- The sun's going down and the evening palms are swaying in the warm breeze.

Let me show you how you can paint your own version pf this scene.

Join me next on "Painting with Wilson Bickford."

(mellow music) - [Announcer] Support for "Painting with Wilson Bickford is provided by The J.M.

McDonald Foundation, continuing the example modeled by J.M.

McDonald by contributing to education, health, humanities, and human services.

Sharing since 1952.

Online at jmmcdonaldfoundation.org.

(upbeat music) The View Center for Arts and Culture is an Adirondack exhibition and performance space featuring in person and online classes for creatives of all ages and abilities.

Open calls, events, and class schedules online at viewarts.org.

- Hi, thanks for joining me today.

I've got a nice little palm tree painting that I wanna share with you today.

It's appropriate for any skill level, beginner, intermediate, advanced, it's a very easy project, very easy to accomplish, yet very effective.

It's gonna start out with some acrylic underpainting underneath which I will describe here in a moment, and then we're gonna put clear transparent oil glaze over the top.

If you go to the WPBS-TV website, you'll be able to download the supply list with all the oil paints and brushes that we're using.

And I'm gonna recap those here for you in just a moment.

There's also a sketch that you'll be able to print off.

It's not necessarily meant to be traced or transferred like I normally do but it's a reference just for you to look at just to kind of dream up your own design, your own layout of the trees and the composition.

For oil paints today, I'm using cadmium red light, dioxazine purple, cadmium yellow pale, ivory black, and titanium white.

For brushes, I'm using a two inch scenery brush, a number three fan brush, a number two detailed scriptliner, a number two liner, a large mop brush, and a small painting knife.

I'm also using black acrylic gesso, and some water to do the underpainting.

Now acrylic paint, as you know, is water-based, so I have a little cup of water here which I will use to rinse out my brushes and make sure you wash 'em out soon afterwards so they don't harden up on you.

After I get this stage completed, it's gonna be oil from there on, so I'm just gonna set this down here and I'll kinda give you an idea how I accomplished this on this one.

I'm gonna take a pencil and just lightly kind of rough in a little land mass here.

From there, I'm gonna use my fan brush and some of this black acrylic and notice I'm kind of tapping downward.

It leaves a little spiky and grassy looking on the top.

So I'm just filling it in solidly.

Now I'm not gonna finesse this one too much, I've already got this one done ahead of time.

That's why I did it ahead of time.

I'm probably done with the fan brush at this point.

So I have a container here with some water.

I'm just gonna put it in there and make sure that it doesn't dry out on me.

And from there, I'm gonna take my number two liner and some water.

And I basically just drew in my palm tree trunks.

Now you'll have to keep your paint quite thin and fluid to flow on top of this canvas but I put the trunks in.

I just made sure I varied the heights and the spacings, although you want 'em a little heavier at the bottom, a little skinnier and more narrow at the top.

All the work in this painting is in this underpainting stage.

So you want to take your time with it, do a good job.

I'm not gonna do all those trees.

I'm just gonna demonstrate how I did the ones that I have.

I'm gonna mimic the reflection in the water and I'm a little more jittery 'cause the water's gonna have some movement to it.

Something like that.

Keep your brush wet.

I'm rinsing that one out.

I'm gonna take the number two detail scriptliner, it's a little thicker, fuller brush.

I'm gonna take some of this black acrylic.

And I come in by putting the ribs on the fronds, if that makes any sense.

They have that spine through the center of them.

I'm just painting skinnier lines to represent those ribs.

And then the fronds come off the ends like this.

Pretty simple.

Let 'em make sense.

They all hang downward because of gravity.

It doesn't take much to get the feeling of a palm tree.

Do you know why the palm tree was so lonely?

It didn't have many fronds.

(giggles) So see, I just keep filling it out.

It's okay if they touch and overlap each other a little bit, actually that's a good thing.

So see, it doesn't take much.

And I just kept going and going and going and fleshing it out until I was finally happy with it.

But this is where all the detail is.

So this is where you want to take your time and a good underpainting in place, afterwards we're simply just gonna add color to it basically.

