(melodious music) - Hey, welcome back.

Certainly glad you could join me today.

Today I have a special treat for you, I'd like to introduce you to my son, Steve.

Steve travels all over the country, teaching hundreds and hundreds of people the joy of painting.

Now I've asked Steve to come in today and show you what he can do in just a few minutes, so I'm going to turn it over to Steve, and I'll be back at the end of the show.

Steve.

- Thanks a lot, dad.

I've already covered the canvas with liquid white, and before I did that I started out with a piece of contact paper with an oval cut in the center of it.

And you do that with a scalpel blade, and you'd start out, you know, with a piece of cardboard, or whatever, and cut out your oval, lay it on top, cut around it, and then you have this.

Now they're going to run all the colors across the screen for you, and we're going to start out with alizarin crimson.

That's a tongue twister there.

Tapping it into the brush, always make sure you get a nice, even distribution of paint.

I put a little bit of phthalo blue in that too.

And we'll just start right here in the center.

Use a criss-cross stroke.

When your strokes overlap it adds movement to your sky.

That helps out quite a bit.

So I'm just throwing a general shape in there.

Try to let your shapes get larger towards the top, rather than down at the bottom.

Now I'm just going into a little bit of phthalo blue, and a little bit more alizarin.

And maybe we throw a little midnight black in there.

Nice dark color.

And up to the canvas again.

Just coming right around the edges of it.

And bleed a little down into here.

Now while you've already got a dirty brush, go into a little bit more of that same color and pull it in from the sides, but don't kill your little pink reflection there.

That really makes it look nice when the painting's done.

OK.

Going to use a clean two-inch brush now.

Just start blending in the center of the water, and move the brush outward.

Use straight, horizontal strokes though, cause still water always lies flat.

Now wash your brush.

(knocking) If your flustrated with the painting, that's a good way to take our your flustrations.

OK. Coming back into the center, add a little bit more pressure this time, and move that paint out.

And don't be afraid of it.

Use strokes that lead the eye into the painting, rather than out of it.

In other words, make little half circles.

OK. Now we'll take our fan brush.

We use a little liquid white on that too.

And why not, let's get crazy, throw a little alizarin crimson in it too.

Make pink clouds today.

(chuckles) OK, we're going to start right up here.

As long as you make little circular patterns you're OK on clouds.

Just remember that clouds are light and fluffy on the top, and nice and flat on the bottom.

So make your strokes real puffy on top, and on the bottom, kind of swing the brush side to side, like this.

You really can't go wrong on a cloud cause nobody knows what a cloud is going to look like, because nobody knows the way the wind blows.

Back to that same half circle.

Now, underneath that I'll add a little dark first.

Looks like we need a little more liquid white to thin our paint down.

Just recently I've taken on a partner to help me teach when I'm travelling around the country doing classes.

His name is Danny Jester and he's really good.

And, we just finished a class out in Springfield, Missouri, had a little shop out there.

And it went really well, everyone really enjoyed it and we even got a good recommendation letter out of the whole do.

Always remember to pull very lightly on the top of your cloud here.

You notice when I was blending into it I hardly ever touched the top.

What I'm doing here is creating distance in the painting by bringing forth planes.

You can tell this is behind this, and this is behind this, because I saved the center area, the dark, rather than blending it out.

And maybe we've got one little cloud up here.

OK, go across the whole thing real lightly.

Now I'm going to do a mountain, and to do that I'll go into a little alizarin crimson, little phthalo blue, and then midnight black, same colors we used in the sky.

Leave that kinda marble and get a roll on your knife.

Come up to the canvas.

Let's have a big, high mountain today.

Make this top peak real bold, this will be the main part of the painting right here.

You really don't have to use much paint on this step either, as a matter of fact you want to scrape it down to bare canvas.

Prod underneath the mountain.

And over here, just maybe a little one.

Scrape it real good down at the very bottom.

Now, with your two-inch brush, blend.

Just pull it right out, follow the angles of that mountain.

And down't worry bout getting close to the top edge, cause it's the dark that's applied up there that makes it brighter.

It takes dark to show light.

Now going through a little bit of titanium white, and we'll put a little alizarin in there.

Basically the same colors through the whole painting.

OK. Come up to the canvas, touch, and just barely pull it.

Now if you use a shaking motion, it helps.

And to mix up some shadow we'll take a little bit of the base color, and a little bit of Prussian blue.

And mix white with that.

We'll have two shadow colors today, so, we'll be doing something totally different.

A little bit of dark sienna, with that same blue shadow color, and a little bit of midnight black with that also.

OK. Back up to the canvas.

Stroke of white here.

