 God's beauty is all around us and my goal as an artist is to capture and interpret that beauty on canvas and to take you the viewer along with me on this painting journey. Hello and welcome once again to Painting Journeys. My name is Kitty Lynn Klisch and we're journeying today to Skagway, Alaska and I want to do a painting for you of Little Step Falls. This is my photograph that I'll be working from and I have underpainted my canvas with the various colors that I find underneath the water and the rocks and everything because I wanted to have in this short hour the opportunity to show you how I apply the water and do some finishing work on the rocks and perhaps bring in some leaves and everything to the painting. So this is this is where we're going but before we do that we need to go back to our last episode so that you can see what we were painting. We were painting Tongus Narrows. Excuse me, Tongus Narrows and this is a photograph of what we were painting. This is Tongus Narrows in Ketchikan, Alaska and it was it's kind of a peaceful restful place along the inlet there where the Pacific Ocean comes in and then at the end of the show we were we were about this far along on the canvas. We weren't quite finished and so I took it home as I promised I would and I completed the painting and framed it and I have it here today to show it to you. So this is the completed painting Tongus Narrows and as you can see I have I have lightened up some of the light behind the mountains to make them show up some more. I have added a little light in the water. I've added definition to the rocks and some trees right at logs laying on the ground. A lot of logs wash in there you know the timber and then on the shore we have the old rotten logs that have come in from the from the water floated onto the shore and are laying there in a little moss and so that's the completed painting. This is Tongus Narrows in Ketchikan. Now today as I said we're going to Ketchikan, excuse me, we're going to be traveling to Skagway. What I did was I get my paints here and get all set to go. What I did is I took the inland route on a ferry there's a ferry that leaves Birmingham, Wellington, Washington and it goes all the way up to Skagway. That's the end of the line and it travels what they call the inside passage. I got on the ferry in Ketchikan when I left Ketchikan and I rode the ferry and it's a beautiful ride. You see all sorts of whales and dolphins and beautiful creatures that are they will swim alongside the ferry and the wake and the in the ferries like I said it's very nice you can have a cabin. I chose to get a cabin and for to sleep in and it was a beautiful ride and one of our first stops was Sitka and while I was in Sitka I went to this marvelous museum there that had all sorts of information about Alaska and the early settlers, the you know stories about the natives and what they had done what they had accomplished and what they had gone through. Some stories are rather sad and the early pioneers the early the early settlers that were there and what they did for the town and it was it was a very interesting place to be. I spent most of my time there then I had to get back on the ferry and we went north to our next stop and it's kind of almost like what you would consider a milk route because the the ferry has to stop at these various little towns to drop the people off there's actually people that use this ferry as a commuting service and they may work in one town down south and they'll take the ferry back and forth to get back home or maybe they'll stay down and work for a whole month or a week or whatever and then they come home on the ferry so the ferry stops at each place well our next stop as I said was was Haynes was Alaska and we were only allowed to get off the ferry for a few moments but right along the waterfront there when we came off the ferry to get a soda or whatever we wanted there were people and they were selling a semi-precious stone that is mined right there in in Haynes and it's black amethyst and it's the most beautiful stone it's totally black and they they leave them rough cut so that they're not completely out of the out of the rock so I have this big this big rock at home and it's just a just a plain ordinary looking rock but coming out of that rock is this gorgeous cut black amethyst stone that is embedded in the rock and it's the most beautiful thing and it just glitters I really love it so that was my that was my treat to myself or to remember that area I was quite fascinated with that because I had no idea that they that they had something like that that they mined something like that and I'm just sort of trying to I'm feeling my way right now I want to I want to get a little bit of this waterfall established in here but there's going to be much more to come and it is coming down here and then it's coming across here and there's the blue I see the blue back there you know there's a this beautiful blue in the water that is coming down and it's just coming down a little little feathery like things in some places are are quite quite bubbly and then other places it just kind of trickles down this is this is the nice what is so interesting about Alaska is that you see all the different colors of stones that they have there I mean it's just it's it's very very colorful so then after Sitka and Haynes we continued on the ferry on up north to Skagway and that was the very end of the line that's where the ferry turns around and returns south and it makes all the stops at the at the places where you were and it just takes the people that are going south back to their homes a nice little bubbly thing right here so I was in Skagway for several days very interesting place very wild place people on the streets were were very friendly but they they looked like they still looked like they were all prospectors or something