[Music] 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 them run all the colors across the screen, that you need to paint it at home.

While their doing that, come on up here and let's get started.

Today I have my regular old pre-stretched, double-primed 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 them on a little plastic tray here.

And we'll use the old foam brush, it's easy to do, we'll just go right into the, right into a little bit of this gray gesso, and with this we're going to 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'll just take this and I'm just going to do a few of them 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 you do.

Just, 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 them 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 old 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.

And they don't have to be exact, just basic idea.

That's all we're looking for.

Just put them 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 going to make the indication of a lot of little tree limbs, that just, just hang around out here and play all day.

But we're not worried about them being perfect because these are just little background limbs.

Shoot, probably half of them won't even show.

You're just putting it in for filler material, that easy.

See there.

You know I get letters from people that 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, sort of shake my hand and pretend that I do.

There, see something like that.

And you just figure out where you want them, 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, old 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, okay 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 going to put the trees that are more distinct right over the top of it and for that, I'm going to use just pure white gesso.

Same little foam brush, see, just, just load it up like that.

Just pure white gesso, okay 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 going to 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 want to 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 going to 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, 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.

Okay, 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 going to sit and check your reflection to make sure it's identical to the thing above it.

There, I love these colored gessos.

I, I don't know why it took so long to get them, since we've introduced them into the art world, they've just about become a standard.

There, everybody's using them now.

All right.

Okay, few over here.

Something 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 you, you can just take your time and do all of these things that you want to do.

I just want to show you how this painting was done because it's so different than anything we've done before and it's so wonderful [chuckles] 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 going to take a, 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 going to take a knife, and I just want to take and sort of flick that.

See it, just flick little globules of gesso on there.

Just flick them 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 them 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, 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, [chuckles] 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 going to put this canvas on my easel and then we'll go ahead and paint the picture.

In the meantime, the other day I had a fantastic experience with a gorgeous, gorgeous little owl that I want to share with you and we'll put him up here.

And we'll 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 telling you, I could just about make a career out of taking care of these little rascals because 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 kind of creatures as pets.

These kind of creatures, God meant for them to be free.

So we raise them up and we get them grown or we take care of them, whatever they need and then we turn them 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 and 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.

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.

and it's neat to be in a TV station and see how all this is done.

All right, a 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've 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.

And right across the base of these beautiful little trees that we've painted, see, we'll just do this, something like that.

And we'll do the same thing in the reflections.

Boy 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, 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 want to 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've 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 sort of darken the edges a little bit.

So with the same old brush, I'm going to go right into a little bit of, a 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 them.

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, and that does 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 them off and do them again.

Prussian blue to 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, okay.

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 them.

There just sort of blend that together.

Wouldn't this be a, wouldn't this be a fantastic scene to maybe put some Indians on horses out here.

That would be, if you're going to 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.

About like so, let's go up in here.

Now I want to begin putting the indication of a little snow that lives back here in the background.

Not, not much color, very little in between back here.

Just a little, just the 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.

A 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.

Because no, no painting ever comes out exactly the same here.

We don't, we don't use any patterns or tracings or anything like that.

So none of them ever come out exactly the same.

[chuckles] And that's even better, that's, that's what makes it fun.

Alright now I'm going to load a lot of white paint.

A lot of white paint right into the bristles.

Because now we want to get serious.

Now we're going to do the things that are in the foreground.

And in our world, maybe yep you're right, comes right down like that.

And see you can just sort of cut around the tree there.

There, right up to him and 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 you all make it look like snow's going 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 looking out at you.

Okay, let's come, maybe right in here, you make the decision.

Really I just want to show you how to do things.

What you do is totally, totally and completely up to you.

There, because 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 want to create the illusion of a few little reflections.

I don't want to 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 want to 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 sort of bumped it with a brush.

But it's easy to fix, because 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, we had 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.

Okay, 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 want to 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 you excited because there's a million things you can do with this.

It's really just up to you.

I 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.