Painting with Wilson Bickford

I can hear the waves lapping the shore as a soft breeze blows through the grasses. Join me next, on "Painting with Wilson Bickford," and we'll dip our toes in the sand. (gentle upbeat music) (gentle upbeat music fades) -

Spokesperson

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. (uplifting music) (bright music) -

Spokesperson

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, I'm glad you could join me today. I've got fantastic little seascape that I wanna share with you today.

I'm Wilson Bickford, and I'm gonna show you how to do this. You can do your own version of this painting. Pretty exciting, huh? If you go to the WPBS-TV website, you'll be able to download this supply list, which goes through all the materials that I'm using today, the oil paints, the brushes, whatnot.

You can simply download this at wpbstv.org/painting, and you'll find all these materials. I'm gonna run through 'em here for you right now. For oil paints today, I'm using cerulean blue, ultramarine blue, ivory black, dioxazine purple, yellow ochre, cadmium yellow pale, burnt sienna, and titanium white. I also have some clear glazing medium that I'm gonna lubricate the canvas with, and a little bit of the thin white base coat that I typically use just to thin paint down as I progress.

For brushes today, I'm using a two-inch scenery brush, a number 10 large flat brush, a number three fan brush, number two detailed script liner, number two long script liner, and a one-inch large mop brush. I'm also gonna have at my disposal here, a disposable foam brush. You'll notice that this canvas is not white. It's been primed with some blue acrylic.

Now I have a pre-mixed blue acrylic that I use for this a lot. If you don't have that, if you don't have such a thing, you can actually mix up an acrylic using white gesso as a base, putting some ultramarine blue, just tubed acrylic paint, ultramarine blue, and a little bit of ivory black, just a small amount of black, to gray it ever so slightly. Come up with a grayish blue color that you like. You'd want to cover the whole canvas with a disposable brush like this.

Make sure you get nice coverage, even if it takes two coats. Let it dry in between. You want a nice solid foundation there. The whole point of this, notice that the blue shows through everywhere.

You even see it in the sand, in the shadows. The idea is to paint on top of this, but let the blue read through, which you see that blue reading through everywhere, which is color harmony. That's the whole point. So once that was dry, I painted that blue.

I think it's helpful to have a T-square. If you don't have a T-square, you could just simply measure up from the bottom. Make sure your line is level. There's nothing on this planet that's any straighter than a string, than the horizon at the ocean.

And notice it's a little bit below dead center of the canvas, from top to bottom. I came in with a T-square, and this is a hard lead, hard graphite art pencil, an H designation, if you are familiar with that. Anything that's a B pencil, this is a normal everyday B pencil, HB, these are very soft lead. And I wouldn't use this if you didn't have to.

The graphite is very soft, and when you paint on top of it, it smears all over. So try to use an art pencil. But I put a line across, just to establish my horizon line. From there, I'm going to take some masking tape and tape that off, that way I don't contaminate my water area with my sky colors that I'm gonna put on here.

I'm gonna take a strip of tape. This is just normal, everyday masking tape right from my local hardware store. It's nothing fancy. And if I can position this tape just so that the tape is just below that pencil line, any of that graphite that does happen to be there will wash away when I put the color on.

(finger scrapes) So I'm gonna press that down. See how it's smearing here a little bit? That's why you want to use a harder lead, there's less of that. Okay, I'm gonna press that down very firmly.

And I'm gonna start out, here we go. You've got your seatbelt fastened? I hope so. This is gonna be a good lesson in clouds today.

We're gonna work on this. This is a two-part lesson. I want to be able to slow down and really teach it and instruct it well. So we're gonna slow down a little bit, but it'll be a good lesson for today as far as the clouds go.

I'm gonna take a two-inch scenery brush with some of this clear glazing medium, and I'm gonna scrub on a very thin coat all over this upper portion. I'm not going below the tape. We will later, but right now we don't need to. (paintbrush swishing) And it's clear, so you think you won't be able to see where you put it, but it actually makes the blue look darker, so it's easy to track your progress and know where you're putting it and where you're not.

(paintbrush swishing) I'm glad you were able to join me today. A lot of people like to do these types of seascapes. This type of scene is very popular in my classes. So I'm glad to be able to share it with you.

