- Join me next on "Painting with Wilson Bickford."

We'll pick up where we left off on part one to complete eye of the tiger.

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Continuing the example modeled by JM McDonald by contributing to education, health, humanities and human services.

Sharing since 1952. online at jmmcdonaldfoundation.org.

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

- Hi, welcome back.

As you recall, last week, we were starting to paint eye of the tiger and we had under painted the black portions and all the stripes and all the details.

And we were adding glazes over the top.

This was just a preliminary glaze.

Now we're gonna darken and deepen everything, build it up a little richer, a little more orange.

Different tigers, there's different tiger species.

There was even white tigers, as you know but I've seen tigers...

I know there's Indian tigers.

There's Siberian tigers.

There's different ones.

And I don't know one from another, to be honest with you but some of them are more orange-y.

Some are more yellow like this, more of a yellowish orange.

If you prefer that color, run with it, it's fine.

This one, I darken down a little more orange-y.

It's all good.

Use your own discretion.

Find a good reference photo to work from and use it.

Now, this I'm gonna add more cadmium red light to my mixture that I had, noticed that there are certain areas that are darker behind his ears.

A little bit here on the front of his muzzle where left it lighter here, right on his snout.

So I'm gonna build those areas a little darker, a little richer, put it on, feather it in a little bit.

If you need to, you can even use the fan brush just to feather it out, blend it in.

I'm gonna put a little bit on the back of this ear and a little bit right out in here.

Now I had a reference photo I was looking at when I designed this one and I was just duplicating what I saw in the photo.

So I'm basically just using this now as my reference and duplicating that.

So you can't paint your subject if you can't see it.

So you're gonna want to use something whether you use my design or you have your own photos.

You're gonna need something that's gonna work well for a reference.

So see, I'm trying to leave that little lighter out here.

I got a little too much there.

The nice part is I can just wipe it back.

Boy that was hard, wasn't it?

See what an easy fix that is.

Okay, a little bit there, a little there.

And then I'm just gonna darken it overall a little bit more so.

I'm gonna take cadmium red light and some burnt sienna.

And right now I'm basically just putting in the color that I like.

Am I being true to the photo?

Well, not necessarily not as much.

That's a little too red.

I'm gonna put more sienna with it, but I want it to look realistic enough, but I wanna use a color that I like.

I'm not afraid to go a little brighter on my colors.

No matter if it's a tiger, I'm painting or a lighthouse or anything else, you want it to tingle the viewer's retinas with that color, make their eyes set up and take notice.

If you're interested in selling your work that's what's gonna sell your painting is have something visually exciting.

I say, I'm just scrubbing this on, no particular fashion.

Well, I take that back.

I am kind of going with the lay of the fur.

I'm kind of going in the direction, so I better restate that.

Okay, that's starting to come together looking pretty good.

It look a lot better once we get his other colors on, I'm gonna come back at the end and make that more of a fur pattern.

Okay, so something about like that.

Want that ear to stand out separately from the rest of the fur behind him.

Okay, we gotta come in and do his eye.

His eye is kind of a combination of green on the top of blue green on yellow green, near the bottom.

I'm gonna start with some of this clear glazing medium and some sap green with a little bit of the ultramarine blue.

Notice, I didn't put any white in it.

Don't need it.

I'm gonna roll that to a point.

And right here at the top upper half of his eye, I'm gonna go with green like that.

I think I'm gonna make that just a little bit darker.

I'm gonna put a little more ultramarine blue with it, darken it down, just a tad more.

And then on the lower portion of his eye, it's much more yellow.

You're getting light reflected into that.

An eyeball's just like a marble, light shines through it, off your back of your eyeball.

And back to the front.

I'm gonna take some yellow, a little bit of the white base coat.

I'm just using the base coat 'cause it's already thin.

I could use the titanium white.

I would just have to thin it down.

It's all good for this purpose.

It won't matter.

I'm gonna be just the smallest, smallest amount of that green eye color into that.

And he's gonna have a yellow glow in his eye right here.

That, that, that, the eye of the tiger.

