,
real sharp edges there, and over here the same thing. Okay, you can set that down, and we can grab our pallet knife and mix up a little bit of Van Dyke brown, a little Van Dyke brown and
a touch of titanium white. It's just a shade lighter
than Van Dyke brown, and then we'll work with the fan brush. All we'll do is load the fan
brush to a chiseled edge. Quite a bit of paint on
the bush, just like that. Here we go. Now, come up here and start at the top, and just drop in an old tree trunk. It might be a new, it's a
new tree trunk, that's right. That's not an old one. Reload, and there might be an old crooked little old friend right... there. Of course, we have a
bunch of trees in here. This is just to indicate
the tree trunks themselves. It's a bigger tree over here. At this point of the painting, I always look at this and say, "Is this going to make a painting?" You never know, I tell you. But no worry, you can do it. It's not that hard once you try it. Now we'll jump over here on the other side and put in a couple little
tree trunks over here. We don't want this side to feel left out. And we'll put that old brush down. We'll grab a clean 2" brush, and then we'll lightly
follow the same direction that you put the tree trunks on and blend and soften those down. That'll set them back into the painting. Then we'll go over here to this side and do the same thing. Okay, with that, we'll go ahead and stomp
in some dark color here. We're gonna get carried
away here. (brush taps) When I'm teaching classes, I
call this the 4 o'clock stomp. When it gets close to the end of the day, I'll just grab the old brush and say, "Let's do the 4 o'clock stomp." It may be 2:30, but it gets
them moving, I tell ya. We'll go right up here, and we'll start by tapping in some indications of some trees, or some foliage anyhow. If you want it to get softer, just tap a little more on its outer edge, and it'll soften up because it's working into your light color there. We don't want to get too carried away, but you need to have a little
bit of this foliage on here. In order to see your
light, you need the dark, so if you just keep that in mind every time you do one of these. Now when you get down here
on these smaller bushes, what you want to do is tap and pull in to your
painting like that. We'll go up to the other
side, the other corner and we'll tap some more foliage into them trees. I tell you what, sometimes
the quicker you do this, the better off you are. If you move along real quick
and brush this in there, more than likely you'll have
a better looking painting. I know it probably doesn't make sense. When you load this brush, just tap like this into your paint, and get that little
roll of paint out there on the end just like that. Push it in there like that. Save some of that sky area. You don't want to kill all your light. Before we get too carried
over here toward the center, what we better do is put in some of this mixture here which is a little bit of yellow ochre, the mixture we used earlier
in the light area there, and add a little more yellow ochre to it. So it's yellow ochre, white, and let's do one more thing to it, a touch of alizarin. Or two touches if you want to. Take your 2" brush, just tap right into your paint like that. That's where you get that
little ridge of paint out there. We'll put some distant bushes in here, or faint little trees. All I do is put a basic tree
shape on there and then, get a clean brush and... tap over it and soften them
down a little bit more. That's what we'll do. We'll just grab another clean 2" brush. Have plenty of brushes
here, thank goodness, going. Just tap right along this edge, and pull down. The same goes with this over here. Now we'll go back to our
old dirty brown brush, that's to save some time, We'll load our brush into the
paint just like this again pushing it into your paint like that. Then we'll come up here and put in a big tree here. That's a monster there. He sneaks right on out
here toward the light. Keep reloading your brush. You need the dark in
order to show your lights, so keep that in mind
when you're doing this. Like I say, if you don't like these colors you can always change yours. You don't have to follow this exact. Down over here in this area,
we want to turn the brush and use it vertically
when I tap onto the canvas just to indicate some
different sized bushes there. Go back and reload again, same color. And tap in some more bushes underneath these larger trees. While we have that same color going, we'll just reload and get some more bushes over here on this other side. That creates by this little mist here, that will create a layered look like there's more depth in your painitng. Okay, we'll put that brush down and we'll go back with our fan brush and some Van Dyke brown and some midnight black. We're just looking for a good,
dark color, so that's fine. We'll just go right up here, and maybe there's a tree
trunk that you can see right there, and then it skips along and maybe hits someone right here. It's a hit-and-miss
method, that's what it is. I know it's probably hard for
you to see, but it's there. It comes down just like that. And maybe there's one more larger tree sneaking in right here. just kind of let your brush bounce if it's hard for it to stick,
it will release more paint and it will stay right there
on the canvas quicker for you. Then we'll grab a liner brush and go down into our thinner here and thin down some Van Dyke brown. I'm picking up quite a bit of thinner because it takes it. It takes a lot of thinner to make the liner brush load right. Now after you get this
pretty well thinned down, just spin it through the
pain like that, roll it. That loads the entire bristle, and then go up here and
hold back on the brush and then just lightly
let it flip off there. (quick whooshing sounds) Oops, I forgot you needn't
make some sound effects. These old things, I tell you, if you drink about four cups
of coffee and then try this you'll be in better shape. That way you have a nervous hand there. Zip, and in your world, as
you know you've heard before, you can put these branches
as many as you want or as few as you want. (quick swishing sound) I do that in a lot of workshops, like when we're teaching the teachers, I'll go making these sound effects, and then they start copying that. It seems like it works