If you haven't tried painting, give it a try. All it takes us some desire and some practice. A little bit of practice will get you a long ways. Okay, nice thin, even coat of that.

That's gonna help everything slip and slide. All my colors, I can blend them very nicely now. Okay, same brush, I'm gonna take a little bit of this white base coat, don't need much of it, and a little bit of the cerulean blue. Notice in the sample, that the lower sky, just above the ocean line, is a different shade of blue.

This blue up here is simply the blue of the canvas, that I leave showing, and it's exposed. But I want to grade it. I want it a lighter value down below, at the horizon, and darker above. So I'm gonna mix up something here.

I'll try this. I won't know until I get it on the canvas. Right here against the white, it looks good, but it's gonna read differently here. Okay, that looks pretty good.

Looks good to me. (paintbrush swishing) I'm getting a little paint on my frame over here. I hate when that happens, don't you? Yeah, yeah, I'll clean that up later.

Okay, so I'm just gonna bring this up, with intentions of blending it away eventually into that other blue. Now that other blue is not wet, but the film of glazing medium I put over the top of it is, and that's going to allow me to just feather them together. (paintbrush swishing) I want a distinction from lighter to darker. It's always lighter at the horizon.

I'm actually gonna make that a little bit lighter yet. I'm gonna take a little more white, (paintbrush tapping) some of the base coat, and even some of the titanium white. There we go. I wanna really emphasize that, 'cause if you go to the ocean, you'll see there's quite a drastic difference in the sky.

The sky that's way off into the distance is much lighter value, and what's over your head is much darker. That's what we're trying to show here, 'cause we have a really vast distance across this water. Okay, I think that'll work. That was easy, right?

Yes, you can do this. I know you can. Okay, I'm gonna take a fan brush, I'm gonna start putting in my clouds. We're gonna think about the linear perspective.

Linear perspective means anything in the distance appears smaller. That goes for the clouds as well. So these ones that are lower on the horizon are the clouds that are really far away. So you'll notice they're much shorter and skinnier, and a little flatter, and they can go right down, because of the curvature of the earth, they can actually go right down to the horizon line because they wrap the curve of the earth.

These up here are closer to us, that are getting bigger. So I'm gonna keep that in mind as I do it. I'm gonna base them in with a purpley gray for the shadows, and then put the highlights on top. So I'm gonna start with some white, a little bit of the ivory black, to achieve a gray, and then just a little smidgen of the purple.

The dioxazine purple is very, very strong, so just be careful that I add a little bit at a time. And myself, personally, that color right there would work, but I'm not loving it. It's just a personal preference on my part. I always like to put a little bit of ultramarine blue with that.

Purple is a secondary color made of two primaries, blue and red. I can lean it more towards a bluish purple, which is just my preference. Maybe something like that. And I'm not sure that's gonna match that tone.

It doesn't have to. I'm just painting what I'm feeling. I'll have to test this and see if it's gonna show up. Maybe a hair darker wouldn't hurt.

So I'm gonna take just a speck more black, speck more of the blue, and a speck more of the purple. I'm just gonna darken the value overall a little bit. (paintbrush taps) Yeah, let's try that. Yeah, it's gonna show up a little nicer for you.

Okay. I don't have a lot of paint on the brush. I knocked most of the paint out of the brush, and I'm just gonna come in and have a jittery hand, like this, and just kind of stir along and put an elongated, horizontal cloud in there. I can go right down to the top of the tape.

Like I said, they can go right below, 'cause they're gonna wrap around the curve of the earth. (paintbrush tapping) As I go higher, I'm just gonna start making 'em a little bigger. Now, see, this is kind of lighter than my sky. I actually want it darker.

So up here, I have to adjust my value. That's just one of those little adjustments that you have to make being an artist. I do want this a little darker (brush taps) against the sky. Now this one's more purple, I can tell by looking at it.

Then this one, this one's more gray. If you want it more gray, use a little more black. So I am gonna put a little more black with mine. I don't mind it being on the purple side.

A lot of times, to me, purple is in the cloud shadows, you see it. I'll gray it down a little bit with some black. There we go, that'll work. And see now, I'm gonna make a bigger shape.

I'm not worried at all about the top of the cloud, I'm not even thinking that. I'm thinking about the bottom and the middle of the cloud, from top to bottom. (paintbrush swishing) So I'm not trying to create the whole cloud at once, I'm just putting the shadows underneath the bottom of the cloud, at this point. I'll bring it up high enough that I know I can melt the highlight into it.