There it is.

All right and blend those together.

I just swished the brush out a little bit.

I'm gonna blend them together.

Oh yeah.

Now we're gonna move on down to his nose.

His nose has kind of a pinkish color on it on the front.

That's why I had this burnt sienna.

It's very pinkish.

I'll take burnt sienna in just a little spec of white.

I don't wanna go too pink.

Let's see what this looks like.

Eh, not bad.

I can live with that.

Now, notice carefully where that divides off.

It's right here on the very front of his nose.

On the top, we're gonna use some burnt sienna.

Burnt sienna, Don't you cry for me?

I don't know why I feel like singing today, but I do.

That's a little too pink.

Now that I'm looking at it, I'm gonna put just the slightest little touch of burnt sienna with it, just to knock it back a notch.

Okay, I can probably almost live with that.

Just a little more sienna.

And on the top of his nose, it's definitely more sienna-ish.

Yep, that's a word.

Look at up.

It's in the Willie dictionary.

Okay, so I'm gonna take more burnt sienna with that color.

And along the top of his nose, it's gonna get this color.

I'm gonna put just a drop of paint thinner with that.

It's a little thick.

Doesn't want to come off my brush.

Anytime the paint doesn't wanna wanna come off your brush, no matter what you're doing and what brush you're using.

It's a little too thick.

If you thin it down, just a whisker, it'll come off your brush.

So I'm gonna put that on like that.

Notice, there's just a little bit of highlight right on that edge in that corner of his nose, it's a rounded corner.

I'm gonna take a little bit of this white base coat and flatten this brush out on two sides, like a little chisel.

And I'm gonna put just a little curvy line right there.

And it's gonna pick up some of that paint underneath, which is fine.

I don't want it pure white anyway.

That's why I used white.

I knew I could get away with it 'cause it'll pick up the color underneath and blend in.

All right.

Does that look like a tiger's nose?

Like George, I think it does.

Okay.

From there, we're gonna start working on the fur.

I'm gonna go back to the number six round brush.

If I cerulean blue and a little spec of the cadmium red light, they seem like an odd color, odd color combination but it'll gimme this really nice blue gray like this.

Excellent color for shading something white like his fur.

So right in here, I'm just gonna put a little bit of this in like this.

Notice, I'm letting the white canvas show through it here and there.

It gives his ear a little shape.

I'm gonna go a little darker right here on the far left edge.

Just so it really turns a corner.

So I'll just lay the glaze on there are a little heavier and we're gonna pull all those individual white hairs outta there.

White hairs.

I know all about white hairs on the chiny chin chin.

Maybe I'm part lion, who knows.

I'm gonna come in.

Now see we're putting in the shadow tones of the white first.

So I'm gonna come in, put this on very thin.

I'm not putting the paint on real heavy.

We've gotta paint over the top of this.

I'm running out of this glaze color.

So I've gotta mix up a little more.

It's just the cerulean blue of the spec of the cad red light.

That's a little darker, which tells me I need to put more glaze with it, which will dilute it.

There we go.

And see, I can need to come up in here a little further.

It's just white fur melted into orange fur.

So it went soft edges between all of it and put it on down here.

What do you call a tiger who runs a copying machine?

A copycat.

Oh yeah.

I'm not kidding.

I'm not kidding.

Now see right here it's white.

I'm just gonna leave that white.

I'm gonna wipe the brush off.

Let that glaze kind of blend off and leave it a little whiter out there on the edge.

I got a little green from my background on his chin underneath here, but I'm gonna cover it with the glaze.

I'm gonna have a lot of fur sticking outta there anyway.

So you'll never notice it.

Okay, I'll swish that brush out.

I'm gonna sit back here and take a look at it.

It's looking pretty good.

I still want to darken behind that ear.

It's bugging me.

So it's one of those adjustments you always have to make as an artist.

I'm gonna take a little more sienna into some of this orange color I used before.

It just darken the value down a little bit.

I wanna go a little darker here.

It'll bring that ear forward.

I'm trying to separate it from the background and it is right now, but I want it a little darker.