Don't you think you can do this?

Oh, I know you can.

I know you can.

This one's pretty simple.

Now if I were to make a boo boo, I would just simply wet my rag and blot it back off there very quickly.

I could lift it right off, no harm done.

So that's how I accomplished that.

I took a little more time, a few more pains with it as you can see, and you could actually come in with the liner and make it a little more grassy if you chose to, put more grasses in.

Notice there's a sense of the reflection of the land underneath.

So I just did horizontal dash lines like this to mimic the color riding on the ripples of the surface of the water.

You'll see it falls together pretty easily.

It might not be so quickly because you have to take your time with those trees, a little more time consuming than difficult, I think, I don't think it's really that difficult.

It's just gonna take a little while.

That's why I did it ahead of time, but there's a lot of paintings you can design like this with an underpainting and it makes the job really easy and they're easy and they're really effective by the time you get done with it.

Out here on the point I had some rocks.

Rocks can be any size and shape, just make sure they're relatively flat on the bottom.

So they look like they're sitting in the water at our eye level.

And that's really all there is to it.

This one like I said, is developed much more, has much more detail in it.

And I just took more pains with it.

You wanna make sure that this one dries very thoroughly, you could either set it aside to dry on its own.

It'll be dry within a half hour or so.

Or you could hit it with a hair dryer and have it dry in two minutes.

Oh, I forgot to mention, I just noticed this one.

I forgot to mention that I had the reflections in, the reflections are pretty much the same type of thing.

I'm just kind of working backwards and they don't have to be as distinct because it's in the water and it's a reflection, I'm kind of painting 'em upside down.

I hate to say that that scares everybody when I say I'm painting 'em upside down, but see I'm not using as much paint and they're kind of sketchy.

I want 'em a little softer but I do have a sense of the reflections in there as well.

Make sure that you swish your brushes out in water and clean them out and you can discard the excess acrylic and I'm gonna lock this down.

I need to put out a little bit of clear glazing medium on my palette.

That's another medium that I'm gonna need for this.

So I'll put that out.

I'm gonna put a nice thin coat over the whole canvas which will wet that down and allow me to apply my glazes.

This is more or less a silhouette scene but I could impart color into these if I chose to.

I probably won't have time to do it today, but I've got another one here that I can show you, it's along the same idea as this one, it's a little more detailed, a little more color in it.

I took more time with it.

It's a little more detailed, like I said, but this is along the same line.

This was done the same way pretty much.

It was all underpainted with the black.

I did put a little bit of green over the top once I had glazed it just like we're gonna do today.

I have the sun peeking over the top.

Just a little more detailed, but same idea.

So you can take these ideas that I show you and design your own compositions, which is fun.

There's nothing wrong with duplicating mine.

We all start out by copying somebody somewhere but it's always fun to try your own thing with 'em too.

Okay, I've got that clear glazing medium on.

I'm gonna take a little bit of the cadmium red light.

Watch this, this is pretty dramatic.

Just like that.

This is more or less a transparent layer of color so the black shows right through it.

Notice I've got kind of a wedge shape in there more or less.

So I'm gonna sweep it up on this side and sweep it down on this side.

Just I don't like to put just straight horizontal bands through it, especially if it's a sky and it makes it look like it's got a little more movement by having the lines not be so straight.

See it doesn't take a whole lot of paint, that medium that I put on the canvas extends this and stretches it out.

Makes it go a little further.

From there, I'm gonna wipe this brush off.

I'm gonna pick up a little purple.

Now I'm gonna put in this purple background first before I put in the darker cloud accent.

So I'm not going with that darkest color first, I'm gonna take a little bit of this dioxazine purple.

It is very, very strong.

Be careful with it.

It will rock your world.

I'm gonna work that in.

Scrub it in quite thinly.

Get a value that you like, go as light or as dark as you want.

See, we did all the fine brush work with those trees.

So this is all just bigger brush stuff for the rest of this.

Makes it easy.

I'm gonna put that on, work it into the orangey color.

Let 'em hold hands a little bit.

Now this one overall is a little darker and I know that and that's fine.