they were you know they weren't all dressed real fancy or anything like that and they had saloons and they still had the dancehall girls and it was just a really really neat place to be lots of neat things to do which I'm going to talk to you about a little bit in a little bit here I'm trying to concentrate right now I I want to make sure that I get this just so so that it is looking like what it's supposed to look like so the the and the reason this is called little step falls is because the rock comes in movement like this and it comes in a movement like that and it comes in a movement like this and then it comes like that and then it comes down here okay and then over here we have some little a little teeny tiny grouping of a little teeny tiny trickle and it's a little more boo little trickle of water that's coming out and it forms a little why here because it's coming around this rock and that's what is so unique in Alaska you are driving down the the road or you know traveling on a bus or whatever down the road and you see all these waterfalls they have a a train that is a replica of the train that used to take people to the top of White Pass Summit now White Pass Summit is two thousand eight hundred and sixty five feet up so as you can imagine you are going around these curves around this mountain and you're going around and around and as you as you as you look back at the back of the train you can actually see the back of the train and then on the side is straight down just just straight down this train just follows these tracks straight up almost to the top and it's just it's an exciting ride and one of the things that I found out about that is that during the gold rush in Alaska the the when they struck gold and the news got out everybody just went absolutely bonkers and in trying to get to the to the gold and so people shopkeepers attorneys people from the people from the that had no business at all trying to prospect they spent all their money on pack horses and gear and they tried to travel up this mountain that we went up by on train okay up this mountain pass and along the way in the train ride you could look down over the the cliffs below and you would see the actual places where they had had little towns of course they weren't the towns weren't there anymore but you could see the the towns and the the places that and that where there was actually they just sprouted up out of nowhere and people would have to walk down these cliffs and and take their horses down these paths on these cliffs and during the during the the rush itself there was only one way to get up there it was a very narrow narrow path up the mountain and so what would happen is if two miners met each other on the path and they tried to squeeze by most likely one miner and his horse pack horse would go over the cliff in fact there is even a cliff named dead horse canyon and that's because thousands and thousands of horses fell off of the path and went crashing down into this canyon it was very sad because the people that wanted to mine to make their fortunes they had no clue what they were doing there was a a bully in that lived in Skagway and he pretty much ran the whole area he would come into town and he would rape rob pillage and everyone was very very afraid of him very afraid of him because of the devastation that he would wreak in the town and there was a shopkeeper in Skagway who was a very small man but he made up his mind that he'd had enough that he was gonna fight back and so he challenged this outlaw to a duel and of course everybody in town was telling him don't do this don't do this don't even go there but he did and he kept his appointment and when he met the outlaw well naturally he was killed he was shot dead but through his dying he gave the townspeople the courage to fight back against that outlaw and so when he died they are the rest of the town rose up they started to fight it fight back and they chased that outlaw out of the area and so he is this little shopkeeper who finally had the grit to stand up for what was right he became the town hero and there's a monument in his honor there and I found that story very touching I'm trying to get in some rocks here for you now so that you have a little idea of what's going on why why is this water flying all around in all of these different directions and it's because that the rocks rocks are what caused the water to move in the different directions that they move in you know there's so many colors here it's it's almost difficult to to see them all and to do them justice this is such a beautiful place this little step falls I saw on my way up the canyon in Skagway and I knew when I took the photo of it I knew that someday I would be painting it I didn't know however that I would be painting it with for you so that's that's a plus I'm enjoying sharing my my journeys with you and thinking about some of the other places that we should journey together perhaps next show we'll journey to Italy I think you would probably like that we're getting these rocks placed in there and I think okay let me see that rock is a little golder right in here sometimes I like to do rocks with a pallet knife because it really it really shows them up a little better because it's rough it has the same texture as the rock does but I don't want to use the pallet knife on this painting I want this to stay relatively soft there's so much going on so I have to be very selective as to what I'm going to show you and in the painting I have to be very selective if I try to put everything that's in the photograph in the painting it's it wouldn't look good in the painting that wouldn't make a good painting so we have to be selective and you know it's not so much about painting everything as it's being to be an artist it's about selecting the beauty and capturing the soul of the of the place or the