I think it'll look nicer if it's a little darker and I'll soften that in with the fan brush into the rest of his head here in just a second.

A little more there, a little up on top of his head.

All right, I like that a little better.

(lively music) If you want to add another layer of depth and dimension to your tiger painting, you can add some grasses in front like he's crouching in the grass.

Take your number 10 flat brush, mix up green that you like.

I've got sap green, ultramarine blue and little cad yellow and a spec of white in this mixture.

Chisel it up.

We can put some grasses in the front.

It looks like he's in the grass, stalking his prey.

You can even put some right in front of him a little bit, sets him in pushes him into the background a little further.

Okay, now we gotta start putting all those little hairs and whiskers in.

For that, I'm gonna use the long script liner.

This is the number two long script liner.

This brush isn't good for much else, then long lines.

But when you're doing long, thin skinny lines it's excellent, wonderful brush for what we use it for.

I'm gonna dip into some thinner and I'm gonna take this white base coat.

Now I wanna pull this out on two sides.

I'm not rolling the brush to a point I'm pulling it out on two sides and flattening it that way I can use it the skinny way and get nice razor thin lines.

It seems like a lot of paint on there.

And I know from experience just because I've doing this for 30 years, you're not gonna know.

You will have to just dive in and try it, but I'm gonna just, I feel like there's too much paint on there.

So I'm just gonna take some off on a rag, on each side, just take some of the excess out.

It's better to have less paint than too much.

And I'm gonna start out with a really touch here to see what I'm getting.

If the line looks heavy and fat, I've got too much paint.

It's not bad, not bad, but I feel like still a bit much.

So I'm gonna blot some of that off and then I should be able to come in here and do this.

Oh yeah, there we go.

And see he's got all those little tiny hairs sticking out of his.

I say tiny they're skinny, but they're long.

So it depends on which way you look at tiny, I guess.

And against that black background, they really show up, that wasn't an accident.

That's why I used a dark background.

I wanted the contrast cause if I'd used the lighter background, all these hairs is whiskers wouldn't show up.

So I was thinking of that as I was designing the composition, composition is critical right here.

I just noticed something I missed.

There's a little bit of that bluish color on the front of this ear.

Oh and then I went in with my dirty brush with the orange on it.

I hate when I happens.

That's all right, I'll wash it out.

So I'm gonna take more of that cerulean blue and red mixture just that purple-ly gray, blue gray.

And I'm not sure how well this is gonna show.

I might have to put just a spec of white with that at this point.

I haven't been using much white at all, but against there.

There I've gotta put just enough like that to get it to show up.

I don't want it too light, too bold, too dominant.

Just enough to do the job.

Okay, now I can go back with this one.

And again, I reload it and it feels like a little too much paint.

So I'm gonna take some of the paint outta that.

I always refer to this as my classes of my students.

Don't load your brush for bear if you're only hunting squirrel and I'm only hunting squirrel right now.

So I'm not loading for bear which means you don't want a lot of paint in your brush.

I'm just doing fine line work.

Okay, I'm gonna start doing some of this hair in here.

You'll see, I've got some little white hairs over the top of the blue shadow tone.

Again, flattening the brush out on two sides.

I'm gonna come in and just put these little short, choppier strokes like this.

Hoping I'm keeping my shoulder outta your way but I've gotta kind of get over here to see what I'm doing.

I know what you're thinking.

You can't wait to get to those whiskers.

I know me too.

Notice that all of the hair runs with the grain.

It's going in a certain direction.

The nice part of this is this process is if you make a mistake, I could simply take a rag just slightly damp there and blot that off.

It's an easy fix.

The underpainting isn't going anywhere.

That's the beauty of having the underpainting.

It's there forever.

You would just remove the paint off the top.

Okay, now right now I'm at the whiskers yet, but I'm getting there but see on his chin behind the whiskers.

He's got a bunch of little hairs on his chin.

I can kind of relate to him.

You know?

(laughs) So these are gonna be the little hairs off his chin.

A little too much paint.