I don't care if this one's as dark as that.

I wanna show you the process, not necessarily make a carbon copy of it.

But having said that, if you want it darker, obviously you know that you can just take a little more of the purple and you can darken that down a little bit.

It's all good.

It all depends on what you want.

You are the artist here so you have to determine what you're gonna paint, how you're gonna paint it, how you want it to look, everybody's different.

I'm gonna take more of the same color and I need to do down here, go right over those reflections.

There are a million paintings that you can do that are so simple.

This is one of the, like I said, this is a simple approach, it's very effective, but it doesn't take a whole lot of work or skill to do it really when you get right down to it.

Okay.

Just blend those together a little bit.

Okay.

I'll set that brush to the side.

I'm gonna go back to a number three fan brush.

Now this is the one, the clean one that I have sitting here, not the one I just used for the acrylic and put in the water.

I'm gonna take a little bit more of this purple.

Wipe it off, make sure I don't have too much.

I'm gonna put some of these little darker cloud accents in here.

Now see, that looks really purple.

This one's not quite as purple.

On this one, I put a little bit of the cadmium red light with it.

So see if you don't like it this purpley, put just a smidgen, a smidgen of the cadmium red light, just a little bit and you'll see it kind of graze it down a little bit.

Again, you know what that is?

It's your preference.

I can't say that enough.

It's your preference and whatever you want.

Look how much better it looks though to break that sky up, put some cloud movements in.

It looks pretty good and I can go right over those dark trees.

Look it the shows right through in between the spaces and the fronds.

It's pretty cool how this works.

I can hear those fronds rustling in the breeze.

So put as much or as little of that as you want.

I'm just about out of paint, I have to mix up just a little more because I have to put some in the reflection.

So I don't match every cloud for every cloud, but I try to get some of them in there in the proper placement.

Most of 'em are up higher and not down in here, so I don't need a lot of reflection in there too much.

I'm gonna come back with this large two inch brush and wipe it off.

If I use a light touch and a circular motion just touching the canvas lightly, not bearing down much at all, I can smooth this out, softens all the rough edges out of it.

And just that easy we've got the background in.

Pretty simple, right?

Yeah, you can do this.

I know you can.

(light string music) To add another layer of closeness to your scene, you can have some fronds hanging in from the outside, just thin down some black on your liner brushes, make these a little bigger and more substantial than the ones we did in the background.

They will appear closer and it really helps push the background away which gives you more depth on your canvas.

Okay, I've gotta go back to my number two detailed scriptliner.

Now this one's been soaking in the water over here so I'm just gonna swish it out.

Wipe it out.

I can tell on the rag, I've got all the black out of it 'cause it's not showing any black.

So I swished it out really well with the water.

I'm going to put my sun in.

I have to kind of get an idea where the horizon line's gonna be the ocean line.

I have to decide.

I'm gonna say somewhere right in through there.

So I am gonna mark that first.

I'm gonna take yellow and a little spec of white on the edge of my knife.

I'm gonna cut in a little sense of an edge there just so I know where the horizon line's gonna be.

And then I can work from there down.

Make sure it's level and parallel at the bottom of your canvas.

Right now, I just want to mark it so I know where it is.

So I'm not getting too technical with it just yet.

If I know where the line is then I know how high in the sky I want to put my sun.

Now I'll continue that across and down in just a moment.

I'm gonna take some of the same yellow color on this detailed scriptliner and I'm gonna paint in my sun.

I like to flatten the brush out on two sides like a little chisel, makes it a little easier.

And if it's earlier in the evening obviously the sun's gonna be higher.

If it's later, is gonna be lower.

And I positioned this one so the glow came right between the rocks a little bit, which was kind of nice.

I'm gonna say right about there.

Try to keep my shoulder out of the way here.

I'm gonna add just a drop of paint thinner to that 'cause it feels a little sticky on my brush.

Here's something for you to always remember, if it doesn't stick, it's too thick.

If it doesn't stick, it's too thick.

Always remember that.

That'll help you out in a lot of times when you're fighting with the brush.

If you fight with the brush, the brush always wins.