painting or the subject matter you want to capture the soul and and you want to show what's really important not just every little little thing because some things aren't important and so you want there we go now we now we're really starting to look like we've got that water coming down and I think before I go too much further I think I'd like to I have another photo here of the falls that I want to show you and this this photo is this is of the of the falls where it goes up and it has some trees there we go I'm trying to get that right on the camera for you there so that shows the falls up higher so you can see this little step falls was just a series of little steps all the way down this canyon and there were trees up in this area up above here well I wanted to add them in because I think that that would make a beautiful um color contrast so I think I will do a little bit of that right now just so that you can see how that is going to play into our color scheme so we've we're going to have some some green leaves right up here and you're going to be maybe a little bit lighter and maybe not so bright I'm going to gray it down a little bit you know this is a wonderful life being a painter talk about doing what you love and loving what you do this is really and truly it because you get to travel to these wonderful places and see scenery like this and then go back to your studio or if you have the time you can paint right on site that's that's even better yet painting right while you're there but if you don't have the time and you're just a traveler passing through like I was why then you can um take the pictures and take them home and paint and share them with your friends and viewers so here we go we've got a little bit of green in there and we're probably dark and that just a tad don't want it to all be too light there is a little dark in there we've got this nice tree that's coming in there and there's probably going to be some light spots on it too um let me see and then I see I see some nice bright green right down in here too that's coming up now that's kind of the undergrowth and it's coming behind this little it looks like a little pine tree of some sort that's in shadow and so we have to kind of put what's behind there behind this over here that looks like that was a log and so we'll work on that a little bit looks like a tree um that just kind of fell to the side and has a little green moss on it there may be a little bit more light on it yeah and he's got his little moss and his little sunlight hitting him in places and you just see a little bit of him there in the in the uh was peeking out from the other stop there we go there he is he's just going right off the canvas there's a little bit of light up in here and a little bit of light down in here behind there behind where the tree is was actually not a tree it's a it's a tree limb and so this is coming down here now if you see this area right in here is quite dark it's very dark and when I darken that what that's going to do is it is going to make my falls appear to come out further and that's what I want it to do I want to uh darken this so that I have the dark the light against the dark of which will move the light forward okay and so that's what I'm going to do next okay and so I'm going to I think I'm trying to make that decision as to what I want it how dark I want that and I think I'll just add a little pain's grave the little alizarin crimson to it I want it to be pretty dark but don't want it to really sink into it I want it to to more be on the surface now I've got a clean brush and I'm just going to come in here and right in here where the falls is coming I'm going to darken that up right up in here a little bit in here and then right down in here a little bit I'm going to darken that up now you can see how right away that makes the falls look like it's showing a little bit more I'm just going to scrub a little here and there we go and now then change my brush again and I think I'll put a little bit of a rock right in here I'm seeing some rock yep right there there we go and it's coming down here and then I want to soften it into the the dark a little bit there so that that shows up nice maybe a little highlight on top of that rock there we go I was telling you about that train ride up white pass summit I didn't tell you what happened when we got up to the top they had to unhook the train and put the engine on the opposite end so that we could go back down and while they were doing that I saw something that I have never seen before and I don't think I'll ever see it again and that was blue ice blue snow and I swear it was absolutely glowing blue the snow was not the snow and ice was not white it was blue the most beautiful beautiful cobalt blue about the color of this right here and it was just incredible I was really really enthralled with that so maybe that's why this looks kind of blue coming down here although I really think that's probably just the shadow and then when they put the the engine of the train back on the on the back of the train and we started back down that was that was so strange because then you were riding backwards and you know and so you saw all these things that you didn't see on the way up because naturally you were you were you know going backwards it was kind of a strange situation I don't particularly care to travel backwards myself but I see a little ledge there a little step and a little water coming down off of that yeah there we go and then come in here and darken this down a little bit because it isn't really quite that light there I'm seeing a lot more of the that this needs to be in the blue what I like to do I like to take my brush and where I see a lot of I like thick paint impasto it's called impasto and so where I see where the paint where the the subject matter looks like it really needs texture