Let the angle start getting longer out to the edges, and as you come into the center, drop the angles harder.

This is the hard part right here.

I should say the easy hard part.

OK, for the last one, just a little bit of highlight.

Now we'll start off with that blue shadow color we made, and just using the small edge of the knife, come up to the canvas and push up into that white and pull out.

We might need to lighten that a tad.

OK, let's try that again.

There we go.

And in that you want a little bit of that other color you made, too.

Always remember to push up into the paint, that drags the little streaks out.

It gets away from that split in half mountain look.

Little bit of dark, this is the base coat I used on the mountain originally.

OK. Little bit of shadow behind this one.

Always drop your blue shadow in first, and then go back and put some more dark behind it to help bring it out.

See, watch what this dark does when I put it in here.

OK, maybe one more real quick highlight.

And that will about do it for the mountain.

Now we're going to take a little bit of sap green on your two-inch brush, just tap it in like before, midnight black and phthalo blue.

Work it in.

OK. Let's just drop some foothills in here.

Real quick like.

The faster you do it, the better it looks.

Pull up with a clean one inch.

Tap.

You don't even need to remove the one inch brush from the canvas at this point, you just keep smashing it.

OK. Darken the color up a little.

And put another row in.

Of course the plane would be a little closer and (mumbles) so it would be darker.

Tap again underneath this one, and we'll throw a little bit of land in.

Using midnight black and van dyke brown, you're going to roll on the knife, touch, pull.

Exaggerate it.

OK, mix that same base coat with a little bit of white, and you've got your highlight color.

Now, with your big brush, don't worry about it being clean, just pull a little bit of that land out, and go across very lightly.

Now, with a one inch a little bit of grass on top of that land to break it up.

Now, with the knife and a little bit of liquid white, pull it out real flat and put a little bit of black with it.

Cut across, and just scratch in a water line real quick.

OK, little bit of yellow highlights this time.

Maybe a couple sticks and twigs right there, and possible, even a pine tree.

Mix all your darks together for the pine.

And load the brush really full of paint.

Just come right down over that other.

OK. A little bit of highlight on those, might need to put a drop of thinner with it.

And maybe a trunk.

OK, I think we're ready to rip the contact paper off it now.

I'm going to start up here at the top edge and just pull.

And wallah, we have it.

Now, to finish this painting there's a lot of things you can do, but I'm going to go with a birch tree, I think.

And I'll start it right out here, why not?

Let's get brave.

Just using straight van dyke brown, putting rolls of paint on the knife.

Make sure you exaggerate the curvature of the tree, or else they'll look like telephone poles, and you don't get any calls out here in the woods.

OK, straighten it up a little bit, as dad would say.

And maybe some highlight on that, just using pure white with a little bit of a base color from the mountain in it.

We'll start right up at the top, kind of making a C. Wow.

Did I do that?

(chuckles) It's amazing sometimes... how easy it is to do this, and then other times... the toughness of it can also make it fun, because if you didn't have those tough times on it, the easy times wouldn't pay off.

I'm adding a little blue in the back of the tree here, for shadow.

And you want to go back with straight midnight black.

And put a last shadow on it, real nice and dark.

Use lots of paint.

OK, less shadow over here on this one.

Now, a little bit of thinner on your liner brush.

Go through that same black color.

Get the paint almost like an ink consistency, it has to be very thin in order for it to get on the canvas.

Spin the brush through the paint.

That puts a point on it.

And up to the canvas.

Maybe a little more thinner in that.

Make a branch come across the trunk of the tree, gives it a three dimensional effect.

And kind of pop the brush back and forth, you get more geometric shapes, and geometrics is what you're looking for in this particular kind of tree.

You only see these in Alaska, this is a big ol' birch tree.

I suppose anywhere up north, really.

When you start getting down to the bottom, just let 'em flow.

OK, bring this one right across the other tree.

See that vignette effect we're getting?

Little more thinner.

And use a little more pressure, let them get fatter down here towards the bottom.

You don't really want to come down past the halfway point on the tree, cause birch trees only have branches down so far, if you put them any lower than that they look kinda hokey.

No use goofing around on it too long.

OK, right down here at the bottom, now this is the fun part.

Just real quick like, smash in some stuff and make it curve around, that's all there is to it.

And then, with a dirty brush, and whatever color's on it, throw on some highlights.

Make sure you stay in that curve.

And maybe to finish it off, just a few sticks.

- Hey, as Steve's finishing up the, the bottom of that painting I just want to come in here and thank him very much for being a guest today.

Isn't it fantastic what this young man can do?

And you can do it too.

We look forward to seeing you again, from all of us here: happy painting, and God bless.

(melodious music)