I'm gonna let the bottom of that sun just kind of disappear.

It's like, I'm not gonna complete the hard edge of the circle all the way around.

It looks like it's kinda lost in the atmosphere and the haze, which is kind of a nice look.

I like that.

I could, I could really finesse it and make it hard all the way around like this one, I'm gonna let it just softly disappear a little bit, just for something different.

Then I will come back to my painting knife and some of that yellow and white mixture.

And I'm gonna cut off a little sliver right on the edge of the blade, tiny little sliver.

And I'll come in and continue these lines down through a little bit.

This just represents the sparkle on the water.

I'm gonna go across these trunks a little bit where I go across the trunks.

I'm seeing that against the black, but I will touch that up.

I knew that was gonna happen so I'm not worried about it.

I hope you get to give this a try.

This is actually a fun one.

Today, I'm using cadmium red light for the orangey color and some dioxazine purple, but you could use a red rose deep and cerulean blue and just any colors, yellow ochre and ultramarine blue.

Just something any of the colors are gonna work.

They're just transparent glazes.

Make sure these ripples stay parallel to the bottom of the canvas, you don't want 'em running uphill or downhill too much.

I'm gonna put some right over the top of these reflections which will help push those down a little bit.

I'm gonna wipe this blade off.

I'm gonna take some pure white now, load the knife the same exact way.

Pull it out in a flat little pile.

Cut off just that little sliver.

And I want really maximum glare and shine here.

And I'm gonna put a little bit of white right down through the middle underneath the sun.

See if you use minimal paint on the blades, you notice how it picks up the bumps and the weave of the canvas and breaks into little dots.

It looks sparkly.

That's ideal.

If you can get that effect, that's what you want.

I'm gonna go back to that number two script liner, and I'm gonna swish it out and I'll take some white and I'll thin it down either with some of this clear glazing medium or paint thinner.

Just get it thin enough so it's gonna come off your brush.

Notice I've got a little shimmer light dancing down through here.

So I'm just gonna come underneath the sun, have some light dancing on the water.

As it comes lower, I'm gonna let it just kind of trail off so I just wipe the brush off and I'm gonna let it literally just kinda run out of paint the lower I come.

It gives a little bit of movement on the water, a little bit of shine anywhere where your glaze or your water ripples may have encountered the black.

See how right here, I can see the yellow and white right on top of the black.

I'm gonna take black and just repaint right over the top of that just to correct that, just as easy as that, nothing to it.

So that's pretty much how I accomplished this.

It's a nice, easy project, like I said, but it's very effective.

It's an easy way to approach it.

You know me, I like to paint smart, not hard.

You can add more ripples in here if you choose to, sparkles, I've got just about enough time.

I'm gonna take the number two liner.

I swish this out in the water, make sure it's clean.

I'm gonna thin down just a spec of black here and we gotta have a couple seagulls silhouetted against this sun back here.

I can almost hear 'em.

(imitates seagulls squawking) There we go.

Evening palms.

Give it a try.

If you do, I'd love to see a copy of it.

You can contact me on Facebook or through my website.

Send me a photo of your effort, I'd love to see it.

Until next time, stay creative and keep painting.

(mellow music) - [Announcer] Support for "Painting with Wilson Bickford is provided by the J.M.

McDonald Foundation, continuing the example modeled by J.M.

McDonald by contributing to education, health, humanities and human services, sharing since 1952, online at jmmcdonaldfoundation.org.

(upbeat music) The View Center for Arts and Culture is an Adirondack exhibition and performance space featuring in-person and online classes for creatives of all ages and abilities.

Open calls, events and class schedules online at viewarts.org.

- [Announcer 2] All 13 episodes of "Painting with Wilson Bickford" season eight are now available on DVD or Blu-ray in one box set for $35 plus 4.95 shipping and handling, or learn the techniques used to paint sundown beacon with the in-depth "Paint Smart, Not Hard" series of Wilson Bickford instructional DVDs.

Additional titles available.

Order online or watch or download directly to your computer or mobile device.

More information at wpbstv.org/painting.

(light upbeat music)