Okay, maybe something like that. Maybe I'll incorporate just a little bit of that color into here, so it's not such a stark change from light to dark. I'll put a little bit of the dark into that one, so it's a gradual succession there. Okay, I'm gonna rinse this brush out and dry it off.

(water swishes) (paper towel crinkles) I'm gonna pick up white and just a little touch of yellow ochre. You'll notice in this sample, there's a little touch of warmth in there with some yellow in there, not too much. And then, I'm gonna put pure white over the top. So I'm gonna take this paint, like this, and this is where I'm gonna start thinking about the top of the cloud, shaping it.

Notice I'm just using the corner, and I'm dabbing. And it's gonna look terrible here for a minute. You trust me, don't you? Yeah.

Who doesn't love the beach? (paintbrush swishing) Do you know what kind of a swimsuit a sheep wears to the beach? A Baa-kini. (Wilson chuckles) You knew that, didn't you?

Yeah, oh well. Now see, I'm just rolling these together. I'm just taking the ends of the bristles, and I'm rolling the colors together. See what a difference that makes?

They start looking better already. I'm not done. I've gotta come back and do more blending. I'm gonna put a little bit of that color on these down here.

And I'm just randomly dabbing here and there. Leave the shadow color showing underneath. Wipe the brush off, roll 'em together a little bit. I like to soften the bottom underside of the cloud so it's not such a hard edge.

So I'm gonna come in, I've wiped the brush off, I'm gonna soften that edge of the dark shadowed portion of the clouds. Makes them look more soft, like they're rolling under, away from the viewer. Okay, I'm gonna swish this out really quickly in my mineral spirits. I'm just using odorless mineral spirits here to clean my brush.

I'm gonna take straight white this time, titanium white, and I'm gonna thin it just a little bit with some of that white base coat. And I'm not trying to crowd out the yellow, I'm trying to add to it. I want it a little brighter on the top. I'll lose some of the yellow, definitely, but I'm not intentionally trying to get rid of it.

I'm adding to it. So you'll see some of that warmth and the yellow peeking through every so often, which is good. See, that really starts bringing it to life once we put this white on here. I'll put a little bit down here on these lower clouds, and I've still gotta blend and bring everything together.

I know it's looking better, but I'm far from done. Good things come to those who wait. So just hold your horses, we'll get there. (paintbrush taps) A lot of people struggle with painting clouds, so this will be a good lesson for you.

Okay, I'm gonna wipe that brush off, and I need to do some really thorough blending now. I'm gonna roll the white and the yellow together. And again, I'm just doing little circles like this. Essentially, I'm pulling the white down and the yellow back up, so they melt together.

You're gonna pick up a lot of paint as you do that, so you wanna keep wiping your brush. I'll come over and do this one, and even then, I'm not done. This is just a preliminary blending, not final blending. Same thing down here, bring 'em together.

What I haven't told you is I'm gonna use a mop brush to really fine tune all of this. Mop brush can be your best friend. This is nice and soft, it's almost like a cosmetic brush. This one isn't.

I could use it for that, but it's an art brush. Very soft. Notice how these edges are very soft, and indistinct, and hazy? It's this brush.

Use a light touch. And again, I'm just doing the little circles, and I'm gonna pull that white out against that blue. Now see, the blue is dry. We've got that glaze medium on there, the clear glazing medium, so it makes it slippery so the paint moves, but it's not picking up the blue.

The blue underneath is dry. So see, I'm just essentially blending over the edge. And see what a nice effect that gives you? You're gonna pick up paint on this brush as you go, so you want to keep wiping it off.

I just try to get a nice soft edge there, so it looks kinda windblown and not so distinct. I can almost feel the wind blowing that cloud. (Wilson imitates wind whooshing) But look how much better that looks once we blend it. Blending cures everything, it really does.

Down in here, I'm just gonna do a little more blending, just to make sure the yellow on the shadow color got pulled together. Same thing down here. I won't do these quite as much. I don't want a hard edge on the top, but I don't wanna fluff 'em up quite as much.

They're too far away, you aren't gonna see all the detail in 'em. Just like that, we have a sky. Pretty easy, right? Yeah, I know you can do it.