then I just kind of pat my brush on there to kind of give it that feeling that marvelous feeling of texture I love that and there that water is bouncing up in there and then it's coming over here and it's going back into the shadow a little bit right in here it's a little more in the shadow down here yeah there's a little a little bit coming right in here okay now and then there's some coming down here and it's kind of coming behind this rock it kind of helps to accentuate this little rock that we have right here that's so pretty there we go and perhaps that water is trickling through here and coming on down what do you think yeah I think that works down here and coming down maybe over here and then this right in here there again is kind of thick because it's the droplets okay now we do have different brush here we do have a lot of this rock and it's kind of in the orange gold color of which is lovely against the blue because that's the this orangey color is kind of the the complement of the blue so we'll put a little bit of that in there and we'll tuck a little bit in in here so that we can see that coming out over in here and coming down here there we go and perhaps we'll put just a little bit of that on this rock right here to kind of give him a little more of a look then we need we need some dark to go right in here because this is really coming out of from behind this rock so that's a little darker in there and this is quite a bit darker in here too and I want to reinforce this I got a little too light there maybe I'll come in with a little little movement there there we go now he looks like a pretty good rock these rocks you just have to play with them until they look like a rock there we go sometimes you play too long and you spoil it so then you have to kind of come back and think of something else to do to kind of punch it back up maybe a little blue there we go and there we go there I like that on there yeah that makes a little more sense okay and I think I'll put just a tiny little bit of that blue in here too okay now then we do have that water on the bottom that is so beautiful right in here and it's so translucent that is just very very pretty very very pretty and it's kind of a gold whoops that's not gold enough kitty come on girl this is kind of a gold right in here and coming over here and kind of waves like and then this is kind of a gold right in there and let me see here now we do have a very dark shadow so I'll have to go back to the dark brush or I have it in my hand here you have to forgive me I'm just kind of get lost here talking to myself about this but then I know that yeah that's it okay so now we've got this dark shadow that's coming in this cast shadow and it adds drama over here in the water that adds a lot of drama and then we've got this little place here too that is that is we need more light more of the color of the falls because the falls is bouncing right there it's coming right down right here and then it's coming right down in here these falls they're they're just phenomenal you know they they they're everywhere and in Alaska you see them and they're just they're so glorious you just you don't know which one is prettier than the last they're so beautiful and the different rock colors and rock formations is just such an exciting place to be I was very fortunate that I got to travel to Alaska you know they have they have the cruises that go up there all the time but I don't know I think the way I traveled I really enjoyed that because I was traveling more with the common people on the ferry and even though the ferry had a wonderful um it had a wonderful you know dining room and they'd even had a movie theater and and I mean it was quite modern and everything in cabins and stuff it was still so much better and smaller than being on a on a cruise ship and I really I really felt you know the top the top deck of the ferry was all taken over with young people that were on their way to north to work and it was it was they were so cute because they had they had all these I mean they couldn't afford tents and things and so had they had little cooking stoves and tents and little shelters I remember one day it rained while we were traveling and you go up there on that top deck and there they are they've got all their tarps spread out and they're going up there from from down in the mainland to work in the canaries and and do different things different jobs like that so it was it was fun it was fun seeing them they dance up there and cut up and carry on and it was just so much fun seeing them and I want that to be a little darker I think I went a little light in this area right here yeah there we go darken that down a little bit because it's it's down in here that we have our our real um and that's more in shadow too you know it's never be afraid if if you are a painter you know don't ever be afraid to go back and and if you see something that isn't doesn't look quite right hey go for it paint over it or scrape it out or you know do something do something don't leave it there we go some water bubbling down right there into that shadow right in there yeah and we'll maybe make a little bit of the come over here all right I see that this rock needs now the one thing I the one thing I do want to remind you the viewers is that you know this will not be finished this will not be a completed painting I will take this back to my studio and I will finish it and then in our at our next show I will show you the finished painting so there's lots of work left to be done right now today I just want you to have an idea of of where I'm going and what my what my plans are with it I see a beautiful rock down in underneath the water and I want to try to capture the look of this rock right here this underneath the water and he's right in there and then he has dark on the sides of him now when that sets