a little bit better. Anyhow, something like that. Just throw you a couple
little sticks, twigs down there at the bottom right here. Maybe a couple dead ones in there. I'll have to add some
more thinner to that. We don't want this side to feel left out, so we'll put a couple over here. Kind of reminds me sometimes I get carried away with this and it looks like maybe
there's a deer antler sticking his head out there. It might be, I don't know. You don't want some of
these trees to feel left out like these guys right here. They need a branch or two. Zip, zip, zip. See, if you just kind
of flip them on there, you're in a lot better shape. Let's do one more, and then
we'll move onto something else. Over here on this side, put
a couple on this guy here. We don't want him to feel left out. He'll feel like he's naked just standing out there in the woods without some branches on him. See, if you just flip them on
there and get carried away, sometimes it looks even better. And sometimes it doesn't. Okay, let's clean that liner brush. Let's grab us a clean fan brush and a little bit of the liquid white and some of this dark Van Dyke brown and some liquid white. We'll tap us in a couple little
highlights on these trees. The light source is coming from here, so we'll just take and tap
right down through here. Now maybe this tree trunk
will show up a little bit. Stand out just a little, and just tap it mainly
on the left-hand side, and let it just get darker and darker and you go to the other side. Keep going back and reloading your brush. Let's do this old fella
standing right here. Now with that, I think we probably better put in a couple of little lighter areas, like maybe the light's
really striking down through here on this path. I'm just going to pick
up with this fan brush some straight titanium white, quite a bit of it on the brush. Load it to a chiseled edge, and (swooshing noise). There's a lot of paint
left there on the canvas. Now what I'll do with this fan brush now is just go back and forth on this, just hit and a miss, like that. And maybe just back and forth a little, rocking stroke just like that 'til is just goes back into nothing. That kind of sets that
path off a little bit more. Okay, let's take a clean, well let's get us a clean brush here. Okay, we'll take a clean 2" brush, after I get one clean here. That's what you get for being lazy and letting them stack up. I'm bad about that whenever
I'm doing a class too. Okay, now with this 2" brush, what we'll do is we'll
go ahead and tap into our yellow ochre and white mix. Now you see why I made so much of it, andthe I push it into
the paint just like that. We'll go up here and highlight
these little rascals. Just a lot of paint and a
little, little light touch continually going back
and reloading that brush. You know what? I tell them also, "No paint, no painting," so keep going back and
reloading that brush. We just, again just like I was saying, we tap and push it into
the paint just like that. We don't want this side
over here to feel left out. You'll just need to continually go back and reload your brush. Let it get darker, and darker, and darker as you get further up into
the corner of the painting. You know what I would do? Is maybe add a touch more
alizarin crimson to this and change the flavor a little bit and put in some different
colors right here on these guys here. Reload the brush. That's one thing you gotta continually do. Okay let's change the
flavor a little bit more, more alizarin. Getting in that yellow ochre
mixed again, more alizarin. And we'll pounce in a
couple of them right here. Look at that. Maybe, I'll tell you what, just vary your colors to what you want. This just happens to be
what I'm going to work with. Now as I work on across the painting, I might want to darken it up. I want to add a little bit of this Van Dyke brown-alizarin mix, so it's not quite as bright
but still pretty bright. Maybe it's a little darker over here. But at least you can
still see a bush there. Same color. There it is growing down here
on the base of these trees. And since this is not so
bright well use the same, this on the highlight
for this tree back here, the foliage, just a little bit. We don't want a whole lot on here. I can see just a little touch of it there. Now, what we'll do is go ahead and clean that brush, flip out the excess thinner. It's the fun part (brush
tinks), and then beat it. Then what we'll do is go in that mixture we was just working with. I just want to clean the
brush so I can load it and get a better load. There you can see where
that little roll of paint, that little ridge. That way we can form the land
here, the lay of the land. This being your lightest area, it's safer to start right in here, and follow this angle,
this lay of the land. If not, you'll be in trouble. (brush sweeps) When you're at home you can always, take your time and do whatever to it here. Just (chuffing noise). See, those sound effects,
that helps a lot. (brush sweeps) It's also important as you're doing this to save just a little bit of dark there. Go back and reload the brush, and get us another little bit of land sticking
out here on this side. Then after you pretty well
have it in there like that, there's not much paint left in the brush, so what I would do is go
ahead and take this same brush and very lightly tap
right underneath here. So you don't have that real
dark, straight edge up there. Looks like it's attached. Same thing for this other side. Now I want to brighten
this area right in here up a little bit more. I'm going to load some of
our yellow ochre and white, just like that, and brighten
it up just a little bit where the light may be
hitting it just a little more. We'll zap a couple of those in there. That just shows the light
hitting on top of those mounds. Then I'll grab a clean fan brush, pick up some Van Dyke
brown and midnight black, and put in a couple little rocks. (ricochet imitation) There might be three or four rocks there. You can put as many or as few
in your opinion as you want. Then, with some titanium white, liquid white, and a little bit of Van Dyke brown, we'll stick a little bit of
highlight on top of those. I'll tell you, the old camera on the wall says it's about time to get out of here. So with that, I hope you've
enjoyed this painting and until next time, happy painting. (bright guitar music)