I'm gonna wipe that out.

Keep these little shorter.

They're not competing with the whiskers at all.

Notice how I'm really in here steadying my hand.

This is touchy stuff.

I'm holding my hand back so I'm not pressing down too hard because if I press down too hard, I'm gonna get too heavy of a line.

So it definitely takes a certain degree of control and you wanna make sure you're not bearing down too hard.

All right.

I think that's starting to come together.

We're gonna move on to the whiskers.

I'm gonna dip in, get a little more thinner.

It felt like my paint's drying out a little bit.

And again, I'm gonna load this, make sure there's not too much paint in it.

A thin paint gives you thin lines.

So you always have to have your paint thin down.

I'm gonna start with the whiskers on this side.

They're coming right out whit those little pot marks were and they're fairly long.

And you'll see that I probably reload more often.

I don't it halfway down and run out paint and then have to match the line again.

If that makes sense, I've been there and done it.

And I know that I don't want to do it if I don't have to.

Notice I broke the edge of his shoulder a little bit.

It's nice to get that depth in there.

It brings the whiskers closer and kind of pushes his body back.

Okay, there's a few up here going here like this.

Oh, he's looking pretty good.

He's coming together.

Over on this side more the same thing.

Obviously they're going the other way.

So if I can get my hand in here without getting my shoulder in the way of the camera here.

Pull some of these out like this.

They're a little shorter as they get up closer to his nose.

All right.

Looking pretty good.

At least that'll give you the idea of how that was accomplished.

I mentioned way back when that I'm gonna come back and add some fur texture into his hairy body there I should say hair texture into the fur.

Maybe that's a better way to say it.

On this one, I simply just used the fan brush and kind of combed it in.

You could really get persnickety, if it's part of your style, you could just throw your brush on the floor.

Like I just did, but you could really get persnickety if you chose to and just use your liner and really come in and just put lots of hair in there.

I myself would be bored with that by the time I ever got it done.

I'd be sick of looking after the canvas.

So I'm not gonna do it that way but just to give you another option if you didn't wanna do it that way either there's nothing wrong with that.

And there's just different brush strokes for different folks.

If I take a fan brush and I'm taking a little more sienna into some of that orange-ish mixture, and if I just come in and just stroke like this, you gotta get enough paint on.

I'm gonna add just a bit of that clear glazing medium to thin it down a whisker.

You'll know it's by the touch.

You'll know it.

If it's not coming off your brush but see how it leaves that more of a grain.

I'm gonna darken it just to tad more so you can see it a little easier and you have it.

Have to have it just the right consistency.

Not too thick, not too thin.

See it's it's coming off the brush, but barely which tells me I need to thin it down a little more and see it gives it that certain roughness that kind of suggests hair a little better.

Down here I got my easel tray.

So I have to kind of work the opposite way or else, take it off the easel, to get off the edge.

See that roughs him up a little bit.

And like I mentioned, from the very beginning, I said depending on how you feel about it, you can reinforce these.

If you want to, if you want, 'em darker and blacker you could certainly come back and I would use the number six round brush or the number two detail script liner either or either brush will do the job.

It depends on what you're comfortable with but I could literally come back with black.

You won't need much.

You're just reinforcing.

You're not actually repainting necessarily.

You're reinforcing.

I could come back with more black and I could touch these areas and say I don't have to get too crazy and do the whole thing.

Even just a little black through the middle of them really makes more contrast and makes 'em stand out.

So the old clock on the wall is telling me that it's time for me to go until next time.

So I hope that you try this out, try some of the other poses I showed you with the tiger.

by underpainting all the markings, it makes it so much easier.

And if you do do a version of it, I'd love to see it.

You can contact me through my website or Facebook and send me a photo of what you've done.

I'd love to see it.

I got some more interesting projects coming up on this series.

So I hope you tune in.

Until next time, stay creative and keep painting (serene music) - [Announcer] Support for "Painting with Wilson Bickford" is provided by the JM McDonald foundation.

Continuing the example modeled by JM 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 - [Female Announcer] 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.

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