up I'll be able to bring the water across that if I try to do it now it's not going to work for me over here in this area here we have what looks appears to be a little tiny pine that is growing up and it's quite dark because this area it's it's in shadow and so it's it's got um seems to be coming right from there and it's going to have when I'm done with it it's going to have some needles on it and it's going to show up as a tree right in this area for right now we're just going to scumble it in so that you can kind of get the feeling of what that is going to look like when it's finished I do hope you will catch our next episode so that you can see little step falls when it's finished a little bit of dark up in here and just kind of wiggling that brush around I just want that little pine tree to show up in there on the side now I may I may decide when I get this back to the studio and take a good long hard look at it I may decide that I want to take that out but we'll see for now we'll leave it in there now I want a little more gold and green right in this area right in here and then it's going to get a little bit greener I have to gray that down a little bit a little greener right in here and right up underneath this water here and right in there and then right over here the water is very dark again just like it was in here that is very dark water is coming down like this very dark so it's just the light is primarily hitting at an angle like this and that's why the water's light down here and you see light up in that area take a different brush here and I want to accentuate that branch a little bit more I want that to pop in there there we go and I want the top of this rock to pop a little bit more I'm going to put a little bit of orange on him maybe a little thing coming down the side and maybe there's a little bit of of color back in here and in there and then I see just a little tiny bit whoops that's way too light kitty tone or down okay let's come up here and I'm seeing just a little bit of light where the light is peeking through there in these rocks this is all very heavy rock area in here it's coming up and coming down in here that's all very rocky and right and so let me see here a few little marks in there put some now I think we better just spend the rest of our time adding to our water right in here we have lots of nice textured water this bubbling and hitting down in here you see that oh boy and that is so much fun to do to create that texture love texture and paintings coming down and it's probably ice cold it would probably be so refreshing to have a drink of this water and over this rock here and it's very very textured right in here right in this area here and then there's this little tiny bit of water coming down over here right up in here there's a nice bit of texturing that we need and a nice bit right in here and then it's kind of coming down kind of comes this way and then down kind of follows the movement to see it's kind of splashing on that rock there maybe we need to darken that rock a little bit yeah there we go yeah we'll darken this rock right in here a little bit so that we can see him just a little bit better there and then he's got the there there we go and then he's coming down here a little bit dark too that dark is coming down inside of there oh okay and then there's a little bit of dark in here I'm seeing it's just such a beautiful kaleidoscope of of color and action motion I mean it's just ah such a breathtaking sight to see I hope I hope for you the viewer that I have I have done it justice so that you have a little bit of idea of where we're going with this so that when I bring it back in the next episode all completed you will have felt like you took this journey with me um in creating and in the the actual visiting of of the beautiful Alaska there we go maybe this could come up here a little bit and I think I want maybe just a little bit more texture in this green just a little bit and a lot of times when I paint water I paint in a downward motion like this and then I'll paint across just a little bit and that will help to make it look like it's going down do you see that how it just that made that water look real deep now we'll bring this around here this is a rock in here those are rocks there we'll have a little color right in here for those rocks I don't like that too much I'm going to soften that down there we go and I'm going to just take my brush and just kind of tap this in a little bit it looks a little hard to me I don't like hard I like my paintings to be nice and and soft and inviting I don't like hard crispness there now we just kind of have a little bit of a idea that he's there but he's not that important so we don't have to we don't have to make him stand out too much and maybe a little bit more dark right in here kind of show that area a little bit isn't this isn't this fun don't you just feel like you're there looking at it yeah yeah okay now I'm just going to put just a few more of the of the water ripples coming around I don't really think I have too much to do on this to finish it up I think it's looking pretty okay right now pretty okay that's not very good English kitty but that's okay that's the way I talk it's all right there oh this has been such a joy to be with you today and to share with you more of my journey to Alaska and I hope that you have enjoyed the journey this journey on canvas through Alaska with me and I think that this is going to be about it and I'm so sorry that we have to once again we have to say goodbye until the next time but I do hope that you will join me and our next adventure and like I said I think we're going to go to Italy you'll want to see beautiful Italy there's lots of different places that I want to take you so bye bye for now I hope you've enjoyed your painting journey with me today I'll see you next time