I know you can do it. Okay. Now if you have room, you can always take a little more white and put another layer in here if you choose to. Now, see, I can break this up.

If you have a lot of dark, I can put a little more fluff in there once in a while. Now it's gonna look like a train wreck until I blend it. See, I come back with the mop. I'm just taking up some of the real estate that's there, some of the space where there's nothing happening.

And see, it puts another layer in your cloud, it makes it a little more three-dimensional, you have a little more depth in it. Okay, so much for that. Pretty easy, right? Yeah, not too bad.

Okay, I'm gonna take the number 10 flat brush, and I'm gonna rip this tape off. (tape scrapes) There's my nice crisp blind that I wanted. And I'm going to kinda lay on the water here. I need to know where my beach is going to lie in relation to the water.

So I'm just gonna take maybe a little bit of white, a little bit of ultramarine blue, and just establish my line. I gotta go a little darker than that so I can see it. This'll blend into my water, so I'm not really concerned about the color or how light or dark, I just wanna be able to see a line through here. Maybe something like that.

I gave myself a little more depth here, a little more water. So I'm gonna have a little less beach. That's okay, I could move it and change it if I wanted to. But I think that'll be fine.

Okay, I'm gonna take some of that same blue. And in this one, I really don't remember for sure, I think I added a little bit of black. Now I could have this be bluish ocean water. A blue gray like this would be fine.

I could have a little more blue in it, like this, and that would be fine, which is kind of what I have here, various mixtures of that. Or, I could add just a little bit of yellow ochre to that blue, and give it a slight greenish feel. A lot of times, ocean water is that color. So use your own discretion.

Get a color that you like. Having that on the brush, I'm just gonna throw it in here. I could add blue into that as well. Now see, this area is dry.

I didn't put the clear glazing medium on it. I didn't really feel I needed it, 'cause I can just scrub this on over the top. I'm gonna fill this in down to my beach line, and I'll be right back. (jovial acoustic music) The mop brush is a fantastic brush for doing soft blending, but if you wanna continue using it throughout your painting, you can't immerse it in the middle of a painting and dry it.

You can't simply can't get it dry enough. So instead of soaking the brush to wash it, which I would do at the end of the painting session, but while you're painting, I take some thinner on a rag, and I simply wipe the brush onto the rag (paintbrush swishes) with the thinner. And you'll see, it really helps clean off all the residue. It's plenty clean enough to keep where working with throughout.

At the end, you certainly wanna clean it like you normally would, and soak it. There, I have that filled in. Now, I could have, as an option, put some clear glazing medium on that first. I chose not to.

I really didn't think I needed it. And it keeps it a little drier to work on top of, but it's an option. If you feel like you want to put some clear glazing medium on there, do so. I will put some down here, on the beach, by the time I get down to that in the next episode, but I'm gonna brush that water in like that.

I'm gonna mix up a darker value of my ocean color, which I had blue, black, and a little bit of ochre in that. I want something darker. And this number 10 brush chisels up really nicely, so I can bring it together to an edge, like this. And you'll notice I have some darker waves in there, underneath the whitecaps.

I'm literally just gonna scuff these on. Don't get too rhythmic and too methodical with them. There should be no rhyme or reason as far as how they line up. I think the phrase people use is willy-nilly.

So I'm just gonna willy-nilly 'em. Theoretically, as they get closer, they should get a little larger. I'm just mixing up more paint here, on the fly. They should get a little larger, so I press down a little harder on the brush to make them a little bigger, because they're closer.

Again, that's linear perspective, just like we talked about with the clouds. And you can put as much of this as you want, it depends on how choppy you want your water to look. I'm going to blend those in and soften 'em in a little bit. And I'll put a few more of them back in there before we come back for the next episode, but I wanted to share with you a couple more paintings here, just to inspire you.

Take these techniques that I'm showing you, and design your own paintings. It's fun. Just let your imagination soar, and do what you can. Don't start out with something difficult, start out with something easy and work your way up to it.

(gentle music) I hope you get a chance to try this lesson. And until next time, stay creative and keep painting. Join me for part two. -

Spokesperson

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. (uplifting music) (bright music) -

Spokesperson

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. -

Narrator

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. (gentle upbeat music) (bright cheerful music)